I have sat in church buildings where the preacher spent forty-five minutes on one sin and zero minutes on the sin sitting in the pew next to him. I have watched congregations work themselves into righteous fury over sins they would never commit while practicing, daily, sins they would never name. I have seen men who couldn’t stop gossiping thunder about sexual immorality. I have seen men who couldn’t control their pride deliver sermons about the evils of worldliness. And I have watched the church, over and over, construct a tier list of sins - the really bad ones at the top, the respectable ones at the bottom - and then arrange their self-righteousness accordingly.
And every time I see it, I think of Luke 18.
“Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” (Luke 18:10-14)
The publican went home justified. Not the Pharisee. Not the man with the clean record and the respectable sins. The publican. The man whose sin was visible, whose shame was public, who couldn’t even look up. He went home justified because he stood before God as what he was. And the Pharisee went home condemned because he stood before God as what he wasn’t.
The tier list is the Pharisee’s list. It is the list that says my sin is tolerable and your sin is abominable. And the cross obliterates it.
“What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?” (Job 15:14-16)
Like water. Not like poison, which you avoid. Not like medicine, which you take reluctantly. Like water. The most natural thing in the world. You drink it without thinking. You reach for it instinctively. That is what sin is to the human race. Not an occasional lapse. Not a regrettable accident. The default behavior of a nature that was authored to produce it.
And here is the leveling truth that every church needs to hear: if we all drink iniquity like water, then no one’s glass is cleaner than anyone else’s. The murderer and the minister are drinking from the same well. The adulterer and the gossip are consuming the same substance. The homosexual and the self-righteous elder are swallowing the same poison. The difference is not in the nature of what they’re drinking. The difference is that some of them know it, and some of them don’t.
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
All. Not some more than others. Not the really bad sinners at 90% short and the decent churchgoers at 10% short. All have sinned and come short. The distance between any sin and the glory of God is infinite. There is no sin that is almost good enough. There is no sin that is close to the line. Every sin, without exception, falls infinitely short of God’s glory. And an infinite shortfall is an infinite shortfall, whether you got there by murder or by pride.
If the blood of Christ covers sin, it covers all sin equally. Not more blood for the murderer. Not less blood for the respectable sinner. The same blood, the same cross, the same sacrifice, applied to every transgression of every elect person who has ever lived.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)
All sin. Not all sins except the really offensive ones. Not all sins ranked by severity with different levels of atonement required. All sin. The blood cleanseth from all.
And here is what that means for the tier list: the cross destroyed it. At Calvary, every sin that Christ bore was borne equally. There was no hierarchy on the cross. God did not look at some sins and say, “These require extra payment.” The payment was total. The coverage was complete. Every sin of every elect person, from the first to the last, from the mildest to the most horrific, was charged to Christ and paid in full. No remainder. No installment plan. No sliding scale.
Every sin ordained by a sovereign God, and charged to Christ for His elect. The one who stole a candy bar and the one who took a life stand in the same spot before the cross. Not because their sins are morally equivalent in human terms. But because both sins are infinitely distant from the glory of God, and both are infinitely covered by the blood of Christ.
Now I need to address the obvious objection, because it’s a fair one. Didn’t Jesus say that some would receive greater damnation? Didn’t He say it would be more tolerable for Sodom than for Capernaum?
Yes. He did.
“But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.” (Matthew 11:24)
There are degrees of temporal punishment. There are degrees of responsibility. There are sins that cause more earthly damage than others. A murder is more destructive than a harsh word. A rape is more devastating than a lie. This is obvious, and I am not denying it.
But degrees of punishment are not degrees of grace. The existence of a hierarchy in temporal consequences does not create a hierarchy in the distance between the sinner and God’s mercy. The murderer doesn’t need more of Christ’s blood than the gossip. The blood covers all equally. The murderer may face more severe temporal consequences - imprisonment, execution, the destruction of lives around him. But before the cross, he stands exactly where the gossip stands. Both are sinners who drink iniquity like water. Both are infinitely short of God’s glory. Both are covered, if they are elect, by the same blood.
This is the distinction the church consistently misses. They see degrees of punishment and assume degrees of grace. They see a hierarchy of earthly consequences and project it onto the heavenly economy. But the heavenly economy doesn’t work that way. Grace is not a sliding scale. It is total or it is nothing. Christ either bore your sin or He didn’t. And if He bore it, He bore all of it. No sin remaining. No partial coverage. No sin that is harder for Christ to atone for than another.
Let me address two subjects that the church has struggled with, not because these are the only controversial sins, but because they illustrate the principle in the sharpest terms. And I’m going to hold them exactly the way the framework demands: as sins ordained by God, treated with the same grace as any other sin, and approached with the same theological consistency applied to everything else in this book.
