That there are differing degrees of seriousness to sin, and an ecclesiastical aspect to the forgiveness thereof, is not difficult to find even if one focuses just on the New Testament. Consider the following:
But he answered and
said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and
there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. (Matt
12:39)
And I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven. (Matt 16:19)
Verily I say unto
you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever
ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt 18:18)
Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence
make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. (Matt
23:14-15)
But I say unto you,
that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.
(Luke 10:12)
And that servant,
which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to
his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did not
commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto
whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have
committed much, of him they will ask the more. (Luke 12:47-48)
Then said Jesus, Father,
forgive them; for they know now that they do. And they parted his raiment, and
cast lots. (Luke 23:34)
Afterward Jesus
findeth him in the temple, and dais unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin
no more lest a worse thing come unto thee. (John 5:14)
Jesus answered, Thou
could have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above:
therefore he that delivered me unto thee hat the greater sin. (John 19:11)
Whose soever sins ye
remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are
retained. (John 20:23)
Then Peter said unto
them, Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts
2:38)
But Peter said,
Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to life to the Holy Ghost, and to
keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine
own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine one power? Why hast thou
conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and give up the ghost: and great
fear came on all them that heard these things. (Acts 5:3-5)
And many that
believed came and confessed, and shewed their deeds. (Acts 19:18)
If any man’s work
abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s
work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet
so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit
of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. (1 Cor 3:14-17)
Know ye not that the
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither
fornicators, shall idolaters, not adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of
themselves with mankind. (1 Cor 6:9)
So that contrariwise
ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should
be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. (2 Cor 2:7)
And all things are of
God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us
the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5:18)
Now the works of the
flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath,
strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time
past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal
5:19-21)
For this ye know,
that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater,
hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. (Eph 5:5)
And when this epistle
is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans;
and that ye likewise read the epistle from Loadicea. (1 Thess 2:16)
Who has before a
blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I
did it ignorantly in unbelief. (1 Tim 1:13)
Having a form of
godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort
are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins,
led away with divers lusts. (2 Tim 3:5-6)
For if we sin
wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking of judgment
and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised
Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer
punishment, suppose ye, shall be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot
the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was
sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
(Heb 10:26-29)
My brethren, be not
many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. (Jas 3:1)
Is any sick among
you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him,
anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save
the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him. (Jas 5:14-15)
For it had been
better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they
have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. (2 Pet
2:21)
If any man see his
brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him
life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say
that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not
unto death. (1 John 5:16-17)
Commenting on Jas 1:14-15, Catholic
apologist Karlo Broussard noted:
[Similar to 1 John 5:5:16-17]
James speaks of at least a stage of sin that doesn’t incur death. He writes, “Each
person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire
then it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings
forth death” (James 1:14-15). Clearly, there is a distinction between the
effects of sin, or at least stages of sin: non-death and death.
Jesus himself teaches
that someone can be guilty of sin and still remain in friendship with him: “Whoever
then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall
be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19). Inasmuch as someone “relaxes
one of the least of these commandments,” he is guilty of sin. Inasmuch as he’s
called “least in the kingdom of heaven,” he’s in friendship with Christ.
Some Protestants
challenge this belief in venial sin by appealing to James 2:10-11, which reads “For
whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of
it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ said also, ‘Do not kill.’”
The first thing we
can say in response is that this interpretation is suspect because we already
saw in James 1:14-15 that James affirms the belief in moral and venial effects
of sin.
Second, James isn’t
even talking about the gravity of sin in the passage in question. His point is
that we must keep all the commandments in order to avoid incurring the
guilt of transgressing the law—that’s to say, the guilt of sin. In other words,
we can’t say to the Lord on Judgment Day, “Lord, I broke only one commandment
but kept the other nine. Therefore, I shouldn’t be condemned.” James explicitly
tells us that this is what he has in mind when he says in the second half of verse
11, “If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor
of the law.”
