“Don’t be that guy,” is standard advice given by older men to younger men all around the world. That Guy is just what he sounds like: the one who doesn’t get it. The one who takes things too far. The one who thinks he knows more than he actually does. The one who is inexperienced but dotes on a single experience he has had rather than just acknowledging he doesn’t have much experience. Among pastors, whether they’ve been trained at seminary or not, there is an equivalent to “that guy.” They’re called first-year seminarians.
The problem with the first-year seminarian is that they don’t know what they don’t know. Most folks who go to seminary do so with a certain enthusiasm for knowing more about their faith, which is good, but the first tastes of that information frequently go to the new seminarian’s head. They become very anxious to employ what they have learned everywhere they go, with whomever they meet, and at great length, even though they’ve just started out and haven’t completed enough of their studies to realize how limited their new knowledge is. No where is this phenomenon more obvious that in the study of Biblical languages. Someone who has just completed their first Greek or Hebrew class is often so excited about the new avenues for understanding that they forget to embrace the reality that they are still novices themselves. It’s become a standard part of most beginning language classes at the seminaries with which I am familiar to inform students at the conclusion of their beginning language classes that they really “know just enough of the language to be dangerous.”
The essence of being “that guy” or the “first-year seminarian” boils down to thinking you have more knowledge of the thing than you really have. There are scholars who devote their entire lives to trying to probe one facet of one of these languages! There’s so much more information! But the first-year seminarian often doesn’t know enough to know that—they are so enraptured by the basic information that they are blind to what they don’t know. The classic example of this is the first-year seminarian spending too much time trying to make a fine distinction between the various Koine Greek words for love, especially philae and agape (as in John 21:15-19), when most of the good scholarship now suggests that these words are nearly synonyms in the New Testament period and that John is likely switching them for the purpose of variance, not to convey some deep theological truth—which is why most good English translations render them all as “love.” There’s nothing to see here, unless you’re a first-year seminarian (or an ad man for New York Life, apparently)!
My goal in this is not to denigrate new seminarians. Many pastors were there once. I sure was, and may still be more often than would be comfortable for me to admit. The phenomena is surely not limited to new seminarians. The point is to suggest that the problem for the first-year seminarian is not that they don’t have knowledge, it’s that they don’t have enough knowledge to know what is truly significant or not. It’s not unlike what happens with young children when you teach them something new: they are amazed by it to the exclusion of everything else, even when the thing you’ve just imparted to them is really nothing more complicated than the fact that their chicken nugget used to be a chicken. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s just a tragedy if someone doesn’t go beyond that into something more substantive. The life importance of knowing a chicken nugget is (at least nominally) chicken is fairly low.
My purpose for writing tonight is this: I fear that many Christians have been trained in a Gospel that is fit for children, but not mature believers, and not having more information, are making the same mistakes that many first-year seminarians make as they try to apply what they have learned. The gospel presentation that so many of us are familiar with is fine as an introduction, but not for someone who has been in the faith for many years and means to understand their Bible. There is nothing wrong with starting out with a basic understanding. It’s just not advisable to stay there if you want to grow in the faith.
The standard evangelistic presentation is often formulated as something like this:
- God made the world perfectly, including humans.
- Humans sinned and were separated from God as a result.
- Jesus came to restore the relationship between God and sinners.
- Jesus is powerful to save from any and every sin, and all sin is equal before God, so everyone needs salvation through Jesus Christ.
- Therefore, you should trust in Jesus for salvation.
(Would you like to pray with me? No, really. If you would, send an email, call, etc. Or pray it by yourself and then let me know!)
That presentation, if it is the one you learned, certainly has a lot going for it. It does a good job of laying the framework for the Christian understanding of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. For those who have been in the faith, this presentation is comforting and familiar. It is, for most of us, what we heard when God moved in us to call us to himself. Each of those statements could easily be defended by Scripture. The problem with that formulation is not that it is, at least on the surface, incorrect. The problem is that if this is all you know about the Gospel, you will be tempted into errors, just like a first-year seminarian, because you haven’t probed any deeper. This formulation of the faith is fine for a new believer or an eager evangelist going to new believers. It is not fine if it is your entire grasp of what the Bible teaches 25 years later.
Before you get defensive, remember: there is nothing wrong with a new believer hearing and responding to this. It’s not wrong to remember this sort of presentation with fondness for your own conversion, or as a sort of outline you’d hang further study on. I know not everyone finds studying the Bible easy. But my argument is that if you never go beyond this, you will stall. Understanding how the Scriptures reveals each of these points is an unending source of joy you can dive into and never reach the bottom of. And each time you dive into the well of God’s incredible riches in the Gospel, you will, as a natural part of the process, begin to see that there are other layers which can add helpful distinctions and clarifications to what you would teach a growing believer which explain entire sections of Christian tradition and will help you to grow wise in the faith.
