Sin is not Justifiable

I was reading a news story about a man who was convicted of a 4th degree felony. That got me thinking of how we rate crimes depending on how bad we think they are. There's 1st degree murder, 2nd degree....there's manslaughter, there's involuntary manslaughter. A man who kills his wife is punished more harshly than a woman who murders her husband....we GRADE everything. I may have cheated on my spouse...but that's not AS BAD as someone who commits murder...so atleast I'm not AS BAD as that person...etc, etc, etc.

That got me thinking about sin. Sin is the same in God's eyes no matter what it is. My lying is just as bad as someone else's adultery. God doesn't RATE sin.

James 2:10
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

That's a hard concept for us to wrap our minds around. I heard an analogy once that I thought was fantastic...and it really put it into perspective for me.

If you take a box of crayons and look at it from the front, some are totally worn down, some have been used a bit, and some not at all. They all look different. BUT if you take that same box, and hold it and look down at the crayons, they all look the same.

That is how God sees sin, it's all the same. Don't go through life thinking "I may have done [this], but "So & So" did [this much worse thing] because then you are justifying your sin through comparison. It doesn't work that way. Sin is not justifiable. Not by a long shot. So just don't try to do it!