All Sins Are Not Equal

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. Today's episode of Stone Choir is talking about the subject of whether all sins are equal. And following on from that, whether we are permitted to judge the sins of another. What does it mean to judge, particularly when scripture says judge not? Yeah, these are both things that you hear in the mouths of many Christians today. Generally, they're liberal Christians who are trying to Trying to avoid controversy, they're trying to avoid any sense of accusation or claiming that one person could possibly be worse than another. That's something that Protestants in particular are extremely allergic to. Uh so today what we're going to be going through is a

1:21 series of verses straight from scripture. This is basically going to be a long Bible study where we talk about the various verses that make absolutely explicit that not all sins are equal, that not only are they not equal in God's eyes, but that they are punished unequally as well. Like many of our episodes, this is fundamentally an assault on the false doctrine of equality. There's no such thing before God at any point. And we'll get into the details of what we mean, because obviously there are counterarguments that some make that we're we're gonna demolish here, in this case, dealing with the question of sin being equal First passage we're going to talk about today is from John nineteen. It's one that we've all heard recently as we're just on the

2:03 heels of holy week. So Pilate said to Jesus, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the authority to release you and authority to crucify you? answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. I attacked on that second part just because as a side note, in the on the spirit of all sins are equal, it's very often something that comes up in the last few years, but particularly on the heels in during Easter, of claiming that it wasn't the

2:45 Jews who executed Christ, that it was the Romans. When you read the narratives of Christ's trials, it was the Jews who brought him to the Romans. The only reason they didn't murder him themselves is that they did not have the legal authority to do so. And so they came to Pilate and then Harry, and then Pilate again, making false accusations, and basically bullied Pilate into a corner to crucify him, even though he knew he wasn't guilty. He said he wasn't guilty, he knew that it was unjust, but for the sake of peace in his own head, because here it says if you release this man you're not Caesar's friend, is an explicit threat this Pilate would be committing treason if he didn't. That's how that played out.

3:28 And so when Jesus says he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin, Jesus is naming the Jew. He is saying the Jews who handed me over to you are To you, Pilate, for Roman execution, because you have the authority to execute. That only existed because of the disparity between the goals of the Romans and the goals of the Jews. And Jesus acknowledged they had different motivations, they had different interests, and that it was explicitly the greater evil of the Jews who were crying for his blood and crying for Barabbas to be freed, even though he was a murderer. That was the greater sin that Jesus refers to. So just as a single passage, they would refute the notion that all sins can be equal.

4:13 Just in one verse, when Jesus says the greater sin precludes any notion that that could possibly be true. And as we go through the rest of these we'll see in in greater detail how that plays out. But right from Holy Week itself, from Jesus on lifts, that claim that all sins are equal is categorically disqualified. So we just end there and it's our shortest episode, right? Because really if you have the the the w the direct word of Christ here saying that there is such thing as a greater sin, well obviously then there are different degrees of sin. There are worse sins, there are sins that are not as bad. Of course, all sin separates from God, and all sin is damning, but there are greater sins, there are greater punishments flowing from those greater sins.

5:00 And just to emphasize what you said about the bit about Caesar's friend, because that's going to go past most modern readers. They're going to see that and go, okay, you're not a friend to Caesar if you do this thing, fine. In the context, to be Caesar's friend is to be someone who is on Caesar's good side, to be not Caesar's friend is as was said, to be a traitor, to be someone who is going to be marked for persecution and probably execution, and Pilate may eventually have been executed. Whether as a martyr or not, we're not entirely sure of the history of that. I happen to think he probably did convert, but that's an aside. But obviously here, just at the outset, we have the very clear, irrefutable teaching that there is such a thing as a greater sin.

5:49 And so Christians cannot say that, you know, all sins are equal. That's not true. All sins are not equal. All sins separate from God. That is true, in so far as you are talking purely about the separation of man from God, all sins are equal in that they affect that separation. But all sins are not equal in the gravity of the sin, in the degree of the sin, in really the Really, the the significance of that separation between God and man that is worked by the sin. This is something that in Luke 23 at Jesus' crucifixion he parallels. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, and they cast lots to devise his garments. Now that was specifically speaking of the Roman soldiers, the men who

6:37 were the proximate cause of his hands and feet being nailed to a cross, he said forgive them for they know not what they do. Just as he said this Pilate's sin was the lesser sin for unjustly murdering him, for unjustly executing him. It was a murder because it was a an unjust execution. But it was also a murder it was also an execution under the law, although the law had been misapplied. But even at that Jesus paralleled Pilate's sin of commanding his execution, and then the actual executioners, the the Roman soldiers who were literally at the cross, some of whom, you know, they witnessed what happened, they witnessed those miracles, as Pilate didn't, he wasn't present. And so when Jesus said forgive them, for they know not what

7:24 they do, that is not a prayer that Jesus gave to the braying crowd of Jews who called for his blood. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they wanted to murder an innocent man. The Roman soldiers, for lack of a better phrase, they were following orders. What were they going to do? Pilate says you execute a man, they nail him to a cross. That's what they did. And so here in two verses in the very same story, you know, hours apart, Jesus says there's a greater sin, and then he says, Forgive these men for the lesser sin. God forgive them because they don't know that they're nailing the Son of God to the cross. And we can of course pull out a general principle here that a knowing sin is worse than an unknowing sin.

8:08 And yes there is such a thing as an unknowing sin If you unknowingly transgress God's law, that's still a sin, but it is an unknowing sin. If you know God's law and deliberately transgress it, that is a knowing sin, that is a worse sin. It's in fact multiple sins, because the act itself is sin, the guilty intent is sin, the deliberate violation of God's law is sin, you're compounding sin when you do something knowingly, as opposed to the unknowing sin where you merely transgress God's law, but not deliberately. This of course also deals with the difference between original sin and actual sin. Actual sin in this case just meaning sins that are not original sin. It's just a term used in theology to differentiate the two.

9:01 It's not saying that actually Actual sin is actually sin, and original sin is not. They're both sin. Original sin is what is inherited from our parents all the way back to Adam. It is inherited down the line, genealogically, that is sin that is a corruption of man's nature, and we sin because we are sinners, and we are sinners because of original sin. Actual sin are those sins that we then go on to commit ourselves, not inherited sin, but sins that we have committed theft, murder, adultery, whatever it happens to be. And so we see in that, the difference between original and actual sin, that at the very least there are categories of sin, there are different kinds of sins, and we'll get into more of that

9:52 later on in the episode. But again, notice the difference in this passage. A knowing sin committed deliberately, committed with intent, is worse than an unknowing sin. And we of course have that in our civil laws, we recognize that. If you accidentally kill someone, probably not murder unless you were doing something incredibly negligent, then could potentially still be murder. But for instance, if you are driving a vehicle and you have a medical emergency, you black out, you have an aneurysm, and you run over pedestrian, that's not murder. It's in fact not even negligent most likely. If you deliberately drive into a crowd of pedestrians, that is murder. So there's a difference regarding the intent, and the same thing holds

10:46 here. The first perfect passage for dealing with deliberate sin is from Hebrews ten. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the spirit of grace. For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, and again the Lord will judge his people.

11:28 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So this passage makes clear part of the reason, perhaps the entire reason that those Roman soldiers Jesus asked for their forgiveness was that they were not deliberately sinning. They were executing a convicted criminal. He was wrongly convicted, but that was that was above their pay grade. They had an order and they followed it. Their sin was not deliberate. And I think that it's entirely reasonable to believe that some of them, at least when they saw the you know, the earthquake and all the incredible happenings in the immediate aftermath of his death, it became clear to them that it was in fact the Son of God and that they had sinned.

