When particular issues come up for debate or argument among Christians, a question that usually lurks in the background – and which might make its presence felt explicitly – is: “Why This issue? What about all the other things we could debate?
Behind this question lies a broader question of theological importance: are all contested issues equally important? And when it comes to questions of ethics, are all sins the same?
I believe the Scriptures offer two very distinct answers to this question.
Answer 1: Yes, all sins are the same
On one level, yes, all sins are the same, in the sense that they represent a human turning away from God’s will and intent in how we live our lives.
Jesus emphasizes this point emphatically in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said of old to the people, ‘You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that whoever is angry with a brother or sister will be judged. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister “Raca” is responsible to the Sanhedrin. And anyone who says: “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell. (Matthew 5:21-22)
To modern ears this sounds ridiculous. How can being angry with someone be the same as committing murder? Surely this last point is much more serious than the first? We should note here Jesus’ use of hyperbole and other rhetorical arts – did you spot his three examples (angry/’Raca’/fool)? Jesus makes a rhetorical argument against a tendency in his own context to view Torah teaching as merely applying to outward behavior.
Any modern reader who engages with the instructions of the Old Testament is quickly struck by its practicality – what you can wear, what you should and should not eat, how you can cultivate – focusing on the phrase exterior of human life. Jesus makes a counterpoint here, and he does it from the law itself: what matters as much as our actions is our attitude. “Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45), and it is what comes from within that defiles us (Mark 7:20).
In our culture, some people still focus on outward obedience, but most of the time we make the opposite mistake, asserting that “it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s what you believe that matters.” Jesus’ teaching corrects these two errors here: what you believe and how you act are inextricably linked. That’s his point.
Other parts of the New Testament teach something similar. James says that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point is guilty of transgressing it entirely.” (2:10) And in teaching “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Paul says that all sin has the same result: it separates us from God. He insists that the inner life is as important as the outer observance: “A person is not a Jew if he is only one in appearance, nor is circumcision merely outward and physics. No, a person is a Jew who is one internally; and circumcision is the circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. (Romans 2:28-29)
The purpose of all this teaching is to emphasize that all have sinned; even the best of us are subject to the power of sin, are far from the holiness of God, and are powerless to change without the new life that God offers us in Jesus through the Spirit.
Answer 2: No, different sins are different
Jesus differentiates between the details of obedience to the instructions of the Torah and the “greater matters of the law” in his criticism of the Pharisees (Matthew 23:23). This suggests that some sins are more serious than others. But note his response: Consistent with his teaching earlier in Matthew, he is not saying that the details are unimportant, but rather: “You should have practiced the second course, without neglecting the first. » These different issues are not the same, but they all matter.
This was a common point of discussion among Jews in the first century as to which commandments were most important. When Jesus is challenged on this point, he gives an answer that would not surprise his contemporaries: love God (Deuteronomy 6:4) and love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) – reflecting the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, the first being focused on upwards and the second towards the outside. Yet it is striking that Jesus summarizes the law from within the law, and in doing so, does not allow us to think that the detailed application of these summaries is unimportant. How do we know what it means to love God, to love our neighbor? Well, we need to read the rest of the Scriptures!
This differentiation reflects the whole form of God’s teaching to his people. We often find summary statements like these, then more general, longer instructions, like the Ten Commandments, and then detailed application of these principles in particular circumstances (like the details found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy). Likewise, in Paul’s letters he often begins his practical teaching with statements of principle, which he then fleshes out with detailed instructions.
For us contemporary readers, this means that we will have to evaluate these different levels of commandments in different ways. “Higher level” principles are more likely to apply to us as stated – but particular applications, expressed in contextual terms, may well need to be reexpressed in different ways in our own context.
How then to tell the difference?
Jesus and Paul continue to emphasize that specific issues are of particular importance. Special judgment is reserved for those who lead “these little ones” astray (Matthew 18:6), and he uses this language to refer to vulnerable disciples, not actual children. Likewise, while people may have difficulty accepting who He is, there is a particular danger for those who have seen Jesus minister in the power of the Holy Spirit and still cannot recognize the power of God in their midst. (this is what the “sin against the Holy Spirit” is mentioned in Matthew 12: 31-32).
In his debate with the Corinthians over sexual ethics, Paul notes that “those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Because God created us corporeal, male and female, because our bodies are not something we to have but express who we arebecause Jesus gave his body on the cross to redeem our bodies, because our bodies are now the dwelling place of the Spirit, the place of the temple of God’s presence in the world, and because our hope is that we will be resurrected bodily on the last day – for all these reasons, Paul considers the holiness of our body to be particularly important.
But alongside this emphasis on the body, it is very striking that Paul refuses to elevate sexual sin above other types of offenses! In this well-known list of vices in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul places his four mentions of sexual sin in a list of 10 offenses (do you know that number?!), and treats them all equally as things that endanger our inheritance of the kingdom of God if we persist in them. There is no theological reason to select one of these sins and consider it more important than the others; God’s call to live a holy life in the power of the Spirit applies equally to all and every area of our lives.
Churches, sex and marriage
Why then are so many Western churches, including the Church of England, worried about sex and marriage? Is this a sign that they are obsessed in an unhealthy way?
We should note three things.
First, the initiative here comes from our culture, and not from the Churches themselves. We live in a highly sexualized culture, and Western cultures currently wear this as a badge of honor, claiming that we are uniquely liberated and enlightened compared to other, more traditional cultures. We are particularly offended when sections of society, such as Christian churches, dispute this assertion. And I have yet to hear anyone, either inside or outside the churches, calling for a formal affirmation of the other sins on Paul’s list of ten!
Second, in this type of context, what has always been a distinct Christian (and Jewish) sexual ethic comes under particular scrutiny.. The late EP Sanders, a leading (liberal) New Testament scholar, writes: “Homosexual activity was a subject on which there was serious conflict between Greco-Roman and Jewish views. Christianity, which accepted many aspects of Greco-Roman culture, in this case accepted the Jewish view so completely that the way most people in the Roman Empire viewed homosexuality was erased, although ‘it has now been reclaimed by ancient historians…Jews of the Diaspora had made sexual immorality and particularly homosexual activity a major distinction between themselves and the Gentiles, and Paul repeated the lists of Jewish vices from the diaspora.
The distinctive sexual ethic that marriage is a permanent union between a man and a woman is as great a challenge to our culture as it was in the first century.
Third, although some claim that this is a secondary issue and not a “creed”, this is not actually the case. This distinctive ethic of sex and marriage arises from the belief in God as creator, who created humanity in his image, male and female – this is precisely Paul’s argument in Romans 1. According to Paul, the Rejection of this ethic is a rejection of God’s creative intention, which is in turn a rejection of God as creator.
This explains why, as Darrin Syder Belousek points out: “The creational covenant model of marriage…is a consensus doctrine of the Catholic Church. Until the present generation, all Christians throughout the world have believed, and every branch of the Christian tradition has taught, that marriage is a monogamy of man and woman… Marriage, the whole Church has always confessed, n It is not only a monogamous union but also a man-woman union. union.’
The Reformers agreed with the Roman Catholic Church on the content of beliefs. But they believed that the Church of their day had taken a decisive step away from the authority of Scripture and the teaching of Jesus – enough to break with them in order to be faithful to the apostolic heritage of the Early church. Many think it is the same today.
