- The whole question of sin and categorizing sin
and whether certain behaviors are worse than others,
we have to really think carefully about this.
First, before God, sin is sin before God.
We are sinning against a holy, righteous,
perfect, infinite God, who demands from us
all of our love and loyalty and trust and service.
That's what the Great Commandment clearly
reveals to us, tha t God has the right
and he is worthy of our worship.
He has the right to demand these things.
So sin before him, any sin,
any violation of his moral demands,
his moral character, reflected in the
revealed word of God brings about death,
the wages of sin is death.
But then when we think of sin at the human level,
and its implication and consequences
we don't wanna just make all sin equal
in the sense of how it shows up in our families,
our relationships and society.
We, in our courts, distinguish various consequences of sin.
So high officials in government who commit treason,
they're lying, they're breaking trust,
we can do that at a private, or in a family relationship
yet we consider that high official's consequences
very serious because his break of trust,
his turning over secrets of the nation
may involve then a loss of military action.
They may involve the loss of many lives.
We hold people more accountable
for those actions even though before God sin is sin.
Sometimes we categorize in our society
the debate on a lot of sexual sins.
We say, "well, sin prior, sexual activity
"prior to marriage and then adultery
"it's all equal. It's just the same."
And then we even bring in,
say instead of heterosexuality sins
we bring in homosexuality.
Well even here we have to think carefully about this. Yes,
Any sexual activity outside of the
heterosexual marriage bond is sin before God.
Yet even in the practice of sexual sins
we distinguish the abuse of an adult of a child.
We distinguish sins that are against the created order
versus that which God has made to be normal
such as male/female in marriage relationship.
And so we have to keep these points distinct.
We have to then see what the consequences are
for a society, a family.
We can then think through that sin
has to carry greater punishment and weight to it
in order to discourage it even though
before God sin is sin.
So keeping all of that in balance
is crucial in thinking carefully
about how we think about sin,
how we think of sins being better or worse,
and how we then carry out our practice
even in society of punishment and dealing with crime
and dealing with sins against one another
as well as sins before God.
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching.
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(upbeat music)