In his letter to the larger church, James writes, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one part of it has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10). In other words, you don’t have heavyweight sins and lightweight sins and welterweight sins—there is just sin! So if you are trying to plea-bargain your shortcomings from felonies to misdemeanors, you are wasting your time, because in God’s eyes, it’s all one and the same. A sin is a sin is a sin.

That’s a difficult truth to accept, and frankly, most of us don’t. We see murder as being a greater offense than lying, and lying as a greater offense than gossiping, and so forth. Indeed, within the Roman Catholic tradition, there are two distinct categories of sin. A mortal sin is one that is committed deliberately, with full knowledge and intent. A venial sin is one that is committed unintentionally, without the slightest inkling of the damage that you may have inadvertently caused another.

Even within the Bible, there seem to be distinctions. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, for example, there are three different words for sin. The first word (and by far the most often used) comes from the root “chatah,” and it means “to miss the mark.” It is used to describe David’s plot to kill Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, or Jeroboam’s decision to set up golden calves in the northern city of Bethel. Neither of these men set out to do wrong. On the contrary, they started out as leaders chosen by the voice of God. However, somewhere along the way, they became distracted by other voices. Hence, they “missed the mark.”

The second word comes from the root “avah,” and it means “to act wrongly.” This type of sin usually involves a violation of one or more of the commandments. When Eli’s sons steal sacrificial meat offered to God, for instance, or when the people of Israel start dabbling in Baal worship instead of staying true to Yahweh, they have broken the commandments, and thus, “acted wrongly.”

The third word comes from the root “pasha,” and it means “to rebel.” This kind of separation from God involves a deliberate revolt. When the prophet Micah denounces wealthy landowners for throwing the poor out of their houses and for creating laws that unjustly favor the powerful, what he is accusing them of is an outright rebellion against the authority of God.

Of course, the common thread here is that all three represent acts that go against God’s will. Whether people are just missing the mark, acting wrongly, or launching a full-scale revolt, they are out of sync with the plan God has for humankind.

In effect, I think this is what James has in mind. He is not suggesting that, since a sin is a sin is a sin, shoplifting suddenly becomes the moral equivalent of genocide. That would be absurd. What he is saying is that you are either in sync with God’s purposes or you are not. And if you are not, then it doesn’t matter if you are a beat slow or a beat fast. It doesn’t matter if you are a little out of sync or a whole lot out of sync—either way the glorious music that God composed for your life isn’t being heard!