12:11 So their knowledge of sin at the time when they were doing it was not the same as what happened at least for some of them after the fact. They were not sinning deliberately when they murdered Christ by nailing him to the cross. That was not true of the Pharisees. It was not too true of the crowd of Jews who had followed Jesus for years trying to murder him. There are passage after passage in in all four of the gospels describing how the Jews continuously tried to murder Christ, his entire earthly ministry. And they finally succeeded. They succeeded by using the won the Romans as a political weapon. It was it was clever. It was it was absolutely malicious. And it was their way of doing it at arm's length.

12:56 You know, just as the Pharisees paid Judas the thirty pieces of silver for his betrayal, you know, and then tossed it back as they couldn't accept blood money. They used the Romans to commit their murder. You know, they did everything at arm's length. They did everything in secret. They did everything so that they could keep their hands clean as they were committing literally the worst sin, the worst crime in the history of the universe. Now think about that. Is when when someone says to you, All sins are equal, would you agree then that if I steal your pencil or if the Pharisees and the crowd of Jews demands that Christ be executed for no crime. Are those equal? That's what you're saying. You're saying that the murder of Christ is no worse than anything

13:45 else that anyone else has ever done if that's if that's a legal or a moral perspective you want to take, I I I I honestly don't see how you can claim to be Christian. Any pagan can understand that there are degrees of sin, that there are degrees of evil. You know, Cory just gave the example of of mensreya when you know you're doing something wrong or not knowing. And then there are also the degrees to which some sins are sinful. There are things that are worse than others. And as as Corey mentioned up front, and you know it's we say this in many episodes, it's always true. It's true, especially in this episode. We're not talking about suteriology. We're not talking about how we can save ourselves or justify ourselves.

14:32 That's a problem that Protestantism solved perfectly 500 years ago, because we read the Bible again and we believed it again, and God solved it perfectly. He gave us the true information about how we are saved. We are saved solely through Christ's sacrifice. So when we talk about something being a greater sin or a lesser sin, none of it gets you off the hook. The example we've given in the past is that the sin of Adam listening to his wife and then eating the wrong piece of fruit, that is the least significant sin in the history of sin. He ate a piece of fruit that he wasn't supposed to eat. It was a beautiful piece of fruit. It was probably delicious. It was you know the the the garden was full of trees

15:16 and he was allowed to eat everything. And God said, this one tree, don't touch that fruit. What did he do? He listened to his wife and he ate that one piece of fruit. You've probably probably virtually every sin that you've ever committed in your life, I'm sure every sin I've ever committed in my life, was worse than eating the wrong piece of fruit. And yet we inherit Adam's sin. We inherit damnation from our Father by virtue of that first sin, the smallest of all sins, and yet it causes our death. So when we say greater or lesser sin, we do that with full acknowledgement that the least sinful sin possible, at least that I can think of, is still a damning sin. We're not talking about manners of damnation.

15:59 We're talking about how God views these things. As we get into some of these other verses in a minute, we'll show clearly specific examples of other sins that are seen as much more abhorrent than others. Yes, with all deference to Walter, we are not dealing here with the gospel, obviously. We are dealing with the law, we are dealing with sin, we are dealing with theology, not specifically soteriology, and so his thesis twenty five to let the gospel predominate is not in play here. We don't reject Article four of the Augsburg Confession, obviously. That is the heart of Christianity. That's justification by faith. But that's not what we're dealing with. We are dealing with the issue of the nature of sin, degrees

16:48 of sin, types of sin, categories of sin, because this is something that has been ignored by the modern church, which undoubtedly you've heard that refrain from us many times now. We are choosing these issues because they are things that are either neglected or taught incorrectly in modern churches. And in order to be seeker sensitive or what have you, many modern churches will say that oh all sins are equal. Because they have it in their head, sometimes the best of them anyway, that they don't want to drive someone away by saying your sin is particularly atrocious. Not specifically necessarily that person, because a person wandering off the street you may not know what his sin is. But in his mind, in his heart he knows what the sin

17:37 is. And so in a sermon, if you stand up there and rail against this particularly atrocious sin and that's the one in his heart, you have some pastors who are worried that that man will never come back because oh well he called out my specific horrible sin. And so that's the concern, but the concern is precisely wrong. Because to go into law and gospel a little bit, sinners have to be broken by the law before they are ready for the gospel. And so if you don't preach the law in its full severity, you should not be preaching the gospel in its full sweetness, because all you have done is set that man up to remain in his sin, to become impenetent, to harden his heart. And so it's the exact opposite.

18:23 It is an inversion of what pastors and teachers are supposed to do when they say that all sins are equal. And I think hardening of heart is is one of the key things that is left out of the discussion of well if all sins aren't equal, what does that mean? That is principally what it means. If you're committing very small, you know, what what the Roman Catholics call venial sins, it would take a lot of them and a lot of deliberate sinning for you to reach the point of apostasy. On the other hand, if for example you're a serial killer, you know, to go at the to the extreme opposite end, something that everyone would admit, murdering is worse than stealing pencils. Everyone knows that. You don't have to have faith to understand that.

19:07 And yet for some reason the modern Protestant freaks out at the idea of saying, well, stealing pencils and murdering a lot of people, those are both damnable, therefore they must be exactly the same. Nonsense. The difference is that the serial killer or someone who does something similarly egregious, and we'll get into some of those other examples, that sort of high-handed, impenitent, severe sin drives out the Holy Spirit much faster if it was ever present in the first place, and makes it impossible for the Holy Spirit to ever be present by virtue of the inherent depravity of the man who would do that. Whereas someone who's just, you know, a shoplifter, it's shoplifting is a terrible bad thing, it's destructive, it's evil, not minimizing it.

19:54 But if all someone ever does is steal a lollipop every time they go down the candy aisle, they're probably not going to destroy their faith or make it impossible for the for the law and gospel to work on their hearts. If someone comes along and says, stealing is wrong, here's the commandment that describes that, you're hurting your neighbor, you're hurting your community, that's evil. It's relatively simple for someone who's been a serial shoplifter to set that aside and turn away from it. It's a much bigger ask for someone who's committing much bigger crimes because they know the gravity of their sin is far greater. And so therefore, the degree of forgiveness that they feel they need is so much more overwhelming that even if you got them to

20:39 the point where they might admit that they'd done something wrong, they would think that they were past the point of forgiveness, which is ultimately why this is so important. If you let someone committing grievous sins continue in them, to the point that when he is perhaps convicted by his conscience that that was all sinful, he's going to think it's too late. And that is when the flip side of all this comes into play. Jesus paid for every single sin, great and small on the cross. They're all paid for, whether you believe it or not, you can be the most damnable, utterly repudiated person in history with no hope of salvation, and in fact have gone to hell. Jesus still paid for that person's sins, all of them.