Pro-life. Full stop. No exceptions. Not because of politics. I’m a registered independent, and I think for myself on every issue. Not because of the Republican platform or the pro-life lobby or the Moral Majority or any other institution that has co-opted this position for political gain. Because of the ontology.
If everything that exists is a thought in the mind of God, and each person is a specific thought He is actively thinking, then ending that life is destroying a thought God is actively thinking.
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.” (Jeremiah 1:5)
“In thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16)
Known before formation. Written before existence. Every member fashioned in God’s book before a single cell divided. The child in the womb is not a potential person. The child is a thought. A specific, personal, authored thought in the mind of God. And destroying that thought is an act of violence against the Author’s creation, no less than any other murder.
Even in rape. Even in incest. Even in medical crisis. Because the circumstances that produced the child were predestinated. God doesn’t make accidental people. The child conceived in the worst circumstances is still a thought God is thinking. The suffering of the mother is real. The horror of the circumstances is real. And the humanity of the child is real. You don’t solve one evil by committing another.
But - and this is where the tier list has to die - I will not demonize the woman.
The woman who has an abortion is a sinner. So is the man who drove her to it. So is the counselor who recommended it. So is the politician who funded it. So is the preacher who thundered about it on Sunday morning while ignoring his own pride for thirty years. Every one of them drinks iniquity like water. And if the woman is elect, if she is among the people God authored for glory, then the sin of abortion is covered by the same blood that covers every other sin. The guilt Christ bore on the cross included that sin. Not because it’s small. Because the blood is big enough.
The answer to abortion is not the courthouse. The political pro-life movement has turned this into a legal battle, and I understand why. Laws matter. Justice matters. But the law never saved anyone. Overturning Roe didn’t save a single soul. Heartbeat bills don’t regenerate hearts. The answer to abortion is the same answer as every other sin in this chapter: Christ. The gospel. Present the truth softly and wait on the Lord.
I would hold a weeping woman who had an abortion and tell her Christ already covered it. Without a single political bumper sticker. Without a single word of condemnation. Because the Pharisee in Luke 18 thanked God that he wasn’t like the publican, and the publican went home justified.
Sin. Ordained by God. Held with aching compassion and zero stones thrown.
Paul said what he said.
“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” (Romans 1:26-27)
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” (1 Corinthians 6:9)
It is sin. It is an abomination. And I am not going to soften that, because the Scripture doesn’t soften it, and I promised in the first chapter of this book that I would follow the Scripture wherever it leads. Even when it leads somewhere uncomfortable.
But here is where absolute predestination demands more honesty than most conservatives can stomach.
The orientation was ordained. Not a “choice.” Not a “lifestyle decision.” Not a “rebellion against God’s design” in the sense that the person freely chose to rebel. God creates each person with a sin nature according to His sovereign purpose, as we established in Chapter 11. The homosexual’s nature was ordained the same way every other person’s nature was ordained. God authored the inclination. The person experiences it. The sin is real. And the authorship is God’s.
This is too honest for most conservatives. They want to call it a choice because that preserves the idea that the person is responsible and God is not. But we’ve already dismantled that assumption in this book. God authors the nature. The creature acts out the nature. The creature is responsible for the act. And God is the Author of the nature. Both are true simultaneously. The pot and the potter. The character and the Author. The sin is real, and the authorship is sovereign.
And here is the other thing the church needs to hear, and it’s going to sting: the church that obsesses over homosexuality while ignoring pride is the Pharisee in Luke 18. The preacher who spends forty-five minutes on Romans 1 and zero minutes on Romans 2 has read half the letter. Because Romans 2 turns the spotlight back on the person doing the judging:
“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.” (Romans 2:1)
“Thou that judgest doest the same things.” Not the same specific act. The same category. Sin. Rebellion. Drinking iniquity like water. The man who judges the homosexual while nursing his own pride is no closer to God than the man he’s judging. They both need the same blood. They both need the same cross. And neither of them can stand before God and say, “At least I’m not as bad as that.”
As I said in Chapter 12, the sentence “there but for the grace of God go I” is theologically imprecise but spiritually essential. The ontology says the seeds are different and I was never a candidate for reprobation. But the old firmware feels the proximity. And the feeling produces the humility that grace demands. The saint who never feels the proximity risks the coldest heart. Grace that produces judgment instead of compassion has missed its own point.
I would sit across the table from a gay man and tell him the truth: it’s sin. Paul said what he said. And then I would tell him the rest of the truth: so is my pride, so is my lust, so is my selfishness, and we’re both drinking from the same well, and the only thing that saves either of us is a cross we didn’t earn and a grace we can’t explain.
