Leviticus 20:11-15: a reflection

11“‘The man who lies with his father’s wife has uncovered his father’s nakedness. Both of them shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon themselves. 12“‘If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death. They have committed a perversion. Their blood shall be upon themselves. 13“‘If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon themselves. 14“‘If a man takes a wife and her mother, it is wickedness. They shall be burned with fire, both he and they, that there may be no wickedness among you. 15“‘If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; and you shall kill the animal.

This is one of the hard passages of the law, a list of grave sins, several of them sexual, each carrying the severest penalty. Passages like this are difficult to read, and it would be wrong to use them to single out or condemn any group of people. But there is something they are meant to impress on us: the seriousness with which God regards sin, and how deeply he cares about the holiness of what he has made, especially in the realm of sexuality and the family. These are not trivial matters to God.

Notice what the severity of these laws conveys. In an age that treats much of this as private and unimportant, the law's gravity insists that sin, and the corruption of what God made holy, is serious, weighty, a matter of life and death. God is not indifferent to how his people live; he cares intensely about holiness, and the law's severity is a measure of how seriously he takes the defiling of what he made good. Sin, all sin, is graver than we tend to think.

And yet, read in the light of the whole Bible, these hard laws drive us toward the gospel. For the sobering truth is that all of us, in one way or another, stand guilty before God's holiness; the penalty these laws attach to sin is, in a real sense, what all sin deserves. The gospel is that Jesus bore that penalty in our place. He took upon himself the death that sin, ours included, deserved, so that we could be forgiven and made clean. Let the law's severity teach you the seriousness of sin, and let it drive you to the mercy of the God who, in Christ, bore the penalty himself.

Lord, these hard laws impress on me how seriously you regard sin and how deeply you care about the holiness of what you have made. Keep me from treating sin, my own included, as light, and from using such passages to condemn others rather than examining myself. Thank you that the penalty all sin deserves was borne by Christ in my place, so that I could be forgiven and made clean. Let the seriousness of sin drive me not to despair, and not to judgment of others, but to the mercy of the God who bore the penalty himself.