God's Standards

A sin is a sin is a sin. There's no sin that is greater than any other sin, nothing you can do that breaks God's law only a little bit. If you break God's law, you've broken all of it. On this point, the Bible is clear.

And we are all sinners. 

But while there is no degree of sin - all sin is equal - there are differences in the circumstances of sin. 

Remember when the Bible tells us that sin is sin is sin, but woe be to the man who causes one of these little children to fall away? Woe be to the man who causes someone else to sin? 

It's one thing to break God's law; it's another thing to get someone else to break God's law. It's one thing to fall away on your own; it's another thing to cause someone else to fall away. 

Ezekiel says it this way: God has a higher standard for the shepherds than the sheep (34:7-10). That is, if you're the person in the situation who is absolutely supposed to know better, God holds you more accountable for whatever happens next. 

If you're the one with the faith, the experience, the voice, the reason, the power, the ability, the responsibility to keep this train on the tracks, if you're the one in the driver's seat when this thing goes off the rails, God holds you more accountable than He does the person who simply got on the train to take a ride. 

You're both guilty of sin, but your sin is compounded by the fact that you were responsible for guiding the whole enterprise. 

Now, this sounds like good news to a lot of folk. Because most of us are what we'd like to call "common." We live regular lives in regular houses with regular families without a lot of major responsibility. We aren't leaders. We aren't CEOs. We aren't pastors. We aren't elders. We aren't Sunday School teachers. So...we aren't shepherds. 

There's not a lot in this world that we're responsible for driving. Nobody's hopping on our train. It's not up to us to keep very many things on the rails. So those "shepherds" that God is holding to a higher standard? That's them, not us. 

Except...the moment you become a follower of Christ, you become a shepherd. 

The moment you give your life to Him, you're supposed to know better. Or at least, you're supposed to be trying to know better. The moment you give your life to Him, you have a knowledge and a power that can guide this whole world, if you'll just use it. If you'll just live it. If you'll just let others see it. 

And you never know who is watching. You never know who is following your example. You never know who is trying to come to follow Christ only to see the way you're doing it and decide that it must be okay because you are doing it. Face it. You're a shepherd, whether you know the names of all of your sheep yet or not. 

And that means you're being held to that higher standard. Right now. 

Sin is sin is sin. But woe be to the man who doesn't realize he's a shepherd...and is leading a flock, however big or small, astray.