Understanding Degrees of Sin and Righteousness

In this session together, we’re going to consider a very controversial matter and one that has plagued an awful lot of Christian people. And not only Christians, but those who are outside the church have struggled with this question, and that is this: are there degrees of sin or degrees of righteousness? [00:00:04]

Jesus of Nazareth never for a moment taught that it is as bad to lust, as it is to commit adultery; it is as bad to be angry, as it is to murder. Jesus never taught that. He never taught it in the gospels. He never taught it in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not taught by the apostles. It’s not taught in the Old Testament. [00:06:45]

The Old Testament, for example, which is the book upon which Jesus was reared and to which He owed His own human allegiance in terms of His ethical patterns, is filled with distinction after distinction after distinction with respect to the degrees of sin. Even in the judicial system of Israel, clear distinctions were made between first-degree murder—what we would call murder by malice aforethought—and involuntary manslaughter. [00:07:08]

The point that Jesus is making is this: that the law that God gives—thou shalt not commit adultery—is not so easily maintained and kept with integrity if one merely refrains from the most abysmal act of adultery. Gail Green did a survey of the sexual revolution and the sex ethics of college girls in the sixties in this nation, and she said at that time, her discovery, in her particular survey, was that the prevailing philosophy of sexual activity among college girls in the sixties was the so-called “everything but” philosophy, or what she called the “technical virginity.” [00:10:25]

What Jesus is saying is that when God says, “Don’t commit adultery,” the full measure of that prohibition incorporates within it the whole complex of that sin—not only the actual act, but all of the things that are a part of it, all the way from adultery back to the initial beginnings that crossed this line of lust. [00:11:41]

The Roman Catholic formula, which was made popular in the Middle Ages and of course became a point of dispute in the sixteenth century, but is still in focus in Roman Catholic moral theology is the distinction between mortal and venial sin. Now the point of that distinction is that there are some sins so gross, so heinous, so serious that the actual commission of those sins is mortal—not that it kills the person but that it kills the grace of justification that is residing in the soul of the believer. [00:14:19]

John Calvin was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church and certainly as critic of this distinction between mortal and venial sin. And here’s what Calvin has to say: Calvin said that all sin is mortal in the sense that it deserves death. The Bible does say if you sin against one point of the law, you sin against the whole law, and so that if I commit one sin, in that slightest act of transgression—did you ever consider the ramifications or repercussions of one tiny little act, one tiny little peccadillo, one tiny little just driving fifty-one miles an hour when the speed limit’s fifty miles an hour, just that tiny little transgression against the civil magistrates, which God calls you to obey—not malicious, not violent, vituperative, hostility towards God, but you transgress the law of God. [00:15:46]

Calvin and every other one of the reformers strenuously maintained that there is a difference between petty sins and what they called gross and heinous sins, and that distinction is important for Christians to realize, and it’s important for us if we’re going to have the fruit of the Holy Spirit to be able to realize it because we are called to be patient and kind and longsuffering with other Christian people, and with other non-Christian people, even to be patient with them in their sins. [00:19:26]

The Bible warns again and again against not adding to the severity of our judgment, that it’ll be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than it will be for Chorazin and Bethsaida. Jesus says (after he’s been delivered to Pilate) to Pontius Pilate, “Those who have delivered me to you have greater guilt than you do.” Jesus measures and evaluates guilt, and with the greater guilt and the greater responsibility comes the greater judgment. [00:22:03]

The whole idea of gradation of sin and gradation of punishment, gradation of virtue and gradation of reward is based upon God’s justice. If you commit twice as many sins as another person, justice demands that the punishment fits the crime. If you’ve done twice as much virtue as the other person, justice demands that you get more reward. [00:23:21]

God tells us that even though whether we get into heaven or not get into heaven will be on the basis of the merit of Christ—the merit of Christ alone that gets me in there—my reward, once I get to heaven, will be distributed according to my works—not that my works are ever good enough to impose an obligation on God to reward them, but God has used this as the method by which He promises to reward His people. [00:23:54]

We are called to move from faith to faith and from grace to grace and from life to life abounding in good works, adding to the treasure that God is laying up for his people in Heaven, diminishing the treasure of wrath, adding to the treasure of blessing. That we must keep in our mind as we seek to build a Christian conscience and a Christian character. [00:26:05]