Sexual Sin: Is it the Worst Kind of Sin? by guest author Joel

One Sunday morning a few weeks ago, a few of us were curiously perusing the “tract racks” at our church.  What we found horrified us and led to us disposing of many of the tracts post-haste.  The tracts’ crimes were pretty basic, some starting off on the wrong theological foot, others wading in with both fists into copyright infringement, etc.  One in particular, though, bothered me particularly and it’s stuck with me over the ensuing weeks.  It was entitled something like “Why Sexual Sin is the worst kind of sin” and was written by a nationally famous Pastor I had assumed to be pretty legitimate.  

It just immediately struck me as the worst kind of thing you could ever put on a tract.  Anyone who is struggling with a particular kind of sin has a lot of needs, and I would doubt that any of those needs includes hearing “Oh, you’re struggling with XYZ sin?  Oh, sure– that’s the worst kind of sin.”  

The more I’ve thought about it since then, I’ve come to realize that Sexual Sin is really the BEST kind of sin!  It’s actually, relatively speaking, a gift!  

Strap in for my defense of this statement.

See, we know that all sin is equal in God’s eyes.  And we know, in our heads, that every sin makes God sick to His Stomach (or the divine equivalent thereof.)  It’s the kind of thing we’ve heard about for years.  And yet I put it to you that we don’t fully understand how some sins truly make Him “feel” that way.  Because, let’s face it, whenever we say “all sins are equal in the sight of God,” we’re usually talking comparatively– talking about Sexual Sin vs. every other kind of sin.  Sometimes I think we’re never 100% sure whether the “rules” are for good, or whether they’re just there to be “rules.”  That’s where Sexual Sin comes in—we know, clearly why the rules are there–no other type of sin is so gloriously destructive, so brilliantly life-shattering, and so powerfully vivid in the wide swath it cuts as it ruins lives.  On top of that, it’s such an incredibly efficient sin that it almost inevitably leads to more sin, from simple lying to your parents about “snogging” when you’re a teenager to, well, worse.  Like murder (David, etc.).  

And that’s why Sexual Sin is so great.  Yes, because it enables us to see, more clearly than any other sin, an earthly example of the ghastly toll that sin, any sin, takes.  See, we always carry on about how “all sins are equal” and what we’re doing, I think, is trying to dial down the sexual sin, when what we should be doing, in part, is ratcheting up in our minds the hideous effects of the other sins.  

When you see the smoking ruins of someone’s life (sometimes literally), instead of bolstering our secret convictions that, yeah, Sexual Sin is, in fact, worse, we could be thinking, as an exercise, wow, what other sins do I brush off that have these kinds of effects, just unseen.  My perfect go-to example for this is “gossip.”

Our church has a problem with gossip.  How do I know this?  It has a steeple and more than two people attend.  But truly–I’ve actually seen this sin at work in people’s lives (I can tell you specifically whom when we get together this week for coffee).  

If you think about it, church is basically a club—a “Let’s Beat Sin. . .Together” club, and somehow we’re not allowed to talk about each others’ struggles with sin?  (That’s just mean, God!)  Gossip is a great example as an “Other sins can include” List sin because the lure of it, the pure bestial joy we have when we’re about to hear about some putrid chunk of someone else’s life, well, it’s almost incomparable, isn’t it?  Almost.  And the effects of gossip are so insidious, so silent. . .that you might not notice the damage you’ve caused for years.  It’s magnificent.  

See, sin is the only thing on earth that doesn’t adhere to the Laws of Thermodynamics.  There’s no friction with sin, so no energy is ever lost, and the consequences get bigger the longer it goes unchecked.  The tiniest little lie, or story, or even wiggle of an eyebrow—you could power a church schism with it!  

Thankfully, due to the picture given to us by Sexual Sin, we can know exactly what we’re doing, in all spheres of our life.  We can be confident that the destruction wrought on the earthly plain by Sexual Sin is equal to that which we wreak on the heavenly plain for the “lesser-known” sins. 

To prove Sex sin’s place as the perfect earthly picture of the foul horror of sin, just look at what Satan tries to do—paint a picture of easy sexuality without consequences.  But of course—if something as obviously consequence-intensive as Sex can be made to seem consequence-free, then we can say, what on earth ARE those Christians railing on about with their tired old rules and regulations?!  They’re just trying to kill our fun.

Additionally, sexual sin the best because it can provide a perfect real-world litmus test for your faith.  I have a friend, a Christian “lifer,” who grew up insulated and virginal, who is getting set to marry someone who was more recently saved, as an adult.  Well, because of real life, the fiancée has a bit more of a “typical” past.  This simply crushes the lifer, two ways—one, the lifer has little experience in the “ways of the world,” so they’ve had no opportunity (blessedly) to be jaded by the easy sexuality of the world today.  Okay that’s good.  But the horror of what is now, sadly, commonplace, crushes the lifer—someone they love has been in that lifestyle.  Secondly, the so-clearly ugly consequences of this person’s past sins have awakened demons of jealousy (again, a perversion of a good thing) in the lifer’s heart.  But here is what is so great—if the lifer can embrace this person’s redeemed, forgiven, pure status in Jesus, the lifer’s faith is 100% affirmed!  It’s a truly and absolutely glorious opportunity to see whether you believe in redemption, and in the efficacy and power of the Blood.  Moreover, it’s so clearly a pass-fail test.  It’s just wonderful.  

I’ve always pictured myself instructing my as-yet unborn children in this area by telling them this:  Look guys, sins are sins.  They’re all hideous and yet there is forgiveness for all of them.  For Whatever Reason, some sins have consequences from which it is difficult or impossible to recover in an earthly sense.  A lot of these fall under a certain umbrella.  Maybe now I will add this:  It’s because sex is so illustrative of so many things, both in heaven and on earth, it’s because it can be so beautiful, that it can also be so frighteningly ugly.  There’s almost no end to what Sexual sin is teaching us if we’re looking at it in the proper light.  And perhaps I will say this–Do your best to learn from afar.  

Disclaimer:  Clearly some of this was written tongue-in-cheek, straddling the Screwtapeian line.  I wanted to see whether you could turn around the unfortunate statement made in the tract I referenced and make it somehow instructive.  All sins are bad and, unchecked, destroy your life.  Some more immediately and colorfully than others.