21:22 The fact that they rejected that forgiveness in some cases will be because they felt that their sin was too great, which is the trick that Satan always plays in every sin. When he pitched the fruit of the of the forbidden tree to Eve and to Adam, it was in the terms of oh you will not surely die. And then what happens after we commit that very small sin, seemingly small? What does the accuser come along and say afterwards? God could never forgive you for that. What you've done is so terrible they hid. They were they were ashamed and they hid. Now they hid because they knew they were naked. That was part of the eating from the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, but the same thing happens to

22:03 us. When we commit a sin and we know that we've sinned, we hide. We know that we are guilty of something. And it Satan wants us to believe that we can't be forgiven. If you say that all sins are equal, the person who's in that position won't be able to understand the severity and the enormity of the sacrifice that Christ gave for their sins. The sweetness of that salvation is greater for he who needs it most. Now we obviously all need salvation from the least to the greatest sinner, but within our own hearts we know our own sins, not all of them, but we know many of them. And when we feel as though our sins are greater than God can forgive, Satan's one. Satan has your heart. Even if you come to some degree of repentance.

22:51 I mean, that's what happened to Judas. He was possessed by the devil, he betrayed Christ, and then he regretted it, but he didn't repent in the sense that he in the sense that he turned back to Jesus and said, Lord, forgive me for betraying you. He felt that he had no hope of forgiveness and so he went and killed himself. That is the ultimate victory of Satan, as saying, oh it's not a big deal, and then you do it, and then he says it's unforgivable. If someone believes that all sins are equal, they're gonna end up on both sides of that equation, one right after the other. Because if you do something horrible and you're believing, eh, I'm no better or worse than anyone else, when your conscience convicts you of

23:31 that sin, you're then going to think this sin's enormity is too much for even God to forgive. There's no hope for me. And that is when there's no room for the gospel. So this is absolutely a question of people people receiving salvation and hearing the gospel faithfully. That can only happen with sound doctrine upfront about what sin is and what it is not. You touched on something there that A lot of Christians also get wrong these days. It's tangential, but it is related to the topic. And that is the the scope of the atonement of redemption. When we think that any particular sin sin leaving aside for the moment the unpardonable, the unforgivable sin, we'll get to that. But when you think that a particular sin is too great to

24:17 be forgiven, that God could never forgive me, I've committed too many and too heinous sins. You're losing sight of what exactly Christ accomplished, what God accomplished in the atonement. And that was the redemption of all things, of creation, because the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was of infinite value. He redeemed creation, not just you, not just me, not just a handful of things. He redeemed everything. It was complete. It was finished. It was an atonement that covered all sin. Period. All sin. It will not be applied to all because there is the objective justification, which is the redemption, the atonement, the price paid by Christ for all sins, and then there is the subjective justification, which is

25:16 the application of that to individual sinners, which happens by faith, and so if you don't have faith it doesn't apply to you, but the sins are still forgiven, and so those who spend eternity in hell are attempting to pay the price for a sin that was already forgiven for which Christ already atoned. And so it is important to not lose sight of the scope of the atonement, of the actual scale of Christ's redemption, which was infinite. One of the most common examples that comes up both in the Old Testament and repeatedly in the New Testament is that of Sodom and Gomorrah as a particular example of an egregious sin and God's immediate temporal and hearkening to the eternal consequences of that sin.

26:06 In Genesis nineteen it's written, then the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know. Now we all know what happened there. The they were engaging in sodomitic behavior. The entire town, the multiple towns in the area, were engaged in obscene sexual acts. And when they f heard that two angels had come, they heard two men were there, they said, Bring 'em out, we want to have sex with them. Which I forgive me for laughing, it's it's it's utterly alien to me, but it was normal in that town. If when someone came they wanted to they wanted to rape the

26:52 guests of Lot and they didn't know they were angels, but it was certainly the confirmation that the angels had come to seek on behalf of God to see whether the outcry was true. And the consequence was that those towns were literally wiped off the map. And we think through modern archaeological evidence we found exactly where that place was. They have found evidence of glass caused by superheated air. Basically it appeared that there was a large air large airburst similar to the Tunguska blast and I think nineteen thirteen roughly. It was it was the equivalent of a multi megaton nuclear detonation in the air above that location. And that's today that is visible in the ground and where they believe Sodom and Gomorrah was.

27:43 Now, archaeologists digging it up don't believe the Bible, because obviously it's all nonsense. But when you look at what they found and what they can describe of the the physical events that occurred there, it pretty well matches perfectly what is described in scripture. There is a massive fiery conflagration that wiped those towns off the map. Now, those are the only towns that have ever been wiped off the map like this by God saying this is what I'm going to do. And in the New Testament, as we'll get to in a minute, it's referred to repeatedly, Sodom and Gomorrah's sin was greater. God said he's going to go down and see if it's true that their sin is very grave. How can a sin be very grave if all sin is equal?

28:30 Or are we to believe if all sin is equal that the next town over from Sodom was less guilty? Were there no sinners in that town? Certainly not. And that was never the claim. Every town has sinners because every town has human beings who are born in sin. The reason that these these towns were destroyed was that their sin was very great. And so we have a passage from Luke ten. But whenever you enter a town, and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. And so here we see that even though the sins of Sodom

29:20 and Gomorrah were great, there is in fact an even greater sin. This, of course, is rejecting Christ. This is rejecting the gospel, rejecting God, which is the worst sin, of course, and this ties right back into the unforgivable sin was mentioned. And I would be remiss if I did not mention as I do every time this comes up, if you can worry about the unforgivable sin, you have not committed it. That's the standard, so if that concerns you whatsoever, you have not committed it. And I'm not going to tell you not to worry about it because of course that would be a problem, but the unforgivable sin is a complicated topic, but essentially it is unbelief. It is the deliberate rejection of God, of the gospel, of repentance,

30:11 it is high handed blasphemy. And that's what we have here. The rejection of the gospel by these towns. And so it will be better for Sodom on the day of judgment. It does not mean that Sodom is off the hook, as we've been saying throughout. Just because some sins are not as bad as others does not mean that they are not sins, does not mean they do not separate from God. Does not mean that if you are not in Christ you will not go to hell for those sins. If you are not in Christ, you will go to hell, regardless of the gravity of the sins you have committed. Your eternity will not be as bad as a serial killer or someone who has committed many heinous sins, but it will still not be a good eternity.

31:00 And so these towns reject Christ, reject the gospel, and that sin is graver than Sodom and Gomorrah, who did not outright reject the gospel, instead they were engaged in heinous sexual sins. Yes, horrible sins, no not as bad as rejecting Christ. And this passage, of course, is one that we had referred to in one of our earlier episodes on the subject of forgotten doctrines. This is one of the passages in the synoptics that refers to the doctrine of shaking the dust off your feet is a curse against those who refuse to hear the gospel. I mean, they've heard it, they refuse to believe it. And so I think that's an important tie-in to as Corey said, the the unforgivable sin. What is what does this say?

31:47 It says that in the case where someone believes when when a missionary comes to them, they're to be told that God has come among them. If they do not believe, that is still to be announced. But whereas in the first case, if you hear and believe, to hear that God has come near you is a matter of profound comfort and joy. If you do not believe when it is announced by the missionary that God has come among you, it is a curse. it it is the it is the foremost of all curses to saying God has been here, you have rejected him on the day of judgment, you are going to receive what you've earned here. And that is, I think, one of the things that is missing from Christian discussion of sin. You earn a specific punishment for a specific sin.

32:36 There's a specific punishment for every sin, and there's a specific reward for every good deed. Now, the difference, and it's it's a tricky one for us to process because we gotten so sloppy about things thinking and speaking about these things. For the Christian, all the good works that we do, which were prepared by God beforehand for us to do for the benefit of our neighbor, we receive credit for them, even though they're God's gift to us, all of the evil things that the Christian does are not credited to him, but were instead nailed to the cross with Christ, so that on the last day when we are covered in Christ's blood and our robes are washed white, we appear blameless before the throne of God.

