Drizzling Rain

It may happen that a catechism student upon hearing this answer will come with the question, “Are there little sins?” Rev. Hellenbroek has undoubtedly considered this, for he immediately follows with the question, “Are there then no sins which can be forgiven?” Upon which he answers, “All indeed in Christ (the sin against the Holy Ghost only excepted) but none so in their own nature” (James 2:10).

An old theological error

Our aged question-and-answer booklet warns here about an old notion which crept into the church in its earliest days. The church father Tertullius has already written about it. People began to make a difference between easily forgiven, daily sins (little sins), and much greater sins, the so-called deadly sins. In the Roman Catholic church this difference had been generally accepted as an established doctrine. According to Rome one commits a deadly sin when in the first place he sins against the law in a great sin, in the second place when it is committed with full knowledge, and in the third place transgresses with a free will. He who commits such a deadly sin deserves, according to Rome, to go to hell and shall, when he dies without a fully repentant confession, definitely go lost.

Completely unjustly, Rome thinks to be able to speak about deadly sins on the basis of, for example, 1 John 5:16b, where we read, “There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” The Apostle John in this context speaks here however about the slander against the Holy Spirit.

The Reformers, and especially Calvin, have rejected the difference between forgivable “little sins” and deadly sins as being in conflict with the Holy Scriptures. They taught, just as we have a few moments ago heard from Rev. Hellenbroek, that all sins are condemnable before God and deserve eternal punishment, but that all sins, with the exception of the sin against the Holy Spirit, can be forgiven through the blood of Christ.

Greater sins

Hopefully, we know this and also agree with it. Yet, we wish to consider this more fully and ask two questions, an exegetical and a practical one. First, we hear an explanation or some instruction according to John 19:11. In this portion of Scripture, we read that the Lord Jesus, while standing before Pilate, is asked the question whether He knows that Pilate has the power to have Him crucified or to set Him free. The Lord Jesus answers, “Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above: therefore, he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin.” It appears here that the Lord Jesus makes a distinction between greater and lesser sins. How should we think about this?

If we would ask to whom the Lord refers with the words, “he that delivered Me unto thee?” then the answer must be, the Jewish people, or the Jewish rulers. Why would their sin be greater than the sin of the Roman governor? The writer of the marginal notes (#18) states in short and to the point, “because they had greater knowledge of God’s Word and Christ’s miracles.” With these words there is noted a full agreement with such texts as, “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 commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12:47&48a).

What the Lord teaches here is not that there are in and of themselves little and forgivable sins but that there will be grades or steps in the eternal punishment. There will be a heavier judgment according to the greatness of the sin when there is evidence of a greater responsibility because of knowledge of God’s revelation. That is why Christ said that it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the Day of Judgment than for the cities of Galilee where He had performed so many wonders.

The practice

There is, however, also a practical question. We reject the doctrine of a difference between little and in themselves forgivable sins and great deadly sins. How does that relate in our conscience and in our daily walk and talk? There are sins for which we react with revulsion, such as a murder, adultery, incest, child pornography, and the cursing of God’s name. We are quick to confess that we are guilty of all, yet there is a restraint in our lives whereby we recoil for many terrible things.

Furthermore, there are matters which we know very well are not good but of which we are also guilty. These are daily…temper tantrums. empty or nasty words, forgetting to pray, careless attendance of church services, reading God’s Word in a formal manner, avoiding our duty while at work, the reading of worthless literature…We still may recognize these things as sin. Yet, there are also those countless “little sins” which everyone seemingly accepts—taunting a teacher on the playground, mocking your boss behind his back, gossip at a birthday visit about this one or that one. They are sins, which when we bow our knees in the evening, do not even come to mind. We, in the living of our lives, have a legion of “little sins” which we gloss over or trivialize.

God’s great anger

One time when considering Lord’s Day 43, a statement in the answer struck me. In that Lord’s Day the ninth commandment is considered. It speaks about avoiding backbiting and slander, about not doing very common, everyday things such as twisting the words of our neighbor, judging, and joining in the condemnation of any man rashly or unheard. Then, at once, there falls as a terrible blow upon our conscience the words from our Book of Comfort, that I must avoid all these things as the work of the devil unless I will bring upon myself the terrible wrath of God. How dreadful! When we think of God’s severe anger, we usually think of murder, blasphemy, whoremongering, adultery, but not about some gossip at a visit.

That, however, is exactly what the Catechism wishes to teach us. That is also what God teaches His people in true conversion. Where He works in the heart and conscience with His convincing of guilt, there is no longer any speaking of “little sins.” Rather, I become hell-worthy with the committing of each and every sin. It will seem as if the final judgment is already accomplished here in this lifetime. God opens the books of His omniscience and of our fearful conscience. Then the crystal-clear light of God’s Spirit shines over those sins which the world looks at as child’s play and as an idle pastime as Guido de Bres states in the Confession of Faith in the article about the last judgment.

Child’s play and idle pastime—yes, that is how everyone thinks about it. That is also how I once thought about it, but where the Lord comes to convince us, what Rev. Hellenbroek says becomes true, “Do all sins deserve punishment? Yes, even the smallest one.”

Revius and Comrie

Jacob Revius was the greatest Calvinistic poet in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. More than once his verses have moved me. Just lately I read a four-lined verse of his. It speaks about little sins. Revius uses the picture of a misting rain or as he calls it a “dusting” rain. When it is misting, it is sometimes so fine that when we look outdoors, we may think that it is dry. People, however, seldom become so wet as when they walk in a misting rain. That is how it is, as Revius says, with all of those little sins:

A misting rain we do not consider

But those who walk in it for some time

Note that it penetrates, down to the body

Even deep unto our naked skin

The sins which men consider small

And think they matter little

Have served to slay many

Thinking to obtain salvation.

(loosely translated)

We, all of us together, may well shudder and say, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults!” It also struck me, reading in the Catechism explanation of Alexander Comrie his remarks when considering Lord’s Day 1, that it is necessary to learn to hide ourselves deeply in the “opened wounds of the Saviour, that God neither as Judge, nor the Law, nor the devil may lay hold on anything of ours and can find or observe anything in us outside of Christ…”

It may well be a question of our souls, both for you and me, if we have learned to know something personally of that hiding in the wounds of Christ in our life. That, remarks Comrie, is what Paul meant when he said that he wished to be found in Christ. Only there is atonement for all our great sins…and for the “small ones.”

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