3. All Sin Is Equal? The “All Sin Is the Same” Phrase Promotes Capitulation Rather Than Mortification
The devil is a created being, and just as all humans have a beginning—so does the devil. Satan has lived and learned much over the thousands of years of his life. He has learned how to increase in his craft of subtle temptations. In a masterful way, he can make God’s children who have learned to hate the very things that God hates to lower their guard and capitulate on their choices of sin.
Like a person who has been trying to keep a strict diet, when they have a bad day, the next delicious temptation on that very day will be a little easier to accept. People often compromise their diet in the afternoon hours after blowing it at lunch by telling themselves, “Well, I’ve already blown it today, so I will just start over tomorrow.”
Unfortunately, some people approach sin in the same manner telling themselves that they will start over tomorrow.
In addition, people who live by the idea that “all sin is equal” will be less likely to mortify the flesh and fight sin. How many men have made the grievous error to enter into an adulterous relationship with a woman after lusting after her on social media? After being reconnected through Facebook, the man falls into a lustful pattern of sin and when he physically meets with this woman, he makes the damaging choice to capitulate because he tells himself that he lusted after her and has already committed adultery in his heart. While this is true, it’s not the same to lust after a person and actually commit adultery in a physical sense. Both are sinful and both will have very different results in the end. Kevin DeYoung writes:
Here’s the problem: When every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I’m Osama bin Hitler in God’s eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-and-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Land’s End catalog shouldn’t dare exercise church discipline on the young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we’ve cheapened God’s goodness. If our own legal system does not treat all infractions in the same way, surely God knows that some sins are more heinous than others. If we can spot the difference, we’ll be especially eager to put to death those sins which are most offensive to God. [1]
Any teaching that condones sin because “all sin is the same” is nothing less than a devilish trap. Not all surgery is the same. Having a wart removed is not the same as a heart transplant surgery. Both are considered the cutting of the human body, but both are quite different in their effect on the body. It would be wise to follow the teachings of Scripture and to avoid all sin. When you hear people classify all sins as the same—remember the words of Jesus. One day in the future, judgment day will prove in a definitive way that all sin is not the same.
- Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 72.
This article answering the question, All sin is equal? originally appeared here.