33:22 That's how it works. Christ's atoning blood washes our robes white in the blood of the Lamb. We stand before God sinless, not because not because we've committed no sin, but because Christ's propitiating sacrifice on the cross washed it away, because he paid the price for those sins. The converse is true of unbelievers. They had no good works in their life, no net no matter how laudable it may have seemed, because they were not doing them in the name of God. And they have everything that they ever did as a sin, which Christ paid for, and they rejected that propitiation. They said, I don't believe in God, I don't want him to have anything to do with this. These are my sins, these aren't sins of the Gaul however, they

34:06 want to cut it, they say, not God's problem, stay out of my business. On judgment day, it's God's business. And Christ's atoning sacrifice does not apply to them because they rejected it. It's not in the sense of the reformed limited atonement where God only died for some, as Corey said earlier. The beginning of John's Gospel is very important when it talks about in the beginning was the word, everything in the universe was made through Christ. This is paralleled in the cross. Everything in the universe was redeemed through Christ. Only Christ could do that, by whom all things were made, through whom all things were redeemed. There's a perfect symmetry there that cannot be achieved anywhere else, which

34:56 is why it's ludicrous for any man to think, well maybe I can do something. Are you kidding me? It's that it's it's utterly preposterous. No Christian believes that. No Christian believes that he can do anything to save himself. I think it's one of the greatest weaknesses of Protestant doctrine that we're still fighting the fifteenth century heresy that we can earn some of our salvation. We dealt with that. We got rid of it. We purified Christian doctrine and said no, all the sacrifices at the cross. Okay, it's a settled matter. We don't need to relitigate that in every single sentence of every single sermon and every single conversation we have about these things, there's more to say about the world and about the Christian life than

35:40 saying that Jesus took care of it all. It's the most important thing, but it's not the only thing. This is about the and then. And as a Christian who's been redeemed, who has the Holy Spirit to be able to understand what God has written, when we see people saying things like all sins are equal, you can't judge man. that's just his sin, and your sin is even worse, except all sins are equal. Like it it falls apart on its face. But the important part is what they want you to do is not tell anyone else else about their sin. That's what Satan wants. He doesn't want anyone to hear that they're sinning until it's too late, until they've committed such egregious sins that they feel that they're beyond redemption, which is false, but it's a lie that's easy to

36:25 believe. It's one of the it's one of the hardest things for someone when they hit rock bottom in in some aspect of their life to realize they can't do it themselves. And that is when they're ready to hear the gospel, to hear that God did everything. You don't have to do anything. God is giving you the gift of faith and belief. Receive it with thanksgiving, and it's yours. To emphasize what you said about the difference between the works of those who are in Christ versus those who are not. We often hear the term virtuous pagan, at least if you read theology and are in those circles, and there is and there is not such a thing as a virtuous pagan, the pagan who lives a morally upstanding life, who doesn't murder, doesn't cheat, doesn't steal, doesn't

37:16 commit adultery, etc, is a virtuous pagan according to the law because you can do the works of the law according to human reason and free will. You cannot do them perfectly, you will always fall short, and so you will always sin. However, as was stated, they are not credited to you as good works, because you are not in Christ, and so as a sinner, everything you do is sin. Everything. Murder, sin. Giving candy to a child, sin. Saving a drowning animal, sin. Everything you do as a sinner is sin. And so, in that sense, there is no such thing as a virtuous pagan. What the pagan cannot do, what the person outside Christ cannot do, is what the person in Christ can do, and instead of the

38:20 works of the law, we are talking about the fruits of the Spirit. Now, these are theological categories, and it is important to keep that clear. Because the good works of Christians are also done according to the law, and we'll get into that in a future episode. But in this sense, this limited technical sense, the works of the law are those things that can be done according to human reason, even by the pagan. The fruits of the Spirit are those things that are done in Christ through faith. Those are credited to the believer as good works on account of Christ's sacrifice on his behalf. And so if you are in Christ, you have good works the good works you do are credited to you, as was stated the

39:10 sins you do are not credited to your account because they were washed away in Christ. They are washed clean by his blood. But again the pagan does not actually have good works, because they are tainted because the pagan is a sinner, not in Christ, not forgiven, and so if you are not in Christ, you have only sins, no good works. If you are in Christ, ultimately, when you are brought before the judgment seat and the books are open, and your deeds are read, you will have only good works, no sins. Next we're going to read Exodus thirty two. The next day Moses said to the people, You have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas this people has

40:00 sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. Now I want to read this in particular because this in addition to having the phrase great sin in English in the ESV, I'm not I didn't, but I I I'm sure it's faithful. Moses was not only highlighting that some sins are better or worse than others, but this was talking about the greatest of all sins, which is a violation of the first commandment. Because what had just happened, Moses had gone up the mountain, he had received the ten commandments, he'd come back down, and what did he find? He found that the Jews had abandoned God. They had made the golden calf, so that they could worship it and say this is this idol is what brought us out of

40:48 Egypt. God had literally just rescued them and they apostatized while in full view of the fiery pillar of his presence on the mountain. It's stunning to me to think about that scene where the very God who had rescued them miraculously from the Egypt, brought them into the desert, was speaking with the man who had led them out of captivity. There's a visible pillar of smoke and fire on the mountain. They hear thunder. Like it was a huge scene. It was very visually dramatic, especially for being so unnatural. And what did they do? They couldn't last forty days without Moses telling him to behave. And so they had an Aaron melt down gold and make a calf for them so that they could worship and say, This is

41:34 our God now. This calf led us out of Egypt. This was a great sin because it was a number one on the list. You shall have no other gods before me. He comes down, was he fine? They have another god before him. And before is an interesting word in that in that you shall have no other gods before me. It means in my presence. It doesn't mean in terms of rank. It doesn't mean before or after. It means before is in I see before me tons of soil. To quote Spooner. When something is before God, it means he can see it. Well, God is omniscient. So what is before God? Everything in the universe, everything beyond the universe. Anything exists, it is before God. God is in the place where that where there is no place.

42:20 He knows everything. So when it says you have shall have no other gods before me, it means you cannot have a single God apart from me. It's not in terms of rank. It's not saying God will be number one and then jewelry will be number two and football will be number three. It's saying you will have only God anywhere in your heart, in your mind, in your actions, only me. And Moses came down and he found them abandoning that right off the bat, and he's called it a grace, and they required him to go back up the mountain and speak to God. There's also an additional measure of egregiousness and irony that some readers will miss in this particular section if you're not familiar with Egyptian paganism mythology.

43:09 Really what they were fashioning for themselves was an Egyptian idol. God had just destroyed Egypt, drowned Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, demonstrated his power over a course of however long it took for the plagues and the Exodus. And the Israelites in full view of God, physically manifested, speaking to Moses on a mountain, decide to create a calf, a golden idol, probably related to Hathor, who is represented often as a cow. So an Egyptian goddess. And so there's that additional level of apostasy here from the Israelites. They're returning to the wickedness of the pagan religion with which they were familiar in Egypt, despite what they just saw God do to Egypt when he brought them out of Egypt.

