(upbeat music) - Well, it's a question we get a lot on the podcast. Can we distinguish between making mistakes and sinning? I don't know if we've covered it, not in this way, but the question comes to us in an email from an anonymous female listener who writes in to say this.

Hello, Pastor John, what is the difference, if any, between my foolishness and my sin? - Well, as it turns out, this is a very illuminating question, was for me. It helped me see something more clearly than I had seen it before. Let me make the question more precise, though.

Instead of what's the difference, if any, between foolishness and sin, let's ask what's the difference, if any, between foolishness and sin according to the Bible? - Right, yes. - Otherwise, I don't know whose definition she's asking about. This is always the problem when you start arguing over foolishness or sin and you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

Whose meaning do you want me to use? Yours, Joe Blow's, or the Bible? So I'm gonna go with the Bible here 'cause I assume that's really what she's asking. So let me read a sampling of biblical texts about the fool or folly and then draw out some inferences about its relationship to sin.

Mark 7, 21. "From within, out of the heart of man, "come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, "theft, murder, adultery, coveting, "wickedness, deceit, sensuality, "envy, slander, pride, foolishness." And then he continues like this. "All these evil things come from within "and they defile a person." So Jesus lists foolishness with other sins like sensuality, deceit, wickedness, slander, et cetera, and calls them evil things.

That's a pretty strong statement to me about the relationship between foolishness and sin. Here's another one, Psalm 107, verse 17. "Some were fools through their sinful ways "and because of their iniquities suffered affliction." So sin and foolishness are linked with sin being what leads to folly. Here's another one, 1 Chronicles 21, 8.

"And David said to God, "I have sinned greatly in the thing I have done." He's talking about the census that he took. "But now please take away the iniquity of your servant "for I have acted very foolishly." So sinning and acting foolishly are the same act in 1 Chronicles 21, 8.

Same thing with Aaron and Moses' sister in Numbers 12, 11. "And Aaron said to Moses, "Oh my Lord, do not punish us "because we have done foolishly and have sinned." And Jesus says that everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man.

So in other words, disobedience is folly. It's like a foolish man who built his house on sand. So not doing Jesus' commands is what makes a man foolish. And then he tells a parable about 10 virgins. Five of them were foolish, five were wise. And the foolish were excluded from the kingdom.

This was not an innocent mistake. And then you go to the book of Proverbs. "How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? "How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing "and fools hate knowledge?" That's what fools do, they hate knowledge. Or Proverbs 14, 8, "The wisdom of the prudent "is to discern his way, "but the folly of fools is deceiving." Or Psalm 14, 1, "The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." Or Psalm 74, 22, "Arise, O God, defend your cause.

"Remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day." Okay, so that's enough for me to get some inferences here. So here's my inference from all that biblical picture. Foolishness in the Bible is always sinful. To act foolishly is to sin. And I think we can say the other way around.

To sin is to act foolishly. So to act foolishly is sin, and to sin is to act foolishly. Sin is an attitude or a thought or an action that dishonors God, or is the fruit of a heart that does not treasure God above all things. So sin dishonors God like that, and folly dishonors God like that.

But, now here's the catch, gotta think carefully now, this does not mean sin and folly or foolishness are identical, or that calling someone a sinner and calling him a fool are saying the same thing about the person. The opposite of sin is holiness or goodness or righteousness. But the opposite of foolishness is wisdom.

This shows, I think, that something different is being said when we call something sin and when we call it foolishness. Calling it sin puts the emphasis on God belittling badness. Calling it foolishness puts the emphasis on God belittling stupidity. In the Bible, the word foolishness exists mainly to bring to light how stupid sin is.

The full-blown sinner is not just evil, he's an idiot. He's irrational. Or to put it positively, foolishness and wisdom, those words are in the Bible in application to people, not thinking about calling God wise here, in application to people. Foolishness and wisdom are words in the Bible as an application to people to show that goodness and holiness and righteousness are smart, rational, shrewd, wise.

Or you might say calling something sin means it displeases God, and calling it foolish means it's gonna displease you in the end. Sin shoots God, folly shoots yourself. Sin opposes God, folly opposes yourself. And since opposing God is suicide, all sin is foolish. - Wow, that's a pointed way to put it.

Thank you, Pastor John. Well, we have run right up against the weekend, and that means it's time for me to tell you that you can subscribe to our podcast and you can find our audio feeds and you can search our episode archive and you can reach us by email with a difficult question that you're facing.

You can do all these things through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. And Pastor John, you are known for writing biographies. You have about 27 of them to date, and those biographies are very popular downloads at desiringgod.org. And of course, they're published now in what, seven volumes in a series called The Swans Are Not Silent, which is a series of books published by Crossway.

And on Monday, we have a question about how you wrote those biographies. What was your process? What was your intended purpose? How did you deliver them? Questions like that. And we will pick up that conversation on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Have a wonderful weekend.

We'll see you on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)