Are there different levels of sin?

Question:

Are there different levels of sin, or is all sin the same?

Answer:

The confusion to this is actually a result of the fact that there are differing perspectives in the Word of God. The difference is not an inconsistency, but rather a matter of theme. When addressing the question from God's perspective, God's Word emphasizes a leveling off. For example, in Isaiah 64, the prophet says:

5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

The Hebrew text is most graphic. The filthy rags are actually menstrual rags...that is the image that God paints of man's righteousness. God is not teaching that he despises righteousness. That would be an odd message given the fact that the Bible continually calls us to righteous living. Rather, God is dealing with the attempt to earn salvation. When it comes to earning our way into heaven, our very best still falls woefully short.

So, from God's perspective all sin is the same with regard to the gaining of salvation. However, from man's perspective, there are differences that matter.

In Numbers 15:30-31 we read:

30 ”‘But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people. 31 Because he has despised the LORD’s word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.’”

In the Hebrew, the word translated "defiantly" is actually a phrase, "byad ramah" which means with a "high hand." The image is the person who sins purposefully, with his hand clenched and raised against heaven. There is no sacrifice in the Law of Moses to atone for such a sin. The only path back is the kind of repentance David shows after his sin with Bathsheba:

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psalm 51)

In 1 Corinthians 6, the apostle Paul makes a distinction between sexual sin and other types of sin:

18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Notice that Paul is not saying that sexual sin is "worse" from God's perspective. However, he says that in a unique way it is damaging to us personally...it can tear us apart and tear others apart as well. Ask any family that has gone through an affair or a divorce and this thesis is proved.

Jesus described his own "high handed sin." He categorized the sin against the Holy Spirit as unpardonable (Matthew 12, Mark 3). In a similar vein, the author of Hebrews gives one of the most sober warnings in all the Bible.

26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10)

These are difficult texts, but they do make it clear that there are certain sins which are particularly deadening to the soul. In Exodus we see that after Pharaoh hardened his heart several times, God further hardened Pharaoh's heart. It would seem that some sins are especially harmful to us both physically and spiritually.

So what is the conclusion? From God's perspective all sin is fatal. From man's perspective certain sins are more damaging than others. However, the answer to all sin is the grace of God, who takes the first and most important step, and the repentance of man, by which we receive God's atoning sacrifice.