So this passage from
James doesn’t prove there’s no distinction between sins that are deadly and
sins that are non-deadly. Given the evidence above, we can conclude that it’s
possible to be defiled by sin and yet still be in friendship with Christ. (Karlo
Broussard, Purgatory is for Real: Good News About the Afterlife for Those
Who Aren’t Perfect Yet [El Cajon, Calif.: Catholic Answers Press, 2020], 39-40)
Supporting Brossard’s comments is that
James is borrowing from the concept, popular at the time, of the yetzer hara
(the evil impulse—see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and
the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity [University of Pennsylvania Press,
2011]). As Protestant Peter H. Davids noted:
(14) James introduces this
contrasting statement with δέ, which here has its disjunctive sense. Each person
is put to the test ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιθυμίας. Note that desire (ἐπιθυμία) is singular. This fact, as well as the
whole flow of thought, indicates the meaning which the phrase has for James.
What puts a person to the test is the evil impulse (yēṣer hārāʿ) within. James has excluded, or at least strategically
ignored, the tempter without (cf. Cadoux, 87), but only to point to the traitor
within underlined by the emphatic ἰδίας.
As many commentators have noted, this is one
of the clearest instances in the NT of the appearance of yēṣer theology (e.g. Windisch, 8; Cantinat, 86–87). In Jewish
theology the evil impulse is not per se evil, but is simply undifferentiated
desire. Desire by nature will transgress the limits of the law; thus the
uncurbed yēṣer will certainly lead to
sin. A Jew could easily have written what James says about desire. Furthermore,
it is clear that desire could lead to blaming God, for in some streams of
Jewish theology God created the evil impulse (Gn. Rab. 9:7; b. Yom. 69b). Desire is necessary for human life. To
prevent it from becoming destructive God gave the Torah (Abot R. Nat. 20) and the good impulse (b. Ber. 5a).*
This impulse, which is differentiated from
the human ego (Schlatter, 126), is characterized by ἐξελκόμενος καὶ δελεαζόμενος. Both words come from the realm of hunting
and fishing. Some commentators have felt difficulty with these terms, for while
δελεάζω means to entice by
bait, ἐξέλκω suggests a fish being
drawn out of the water by a line (Hort, 25; Hdt. 2.70). Adamson, 72, rebels at
the drawing out preceding the enticing and, rejecting Hort’s suggestion of a
metaphorical meaning for ἐξέλκω parallel to that demonstrable for ἕλκω (e.g. Xen. Mem. 3.11.18), suggests emending the
text to read ἐφελκόμενος, “attracted,” as in
the proverb in Homer Od. 16.294 and
Thuc. Hist. 1.42. This seems an
extreme solution, being totally without textual support. In 1QH 3:26 and 5:8
the author merrily mixes metaphors of nets and snares (this multiplying of
types of traps is also done in the OT, e.g. Ec. 7:26; 9:12; Ezk. 12:13; 17:20),
and there is no reason to believe James would not do the same: in the first
word he pictures the person enticed to a hook and drawn out (here Hort’s
suggestion that only the enticing is in James’s mind may well be true) and in
the second the person attracted to a trap by delicious bait.*
(15) The metaphorical
character of the bait or enticement is quite apparent in this first phrase. Ἐπιθυμία, which was very active
in enticing the person in v 14, now turns out to be a seductress who, having
enticed the person to her bed, conceives a bastard child by him. The
personification may draw on Proverbs as its background, although the
description of desire as seductive is a rather common image which, given the
feminine gender of ἐπιθυμία, could suggest itself
without precedent, as would the sexual nature of the evil yēṣer, which was consistently associated with adultery (Schechter, 250;
Porter, 111). The figure of wisdom in chaps. 1–9 and particularly the contrast
with the loose woman in chaps. 5 and 7 may lie behind the imagery here: note
that Pr. 7:22, 23 uses the picture of a snare and an arrow, most appropriate in
terms of the words used in Jas. 1:14; cf. Marty, 33; b. Yeb. 103.b and b. Shab.
146a picture yēṣer hārāʿ as stemming
from adultery between Eve and the serpent, which could be another association;
there was also a strong tendency in Jewish tradition to personify the evil impulse
and make it interchangeable with Satan; cf. b. Sukk. 52b; b. B. B. 16a). (Peter H. Davids, The
Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text [New International Greek
Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982], 83-84)
Differing sins and differing gradients of
seriousness thereof are in view in Jas 1:14-15.