44:11 There's an allusion to this in Matthew twenty-two when the Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus. They see Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Of on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. And so basically what Jesus is describing to the Pharisees is the first table and the second on the second table of the law. He's describing you shall have no other gods before me and the other the second and third commandments that deal specifically with our relationship

44:50 with God, and then the second table is our relationship with man, beginning with parents, and then murder, adultery, and so forth. So when Jesus says there's a first and a second commandment, that necessarily implies that some sin is greater than others. The only alternative, if you say that all sin is equal, is to say, Well, I can violate the first commandment and be an idolater, or I can do something else like steal my neighbor's ox. That's all the same. Jesus literally says in Matthew 22, it's not the same. He says the first and greatest commandment is our relationship to God, and then the second commandment is our relationship to our neighbors. And everything flows from that. And as we've said in the past, when you look at the

45:32 ordering of the commandments from one through ten, it's greatest to least. With at least Lutherans, we put things like chattels in the tenth position, and we put God in the first position. Don't commit adultery, don't steal your neighbor's ox or donkey, or his slaves or his wife. Those are both sins, they're both damning sins, but they're at opposite ends of the spectrum of severity. It is far worse to commit idolatry than it is to steal. Stealing is bad, idolatry is worse. Jesus says it. We have to believe it. And if we believe it, then we can't say all sins are equal. Like there's gonna be a lot of redundancy in this in this episode because there's so many passages. Like that the reason that we're we're doing this cumulative repetition of

46:20 these der various verses and we're we're we're only scratching the surface here. There are many, many passages that deal with this specific issue. These are some of the key ones. But what these litany of passages show us are that you cannot possibly believe that all sins are equal if you believe any part of the Bible. You can turn to pretty much any book and you're gonna find the same story, and that story is that there are some sins that are greater and there are some sins that are lesser, not for the purpose of salvation, but for the purpose of sin against God in the degree to which it offends him, in the degree to which the penalty that Christ paid on the cross. That's important. God says it's important.

46:57 This isn't us making something up. This is not podcast or theology. It's literally just reading what's in the Bible. So the reason we're saying the same thing over and over again is that God said the same thing over and over again. And when the world is saying the opposite thing over and over again, at some point you have to wonder which book are they reading? Because they cannot be reading the Bible if they're saying that all sins are equal. To add just a little footnote that isn't actually well is from the Bible and isn't at the same time, just for those who are going to be listening with a more critical ear, yes I am well aware that the word underlying calf in Exodus thirty two is egel and the feminine version is igla, but it was most likely still

47:43 in some way related to Hathor, because yes, Hathor is typically represented as a female deity, and thus a cow and not a young bull. Just adding that for anyone listening with a critical ear. Keeping it out of the comments. Yeah, basically I'm heading off uh having to field a comment somewhere on that point. That's something that people probably know us as Cordy and I talk. we'll sometimes make these odd asides, brushing aside criticisms of what we've just said. We're such perfectionists that we're both sitting here continually critiquing what we're saying to ourselves. As I'm speaking, I have a running monologue where I'm basically heckling myself, saying, Well, that's not right. That's not right.

48:27 You should do that better. You should have said this differently. Literally as I'm talking, as I'm thinking. And so sometimes our sentences get longer and longer as we sort of tack on all these additional seemingly less important things. It's specifically because we're trying to be clear and precise in our speech and not make mistakes. And so we we literally harangue ourselves in our heads so that we find all the faults so that hope hopefully there's not much left for someone else to find fault with. It's something that's it's kind of endemic to the the way our brains work. But I wish some more people sort of took that care as they approached these things because just shouting catchphrases that sound nice and

49:06 that make you friends with the world, if it puts you at odds with scripture, we think that's a big deal. That's why we're taking the time to do this. That's why we're suffering the indignities that Corey and I have suffered in our personal lives for the sake of doing this. This has not been fun. This has not been easy. We've taken abuse for saying these things. For what? for doing Bible studies. Okay. if people want to heap abuse on us for doing Bible studies, I think that if there's a sin here, the Bible study is a lesser sin than he who would attack us for it. It's funny that the same people who say all sins are equal are also the first to say that Cory and I are chief among sinners. Maybe that'll be a subject for another episode.

49:46 The uh next passage I want to read is from Luke twelve. 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. Every one to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom mike they entrusted much they will demand the more. So again, this is emphasizing not only the knowledge and forethought of the action of the individual, but it's emphasizing that there are greater and lesser punishments and that to some degree the punishment for he who does not know what he's doing will be lesser. There's still punishment.

50:31 You know, this passage I I this is from ESV and so I didn't fix where it said servant. It means slave. you don't beat servants. You beat slaves. You beat someone who's your property. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. This passage d condones it. It says the greater beating will go to the slave who has sinned more greatly, the lesser beating will go to the slave who has sinned more lightly. Lighter beating, lighter consequence for a lighter sin. Again, it doesn't explicitly say greater and lesser degrees of sin, but it's it's the same principle playing out again because it's exactly the point. These things are everywhere in scripture. And one And once you start to understand that this notion of

51:13 equality and of everything being i equal and identical, it's anathetical to scripture. It's something new in a new religion. It's not something that came from God. Next one I wanted to cover was from James 3. It's a very short one that we've referred to before. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with the stricter judgment. Again, if everything is the same, how can there possibly be a stricter judgment? And consider this. This is being written about Christians. It's not being written about a stricter judgment in terms of believer and unbeliever. This is not about soteriology. This is not about whether or not someone's saved. It's saying that even if you are saved, if you choose to

52:03 become a teacher, you opt into a stricter judgment, you will face harsher consequences. Now in heaven, harsher consequences don't mean punishment, but there are degrees of glory in heaven. We probably won't get into some of those passages today, but it's clear that the rewards in heaven are also given unequally. When Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, how is that not unequal? Like all of all of these phrases that are so common to the way God speaks about heaven and about reordering the ungodly worldly worldly life in a heavenly life, it's all about inequality. The first shall be last. That's not fair. That's not equal. That's saying that someone who lived like a king today and did

52:53 not live in a goggly fashion, even if he's saved, he's not gonna be first in heaven. He's gonna sit at the back. He's not gonna have the place of honor. It's going to be the widows and the orphans, and those who had the least and were the most humble, and and seemed the most pathetic, those will be the ones whom God elevates as the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And it's not just about station in life, it's not just about class system. It's also about works. The The when God judges more strictly teachers, those who have taught faithfully will receive great rewards. Those who have taught unfaithfully, what but were still saved, they're not gonna get much for it. And we don't know how that plays out.

53:37 So we're not giving specifics because God gives none. But God absolutely says that these things will occur. And all we in the twenty first century need to know is that it's unequal. Some get more, some get less. In heaven, in perfection, some get more and some get less based on the degree of their sin today. Because for a teacher to be judged with stricter judgment Judgment based on his teachings implies that there are some teachings that are sinful, and that the greater degree of sin in teaching, the greater lack of glory will be given for that teacher. It may well be a teacher who spent his whole whole life teaching falsely, but somehow was fill still a Christian. I don't know what he's gonna get in heaven.

54:24 He's gonna be in heaven. It's going to be perfect for him, but it will not be as greatly rewarding to him as if he had been a faithful teacher. Again, we don't know what that looks like. It's not our business. It's not our problem. It's in God's hands, we can trust that he will act perfectly. All we need to know is that when we run around saying, Yeah, it's all the same, man, that we're not agreeing with what God says. And yes, of course, we do know that we have elected to be subject to the stricter judgment because what we're doing here is teaching, and we are both well aware of that fact. But I would also highlight here that I do think the implication that comes along with this is something to which Christians should pay attention.