Let me give you one practical example with the names removed. I was recently asked by two incredibly bright, faithful young women I know, about the cultural difficulty Christians now have in the area of sexual ethics. Their questions, boiled all the way down, were as follows:
If all sins are equal before God, why should we push harder on some kinds of sexual sin than others? Why aren’t we handling them all the same? Is this case of Christians picking something they think is more unacceptable and being hypocritical about it?
If you spend any time at all in our culture, you have (or will) undoubtedly hear something very much like this, if not on the question of sexual ethics, then a similar question on some other point. Christian Gospel presentations are well known and this seems to be a damning indictment of “judgmental Christianity.” Except, in reality, this is a criticism of a simplified version of the faith, not the rigorous one that stands up to these criticisms. It would be like judging a kindergartner for their understanding of the cosmos and then rejecting astrophysics as a result.
If you compare their perfectly reasonable questions to my Gospel presentation, you will discover that most of their questions land in this statement:
- Jesus is powerful to save from any and every sin, and all sin is equal before God, so everyone needs salvation through Jesus Christ.
In particular, the italicized middle clause seems to be the source of our trouble—the assertion that all sin is equal before God. And this is one instance where my simple Gospel presentations fails the mature believer, because when it comes to the question of whether all sins are equal before God, the answer is yes…and no. Let me explain.
If you believe the entire Bible is true and you want the answer to what the Bible says, then the whole Bible is where you should look. If you survey the Scriptures, you will discover that there are clear classes of sins which God handles differently, especially when you get to the Law of Moses. If all you did was read the first five books of your Bible, the idea that all sin is equal would be unthinkable. In fact, none of the Old Testament seems to teach that. The laws very clearly group different kinds of sins and require different punishments or offerings for different sins. In addition, there are some sins according to that law that demand a death sentence or cannot be atoned for. There are even different words to describe some of these infractions in Hebrew which seem to be meaningful. Moving further into our Bible, the Old Testament prophets seem to indicate that there are some sins that God finds especially irksome—not because of which sin it is, but because of the underlying heart condition which causes it. By the time you get to the New Testament, the narrative turns very precipitously towards Jesus covering the payment for ALL sin (an exciting new development as the book has progressed!), but not the earthly consequences for all sin. In other words, Jesus died for all the sins committed by all sinners, but that doesn’t mean that all sins are the same before God.
The good news of Jesus Christ in the Gospel is that no matter your particular brand and class of sin, the death of Jesus will cover it. That is important because any class of sin would be enough to separate you from a holy God. In that sense, and maybe only in that sense, are all sins the same—to separate us from God. In every other way, the sins may still be viewed very differently by God.
How can that be true, you might ask?
Consider the following:
1. Jesus says (in Matthew 18) it would be better for those who lead “little ones” astray to be dropped into the ocean with a millstone around their neck and drowned, ostensibly because it would be better than the punishment for that particular sin, which seems, you know…sort of severe.
2. In the book of Acts (4:32-5:11), the Holy Spirit immediately moves to strike dead a believing couple who were caught lying to God following a property transaction which led to them making a donation to the fledgling Church. Ananias and Sapphira sinned by lying about the amount they made from the sale so as to look magnanimous in the community when they had, in actuality, kept some of the proceeds for themselves. Again…serious, for what some might argue is a fairly harmless lie–they gave their gift, right? As it turns out, this is more serious than it appears, but again, serious enough for immediate reaction from God himself. The fact that not all sinners who come to faith are immediately killed is an indication that there is some sort of thing happening here beyond the usual, and something worse.
3. Shortly after this, also in the book of Acts (8:4-25), is the story of Simon the Sorcerer. Simon sees the power of God in the ministry of the Apostles as they do ministry work and attempts to buy the ability. In short, he wants to “learn the trick,” not realizing it is the power of God. Peter harshly rebukes Simon, but Simon doesn’t die and meekly retreats. Peter’s reaction seems to be strong, and yet, no body count, perhaps because Simon isn’t a believer when he makes the request.
4. In Acts 8 and 9, we discover that Saul of Tarsus has been persecuting Christians and is seeking to kill them. In an incredible moment, Saul, while traveling to kill more Christians, is knocked off his horse by a vision of the risen Jesus and ultimately converts. Apparently, his penchant for blood was also not worthy of an immediate death sentence, and instead, Saul becomes the Apostle Paul and preaches the Gospel until he himself ultimately finds the earthly punishment he himself would’ve meted out on Christians earlier in his life.
5. This same Paul, later in his life, wishes eternal condemnation and hell fire on those who preach a false Gospel (Galatians 1, especially verses 8-9). Strong words from a guy who preached grace and forgiveness for sin, which probably indicates he thought this was a pretty serious sin that was worse than some other garden variety version.
6. By the time we arrive to the end of time, there are books opened which include every deed any person has ever done. Everyone is judged for their actions, living and dead. Then a second book is opened, which is “the Lamb’s book of Life,” which includes those who have trusted Jesus for salvation and have endured in the faith until the end of their lives. (Revelation 20:11-15). In the end, only one book matters, but that leaves apart entirely the question of what’s in the book of what everyone has done.
