In his letter to the larger church, James writes, . . .

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—you just have sin!  So if you are trying to plea-bargain your shortcomings from felonies down 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 sins.  A mortal sin is a grievous act that is committed deliberately, with full knowledge and intent.  A venial sin is less grievous, usually committed unintentionally, without the slightest inkling of the damage you are causing.

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 most often used word comes from the root “chatah” and it means to “miss the mark.”  The second word comes from the root “avah” and it means to break one of the commandments.  The third word comes from the root “pasha” and it refers to a deliberate revolt against God.

Of course, the common thread here is that all three represent acts that go against God’s will.  Whether you are just missing the mark, breaking one of the commandments, or launching a full-scale revolt against the Almighty, your actions are out of sync with the plan that God has for your life.  And I think that may have been what James had 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 your actions are either in sync with God’s plan or they are not.  And if they are not, then it doesn’t really matter whether you are a little bit out of sync or a whole lot out of sync.  Out of sync is out of sync—making the glorious music that God composed for your life difficult for others to hear!