Guilty of One, Guilty Of All - James 2:10

   
 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.- James 2:10

    Probably the most oft-repeated objection to believing in God that I hear is the opinion that He is a deliberately cruel and harsh God if He insists that His definition of sin must be ours. Notice that the objection isn’t based on the supremacy of God’s moral position. You understand, after all, that He is God and we’re not? It is based upon our personal choices and attitudes toward what should or should not be a sin. We have decided against traditional Christian moral values in favor of our desires and predilections and chosen things long considered to be sinful, to be the new paradigm of right behavior. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” - Isaiah 5:20.
    As we can see, this practice isn’t anything new. We’ve been doing this since time began. Those who adhere to this convoluted sense of ethics seldom refer to it as ‘morality’. I believe the reason they avoid the word is that they inherently know the things they think, say, and do are not moral by any stretch. So their immediate counter in nearly every confrontation is that no one has the right to tell them what is right and what is wrong. You’ve heard it yourself: “What’s right for you may not be what’s right for me.” The attitude has long been the subject of judgment calls. “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” - Judges 21:25. You can see how this could quickly lead to ill-advised thinking and behavior. Shame has forever been as crucial a warning sign in our lives as has been pain. They are both words describing a feeling that something is wrong. Shame comes from an emotionally sick and damaged heart; pain comes from a physically sick or damaged body. Both should be heeded to prevent further harm.
    “It’s not that we shouldn’t have a somewhat stable standard for moral behavior,” they say; “but it must be a ‘floating standard,’ rather than one that is rigidly defined and maintained. It must be a standard that can ‘evolve’ with circumstances.” That is not God’s plan. “You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.’” - Leviticus 24:22. While this particular passage was directed more toward unequally apportioned justice, it serves well to show the law should be recognized the same way by everyone. What is right for me IS right for you; the inverse is true as well.
    How many times have we heard the adage - “If it’s right, it’s right even if no one does it and if it’s wrong, it’s wrong even if everyone does it.” We just can’t have conflicting ideas about right and wrong when we have a clear-cut and long time set of moral values that are so easily identifiable. Even if your sin has become the “in-sin” for the times and the culture, it is still sin! Popular culture is the last thing we want to rely upon to represent the moral compass of our lives! By God’s standard, if it wasn’t acceptable behavior yesterday, it isn’t acceptable behavior today, and it will not be acceptable behavior tomorrow. God’s laws are as unchanging as He is - “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” - Isaiah 40:8.
    When a rare occasion takes place and the idea of a defined standard for behavior is recognized, the excuse for sinning then is deftly deflected as an acceptable gaffe. “It was only once. It’s my only weakness. After all, I behave in every other way.” It the tired old excuse - “Basically, I’m a pretty good person.” But as the title passage states - even if we keep all the laws except for one, we are still guilty of breaking the law. Our sin is still with us and we are without excuse. This is why it is essential that we understand our thoughts, words, and works can never help us gain salvation. All they have the power to do is further emphasize our guilt as sinners. And suggesting that God is somehow the villain in all this is not only sinful in its self but slavishly evil. Mankind’s evil is the antithesis of God’s holiness. And we dare to opine that we can determine for ourselves what is sin and what is not?
    The only way to maintain such an erroneous belief is to deny the sovereignty of God, His Word, and His very being. This is the very essence of the “unforgivable sin,” the calloused and shameless failure to repent of our sins. Rest assured; this is not the position we want to be in on Judgment Day. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” - 2 Corinthians 5:10. What each of us believes will be what each of us receives.