All sins are great, but some are greater than others. Deliberate sins are worse than secret ones. Premeditated murder is punished more severely than manslaughter committed because one is overcome with passion. Some sins are done in defiance against the Most High. Those are the iniquities that will be visited “with many stripes” (Lk. 12:47). David calls them “presumptuous sins.” There was no provision in the Law of Moses to make an atonement for such sins (Num. 15:30).
What are “presumptuous sins”? They are those “committed in arrogant disregard of divine commands” (ESV). They are those that have all the “guilt of open rebellion” (John Wesley). They are those that “the doer, when he does them, knows to be wrong” (MacLaren). They are those “committed willfully against manifest light and knowledge” (Spurgeon). A presumptuous sin is tantamount to one's spitting in the face of his Maker.
We must learn the secret of dealing with secret sins before they erupt into presumptuous sins. We are all capable of the most despicable, heinous sins imaginable (2 Kgs. 8:12, 13 “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?”). We need both pardon and power from God to keep His Word and to be kept from sin.
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Bob Vradenburgh is the senior pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has spent 40 years in full-time Christian service: the first 20 years as a missionary and the past 20 years in the pastorate. Bob’s passion is the expository preaching of God’s Word,...
