BIG SIN vs little sin

I kind of like cleaning. Washing dishes is my favorite, and there's a certain satisfaction in having a spotless stove. One thing that I find somewhat unpleasant, though, is wiping down the counters and tables. Often times, they already look perfectly clean, but the blackened Clorox wipe when I've finished suggests quite the opposite. It's always so strange to realize that something that looked pretty clean was actually really dirty.

This concept can be reflective of sin. It's easy to notice big sins in our lives (or, let's face it...other people's lives) but it's tempting to kind of sweep our "little" transgressions under the rug. In my own life, there are a lot of things that I kind of forget are actually sinful and just think of them as "things I probably shouldn't do." Cursing, gossiping, judgments, eating six sea salt caramels instead of a reasonable number (#gluttony) to name a few. When I look in the spiritual mirror, I think I look pretty good -- pretty clean. Compared to the "big" sins, I'm not doing that bad. 

Right. 

I'm pretty sure, though, that if I were to take a metaphorical Clorox sheet and wipe down my soul, it would be pretty revealing. I know I'm not alone in having this mindset, and it's not merely a cultural phenomenon, either. The Pharisees were notorious for this type of thinking.

John 8:1-11New International Version (NIV)

8 

1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Jesus sees all sin the same way. There really is no such thing as "big sin vs little sin." We're all unclean before the Lord and it's only through Jesus's death on the cross that we are liberated from the consequences. Guess what? The consequences for our so-called "little sins" are the same as those for people with "big sins." At the end of the day, we are all dirty tables, no matter how clean we look.

I'll spare you a picture of my towel-filled trash can, but here's a shot of my table after I cleaned it. It's almost annoying that it looks exactly the same after I've laboriously scrubbed it. Sometimes it makes me almost resent the cleaning process -- there's no visual change, so why bother breaking my back? (Okay, okay...wiping down the table isn't all that difficult...)

This is part of the danger with categorizing sins as "big" or "little." In Luke 7, a sinful woman is washing Jesus's feet with her tears and hair. Simon the Pharisee is questioning why Jesus would let such a filthy person touch him. Jesus responds:

41 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[c] and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

I guess if I dumped a bucket of mud on my kitchen table before cleaning it, I'd feel a bit more accomplished afterwards. Obviously I'd never do that - that would be really counterproductive. If loving Jesus is to be the foremost priority in my life, it's imperative that I recognize what he has done for me. Of course, I'm not going to go outside, shoot everyone on the street, rob a few banks and build myself a shrine so that Jesus can forgive me more (a la Romans 6:1) - especially because despite those being horrible things, they're no worse in God's eyes than the gossiping, judgmentalism and gluttony I'm guilty of.  

One of my goals lately has been to really work through these "little sins" in my life. Why? Because they're not so little, and because ignoring them can put a wall of self-righteousness between me and God and between me and people who don't know Jesus yet. It's part of humility - no matter how clean I look, I need Jesus just as much as the woman at the well (John 4). 

My challenge for you (and me) is this: Don't let unconfessed sin fester. Pray about it. Ask for forgiveness, ask for strength to overcome it, and ultimately remember that Christ already conquered it on the cross. There's power in that. If you feel stuck in a sin, remember that Jesus already won, and you don't have to be bound to that behavior anymore. #liberated

PS: Don't be a table