All sins are the same..?

I’ve quite happily gone through my Christian life thinking that a sin is a sin is a sin; there’s no degree of ‘worse’ sins because it’s all just sin, with perhaps two exceptions:
1. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only unforgiveable sin
2. Sexual sin is considered worse because it invariably means including another in your sin.

However R. T. Kendall says this: ‘Some sins are undoubtedly worse than others’. I’ve realised this; all sin is sin, an abomination to God and importantly is against Him. We’ve all done it.
But some of us have sinned more, and it’s certainly been different. The Bible tells us that punishment in hell will be proportionate to the sin we commit, so yes indeed some sins are ‘worse’.

Just a thought for a Friday afternoon.

John 1:5

This lesson will finish our walk through the start of John so we can learn some actual grammar and so on, but the absolute best first step we can make is to get to a point where we are looking at the original Greek text and are reading it out loud in Greek. If you’ve not been doing this I’d encourage you to begin writing out the words as we learn them – it will help with your understanding and with the pronunciation of particular letters (it only took me three times of writing ‘n’ instead of ‘v’ to learn that one!

Here are the first four verses again anyway. Read them aloud, see if you understand what you’re saying, then let’s press on with verse five.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν,καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

Here’s verse five:

καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.

kai to fws en tay skotia fainei, kai hay skotia auto ou katelaben.

Vocabulary for this verse is as follows (I’ll miss out the common words):

τὸ φῶς – the light

τῇ σκοτίᾳ – in the darkness (ἡ alone is just ‘the’)

φαίνει – shines

αὐτὸ – him

οὐ – not (remember that?)

κατέλαβεν – grasped (approximately – the Greek word can be translate as either overcome, or understood; see which one your translation opts for but bear in mind that the word really means both).

So let’s have those first five verses again. I’ll put the pronunciation in as well, but this will be the last time I think; there are some letters we’ve not encountered yet but I’ll introduce them as we go along.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.

John 1:4

Pressing on, and we now begin to develop our understanding in verse four. Please note that the ‘w‘ character (omega) is pronounced like ‘o’ is in stone. I’m going to keep the w in the pronunciation markings to differentiate between it and omicron.

ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

en autw zway ayn, kai hay zway ayn to fws twn anthrwpwn

We already know some of these words, like καὶ, ἐν and ἦν so we won’t retranslate them, but let’s go through the other words in the verse:

αὐτῷ – him (this is an important word!)

ζωὴ – life (notice that the strict English spelling of this word is Zoe…that’s where the name is from)

ἡ – the (remember this from a few lessons ago?)

τὸ φῶς – the light

τῶν ἀνθρώπων – (of) the people

So the literal, word-for-word translation of this verse is as follows:

ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

In him life was, and the life was the light (of) the people.

Let’s add that to the previous verses and read through the first four verses of John together, in the original Greek:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν. ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

And the literal word-for-word translation:

In (the) beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. This one was in (the) beginning with God. Everything through him came into being, and without him came into being not even one (of) the created things. In him life was, and the life was the light (of) the people