I don't want to be too elementary, but hey,I am teaching at a high school in the mornings and this morning, someone brought up a what I consider a pretty good question.

In God's eyes are their levels to sin?

Those weren't her exact words of course. Her words were more like, everybody thinks sexual sin is so awful and all that, but these others sins are really bad too. Aren't they kind of the same?

Like, isn't going out and committing sexual sin just as bad in God's eyes as cheating on a test?

Now we all know, if we're asking a question like this in order to justify our sin, we are missing the point. That's kind of like saying I want a little bit of leprosy just not a lot. The smallest sin is worth an eternity in hell, so they all are definitely, very, very bad. Plus, we all know if we're asking this question in order to look down on others, we're missing the point. Read the gospels and you find out Jesus had a whole lot to say about that.

But still, it might be worth a moment's thought. This is a common idea - at least among Christian high school students - that all sins are the same in God's eyes. After all, "Jesus says lust is like adultery and anger is like murder so all sin must be the same."

Now I'm not saying I have the final answer, but I do wonder if this isn't just a case of thinking a little too simplistically about Scripture.

For one thing, there is such a thing as the unpardonable sin. In other words, in a different passage Jesus makes it clear there was a sin that was worse than every other sin - a sin so serious that God said He wouldn't forgive it. We can't say then that every sin is the exact same.

For another thing, the writer of Hebrews talks about the condemnation of those who profess to know Christ and then rejecting Him being worse than the condemnation of others. If one person's condemnation is worse than another's that seems to indicate the level of seriousness is different.

On top of all that, isn't there something of a progression in Romans 1; where it seems certain sins are almost punishments in themselves of other sins - like things are getting worse and worse because the sins are getting more and more serious?

And what's more, what about God's justice? God is perfectly just and we certainly at least on a human level wouldn't view a judge very just if he viewed every crime the exact same way.

Now we definitely get a little screwed up on which sins are most serious. For example, it seems viewing the gospels that proud people are looking up the moral ladder at prostitutes.