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“God loves Satan just as much as He does you and me and everyone.” 

That was what a prominent deacon in a church I attended long ago said during a Wednesday night Bible study. We were studying the enemy of God’s people, called Satan or the devil or the serpent. I was a new seminary student at the time, and although I was not then and am not now a world class Bible scholar, I knew enough to prevent me from staying silent. I spoke up, hopefully with respect and kindness.

“I don’t agree with that statement. God did not send Jesus to die for Satan, nor does God provide any opportunity for the devil to repent and be saved.” 

The room got awkward, but to his great credit, the deacon listened without getting upset, and said, “That’s a good point. I never thought about that.” The pastor leading the study quickly moved on, but I filed that experience away, taking note of just how prominent and pervasive the idea of “moral equivalency” was, even in conservative country churches like this one. 

The idea this deacon had believed was that if God is love, perfect love, then He must love all creatures exactly the same. Surely, in a perfect love, there could be no distinctions or variations or discriminations. The ground of perfect love is perfectly level and it is ladled out with the exact same intensity and purpose upon everyone and everything. 

You have to admit, it sounds really good. 

But there’s only one problem in this seemingly logical definition of God’s perfect love . . . the Bible.

“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut 7:6). 

“For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in My eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life” (Isa 43:3-4). 

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2). 

“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Mal 1:2-3). 

“In love He predestined us for adoptions as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:5).

So much for the moral equivalency view of God’s love. 

This notion of moral equivalency has also infected our political thinking in evangelical circles. I mentioned this in the previous blog post  https://www.corydonbaptist.org/blog/ready-set-vote. I have heard pastors making pitiful arguments to justify voting for the Harris-Walz ticket, or the Democrat Party in general. These arguments all rest on a faulty view of moral equivalency. The arguments sound something like this:

The Bible doesn’t just care about abortion, it also cares about the poor. God cares just as much about good economic policy as He does the unborn. The Bible might say homosexuality is a sin, but it also says we must not oppress peoples. So, I vote Democrat because I do not want to see the LGBTQ community oppressed. The Bible says we must care for the sojourners in our land, so I think it’s just as important to keep our borders wide open so as to not mistreat or oppress the immigrants. Migrants should have the very same opportunities available to them as US citizens. 

Well, suffice it to say you will get no argument from me about whether or not God cares about the poor and oppressed. He does. And God commands His people to treat others with respect and dignity, including migrants or immigrants. But God is a Lawgiver, too. And His Law reveals His own character, as well as our sinful depravity. So, here we might need to make a distinction between law-abiding immigrants and law-breaking migrants or immigrants, in order to rightly order our immigration and border policies as a Nation, you see. Not all immigration is morally equivalent! 

And regarding the poor, surely certain economic policies are better than others, as a whole, for a Nation and society. And I think history demonstrates that socialism and economic Marxism fails to actually rightly provide for the poor. History demonstrably argues that economic socialism and statism, favored by the vast majority of Democrats today, bankrupts a Nation and impoverishes nearly everyone. 

And yet, my point is not to argue the nuances of economics. The ins and outs of the multi-trillion-dollar global economy of the US is far more complex than most of us normal Christians and pastors can fathom. But to say that a certain economic system is more important to God Almighty than whether or not a Nation legalizes or endorses or promotes infanticide / abortion, no-fault divorce, so-called “gay marriage,” sodomy, pornography, sex-trafficking, and irreversible surgical and medical mutilation of young men and women’s genitalia, is simply insane! 

God told Israel and Judah through the Prophet Jeremiah that child sacrifice had never even entered His holy mind (Jer 7:31; 19:4-5; 32:35). There is no moral equivalency there! 

One of the great values of God’s Law is in this matter of differentiation of sins. Not all sins are equally heinous in God’s sight. While all sin, if left unchecked by saving grace in Christ, leads to hell, even there, Jesus taught Divine fairness in punishment (Luke 12:47-48). While all sin is against God, not all sin in Old Covenant Israel was considered a public crime against society, and not all sin or crimes were to be punished equally. Here’s a great bulleted list from Kevin DeYoung (https://www.crossway.org/articles/is-every-sin-the-same-in-gods-eyes/?utm_source=Crossway+Marketing&utm_campaign=a449ca91c5-20241021+Gen-IsEverySintheSameinGodsEyes?&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a449ca91c5-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]) that summarizes well:

• The Mosaic law prescribed different penalties for different infractions and required different sacrifices and payments to make restitution. 
• The Mosaic law also distinguished between unintentional sins and highhanded sins (Num. 15:29–30). 
• Sins of rank idolatry and willful rebellion were more serious indictments on the kings of Israel and Judah than was the sin of failing to remove the easy-to-overlook “high places” in the land. 
• God’s anger was often specifically directed against the leaders of the people. The sins of the king or the priests or the elders meant greater judgment than the sins of the laity. 
• Jesus warned that cities in which he performed his miracles would be more severely judged than Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 10:15). 
• Jesus considered Judas’s betrayal to be a sin worse than others (Matt. 26:24). 
• God’s anger is especially roused by sins against children, the weak, or the helpless (Jer. 32:35; Matt. 18:6; Luke 20:47). 
• Excommunication seems to have been reserved for only the most flagrant sins (1 Cor. 5:1–13). 
• Cornelius, though not yet saved, was considered a devout man who feared God (Acts 10:2). Even among non-Christians there is a difference between being a decent person and being a dirty, rotten scoundrel. 
• There is a sin that leads to death, but not all sins are unto death (1 John 5:16).

Well said, Pastor DeYoung. The only thing I might add at this point is to urge my few readers to consider carefully how seriously the New Testament takes sexual sin. Study the various passages and the severity with which it is condemned, then hold up to the biblical light the unabashed endorsement and support from so many political candidates of homosexuality, lesbianism, adultery, pornography, prostitution, hyper-sexualization of children at ridiculously early ages, polyamory, and the list goes on. And if you do not see the undeniable link between sex or sexual sin and abortion, then you are indeed blind. 

As one anonymous person posted on a recent X post I came across regarding abortion, “You cannot vote for a pro-abortion candidate then go to church Sunday and sing about how much you love Jesus.” 

So, let’s not justify pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ votes with faulty “moral equivalency” arguments. Truthfully, I respect a Christian who out of conscience simply does not vote at all (though my previous post made it clear I presently disagree with that choice) far more than I do a Christian, or someone claiming to be a Christian, who votes for a candidate who supports abortion and sexual perversion. Such a thing is simply unconscionable to me.

by Keith McWhorter