James 2:10

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

The Message: You can't pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God's law and ignoring others.

It is so easy to look at the things others are doing and be critical. I can look at my husband, my children and see them doing something and think to myself that I would never do that. I can watch or listen to the news and think how dreadful something is, how awful some people must be to do things like that, to kill, murder, torture, kidnap young children. How it is a truly dreadful world we live in with all the violence and crime.

I sit here in my ivory tower, watching the world go by with a critical eye, never looking at the things I do, the times I mess up, how often I actually do things that are just as bad. Well, ok, I don't actually go around murdering people, torturing them and so on, but what about the times when I come out with a cutting remark that makes someone feel really useless and insignificant? Or when I sit here and fume silently to myself (feeling really superior because I didn't lose my temper and answer back, as well!), going over the things that were said to me, the things that person did, how awful it was, what a mean and rotten person they are, I would never do or say that, metaphorically polishing my halo whilst being ever so critical and judgemental?

Take a look at Matthew 5:21-22:

You're familiar with the command to the ancients, 'Do not murder.' I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother 'idiot!' and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell 'stupid!' at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill. (The Message)

It is the intention of our heart that matters, the reasons behind the things we say or do. Even thinking we hate our brother and want to kill him is as bad as actually killing him.

And Jesus goes on to say (Matthew 5:27-28, The Message):

You know the next commandment pretty well, too: 'Don't go to bed with another's spouse.' But don't think you've preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt.

Our thoughts count just as much as our actions. It’s no good feeling all superior and holier than thou because I don't go around killing people, jumping into bed with every other man I see, ignoring my marriage vows. There are men who, for instance, do not commit adultery but will look at other women, read pornographic magazines, etc but Jesus says that is just as bad as actually committing the deed. Getting angry with someone is just as bad as killing them.

It's all very well being critical of others, pointing out their faults and flaws, even if it is only to ourselves (and feeling oh so superior in the process…), but if we think the same things, albeit we never act on it, then we are just as bad. Keeping all the ten commandments apart from one doesn't make us any the better a person than someone who breaks each and every commandment on a regular basis.

God does not grade sin. He doesn't give us marks out of ten for the number of sins we have committed, how serious they are, how often we committed them. A mass murderer in God's eyes is just as bad as the person who tells lies or who gossips. It's not a case of Adolf Hitler scoring a 10 whilst I get a 1.5, for instance. God is so pure, so holy, so just, that He cannot be anywhere near sin. It is like the isolation rooms in hospitals where every precaution is taken so that germs, infection, cannot get to the person in the isolation room. Our sin separates us from God, completely, utterly, like a chasm between God and each one of us that we cannot cross.

I love the NLT translation of Isaiah 44:22:

I have swept away your sins like a cloud.

I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist.

Oh, return to me,

for I have paid the price to set you free.

Jesus has paid the price to set us free, to bridge the chasm between each one of us and God. We just have to take His hand and walk across. His sacrifice means that our sins are forgiven, each and every one of them. The sly digs, the innuendoes, the hurting, the hating, the pain, the gossip, the pride, even the murder, the theft, the adultery, the abuse, every single sin is forgiven. Every last one of them.

When we tell ourselves that God wants nothing to do with us because we are sinners, that He could never forgive or forget when we did x, y or z, we are actually being full of pride and imagining that God is too weak and ineffectual to do anything, that our sins are greater than God's ability to forgive, his capacity for love and his great mercy.

No one is so bad that God cannot forgive them, no sin is so great that God's love cannot cover it. There is nothing we have done that could make God love us less, and nothing we can do to make Him love us more. Isn't that just so awesome and so gracious of God? He has paid the price to set us free.