What is a worse biblical sin?
Among today’s evangelicals, it has become virtually commonplace for us to talk as if all sins render us equally guilty before God. Perhaps we have bristled at a previous generation’s tendency to identify one or two sins as particularly hell-deserving. Perhaps we are looking for a way to winsomely engage a society allergic to the idea of sin. My guess is that many of us just want to do justice to Scripture’s universal condemnation of human sinfulness. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Should we really insist that some have sinned worse and fallen farther? But then we listen to Jesus and find, as usual, that like so many tables in the temple courts, he turns over our assumptions. Although Jesus warns us not to make hasty, simplistic conclusions about who the “worse sinners” are (Luke 13:1–5), he also warns us that some sinners, if they do not repent, will face “the greater condemnation” (Luke 20:47). He teaches that some will receive a comparat