Does Even the Slightest Sin Deserve Eternal Damnation?

Calvinists like to quote James 2:10 to teach that even the slightest sin requires eternal damnation. Here’s my response from my book, Rebuilding the Foundations:

The passage is in James 2 and talks about showing favoritism to one another, yet Calvinists have made it the gold standard for God’s final judgment. It reads:

But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. (James 2:8-11)

This passage warns us not to favor one person over another because we are all lawbreakers, having violated God’s law in one way or another. It does not say that God will judge us for breaking one small point of the law; it says we should not judge one another because we are all lawbreakers.
James 2:8-11 teaches that any violation of the law makes you a lawbreaker. It does not say all lawbreakers deserve eternal damnation. In fact, it says nothing at all about eternal damnation, nor who deserves it.

There are passages that talk about what violators of the law deserve. A very good one is the story of the adulterous woman (John 8:3-11). Jesus was teaching a small crowd near the temple. The scribes and Pharisees broke into their gathering and threw a woman at his feet. They announced, “Teacher, we found this woman in adultery, in the very act.”

I am sure the sarcasm dripped from their tongues as they unknowingly confronted their Creator and future Judge. “Now in our law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do you say about her?”

Oddly, Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger. I have heard several guesses as to what he was writing, my favorite being the name of the Pharisees’ mistresses. My guess is that the hypocritical condemnation of this woman, the ignoring of the man that was with her, and the sneering tone of the arrogant Pharisees infuriated the Son of God, who was a man tempted in every way we are (Heb. 4:15). Writing on the ground, whatever he wrote, may have given him time to refrain from ‘un-creating’ them with a thought, dissolving their miserable hides into sub-atomic particles.

Whatever the reason, he wrote long enough to simply state, in so many words, “All of you who have not broken the law, you have the right to throw a stone at her.”

James 2:10 is right. We are all lawbreakers. Even the Pharisees, when Jesus called them on it, could not deny it.

We also find out, through Jesus, just what God thinks we lawbreakers deserve: a second chance. Or maybe it was a third chance … or a fourth … or a forty-fourth … or maybe the four-hundred-and-ninetieth (70 times 7; Matt. 18:22).

Jesus told her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you? … Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.” (Jn. 8:10-11).

Here we have an actual case of how Jesus, and thus God, looks at adultery. Like all other sins, he forgives, and he asks the sinner to stop sinning. The people who aroused God’s wrath were the proud and hypocritical (Matt. 23).

Jesus gave us multiple examples of the way he, and thus his Father, judges. In his judgment, sinners need his physician-like skills to repent and become righteous (Luke 5:31-32).

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I am working on the cover of a new book called I Desire Mercy and Not Sacrifice. Whether or not Calvinists read my book, they should listen to that quote from both Hosea and Jesus, and  then they might not be so quick to condemn the innocent, nor the guilty.

I think the Kindle version of I Desire Mercy and Not Sacrifice is live.