R.C. Sproul: I think the New Testament makes it clear.
There’s at least 25 references in the New Testament that speaks of the various degrees
of punishment and reward, and or reward in heaven relative to the degrees of sinfulness
of sin.
Even though all sin is sin, there’s still a clear distinction in the New Testament between
those sins that are covered, the multitude of sins that love covers, that the Roman Catholic
distinction between “mortal” and “venial” is not something that we would hold, but it’s
a distinction that we would agree with in part; that at least there are, there is a
difference between less and greater sins.
And the New Testament follows that again, again and again.
And the point that we’re talking about here is that we are heaping up our sins against
the day of wrath, heaping up wrath, piling it up, treasuring it up, according to the
apostle Paul.
And so it’s not like if oh, if I commit one sin, if I — I’ve heard a guy say,
“Well I’ve lost it after I’ve already committed that sin, so I might as well go
ahead and finish the action.”
No, no, no.
You’re just entering into a more egregious violation of that previous sin.
I once heard a psychiatrist speak a refutation of the ethics of Jesus because Jesus said
that every sin is equally heinous, he says.
And then anybody know better than that.
And I said, “Jesus never said that every sin is equally heinous.
Jesus said that every sin is real sin and violation of the character of God,” and
all the rest.
But even when He says, in His explanation of the Sermon on the Mount, that if you lust
after a woman in your heart, He doesn’t say that’s as bad as actually committing
adultery but He, what He is pointing out is that even if, even if you refrain from the
actual act does not mean that you have been totally obedient to the commandment.
And so Jesus expands the implications, and repercussions, and consequences of the commission
of sin.
So that the Pharisees in their oral tradition had a simplistic understanding of the prohibitions
of God.
But Jesus never said that all sins were equally heinous.
Steven Lawson: Just to add a couple of verses, Hebrews 2:2 and 3 says, “Every sin shall
receive a just recompense.”
So each individual sin would have the proper consequence to that sin.
Some sins are greater, and there is a greater condemnation than others.
And we see that established in the Mosaic law — “An eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth.”
It means that the punishment fits the crime.
It’s not an eye for a tooth, or a tooth for an eye, but an eye for an eye; meaning,
if you take out someone’s eye, then you must replace that eye, so to speak.
Or a tooth for a tooth.
And it’s a matching up of the punishment for that sin, and in the, under the Mosaic
Law, there were, I can’t remember the exact number but it’s 21, 23, something like that,
sins deserve the death penalty where other sins did not deserve the death penalty.
So there’s a distinction in God’s justice as He metes out the punishment for the crime.
What is true in time will be true in eternity.
Albert Mohler: Yeah, Paul tells us about God’s judgment being “to each according to his
deeds committed in the flesh.”
If it’s according to to each, that would indicate an individual judgment, in which
there would be some variation.
No one, no one found guilty — innocent of anything less, is guilty of an infinite assault
upon the holiness of the righteous and omnipotent God.
But I think R.C. put it exactly right.
Even in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, it’s false to say, “Jesus said this is
all the same.”