Scripture does give you lists. Six of them are laid out below, side by side. Then comes the harder question: what were they written to do?
There is no single master list of sins in the Bible. There are several, and the clearest are in Galatians 5, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Colossians 3, Mark 7 and Proverbs 6.
They overlap, none of them match, and every one was written to show people what was going wrong inside them. They were written as a diagnosis, never as a scoreboard.
The lists come first, because that is what you came for. Then what to do with them, which is where a lot of churches have gone wrong.
Wording from the NIV. Read them slowly and notice what repeats.
Paul, writing to churches arguing over whether Gentile believers had to keep the law. He calls these the acts of the flesh.
Paul, describing a humanity that has turned away from God. The longest list of the six.
Written to a real church with real lawsuits and a real scandal, which Paul had just finished confronting in chapters 5 and 6.
Two short groups. The first is about desire, the second is almost entirely about the mouth.
Jesus, in the middle of an argument about washing hands before meals. The only list here spoken by Him.
Wisdom literature, framed as six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to Him.
Two notes. The 1 Corinthians list includes a line built on two Greek words that are among the most argued over terms in the New Testament, and that question gets its own space in is being gay a sin. And Proverbs 6 uses a Hebrew teaching pattern, six things, no, seven, unpacked in what haughty eyes means.
If you wanted pride, envy, gluttony and the rest in a tidy row of seven, that list came later, from church tradition. We cover it in what are the 7 deadly sins in the Bible.
Put them side by side and four patterns show up.
No two lists match. Romans runs past twenty items, Proverbs stops at seven, Colossians splits into two short groups. Galatians even ends with the words and the like, which tells you Paul is giving examples, not filing a complete inventory.
Of the fifteen things in Galatians 5, eight are about how people treat each other: hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy. Slander shows up in four of the six lists. So does greed. The sins repeated most are the ones that wreck a room full of people, church people included.
Paul did not invent the format. Felix Just, S.J., notes that the Hebrew Bible “contains very few extended lists of virtues and/or vices, aside from the Ten Commandments and related passages,” and that moral discussion in this style became popular in the Hellenistic period. What was new was what Paul did next.
Romans 1 runs straight into Romans 2 and points at the reader who was nodding along. 1 Corinthians 6 turns into that is what some of you were. Galatians 5 turns into the fruit of the Spirit. Colossians 3 turns into putting on the new self. Not one of them ends on the list. If you want more, read my study on what God hates.
“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”
Romans 2:1That comes right after the longest list in the Bible. Paul lets the reader feel good about not being those people, then turns it around. If Romans 1 makes you think of somebody else, Romans 2 was written for you.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The one list Jesus gives comes out of an argument. In Mark 7 the Pharisees notice His disciples eating without the ceremonial hand washing. Jesus moves the conversation from the outside of a person to the inside, and Mark adds that in saying this He declared all foods clean.
“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come…”
Mark 7:20 to 21He does not hand the Pharisees a new set of rules. He traces every item back to one source. Theft, murder, adultery, greed and envy are the fruit. The heart is the root. In Scripture the heart is where thinking, wanting and choosing happen, as we lay out in the heart in the Bible.
He did the same thing on the mountain in Matthew 5. You have heard it said, do not murder. Jesus puts anger in the same sentence. You have heard it said, do not commit adultery. Jesus puts the lingering, possessive look in the same sentence, which we unpack in what lust is in the Bible. He did not shorten the list. He moved it inside, where nobody gets to look clean.
A checklist asks what you did. A diagnosis asks what keeps producing it. Jesus always asked the second question, because He intended to heal what He found.
A list of sins in the hands of Jesus is an X-ray, not a report card. It shows what is happening under the surface so it can be healed, not so it can be graded.
Here is the best case for the checklist approach, and it deserves a fair hearing. The lists are specific. Churches that skip them drift into a vague niceness that never calls anything sin. All of that is true, and we are not throwing the lists away.
Counts what you did. Compares you with the person in the next row. Ranks the sins so yours land near the bottom. Ends in a verdict about who is in and who is out.
Names what is wrong so it can be treated. Points at the source, not only the symptom. Applies to the reader first. Ends with a way forward.
Here is where Sound of Heaven stands. Using these lists as a scoreboard is wrong. Ranking sins so yours sit near the bottom and other people's near the top is wrong. And reading a list at somebody to shame them into the back row, or out the door, is the exact opposite of what the lists were written to do.
