Scooby Doo, Where are you?

Ruh-Roh!

“I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you pesky kids!”

Ruh-Roh!

I have vivid vacation memories of getting up with the sunrise as a little boy. I would head to the living room where my grandpa was already awake, drinking coffee.

He’d let me turn on morning cartoons. One of my favorites was Scooby Doo.

Each episode of Scooby Doo ended the same. After the antics, mystery, and calamity would come a moment where the criminal was bound and helpless but still in a mask. The monster had been neutralized but not yet revealed.

The Mystery Incorporated gang did not stop in that moment and say, “Zoinks! We’re all sinners. Who are we to judge? All sin is equal right?”

They unmask the monster! They reveal who is committing these crimes so that justice can proceed in the light.

We must beware of the potent perversion of grace that pretends all sin is equal.

“All sin is equal.” Is a convenient phrase that makes for dangerous consequences.

All sin is equal leads Mystery Incorporated to walk away with their heads hanging. Who were they to presume they could unmask a criminal!?

No one loves a masquerade like a monster.

All sin is NOT the same. Don’t repeat a catch phrase that mutates the Bible. 

Yes, all sin brings the same effect–it all brings separation and condemnation from God. 

All sin is not equal in every way. All sin is not the same in how severely it impacts others. All sin is not equal in culpability. All sin does not receive the same degree of judgement.

While any and every sin will separate you from God and lead to Hell, any and every sin is not the same in God’s eyes or in God’s justice.

Not all sin is equally heinous.  

We are not all monsters even if we all stood condemned.

Guilty sinners can call injustice to account, wickedness to repent, and oppression to cease. Being guilty of sin and forgiven by the grace of Christ(!) should move us to regard others humbly but it should not regard all sin as equal.

When Jesus said “Woe” to the leaders of Israel He meant it. He knew they needed unmasking even if all of Israel needed repenting.

We must be people who take our own sin most seriously. We bow humbly before the cross and offer grace to repentant sinners. But the biblical doctrine of grace does not require us to minimize the doctrine of sin.

To put a point on it–Not all sin is abuse but abusers cannot hide behind the phrase, “all sin is equal.”