55:08 There are different kinds of teachers, the same as there are different degrees of sin. If you are a pastor, you are a teacher in the church, you are an overseer, you have responsibilities, and you will be held to account for what you did or did not do in this life. When you spoke falsely, when you minimized parts of scripture, when you ignored parts of scripture, God will ask you about that at the judgment. You will have to give an answer. But there are other teachers as well as And those teachers will be held accountable for what they did or did not do in the office that was given them by God. It's not going to be the same sort of stricter judgment as someone who stands up to teach in the church that is What

55:56 is in view here, but if you're a parent, you're a teacher, and you will be called to account for whether you taught your children correctly or not. If you are an employer, you will be called to account for how you treated and dealt with your employees. Now there may be some complexity there when it comes to teaching the faith to employees, and how much of a duty an employer has there is up for debate. But if you are the master of a house, you are responsible for everyone in your household. You are a teacher by virtue of your office, and it is your duty to fulfill that faithfully. Again, no, you will not be held to this particular high level of scrutiny and strictness, because you did not stand up to teach

56:46 in the church, you did not deliberately stand up to handle the things of God. But by virtue of the office given you by God, you do have a lesser version of this duty. And it is vitally important for Christians to bear that in mind when they go about their daily tasks. If you are a father, are you training your wife? Are you training your children? Are you training those who work in your household if you have others who work in your household or live in your household? Are you doing the things God gave you to do by virtue of the office he gave you? If you are not, you are falling short of the mark, and falling short of the mark is one of the things that is meant by one of the words we translate as sin.

57:37 Do not sin by omission. Yes, it is possible to sin by commission, but it is also possible to sin by omission, which simply means it is possible to sin by doing something, and it is possible to sin by failing to do something that you should have done. And for specific details on what we mean when we say that we are teachers, go back and listen to the first episode of Stone Choir, episode number one. We specifically talked about the difference between what a pastor does and what a teacher who is addressing an anonymous audience. So there's no accountability from anyone listening to us to us. There's no relationship is between you as the listener where we hold you accountable for what we are teaching.

58:23 However, what we are teaching, we are accountable to God for. That is the difference. A pastor is accountable for the souls in his parish A teacher in uh an audience hall is doesn't have accountability in the same way. He's not necessarily taking attendance. He doesn't know who's there, it's a lecture. He shows up, people show up, you listen. You take it or leave it. When we say that we are teachers, it is in that sense. We are teaching from Scripture. We're saying things that God says and we're giving you what we believe is a faithful explanation for those things, particularly as they relate to the world today, but that is not to say that it is taught with any authority beyond the authority of Scripture itself.

59:06 We're not making any claim based on credentials or anything. Take it or leave it. If what we say is good, it's because you agree with scripture. If you don't like it, okay. If you don't take our your arguments, our arguments, that's between you and God. If we're wrong, we answer to God. If you're wrong, you answer to God. We don't have to worry about that. And again from that the Luke twelve passage, everyone to whom much has been given, of him much will be required. That's Cory and me. We're smart. We're good at this. Even if someone thinks that what we're saying is false, particularly those who are hate listening, who believe that we're false teachers, they admit that we're extremely good at it.

59:48 Those who listen and like what we say also think that we're good at this. We've had a very warm and welcome and widespread reception to the way that we're explaining things on Stone Choir because we're good at it. The reason we're doing it is that much has been given to us. What were we doing the year before we started this podcast? We were not using our gifts the way we're using them now. That was sin. We should have been doing this earlier. We talked about it earlier. I avoided it because I knew that harm would come to my family from evil men who would seek to destroy me for the sake of telling the truth. Because that's the state of the world today. It's the state of the church today. I put it off because I didn't want to cause harm to

1:00:30 my family. It eventually got to the point by the end of 2022 that it became clear that I I had no choice. And so Corey and I talked about it, and we finally pulled the trigger on something and we I think we both knew from the time we met that we pretty much had to do this. And other people had talked about before we joked about it for a couple of years, but we avoided it sinfully and we stopped sinning and now we're doing it and now we're accused of sin for doing it. So again, that's we in a minute we'll get to the judge not stuff. But I just want to point out when we say we're teachers, it's not bragging. The reason we're doing this is that we have been given gifts. We believe as a matter of conscience we have no choice but

1:01:09 to do this. We believe that it's obedience to God for us to do this. We don't have a choice. I don't know if I don't sp put it. Like it's it's that important to not remain silent. That's why we named it what we did. We give an explanation at the end of the first episode. We are the stones who cry out, not because we feel that we have a vocation to, but we have the aptitude to and no one else was doing it. And now that we begun doing it, other men are beginning to speak up against the same evil. That is what needs to happen. Because two guys of the podcast aren't going to do anything by themselves. If we're just shouting into the void, nothing changes. It takes hearts and minds elsewhere in the church reorienting towards what

1:01:50 God has said so that we can all become faithful members of faithful churches again. And And the the last passage we're going to read in this section from Matthew five amplifies from James three. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So again, this is reiterating greater punishment, greater reward, least and greatest. Now punishment maybe isn't quite the right word. Called the least in heaven, you're still in heaven, so great. Like you cross the finish line. That is a cause for celebration. However, you're gonna be the least.

1:02:31 And it's not a popularity contest. It's not striving to be number one in heaven. We all know that it's that's not us. You know, the the scripture talks some about, you know, the ranking there and we we have a little bit. We know that there's a ranking. Jesus' disciples argued over who was gonna be seated at his right hand. And the question is valid, the concern isn't our problem. That's God's gift to give. What we have to worry about is that in this life our actions do not shame God, do not waste the gifts that we've been given. And that if God says something, we're not ashamed of it and we just believe it and we follow through with it. Again, to finish out this thing on all sins not being equal.

1:03:16 We're not saying, oh, if you obey God, you'll be saved. You're already saved. So how can you best obey God? It's you're just changing the word order, but it fundamentally alters the equation. And that's the reason that these subjects are important? To emphasize what was said about teachers and what will be demanded from teachers and others, from him to whom much has been given, will much be required. And that is the long and the short of it. If you have been given a particular set of gifts and you are not using them in service of the kingdom, you will be judged for that. That's not necessarily going to damn you, but you are not going to receive the rewards that you would have received if you had

1:04:02 used the gifts given you by God to do the good works he prepared for you to do. And that is the case if God has given you intelligence, you should be using that in service of the kingdom. If he has given you material wealth, you should be using that in service of the kingdom. If you are someone to whom God has given tens, hundreds of millions of dollars, you should absolutely be using that to fix up church buildings, to fund the soup kitchens, to help others in your congregation who are struggling, you should be using the things God has given you to help others, because those are good works, those are the good works prepared specifically for you, because he gave you the means to do it. And when it comes to teaching, if God has given you a

1:04:52 perceptive mind, the ability to process materials, a knack for languages, whatever it happens to be, all of these various capacities that go into being a good teacher of any particular subject, because you can serve God teaching law the same as you can serve God teaching theology. You can serve God making shoes. If he gave you a particular dexterity, you're very good with your hands. You may be a surgeon, you may be a cobbler, it just depends on the abilities that God has given you. What would you, what will be required of you at the judgment is what you did with the gifts that were given you by God. Yes, there is all The central judgment, the core matter, upon which you are sent to the right or the left

1:05:44 hand, whether you are a sheep or a goat, and that is whether or not you have faith in Christ. But, after that, the books are opened, and your deeds are read from them, and you will have good works, or you will not, depending on what you did, in this life with what God gave you. And that again is why we are doing this podcast. God gave us the ability to look at these materials, to understand them, to read through the resources, and then to teach others. And so we are using the gifts that He gave us. And as mentioned, in the the balance of our lives heretofore, we've used those gifts largely for other things. I've taught a little bit in the church in the past. I taught through part of Genesis until COVID kind of killed that.

