The Greatest Sin of All

*This short blog (The Greatest Sin of All) is part of a transcription of the audio taken from a Q&A panel discussion from our Sexual Identity event. You can listen to the full episode here.

Question:

How can I respond when someone tells another person they’re going to hell because of their sin of homosexual behaviour?

Dr. John Neufeld answers:

I think it’s unfortunate when any believer says to anyone: You’re going to hell. Here’s what we need to understand: We’re all going to hell. Our sins condemn every one of us – we’re deserving of it. That’s the reality, so we shouldn’t pick on someone and say, “Your sins will make you go to hell.” We have all sinned.

You want to know the biggest sin of all? This is it:

Failure to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

That condemns us out rightly. So stop talking that way if you do. I’d interrupt the conversation and say, “Stop it.”

Postscript

I’m grateful for Dr. John Neufeld to have pointed out the greatest sin of all. Notice how the greatest sin isn’t the inability to live up to a certain external behaviour, but it’s rather an internal position of the heart.

Recorded in Matthew 22:36-40, a lawyer tests Jesus and asks Him,

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

It would make sense, then, that the great sin would be the complete opposite of the great commandment.

As a quick point of application, grow in your love for God by spending time with Him.

This article was originally released on February 1, 2017.