All of this is to say that the teaching of the New Testament is that Jesus has unambiguously taken on the punishment for all sin, NOT that all sins are equal before God. Our kindergarten presentation of the Gospel is correct and has selectively prioritized the final need for salvation, but does not require us to believe that all sins are the same, only that the practical effect of all sins with respect to relationship with God is the same—to separate us from the holy God eternally if they are not paid for on our behalf by Jesus Christ.
That leads to one final point that I need to make here. Sins may finally be atoned for by the same sacrifice in the saving death of Jesus Christ, but that obviously does not mean that all sins have the same effects on earth. When Jesus suggests that a man who has looked lustfully on a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart, he surely can’t mean that you might as well just sleep with her if you can because you’ve already sinned. There are real differences between the two sins in terms of their earthly consequences’ destructive scope. The root heart issue Jesus is addressing is the same, but that is the only sense where the two things are equal–the roots are the same, and the plants are the same species, but they are producing different fruit (or at least producing it on a different timeline). In first century, as today, marital infidelity, adultery, and fornication were serious matters which had legal, cultural and relational consequences. Jesus is not annihilating those distinctions by claiming the man commits the sin in his heart. What he is suggesting is that even really holy looking people can still have secret sin which can separate them from God even if it never makes it to full fruit production. In other words, just because someone doesn’t have a visible and obvious sin doesn’t mean they aren’t still separated from God because of a sinful heart, or that they won’t have other negative effects. He is making the same point as our basic evangelistic presentation and the book of Revelation. But that doesn’t annihilate the distinction—he was addressing people good at the outward part of the law but very poor at the “inward life” part. Condoning outward adultery by making it equal to lusting after someone internally was not even remotely in his view.
Now we’ve come full circle. We can affirm that our simple Gospel presentation is focused on the final state of things, but that in the intermittent time between when we come to faith in Christ and when we die, the sins we commit need not be the same in terms of how God ultimately views them, or in their earthly consequences prior to our death. Though they are different, God continues to love us all, probably because we all sin in many ways.
Applying this back to our question about sexual ethics, we now have the right questions we can ask. Are all sexual sins the same?
- In the ability to separate us from God finally if we do not repent? Yes.
- In terms of Jesus’ payment for them? Yes, at least in the sense that he does pay for them all for all who believe.
- In terms of how God rates or classes them, possibly even in regards to their severity? Probably not, on the basis of the texts of Scripture, and for reasons which amount to His love for us in protecting us from negative consequences he can see which we cannot.
Given these evaluations, we have more elaborate and well-formed questions we can ask.
- What sorts of distinctions does the Bible make from Genesis to Revelation about these different sins?
- Are there classes we can identify that are consistent throughout the text which might guide us about how we should approach them?
If we find differences in class or grouping, they are likely there not because God isn’t interested in paying for some sins, but rather because his design for humanity is such that some sins have different (or worse?) consequences than others. But our view now gives us the ability to go to texts and ask the right questions. We are no longer chained to our rudimentary understandings, and we can go to the text open to what we find there. We’ve moved past our basic framework into something a bit deeper.
Those better questions do not themselves protect us from being judgmental or hypocritical. If we go to the texts of Scripture seeking to justify ourselves (or to confirm our existing biases), regardless of what side of a potential debate we might be on, we are both judgmental and hypocritical and deserve what bad stereotypes might be assigned to us. But if we submit to the texts in humility, we can come to a nuanced and informed view which is faithful to the text and might well have a correcting word for everyone, including ourselves. Such a view may not please everyone and may not prove any protection from the labels of those who might disagree, but when it comes to our hearts in it before God, we can honestly say that we have been driven by a love of the texts (shown by our prayerful searching) and also a love of others (shown by trying to understand why the texts might suggest different classes or groups of sins and what sorts of suboptimal outcomes they may be trying to prevent). This is a fitting approach for mature believers.
It is not only one clause in one part of my basic Gospel presentation that presents these sorts of challenges. If we do not continue to seek God in the Scriptures, other parts of our doctrine will be stunted, and we will struggle in our own walk and in sharing our faith with people who have the real and honest questions of those who do not believe.
Ultimately, my point in this entire article is to take the long way to commend to your what Paul suggests in Ephesians 4:
13 …until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4:13-16
When we have appropriately understood that we have to move past simple understandings of the Gospel and into real study of the texts which reveal our own hearts, we are free to bend our own hearts towards the Scriptures and receive the answers we find there, led on by the Holy Spirit as we read, and testified to by generations of Christians before us. When we do that, shifting cultural understandings do not cause us to become unmoored, they simple help us to understand how we can love those who are struggling in the difficult cultural waters better and show love and grace as well as truth to them. The danger if we don’t go deeper is that we too will be carried away. Ultimately our response to the simple Gospel is to desire and seek out its full depth so we don’t have to rely only on our simple understandings, but the entire revelation of God.
May you be empowered to respond daily to the simple Gospel, and to desire to sink deep roots as you grow in it. May your study of the Word of God make you both wise and compassionate as you demonstrate and proclaim the love of Jesus Christ.