This being Good Friday, I want to write about an idea that has confused some people, the nature of sin. I’ve heard recently of people saying all sin is equal in God’s eyes so does God condemn an abuser with the same severity as the gossip? No, he does not, and you wouldn’t have to read far into the law God gave Israel in Exodus through Deuteronomy to see that the proscribed punishments intend to fit the severity of the crime.

All sin does separate us from God, even the minor ones, and that is because these sins are the fruit of the original sin that accomplished our separation. The Fall is our original rebellion, the act that put all of us into a state of sin. The toddler screaming at his parents isn’t divinely separated for screaming. The teenager repeatedly refusing parental accountability isn’t marked a divine rebel for these acts. Both of these are examples of the fruit of original sin, and this is the sin that separates all of us from God. Only in this way are all sins equal.

 “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given” (Rom 5:12-13 ESV).

Even before we had a law to identify the fruit of sin, deadly sin was in the world, and this is the sin for which Christ atoned on the cross. This is the reason for Good Friday.

The root of sin, the source of every sinful act we have done, has been nailed to the cross and blotted out by the blood of atonement. “As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom 5:18 ESV). That life is available to all who take Christ Jesus at his word–that this sin is a deadly serious matter, deeply engrained in all of us, and that he has atoned for it completely on the cross.