the naughty list

Matt Dabbs pulls together the naughty list from Revelation 21:8, 1 Cor 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-21, Col 3:5-6, and 1 Samuel 15:23.

• cowardice
• unbelief
• being vile
• murder
• sexual immorality
• practicing magic arts
• idolatry
• lying
• being wicked
• adultery
• being a male (or female) prostitute
• homosexual offenders
• stealing
• greed
• getting drunk
• slandering
• swindling
• impurity
• debauchery
• witchcraft
• hatred
• discord
• jealousy
• fits of rage
• selfish ambition
• dissensions
• factions
• envy
• orgies
• impurity
• lust
• evil desires
• arrogance
• rebellion

I loves Dabbs' spirit in this. He's saying let's be careful not to pick out some as more horrible than others; any of these can destroy our lives and certainly our witness. But he is not proposing to become a slave to law either. Our good works are not the gospel. Our goods works can only adorn and make the gospel more attractive (Titus 2.10). That is, he is championing living right because we have been made righteous not because we are working to attain it while still confronting the error of singling out and making issue of the ugly sins.

The deal for me is that we do not need to wait until we are perfect in everything on this list before we can say that living any of these is sin. And more so, if we are to live rightly in these areas, we must start with they fact that they are sin rather than excusing them or allowing the complexity of life to confuse the facts.