1:06:36 But for most of my life, no, I didn't focus on these things and use the gifts in the way that I should have been using them all along. I should have been doing this for far longer than I have. We both recognize that. But it is better to begin doing the things God wants you to do today than saying, oh well, I didn't do it for the last ten years, so it's already too late. That's just Satan again telling you you've committed too many sins over too long of a period. They're too great, they're too heinous, God couldn't possibly forgive you, and that's false. Your sins are already forgiven. Start doing the good works now. That is part of Christian life. No good works do not save you. Again, we went over this five hundred years ago.

1:07:27 We had this fight. We won because we resorted to Scripture, and the adversaries did not. Good works will not save you. Good works do not contribute to your justification. Good works do not make you ready for justification. Good works do not complete your justification. Good works do nothing for your justification. But you still have to do them as a Christian. Because a living faith will produce fruit. The same as a living tree, a living tree, a healthy fruit tree, produces fruit. If your faith is a living and healthy tree, it will produce good works because those are the fruit of a living Christian faith. And so if you have not been doing those works, if you have not been using the gifts God gave you, start now.

1:08:25 And so we will finish up to day with one more passage also from Matthew being Sermon on the Mount. 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 lust. lustful intent, has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out, and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. And so what we see here in the teaching on lust or adultery on the Sermon of the Mount, in the Sermon of the

1:09:11 Mount, is you have a progression of sin from least terrible to most terrible, the ultimate end of this chain is not actually listed by Christ, because the ultimate end, of course, is actual adultery. And so it's the wandering eye that drives that grasping hand, that pulls the body down into adultery, and ultimately the soul down into hell. And that's what we're dealing with here. You have a progression of sins, and every step is worse than the previous one. If you look at a woman with lustful intent, that is adulterous sin. But it is not as bad as reaching out and grasping that woman, which is, of course, the physical manifestation, the beginning of the ultimate act of adultery, and that is not as bad as

1:10:08 the actual act of adultery These are degrees of sin. This is Christ's teaching on the progression of sin. Because we see this with all sin. Sin always gets worse. And so the time to stop sinning, of course, is before you start. But the second best time to stop sinning is the second you recognize it is sin. Because if you continue, it will get worse. You will commit more egregious sin because it is always the little sin that Satan gets you to commit, the little sin where you give in to the flesh and some minor thing, that leads to another sin, and another, and another, and ultimately you commit heinous sins. You will of course ultimately apostatize if you continue down that path, because it becomes a willful turning away from God at some point.

1:11:03 And so here on the teaching on lust, if you look at a woman lustfully, and most of this audience undoubtedly is male, you are going to do this in life. You are a fallen and sinful being your passions are not rightly ordered, you are going to look at a woman with lustful intent, particularly given the reality of our current social situation, let's call it. Turn away. Close the browser tab, walk away from the computer, whatever it happens to be, whatever the temptation is, flee. That is the advice of scripture is to flee the temptation. If you cannot flee the temptation, pray. Pray the Lord's Prayer. Do the best you can to minimize this temptation because men are visual. That's a simple fact.

1:11:54 And so looking at the woman with lustful intent, that desire that starts with the eye is going to lead to more. It may be you look at the woman first and Then you decide to go and talk to this woman who you have a lustful desire for her. You've committed an additional sin. No talking to a woman is not a sin, but it's the intent you have behind it. And then you ask her out for a drink. The sin progresses, it gets worse. Flee from the sin as soon as the temptation arises. Yes, that internal desire, that concupicence itself is sin. You've already committed the sin when you've looked at her with lustful intent, but you don't have to continue the chain and commit worse and more egregious sins. So the Christian response

1:12:45 is to turn to God, because God will give you a way to escape from the sin. He promises that. Look for that way to escape the sin, if it's fleeing, if it's praying, minimizing, whatever it is you can do, flee from the sin. Do not follow this chain that Satan wants you to follow, because what he wants you to do is he wants you to start off thinking, well looking isn't that bad. Yeah, it's it's a sin, but they're much worse things I could be doing, so I'll look. He wants you to follow from that all the way down into the depths, until you commit fornication, adultery, whatever it happens to be. And then he's going to turn around and tell you Look, you're just a sinner. You've already committed this heinous act, God won't forgive you for this,

1:13:32 you may as well keep sinning. That's his end goal. Do not follow him into the pit. The important thing to note about the progression of sin is that looking lustfully is a sin, and then any follow-on are additional sins. And I think this is something that the all sins are equal lie actually weaponizes upfront. It's not only at the end where you've already committed fully to a life of sin and you say, well, I've already done it, I may as well keep doing it. If you believe that all sins are equal and you catch yourself looking lustfully at someone, well if all sins are equal, the n the natural rationalization of that circumstance is what? In for a penny, in for a pound. I already looked at her with lust on my heart, which Jesus

1:14:25 says is actual adultery. So if I'm already an adulterer, why shouldn't I follow through? Why shouldn't I complete the act? I'm already guilty. I may as well enjoy it too. That's the trap. If you believe that all sins are equal, then it's very and like that's it's false. That's what I just said is a lie, but it is a very easy lie that can be rationalized in the mind of someone who's ultimately just self serving. Even if you listen to part of what these people are saying God said, which is false. God didn't say that. God said these things. But even if you listen to it and it informs your actions, the lie of all sins being equal may very well cause you to commit greater sins because you don't believe they're greater.

1:15:10 See that's the trap. If all sins are equal, how can you commit a greater sin? You're already a sinner, so who cares? Like Jesus died for me, he took care of all this crap. What do I need to worry about? That's part of the ultimate trap. It's not just that all sins are equal. It's just that individual sin is equal to any other individual sin. Necessarily, any volume of sins is also equal to a different volume of sins. So one someone who commits a hundred sins in a day versus someone who commits a thousand sins in a day. There's no way to quantify that. We don't even know how often we sin. It's impossible. But even for the sake of argument, if it were quantifiable, both are equally damned, but if you believe it all sins are equal,

1:15:55 you can't say to the man who's only committed a hundred sins, you know, you got nine hundred more, you're not gonna be any worse than that other guy. And that's what these false teachings do to us. They ultimately give license. See they're sold as a way of being loving and being caring and not being judgmental, but ultimately what they do is they give license to greater and greater sin, which again ultimately always leads to separation of the soul from God. It's what Satan wants, which is why this all sins are equal stuff is is a pernicious sin. It is a vicious evil thing that is spread among us. Some people have it say it with good intentions. Other people say because they know that they're covering for their own

1:16:38 greater sins. They know that they're up to no good and they don't want to be judged more harshly than someone else. So they pump this smoke screen into the air so that you can't judge them. Now I I mentioned a couple times we're going to be doing judge not in this episode. We're already getting along on time. Next week we've decided we're gonna be doing an episode on antinomianism where we're specifically going to talk for in it probably close to two hours again, specifically about judge not and the modern view, well it's not modern, but it's a recurring theme of antinomianism or against the law, where people set their hearts against what God says because they just they don't like the sound of it.

