All Sins Are The Same. Really?

I've believe I have mentioned before, that God seems to use "coincidences"  to drive a point home to me.  By coincidences I mean God reminds me multiple times over a short period of time about a particular issue that He must want me to recognize or grasp.

The other Monday, I opened the elder meeting with some thoughts from the book of Jonah.  In the ensuing discussion, Pastor Brett mentioned he was going to begin a series from Jonah.  After Pastor Brett's first sermon on Jonah this past Sunday, I happened to pick up a book called Stuff Christians Like (it's a little collection of satirical blogs about things us Christians say and do - pretty funny actually) by Jonathan Acuff.  I just happened to open to a section called "Pretending We Believe All Sins Are Equal".  In it, Jonathan writes that we feel righteous just saying that phrase.  He notes that it's easy to think sins are equal when someone in your small group admits they don't love their enemies enough.  But what about if someone admits having three abortions?  He jokingly portrays God up in heaven saying; "On no, Martin had an affair.  Oh wait!  It was just an emotional affair, not a physical affair.  Phew!  That was a close one."  (See Matthew 5:27-30)

I had skimmed thru a book by Tullian Tchividgian I read this past year about Jonah, and he had a line in there that said; "This is important because our every tendency to ignore God is always a result of our downplaying the size and significance of our sin, of God’s grace, and of God’s mission." (My underline.)

Just like Jonah, it's easy to create a little caste system for ourselves - I'm a little better than the next guy (although I'm pretty sure the Bible tells us that ALL have sinned...)  I don't measure my sins against God's Word.  I measure them against what I see others doing - just like Jonah.  Holiness is then not measured by God's standard, it gets measured by mine - and that's wrong.

And so, I continue to pray during this Lent Season for God to continue to speak to me (multiple times apparently!) and teach me to be humble before Him.  That's easy to do if I use His standard not mine!