A great preacher, now deceased, to whom I used often to listen with profit and delight,

would sometimes shout dramatically, ”God never classifies sin.”

His words were intended as a protest against a careless attitude toward certain forms of sin, and in their context I agree with them. Nevertheless God does classify sin and so does the law of the land, and so does the conscience of every man.

As various serpents differ from each other in their power to kill, so various sins carry different kinds of venom, all bad, but not all equally bad, their power to injure depending upon the high or low concentration of iniquity they carry in them.

Within the precincts of religion are sometimes found certain sins which I want here to mention. These may be classified under three heads: Sins committed out of weakness, respectable sins
more or less allowed by everyone, and sins that have been woven into the religious fabric until they have become a necessary part of it.

No sin is to be excused. Every sin carries its own penalty. But the sin committed on impulse or the sin committed out of weakness over the protests of the heart surely does not carry the same deadly charge as those done with brazen deliberation. From such a sin there is complete deliverance by the power of Christ; and from such there is more likely to be, since it is a grief to those who commit it.

Sins of the second category are those that exist with the sanction of or at least the connivance of the church, such as pride, vanity, self-centeredness, levity, worldliness, gluttony, the telling of "white" lies, borderline dishonesty, lack of compassion for the unfortunate, complacency, absorption in the affairs of this life, love of pleasure, the holding of grudges, stinginess, gossiping and various dirty habits not expressly forbidden by name in the Scriptures.

These sins are so common that they have been accepted as normal by the average church and are either not mentioned at all or referred to in smiling half-humor by the clergy. While not as spectacular as a roaring weekend drunk or as dramatic as a violent explosion of temper, they are in the long run more deadly than either, for they are seldom recognized as sin and are practically never repented of. They remain year after year to grieve the Spirit and sap the life of the church, while everyone continues to speak the words of the true faith and go through the motions of perfunctory godliness, not knowing that there is anything wrong.

There is another kind of sin which for sheer turpitude must rate before those mentioned and very near to the sin that is unpardonable. It is the kind that has become incorporated into the structure of popular religion and is necessary to its success. From this kind of sin I have never known anyone to turn away after it got working for him. It appears to destroy its victims utterly.

So no one will be left guessing let me be specific. I refer to the methods used by various leaders to promote Christianity, by means of which they gain some kind of success but which are themselves basically evil. Here are a few examples:

Telling falsehoods about the size of crowds, the number responding to the invitation and the impression made upon the city. Using the tricks of psychology known to every showman, piously pretending that they are the very workings of the Holy Spirit. Humbly praying for things in the presence of persons known to be well off and suggestible, and then devoutly testifying to answered prayer. Building a big reputation for being men of faith when the whole procedure is based upon a shrewd knowledge of human nature. Retaining publicity men to keep their names before the public and allowing the impression to get abroad that it is all the result of Spontaneous public interest.

Still other deadly sins exist within the very circles that make pretense of the most advanced type of godliness; such, for instance, as professing great compassion for the sick, conducting giant meetings for the purpose of bringing healing to them, but slyly separating the hopeless cases from those less serious and more susceptible to psychological impressions, and all the while growing rich on the miseries and pains of humanity. Some of these prophets own large estates, drive huge cars and boast of fabulous wealth tied up in equipment, while the suffering multitudes whose blood they suck hobble or crawl or are carried to meetings.

Investigation of one such man carried on by some godly pastors revealed that he had been hiring healthy persons to come up for prayer and pretend to be healed. This was done, he explained when faced with the deed, to ”encourage weak faith." Thus lying and deception were deliberately made a part of the purported methods of the Holy Spirit.

Others base everything on the power of money and personality, yet testify that they are trusting ' wholly in the power of the Spirit. And many introduce into their religious work every gimmick known to the world, and so destroy the very  thing they profess to cherish.

It is sufficient evidence of the moral insensibility of such men that they violently resent even the mention of these things; and it is further proof of the success of their methods that the very public they have betrayed will rush to defend them.

By AW. Tozer