Jesus told a story about this in Luke 18. A Pharisee stood in the temple and thanked God he was not like other people, and then he recited a short list: robbers, evildoers, adulterers. Then he pointed at the tax collector. That is a vice list used as a scoreboard, almost word for word. Jesus said the other man went home justified before God, the one standing at a distance who would not even look up and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
It is worth naming who this usually gets used on. Greed shows up in four of these six lists, and sermons aimed at the comfortable and the well off are rare. Slander, factions and selfish ambition, the sins that tend to run church boards, rarely get the spotlight. The lists get read at the teenager, the divorced mom, the guy who walked in still smelling like last night. That is sin ranking, and it is dishonest with the text.
And it cuts the other way too. The answer to scoreboard religion is not pretending sin is harmless. Everything on these lists hurts somebody. Slander ruins a reputation in an afternoon. Drunkenness breaks families. Grace that shrugs at that has stopped caring about people. Scripture does treat some wrongs as more damaging than others, and we walk through that in are all sins equal. But weight of harm is a different thing from a ladder for deciding who belongs. The lists stay. The scoreboard goes.
In Luke 18, what does the Pharisee do with his list of sins?
He thanks God he is not like robbers, evildoers and adulterers, then points at the tax collector. Jesus says the tax collector, who only asked for mercy, is the one who went home justified.
Some of you had one of these lists read at you, from a pulpit or across a kitchen table. If that is you, hear this plainly: that was a misuse of Scripture, and the shame you were handed was never the voice of God.
Jesus put the tax collector at the center of that story on purpose. If you want to talk it through with somebody who will not do that to you, reach out and let us pray with you.
If the lists are a diagnosis, what is the treatment? Paul's clearest answer comes right after the list in 1 Corinthians.
“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
1 Corinthians 6:11The list does its job when you recognize yourself in it, not your neighbor. That is conviction, and it is a kindness. The Spirit shows you what is hurting you so it can stop.
The tax collector did not deliver a speech. Six words. Honest beats polished.
Repentance is a change of mind that becomes a change of direction. We walk through it in what repentance is in the Bible.
Galatians answers fifteen acts of the flesh with nine qualities: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Fruit is grown, not performed. More in the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Notice the tense in 1 Corinthians 6:11. Washed, sanctified, justified, all in the past. Paul does not tell them to clean up so they can be washed. It has already happened, and the list describes who they used to be. That is the Kingdom as a present reality. People walk out of the patterns on these lists every week, right here on Long Island, not someday.
Every list in the Bible ends up pointing past itself. A list can name the problem. It cannot heal it. Jesus did what no list can do. He took the full weight of everything on these pages to the cross, and He came out of the grave with life to give away. We lay that out in Jesus died for our sins.
So read the lists honestly, and about yourself first. Then look at Him. The point was never to make you an expert in what is wrong with you. It was to get you to the One who makes it right.
For related reading, see what sin is, what the Bible says about judging others, idolatry, what the Bible says about lying, witchcraft in the Bible and what we believe. And if you are looking for a church that will not keep score on you, come visit us in Deer Park.
The Bible gives several lists of sins rather than one master list, and every one of them is a diagnosis written to lead people to healing in Jesus, never a scoreboard for ranking and shaming other people.
Tell us what you are carrying. Somebody from Sound of Heaven will pray with you and help you sort through it, with no scoreboard in sight.
No single complete list exists. Scripture gives several lists of sins instead, the clearest being Galatians 5:19 to 21, Romans 1:29 to 31, 1 Corinthians 6:9 to 10, Colossians 3:5 to 9, Mark 7:21 to 22 and Proverbs 6:16 to 19. They overlap on greed, slander and envy, but no two match, and Galatians ends with and the like, which shows Paul was giving examples. The lists diagnose the heart rather than forming a legal code.
Galatians 5:19 to 21 names fifteen acts of the flesh in the NIV: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness and orgies, followed by and the like. Eight of the fifteen are about how people treat one another. Paul answers the list at once with the fruit of the Spirit in verses 22 and 23.
Some sins do more damage than others, and Scripture recognizes that. But the Bible never gives a ranking system for deciding which sinners belong. Jesus traced murder back to anger and adultery back to lust in Matthew 5, which leaves nobody standing on a higher rung. Differences in harm are real. A ladder for comparing yourself with other people is not what the lists were written for.
Not as a list. The traditional seven, pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, come from later church tradition. The closest biblical list of seven is Proverbs 6:16 to 19, and it looks quite different: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a scheming heart, feet quick to rush into evil, a false witness and a person who stirs up conflict.
Yes, and the letters assume it. Paul wrote these lists to churches, to people who already believed and were still wrestling with envy, factions and anger. Colossians 3 tells believers to put these things to death and put on the new self, which only makes sense if the struggle is ongoing. Struggling does not put you outside of grace. It means the Spirit is still at work.