When a person commits a trespass, being unwittingly remiss about any of YHWH’s sacred things, he shall bring as his penalty to YHWH a ram without blemish from the flock,  . . . Leviticus 5:15

Penalty – A few days ago Matt and I looked carefully at the list of the 613 Torah commandments.  You can find them here.  We spent about an hour and a half going through each one in order to determine if it applied, how it applied and what we were doing about it.  Of course, we immediately discovered that the vast majority of these 613 are things that we either already do or would have no problem doing.  We don’t lie, cheat, steal.  We do love God.  We honor His name.  We know that He is the only God.  We want to take care of others.  We wish to worship correctly.  When we were all done, we looked over the list of the ones we thought might present some debate.  None of them included sacrifices before the priest at the temple (because there isn’t any temple so we couldn’t do them even if we wanted to).  None of them included any commandment that presupposed inheritance of the land of Israel since we (as Gentiles) aren’t part of that group.  Of course, we also aren’t Levites, so those didn’t count either.  When we were done with the list, we had about 12 commandments that might be controversial.  Almost all of them were about what we eat, which days we celebrate and what we wear.  That was it.  Nothing theologically earth-shattering.  Just diet, dress and holidays.

Then we realized that for us Torah observance simply meant deciding to eat what God tells us to eat, dressing as God asks us to dress and celebrating His festivals.  Everything else we already were doing or could quite easily do.  Suddenly the very big issue about law and grace seemed quite inconsequential.  It all boiled down to this:  am I going to live the way God asks me to live even in these simple things, or am I going to offer any number of excuses for living some other way.  There was absolutely nothing on the list that was impossibly difficult to do; nothing that would require a revolution in my life.  Everything left on the list of the 12 things were simple, tiny, insignificant changes.  If I did them, I would have the joy of knowing that I did them simply because I wanted to be closer to what He said.

This reminded us of Moshe Kampinski’s comment when we heard him speak in his store in Jerusalem.  He said, “You silly Christians.  You think that keeping Torah is about keeping rules.  We think that keeping Torah is about 613 opportunities to love God.”  It all depends on perspective, doesn’t it?  And that perspective is usually the direct result of an attitude of the heart.  Look at this verse from Leviticus.  It requires the one who has unintentionally offended God in some element of worship to bring a sacrifice as a penalty.  Of course, we could react to this and say, “Penalty?  Why do I have to bring a penalty?  Doesn’t God love me?  Why do I need to follow some rule about removing guilt about something I didn’t even know I was doing?”  That is the same attitude that says, “Shrimp?  Why can’t I eat shrimp?  What’s wrong with shrimp?  We have food processing today.  Eating shrimp is my right.”  What’s wrong with all this?  It’s the attitude – seeing God’s instructions as impediments to my freedom instead of seeing God’s instructions as opportunities to enter into His presence.

So, what will it be?  Are they 613 ways to love God or are they infringements on my right to do what I want?  How you answer that question will probably determine the direction of the rest of your life.

Topical Index: 613, Torah, penalty, attitude, Leviticus 5:15