Is all Sin the same?

“All sin is the same in God's eyes.” Most people have heard that said, usually by a Christian, and usually meant well — it sounds humble, and it stops anyone in the room ranking his neighbour's sins below his own.

Now listen to where the sentence ends up. A man who has spent months lusting after a woman tells himself that Jesus already counted it as adultery in the heart, so the act itself would change nothing. He is not asking a question. He is talking himself into it, using a line he picked up in church.

He is half right, and he is leaning on the wrong half. Every sin is equally fatal. Not every sin is equally serious.

Take the first half. One sin is enough to ruin a man before God — not one sin repeated for forty years, but one.

Romans 6:23 (NKJV)

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sin, of any size, earns death. That is the wage, and it does not go up or down with the offence. James explains why a single breach is enough:

James 2:10–11 (NKJV)

For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

The reason is in the second sentence, and it has nothing to do with arithmetic. He who said… also said. One voice spoke both commandments. The law is not a list of separate rules where a man can pass most and fail a few. Behind every commandment stands one Lawgiver, and the same God who forbade adultery forbade murder. So the man who keeps nine and breaks one has not scored ninety per cent. He has defied the God who spoke all ten. That is the sense in which all sin is the same: any of it is enough to put you on the wrong side of God, and none of it can be offset by the commandments you did keep.

Now the second half. Jesus did the grading Himself, hours before the cross, standing in front of Pilate.

John 19:11 (NKJV)

Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

Pilate was about to send an innocent man to be crucified, and Jesus does not excuse him for a moment. But He tells Pilate that someone else that night carried heavier guilt — the man who handed Him over knowing exactly who He was. Two men, sinning against the same Christ, and Jesus grades them. So the slogan cannot mean that God sees no difference. Jesus saw one, and said so, on His way to the cross.

He said the same thing about punishment.

Luke 12:47–48 (NKJV)

And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.

Both servants are punished. Neither is innocent. But the punishment is not identical, and the thing that separates them is knowledge. The servant who understood what his master wanted and ignored him is more guilty than the servant who never knew. God's justice is precise: He does not sentence in one lump. Israel's law worked the same way — some offences carried the death penalty, others restitution, others a fine (Exodus 21–22). The penalty was fitted to the crime, which only makes sense if the crimes were not equal to begin with.

So back to the man talking himself into it. His argument does come from a real sentence of Jesus.

Matthew 5:27–28 (NKJV)

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Jesus is not pulling adultery down to the level of a look. He is pushing the commandment back to where it always reached — the heart. His hearers had shrunk the seventh commandment into a rule about bodies, so that a man who kept his hands to himself could count himself obedient. Jesus takes that comfort away. The point is not your lust is as bad as adultery. The point is your restraint is not innocence.

Which means the man reasoning himself into the act has taken the one thing Jesus said and used it to do the one thing Jesus forbade. He has sinned already; that much is true. Going through with it settles nothing. It commits a second and heavier sin, and it pulls other people into the wreckage — a woman, a marriage, children, a church. That reasoning is not theology. It is sin arguing for more of itself.

Both halves have to be held together, and that is where the best-known attempt to sort sin comes apart. Roman Catholic teaching sorts sin into two categories: mortal sin, said to destroy grace in the soul and ordinarily requiring confession to a priest, and venial sin, which wounds the soul without destroying it. The Reformers rejected that division and Reformed churches have never taken it up, because Scripture will not support either half. Every sin, however small, deserves God's judgement — James has already closed that door. And there is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven to a man who repents. What Scripture does teach is that sins differ in gravity, and it tells us what makes the difference: how much light the sinner had, what the sin itself was, and the circumstances in which it was committed.

So is every sin forgivable? Every sin a man brings to Christ in repentance is forgiven, and there is no list of exceptions. And if you want it, that wanting did not begin with you. A hard heart does not soften itself; God gives the new one, and He gives the desire that goes with it. The man who only looked and the man who went through with it do not come on different terms. Both come with empty hands, and both are told the same thing:

1 John 1:9 (NKJV)

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Faithful, because He promised. Just, because the punishment for the sin being confessed has already fallen on Christ.