For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. – James 2:10,11
I remember when I was at a point in my life where I’d backslid. Have you ever done that? Moved away from God and taken a few steps (or more) back toward your old ways? I could tell there was something lacking, but I didn’t want to own up to it. So to make myself feel better, I’d compare my sin to the people around me. At least I didn’t cuss like he did. At least I didn’t wear revealing clothing like she did. At least I was protecting my chastity unlike him. At least I didn’t get drunk like her.
And you know what? It didn’t make me feel any better. Deep down I knew that wasn’t enough.
We tend to put sin on a spectrum. This sin is worse than that sin which is worse than that sin. But sin is sin to God. The Bible says, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We try to make ourselves feel better by pointing to other’s sin, but that’s hypocritical. In Matthew, Jesus says, And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5).
When we try to lessen our own sin, we’re really just making excuses for ourselves. We’re saying it’s okay to do what we’re doing because it’s not that bad. But it’s all bad. It’s all sin against God. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who sinned less because we all sinned against God.
There is no sin spectrum, and we need to stop pretending there is.