The real danger in the church is not the sins everyone talks about. It’s the sin nobody talks about.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Pride is the one sin that disguises itself as virtue. Every other sin knows it’s a sin. The thief knows he’s stealing. The adulterer knows he’s sinning. The murderer knows what he’s done. But the proud man thinks he’s righteous. He mistakes his self-righteousness for holiness and his judgment for discernment. And that’s what makes pride the most dangerous sin in the pew - not because it’s worse in some cosmic hierarchy, but because it’s the one sin that convinces you that you don’t have it.
The Pharisees were the proudest men in Israel and the most doctrinally rigorous. They tithed on their garden herbs. They fasted twice a week. They memorized the law and debated its finest points. And Christ called them whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27). Not because their doctrine was wrong. Because their hearts were rotten. Their doctrine was impeccable and their pride was bottomless, and they couldn’t see the contradiction because the pride had blinded them to it.
And I’ve been that man. I’ve been the sovereign grace Calvinist who was so right about the doctrines of grace that I was wrong about everything else. I was right about sovereignty, and I was wrong about love. I was right about predestination, and I was wrong about compassion. I was right that the truth mattered, and I was wrong that my way of holding the truth was the only way that counted. I was, as I said years ago on Pristine Grace, so right that I was wrong. And the pride monster was the last sin I noticed, because it was the one wearing a suit and tie and quoting Romans 9.
One final point, because someone will ask it.
“If God ordained homosexuality and abortion and every other sin, should we not oppose them? Should we just accept everything because God planned it?”
No. And here is why.
God ordained the crucifixion. It was the worst act in human history - the murder of the Son of God by wicked men. And it was the greatest good in human history - the redemption of God’s elect. God ordained the act. The men who performed it were still wicked for performing it. Both truths coexist. The ordination does not excuse the actors.
“Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” (Acts 2:23)
Determinate counsel and wicked hands. God ordained it, and the hands were still wicked. Ordination and moral approval are not the same thing. God ordains sin for His purposes. He does not approve of the sin. He uses the sin. He authors it for a larger story. But the sin, within the story, is still sin. The character who commits murder in the novel is still a murderer, even though the Author wrote the scene.
So we present the truth. We say what the Scripture says. We call sin sin. We hold homosexuality as sin, we hold abortion as sin, we hold pride as sin, we hold self-righteousness as sin. And we present the truth softly. We don’t force it. We don’t legislate regeneration. We don’t mistake the courthouse for the cross. We say what’s true, and we wait on the Lord. Because the Author already knows who’s going to hear it, and our job is not to change anyone’s nature. Our job is to present the truth and let the Spirit do what only the Spirit can do.
“Some sins are clearly worse than others. Jesus said Sodom would fare better than Capernaum.”
Degrees of temporal punishment exist. A murder has more earthly consequences than a lie. But no sin is closer to or further from grace. The murderer doesn’t need more of Christ’s blood than the gossip. The blood covers all sin equally for the elect. Temporal severity and eternal distance from grace are two different measurements. The church has confused them for centuries.
“You’re being soft on sin by saying it’s all the same distance from grace.”
I’m being hard on self-righteousness. The point isn’t that sin doesn’t matter. It’s that your sin doesn’t matter less than their sin. The church that obsesses over one sin while ignoring its own pride has the bigger problem. And the Pharisee in Luke 18 went home condemned, not the publican.
“If God ordained homosexuality and abortion, should we not oppose them?”
We present truth. We don’t force it. Ordained doesn’t mean approved. God ordained the crucifixion (Acts 2:23) - the worst act in human history - for the greatest good. Ordination and moral approval are not the same thing. We call sin what Scripture calls it, and we leave the results to the Spirit. The courthouse doesn’t save. The cross does.
“You’re just trying to make everyone comfortable with their sin.”
No. I’m trying to make everyone uncomfortable with their self-righteousness. The gospel comforts the guilty and disturbs the comfortable. If you’ve been reading this chapter and thinking, “I’m glad he’s finally addressing those people’s sins,” you’ve missed the point. This chapter is about you. It’s about me. It’s about the sin we tolerate in ourselves while pointing fingers at the sins we’d never commit. And it’s about a cross that doesn’t have a tier list.
“The Bible says some sins cry out to heaven. Doesn’t that make them worse?”
Sins that cry out to heaven - murder (Genesis 4:10), sodomy (Genesis 18:20), oppression of the poor (Exodus 22:23) - provoke more visible temporal judgment. God responds to them more dramatically in history. But “crying out to heaven” describes God’s temporal response, not the sin’s eternal weight. Before the cross, every sin weighs the same: infinite, requiring infinite atonement, which Christ provided in full.
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