The Seriousness of Sin – The Law of God: Questions and Answers

The Seriousness of Sin
The Law of God: Questions and Answers

“Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Leviticus 19:2

Sin is affront to our holy God, especially sin committed by those He has redeemed, saved, and taken unto Himself as a peculiar people, to whom He has shown what the Lord requires of them in order to live together before Him in love (Eph. 1:4).

God’s people are called to be holy because God, their Father, is holy. All sin against the holy God must be removed if fellowship with and benefits from Him are to be realized. The system of sacrifices and offerings, instituted as part of the worship Israel owed to God, can seem like a bloody, awful mess at times.

It was supposed to.

“See this?” God says to His people. “See these suffering, slaughtered, wholly consumed lambs? This is what you deserve who are so ungrateful to and flippant toward Me, Who saved you, that you deliberately flout my holy and righteous and good Law.”

Besides the sacrifices required to restore fellowship with God—the lives of innocent substitutes, rather than the lives of sinners themselves—God regarded certain sins as more offensive to His holiness and more destructive of a just and loving social order than others, and thus He required greater punishments—harsh punishments—to check the sin-prone hearts of His people.

Got a question about the Law of God? Write to T. M. at tmmoore@ailbe.org, and your answer might appear in this series of In the Gates columns.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and study the question for yourself.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.