"For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law."
There is an ongoing spiritual battle between our flesh and the Spirit of the living God that dwells in the heart of every saved human being. This battle is extremely discreet, yet it has devastating effects that are glaring in the body of Christ. The battle exists on various levels, but two in particular warrant attention: hierarchies of sin and minimization.
In the church we tend to look upon sin with almost a 1-10 scoring card on how bad someone is based on their sin of choice. But James highlights this point specifically, pointing out that avoiding one sin but committing another has the same result: separation from God which requires Biblical repentance regardless of the sin committed.
This leads to minimization where the flesh compares our sin with other sins and whispers into our ear that we are not as bad as we appear to be on the surface. It is a form of self deception where we fall into a trap of evaluating our spiritual maturity based on what sins we avoided rather than owning those sins we are actually committing, all the while falling further into a state of hypocrisy.
In the end, how we view sin is imperative. Do we see all types/variations/severities of sin as universally equal and deserving of judgment in the sight of God? Do we question what the Bible specifically calls out as sin? Do we seek wisdom from Scripture to help define our boundaries concerning sin? Do we trust the Spirit's prompting when conviction reveals our true heart?
Simply stated: If we believe the Bible is absolute truth, we cannot live in ignorance. We cannot rank our sins and believe God only punishes the big ones. We cannot minimize our sin and think more highly of ourselves than we ought. And we cannot plead ignorance when the day of judgment comes, for we all have sinned and deserve judgment.
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