Emperor sins were once a mystery to me.  I was introduced to the term several years ago and I was puzzled and intrigued by the concept. I have never written on the subject and I have never seen another writer address the concept.  The subject is like a battery, it has a positive post and a negative post to it. Hopefully, this will energize us, but we must have both posts to be able to get what we need out of this subject. I was briefly introduced to this subject a couple of years ago while reading a book. I have been a believer for several decades, and I have read about every author imaginable, but this particular author introduced a term that I had never heard before; that term was “emperor sins.” The author described this term as “sins that control other sins”.

The author did not have a list of emperor sins in the book I was reading so I was bound to come up with a list on what the Scripture teaches. I did find that the term and the concept, is accurate.  There are certain sins that control, incite and produce other sins. Sometimes you have the chief and you have the Indians. There are certain chief sins that have other little Indian sins servicing them and strengthening them. I originally wanted to do a countdown from ten to one, but I couldn’t get settled on which ones would be the lesser and the greater. So, I began to dig. The more I dug, the more fruitful the study became. When we address sin, we do so because we want to help people break free from the bondage of it. God’s commandments are not grievous (I John 5:3), because whether we are being positive or whether we are being negative, it is all helpful.

The discipline of studying the nature and doctrine of sin is known as hamartiology.  It is a branch of systematic theology and is a surprisingly resourceful study.

The Myth

We should strike down the old, false teaching that many of our forefathers used to tell us, that is no such thing as big sin and little sin; sin is just sin. That is a spiritual, I might add, a dangerous misconception. It is not a statement that is supported in Scripture. I have been careful over the years to add my contribution in trying to reverse that concept.

There is, in the Bible, what is called greater sins (John 19:11). At the end of our Lord’s life, while being arrested, he was in a dialogue with Pilate, the Roman procurator, where the question arose “what is truth?” and as he conversed there was a tension in the heart of that leader. He was anxious about having Jesus crucified.  Even his wife told him not to participate. Jesus made a remark during that discussion saying he who has delivered me into your hands has committed the greater sin. Insinuating that the sin of Judas Iscariot was greater than the sin of Pilate. Why? Because Pilate had never heard a sermon from Jesus, and Pilate never had a front row seat to the miracle ministry of Jesus, while Judas had seen it all and heard it all. The sin of Judas is a sin against light because he is sinning against what he knows is true. Jesus assessed the sin and said Judas is the greater transgressor. So regardless of what former information we have heard or received about big sin and little sin, Jesus says there are differences in the varieties of sin.

I went back to the Old Testament, and I discovered in my studies that these varying sins are called by different names in the Old Testament. It does not carry over into the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, when we read Psalm 51, we find David confessing sin, iniquity, and transgression:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalms 51:1-2)

David confessed the same three degrees of evil in Psalm 32:5 where he said, “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”  He also usedtwo of the three terms in Psalm 38:3-4, “There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.”  In all three cases David is referencing the episode of his deeds with Bathsheba and the cover-up and murder that followed.

In the Old Testament sin could be classified as an accident, iniquity in the Old Testament could be classified as an attitude, and transgression in the Old Testament is an act. In David’s confession of his terrible deeds with Bathsheba, it was a sin that he saw her, but he did not premeditate that. It was a sin that she was bathing, it was a sin that something crossed into his path that he was not anticipating. He confessed that as sin. In the same passage, he later says that he has iniquity. It was a sin to see something that he did not plan to see; it was an iniquity to ponder how he could have it. It turned from an accident to an attitude and then it was a transgression when he sent for her. David sent a servant to fetch Bathsheba.  The servant even asked if he meant the wife of Uriah to which David responds that he was indeed referring to the wife of a deployed soldier. Now, he is premediating the scarlet transgression of adultery. He is romantic with her and conceives a child with her. His transgressions have multiplied, and now he must cover them up. There is even debate about whether the sexual relationship between them was consensual or in fact a case of rape.

There certainly is such thing as big sin, and there is such thing as little sin. Big sin is transgression that sins against light. David knew better. You and I often knew better but what we wanted overpowered the scriptural and spiritual input in our lives while taking what we knew was forbidden. This is why Nathan was so harsh on David. Nathan spoke to David him about a shepherd, who had a multitude of sheep and deliberately took from the shepherd who had only a small amount of sheep. Nathan asked him what should happen, to which David responded that the greedy shepherd should pay the penalty. Nathan tells David that he is the greedy man that has transgressed. David wilts under the weight of that sin, iniquity and transgression.

Sin should have that effect in our lives, whether we generalize it and just call it sin. We should, however, be specific when we confess it. If it is sin we should confess it as sin, if it is iniquity we should confess it as iniquity, and if it is a transgression we should confess it as a transgression. Sin is something that happened that I was not expecting, iniquity is something that I let germinate, and transgression is taking something that I knew was wrong. Be careful to not lionize yourself, do not think higher of yourself than you should. We should confess the ugliness of our evil nature before God and not pretend that He is ignorant of it.

There are certain sins that have a reproductive property about them. They are seldom  committed alone. They often have other little sins who are the supporting cast of the big sin. This supporting cast could be classified as the lesser of the sins, but the transgression may be that emperor sin that is in control of these other sins in our lives. You will probably be tempted to create your own list, and you have every right to do that. It is up to you to discover some of those on your own, in fact they may be different in your life than in mine. The Bible does not call them emperor sins, but it gives us the opportunity to discover them and discover how they breed.

Dr. Brad Bailey is a husband, father, grandfather, pastor, college president, author, business owner and radio personality in Brandon, Florida