When people speak of something, or someone, being ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they are always basing this determination on a mere comparison. Although we all do it, we tend to compare differences between things based only on our own knowledge of the two most extreme situations… And, that has always been the accepted world-wide standard for comparison. For example; in the United States, there are laws governing certain acts to be illegal if someone is caught violating that law. However, if someone committed the same act in another country, their governmental laws might not view it as being illegal at all… So, does that make the act ‘good’ or ‘bad?’
To determine if the act is actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we must first determine what side of the fence we are going to look from.
But what about sinning?
If people wanted to assume that someone was a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person, then obviously, from our explanation above, they would only be comparing that person to either themselves or to other people that they may have known. The same is true with sin. We only have a comparison of sin based from those people from whom we have associated with throughout our lives. The people who committed acts that we did not approve of,… well, they became sinners according to our comparison standards.