There are a number of theological questions that have been bandied about for years. One of those is whether or not all sins are equal or if one sin could be more egregious than another. Perhaps, for everyday people like you and me, the more important question is “Who cares?” I mean, do things like this actually have any practical value in our lives?

The short answer to that question is, yes. I think there is practical value for you and me. How we view sin affects how we deal with things like guilt, justice, forgiveness, etc. But before we get to that and spoil which side I come down on, let’s take a look at the argument in favor of all sin being equal.

One of the first passages that comes to mind to support this idea is:

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
– James 2:10

This one seems pretty straightforward. But that’s not all. Let’s couple that with what Jesus talked about in His famous sermon from the Gospel of Matthew.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

• Matthew 5:21-22

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

• Matthew 5:27-28

From Jesus’ own mouth, we get to hear that being angry with someone is tantamount to murder just as lusting after a woman is essentially no different from actually sleeping with her.

There is also the fact the solution to the sin problem is not something that is a matter of degree. It was the same sacrifice of Jesus that reconciled all sinners and made them righteous:

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

•  Romans 5:19

So, if we were to summarize what we’ve looked at so far, we can see that:

1. Failing to uphold one law makes us guilty of breaking all the Law
2. There is no essential difference between being angry and committing murder
3. There is no essential difference between lust and committing adultery
4. The same price was paid for all sin

So far, the case for all sin being equal look fairly strong. But, let’s consider the other side. There is one glaring issue with what we have seen so far.

That issue is, in order to better understand any given Bible passage, like James 2:10, for example, we need to take a page from Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason and “never read a Bible verse.”

Did he really say that? Yes. Yes, he did. But notice what he did not say. He didn’t say “never read the Bible.” His point is, in order to understand a particular passage of scripture, especially a single verse, you have to read it within its surrounding context and not just pull a single verse out and make it stand on its own.

To that end, let’s take a bit of a broader look at James 2:

‘If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.’

 – James 2:8-13

In this fuller context, we can now see that James is using a somewhat different metric. He is referring to sin in a sort of pass/fail sort of way. You’re either a lawbreaker or not a lawbreaker. He doesn’t really address the question of the degree to which a sin is bad relative to another sin.

What should we do with the passages from Matthew 5, then? Clearly, Jesus seems to be saying that anger equals murder and lust equals adultery. Doesn’t that still make all sin the same?

No. Not really. For this, I will refer you to a fantastic article written by Clay Jones in which he poses an interesting question; why do gangbangers stop at red lights?

It may seem like a completely irrelevant question, but I think it gets to the heart of what Jesus is saying in the two passages from Matthew that we looked at.

You see, when we are full of rage against someone, what is ultimately stopping us from murdering them? I’m not talking about just being annoyed with someone. I mean heavy-breathing, red-eyed, high blood pressure, fists clenched, would turn into the Hulk if you were exposed to gamma radiation sort of rage.

We might try to pass off our lack of homicidal actions by saying, “But I’m not going to actually kill someone just because I’m angry.” I’m not entirely sure. I mean, sure. There are some cultural (not to mention legal) stigmas about that sort of thing. But just imagine for a moment that we didn’t have those in place. Imagine we were living in a completely anarchical society. 

Or maybe imagine we were living in a real-life version of the Purge movie. You could do whatever you wanted and there would be no legal consequences. Do you really think there wouldn’t be more people who took their anger to the level of actually killing someone if we were in that situation?

What Jesus was getting at was basically the idea that, when you are that angry at someone, the only reason you’re probably not going to kill them is because there would be negative consequences for you. You’re more motivated by self-interest than anything else. Again, this might be difficult to wrap our minds around because we are so culturally indoctrinated to the idea that murder is wrong that we are kept in line and it’s difficult to imagine how we might behave if there really were nothing holding us back.

It’s a bit easier to grasp the second passage we looked at, when Jesus equated lust with actual adultery. There are no laws against adultery, though there is some social stigma. Yet people still do it all the time. 

Again, Jesus is getting at the idea that our thoughts and beliefs inform our behaviors. We don’t just stumble into bed with someone other than our spouse. That is preceded by thoughts of lust. If we’re looking at someone lustfully, we’ve already decided that we want to sleep with them. The biggest thing holding us back is typically that we don’t want to experience the consequences of doing that. We know what we stand to lose if we follow through with it. Again, we act (or don’t act) out of self-interest.

So, Jesus isn’t saying that anger is as grievous a sin as actual murder or that lust is just as bad as actually committing adultery. What he’s getting at is that these are heart conditions that we have to deal with. And if we fail to deal with them, they will continue to plague us and, in some cases, lead us to eventually act on them. 

Because Jesus understands that thoughts and beliefs inform our behavior. Remember, this is the same guy who told us:

“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

• Luke 6:45

If anger or lust is in our heart, we have to resolve those issues so that they won’t influence us to further sin. Just read through the gospels and note how often Jesus addresses our thoughts and desires. Jesus keeps pointing back to the heart—our thoughts shape our actions, and unchecked desires lead to sin.

The last thing I want to point out with regards to understanding Bible passages is something that many scholars and pastors often reference. That is the idea of allowing scripture to interpret scripture.

So, what does this look like, in practice?

Well, as we’ve already covered, the passages from James and Matthew could be interpreted to say either of two different things. Yes, they become more clear when you read the context, but there may be times when even the broader context doesn’t quite clear things up for you. 

In those cases, a good practice is to look for other passages in the Bible that may help us to eliminate some of the false options. It’s kind of like taking a multiple choice test and quickly eliminating the options you already know are wrong so that you have a higher percentage chance of guessing correctly with fewer options left.

How does this work? Well, in this case, we can look for any passages that seem to indicate that maybe sin is not all equally bad. For example, let’s look at this one:

“Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
– John 19:11b

It certainly seems clear that Jesus is explicitly taking a side on the matter. It’s a bit more difficult to take a passage like this and twist it to fit the “all sin is equal” narrative because there is less ambiguity.

Or how about these two:

“But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.”
– Matthew 11:22

“And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating.”
– Luke 12:47

Both of these passages seem to quite clearly indicate that the punishment for one is less than the punishment for another. Certainly, it wouldn’t be very just for God to punish one sin more severely than another if they are qualitatively the same. Therefore, with these few passages, we can eliminate some of the options for how to interpret the first few passages we looked at. Clearly, if all  these passages are true, and I contend that they are (I’m sure we’ll get more into that eventually), then we simply can’t come to the conclusion that all sins are equally bad.

To bring this to a close, I think we have seen that some sins seem to be worse than others and deserving of different levels of punishment but all sin makes us lawbreakers. So, to our original question, are all sins equal?

No. And Yes.

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