1:17:20 And judge not as a part of that. If you if you say you can't judge people, it again, it's another smokescreen. It's a demand defense mechanism to say, hey man, my sins are no worse than yours or no better than yours. We're all equal, right? So don't you tell me what's wrong with me. Well, where does the law go in that world where you can't tell someone of their sin how can they be corrected? If if scripture is useful for rebuke and correction of error, and yet rebuke is forbidden by this modern morality, are you going to be Christian? Or are you going to be the modern religious person that says he's Christian that does things that kill the Christian faith. That's what this comes down to. So we're gonna do another episode on this.

1:18:04 It'll be not quite a follow-on, but a natural continuation of the essence of judging and the law. Uh we've talked in the past about what the nature of the law is. Uh if you'd like a refresher, I'd recommend going back and listening to the episode on perfect hatred. We talk at some length about the manner in which the law is eternal and it's functionally it's it's got it's God's eternal will. What God wants for the world, what he wants for us individually, does not change. The rules are not fickle. God's not fickle. The rules are not capricious. What What God desires is that which is good and holy. And when we set our minds and our hearts at odds with that, we create the hell on earth that we're all experiencing now.

1:18:49 So I'll just leave you with the the thought that These things that seem small, like what's the big deal if someone says all sins are equal and someone says they're not? On the on a surface, it doesn't seem like it's much of a distinction. Because you know, as Protestants, especially, one way or another, we know that Jesus paid for all our sins. So who cares if one sin is worse than another? Are you saying you're better than me? No. It has nothing to do with an individual asserting being better or worse than another Christian. The problem is that these are matters that ultimately separate souls from God. Satan knows what he's doing. When Satan comes up with this rhetoric like all sins are equal,

1:19:30 he knows it's gonna play in our hearts and minds. He knows is what we want to hear because it's license. It's basically a free pass. That's not how the pastors sell it, but it's how hearts receive it. And for some of the pastors, it's what they intend. Some of the guys who are the biggest promoters of this stuff inevitably get outed is sexual deviants who in many cases have been defrocked because they go so far because hey man, all sins are equal. I don't judge me. This stuff matters. Even the the things that we talk about that seem like they're small issues. If they were small, we wouldn't be talking about them. We're talking about big issues that don't seem big because Because they slip under the radar.

1:20:10 Anything that sounds Christian is all right by the Christian ear. The problem is that we no longer discern what is Christian from what is worldly. All someone has to do is gussy it up and make it sound a little bit like Jesus. And a Christian is going to say, oh yeah, that that sounds like morality. I want that to be mine too. We focus on scripture. Please, you focus on scripture. Read your Bibles. If what we said is wrong, you're gonna find it in the Bible. If what we said is right, you're gonna find a bunch more of it. Because we're not cherry picking. We've spent an hour and a half talking about you know close to a dozen passages. We could have done fifty more. That should be a reminder to you that when someone says something

1:20:50 like all sin is equal, they're not talking about a sin from scripture. They're not talking about God. They're talking about teachings of demons. And it's a it's a strident thing to say, but the difference between salvation and damnation is recognizing our master's voice. The Christian's Master's voice is the voice of God. And that voice is found in scripture. Others do not hear it. They hear the voice of God and they're like, I don't that doesn't sound right to me. Many of them hear it and they think that sounds hateful. That's it's a very common complaint, is that this stuff sounds hateful. Well if you If you think the voice of sound of God sounds hateful, wait for judgment day because Christians are going to be

1:21:33 lined up in one line and everyone else is gonna be lined up in another, and we're gonna hear a very different type of voice. Christians are going to hear welcome thou good and faithful servant. Yeah, I wish for everyone who's listening that that would be what you hear on the last day. 'Cause I would like to hang out with all of you. We'll have a stone choir booth. We can sit sit around and talk and figure out all the stuff that you know we didn't understand. It'll be exciting and it'll be perfect and we won't have to worry about fighting and disagreements. But we have to get there. And Jesus paid the price for us to get there, but we can't reject what he says. So please read your Bibles, go to a faithful church, study this

1:22:11 stuff and take it seriously. And as Corey said, flee evil. It's okay to flee evil. Whatever it is, whether it's lust or false teaching or whatever your particular pet sin is, if you're confronted with it, just turn around and walk away. That's where repent means. Metanoia means a turning, turning away from do a 180, back out of there, get away from the evil and focus on what God desires. And in the end, that's all we can do in this life. We can't be perfect, but we can try to go and sin no more. So let's try that. And not to bury the lead or add something on right at the end, but not to be remiss. I want to point out exactly what it is when someone says all sins are equal. The reason we are focusing on this, and as was mentioned, we

1:23:06 could have gone through dozens more passages we could point out Genesis nine six. There are different punishments for different sins, very strongly implying there are different degrees of sin. But I want to read the second commandment You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain and the explanation from the small catechism what does this mean we should fear and love God, so that we may not curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie, or deceive by his name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. And that was the point of this entire episode. Because when you say that all sins are equal, you are lying and deceiving in his name. You are violating the second commandment.

1:23:59 And as a reminder, the commandments are hierarchical. You are committing one of the greatest sins, because of course the greater sin would be to have another god, which is also implicated when this comes up. But But those who say that all sins are equal are lying in his name, are deceiving in his name, they are violating the second commandment. And that is why this is important for Christians. It's important because God's word is truth and you should believe every word of it. But it is also important because when you ignore things like this, particularly if you are a pastor or a teacher, and God forbids you stand up and teach false doctrine on these subjects because that is violating the second commandment.

1:24:44 And if you do not repent, you are keeping that sin for yourself, instead of letting God, instead of letting Christ take it to the cross and wash it away in his blood. And we don't want anyone listening to this, even if you are listening to it, if you are hate listening to this, if you are attempting to find some way in which we are teaching false doctrine, something we've said wrong, somewhere we've slipped, misspoken, whatever have you. Even if you're that person, we want you to repent and turn from your evil ways and return to God. Because as Woe said, we do want everyone to make it to paradise, no everyone will not. Scripture is very clear on that. Many will reject Christ, will reject God, will spend eternity in hell

1:25:34 paying for sins for which Christ already paid. We do not want any of you to join them. We would prefer that you join us in paradise with the Savior who paid for all your sins. All of your sins, which are not all equal, some of which are egregious, some of you may have committed truly heinous sins in your life. Some of you listening may not have committed particularly heinous sins. You still sin, you're still a sinner. Again, as was said before, you sin because you're a sinner, you're not a sinner because you sin. It's that original sin that is the wellspring from which other sins come. And so whether you've committed the relatively minor sins, stolen the pencil as was mentioned earlier, although it depends which one of my

1:26:25 pencils you steal, or you've murdered someone. That was paid for by Christ, regardless of the gravity of the sin. But if you keep that sin for yourself, if you don't allow Christ to take that to the cross, if you want to say, No, I want to keep this one, then you get to spend eternity with that sin instead of with your Savior. And so all sins are not equal. Some are worse than others. But Christ died for all of them, He paid for all of them, He paid for every single sin you have committed. Regardless of how trivial or how truly terrible. The atonement, the scope of the atonement, was infinite, all sins wiped clean. But only if you believe you're not going to be able to do that.