Are there degrees of sin?

Question 6069.

Are there degrees of sin? Yes and no, and both halves of that answer need holding at once or you will end up in one of two ditches.

All sin makes a person guilty before a holy God, so in the matter of guilt there are no degrees of sin worth counting on. Yet Scripture plainly speaks of greater and lesser offences, heavier and lighter judgements, and sins that carry consequences others do not. Denying either truth distorts the gospel.

Every sin makes us guilty

Start where Scripture starts. Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it (James 2:10). James is not saying that a white lie is identical to murder. He is saying that the law is a single fabric belonging to a single Lawgiver, and one tear puts you on the wrong side of it.

Paul’s verdict is the same. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). There is no category of person who nearly qualified. The line does not run between the respectable and the disreputable; it runs between God and everybody else.

This is why degrees of sin cannot be a basis for comparing ourselves favourably with other people. The moment we start ranking, we are usually building a case for the defence. Jesus met that instinct constantly, and He never once agreed with it.

And yet Scripture speaks of greater and lesser

Now the other side. Jesus tells Pilate that the one who delivered Him over has the greater sin (John 19:11). Greater is a comparative. He also says it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgement than for the cities that saw His works and did not repent (Matthew 11:20-24).

He describes a servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it receiving a severe beating, and one who did not know receiving a light one (Luke 12:47-48). That is an explicit statement of proportion. Knowledge increases responsibility, and responsibility affects judgement.

The law itself operated with degrees of sin. Murder and theft carried different penalties. Some offences required restitution, some required sacrifice, and a few required death. A legal system that treated every offence identically would have been unjust, and God did not give Israel an unjust one.

How the degrees of sin fit with universal guilt

The resolution is to see that guilt and gravity are different questions. In the matter of standing before God, one sin is sufficient to condemn, so there are no degrees of sin that will help anyone at the bar. In the matter of harm, contempt and consequence, sins differ enormously.

Think of it as the difference between falling into the sea a mile from shore and falling in a hundred miles out. Both people are drowning and both need the same rescue. It does not follow that the two situations are identical in every respect, or that the distance is imaginary.

Jonathan Edwards observed that the gravity of an offence rises with the dignity of the one offended, and whatever one makes of the rest of his theology, the principle is sound. Sin against an infinite God is not a small thing whoever commits it, and that is why the first answer must always be that all have sinned.

Scripture is comfortable with both statements because it is answering two different questions. Am I in need of a Saviour? Every sin answers yes. Is this act worse than that one? Frequently, yes, and pretending otherwise is not humility but confusion.

What makes one sin graver than another

Knowledge is one factor, as Luke 12 makes plain. The believer who sins against clear light is more culpable than the person who has never heard. James says the same of teachers, who are judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).

Intent is another. Numbers distinguishes sins committed unintentionally from those committed with a high hand, and only the first had a sacrifice attached. That distinction survives into the New Testament vocabulary and I have traced it in what wilful sin means.

Harm done is a third. Sins against the body, against children, against the vulnerable and against the unity of the church all carry particular weight in Scripture. And there is a fourth factor that we usually miss, which is contempt. The same act can be committed in weakness or in defiance, and God reads the difference.

The Catholic distinction and why I do not use it

Roman Catholic teaching divides sins into mortal and venial, the first destroying grace in the soul and requiring sacramental confession, the second weakening without destroying it. This is a genuine attempt to systematise the biblical data about degrees of sin, and I understand the impulse.

My difficulty is that Scripture never draws that particular line, and the consequences of drawing it are serious. It implies that grace can be lost by an act and regained by a procedure, which cuts against justification by faith and against the security of the believer that I have set out in what eternal security means.

The verse most often cited is the sin that leads to death in 1 John 5:16-17, but John is not constructing a two tier system. He is speaking of a specific and probably physical judgement within the believing community, of the kind Paul describes at Corinth.

The unforgivable sin is a different matter

Jesus does speak of one sin that will not be forgiven, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28-30). That is not a matter of degrees of sin in the ordinary sense, because it is not a heavier version of something lighter. It is a settled attribution of the Spirit’s work to Satan by people who had seen the evidence in front of them.

Notice how the same passage begins. All sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter. The exception is stated against a background of astonishing generosity, and the exception concerns a fixed rejection rather than a particularly nasty act.

In pastoral terms, the person terrified that they have committed it almost certainly has not, for the same reason that people worried about being hard hearted rarely are. Anxiety about the Spirit is not the same as contempt for Him.

What difference this makes in practice

It should keep us from moralising leagues tables. Congregations often have an unspoken ranking in which sexual failure sits at the top and gossip, pride and greed do not appear at all. Scripture’s own lists refuse to cooperate with that, placing envy and slander alongside things we consider unspeakable (Romans 1:29-31).

It should also keep us from flattening everything. Telling a survivor of abuse that their abuser’s sin is no different from her impatience in traffic is not gospel comfort. It is a misuse of a true doctrine to produce a false conclusion, and it wounds people badly.

And it should shape how a church responds. Some sins require restoration in gentleness, some require formal discipline, and some require the police. Recognising degrees of sin is part of loving people wisely rather than uniformly.

What it means for your own conscience

If you are inclined to minimise, remember that one sin is enough to require a Saviour, and that the sins we treat casually are frequently the ones Scripture treats most severely. Pride heads the list of what God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19), and almost nobody comes to me about it.

If you are inclined to despair, remember that degrees of sin do not affect the sufficiency of the cross. There is no sin so large that the blood of Jesus falls short, and the arithmetic that says otherwise is not Christian arithmetic.

It is worth adding that a heightened sense of your own sin is usually a sign of spiritual health rather than of spiritual crisis. The closer anyone in Scripture gets to God, the worse they think of themselves, and Isaiah and Peter both said so out loud.

And if you are inclined to compare, stop. The publican in the parable went home justified because he did not look sideways at anyone. God be merciful to me, the sinner (Luke 18:13-14). That prayer has no comparative in it at all.

So, now what?

Hold both truths and refuse to trade one for the other. All sin condemns, and some sins do more damage. A Christian who loses the first becomes self righteous. A Christian who loses the second becomes careless with other people’s wounds.

Take your own sin seriously without ranking it against your neighbour’s. The only comparison Scripture invites is with the holiness of God, and that comparison ends every argument about degrees of sin rather quickly.

And take the cross seriously enough to believe it covers the worst thing you have ever done. What would change this week if you stopped grading yourself and simply came to Him as the sinner you actually are?

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

James 2:10, ESV