Ignorance Is No Excuse
The Lord spoke To Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people thus: When a person unwittingly incurs guilt in regard to any of the Lord’s commandments about things not to be done and does one of them– Leviticus 4:1-2 JPS
Unwittingly incurs guilt – “But I didn’t know!” We’d like to believe that this justification has some merit but we’re sorely mistaken. Ignorance is no excuse under the law. You’ve certainly heard that before. Just because you didn’t know that right-hand turns on a red light are illegal in Chicago doesn’t mean you won’t get a ticket (as I learned on my arrival to Seminary). The judge might make an exception because of your ignorance, but he isn’t required to. In fact, if he’s going to uphold the “law,” there will be no exceptions.
Such is the case in the Mosaic code. Guilt incurs whether or not the perpetrator is aware of it. When he finally realizes his mistake, then the sacrificial system kicks in and there is a legal path for amelioration of the prescribed punishment. That’s what the sacrifices are for—unintentional mistakes. Unfortunately, this leaves us with an enormous problem. Most of our mistakes are not unintentional.
It should be emphasized here, as the workings of the sacrificial system are introduced to the reader, that the laws of the Torah did not permit Israelites to expiate intentional or premeditated offenses by means of sacrifice. There was no vicarious, ritual remedy—substitution of one’s property or wealth—for such violations. Whether they were perpetrated against other individuals or against God Himself. In those cases, the law dealt directly with the offender, imposing real punishments and acting to prevent recurrences. The entire expiatory system ordained in the Torah must be understood in this light. Ritual expiation was restricted to situations where a reasonable doubt existed as to the willfulness of the offense. Even then, restitution was always required where loss or injury to another person had occurred. The mistaken notion that ritual worship could atone for criminality or intentional religious desecration was persistently attacked by the prophets of Israel, who considered it a major threat to the entire covenantal relationship between Israel and God.[1]
Imagine if Christians actually realized this were the case. The argument about “salvation by works” would be DOA. Luther’s entire premise about the distinction between law and grace would collapse. In Judaism, there is no sacrifice for intentional sin. The perpetrator must bear the consequences. Can intentional sins be forgiven? Yes, atonement is possible, but atonement occurs if and when restitution and reconciliation occur, and restitution always includes a penalty. In some cases, of course, restitution is no longer possible (e.g., murder). If the perpetrator is to find atonement, the required consequences are extreme (life for life). The gospel verse about the unforgivable sin follows this line of thought. Atonement requires death.
It is particularly sad that Luther and others never understood the intention of the sacrificial system. It’s sad because this tragic mistake fostered the Christian belief that forgiveness is the central tenet of relationship with God, and that any form of sacrifice is spiritual blindness. What happened is that Christianity ignored the crucial distinction between intentional and unintentional violations of the commandments, wrapped them all up under the pseudo-grace of forgiveness without penalty, and produced generations of believers who thought that all that was necessary was to plead the blood of Jesus. I shudder to think how many unsuspecting souls will discover that their lack of restitution leaves them indebted when they face judgment.
Topical Index: unintentional sin, restitution, sacrifice, forgiveness, atonement, Leviticus 4:1-2
[1] Baruch A. Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus, p. 3.
“Such is the case in the Mosaic code. Guilt incurs whether or not the perpetrator is aware of it. When he finally realizes his mistake, then the sacrificial system kicks in and there is a legal path for amelioration of the prescribed punishment. That’s what the sacrifices are for—unintentional mistakes. Unfortunately, this leaves us with an enormous problem. Most of our mistakes are not unintentional.”
Indeed!… this is the very problem of sin, because it is of a spiritual context, derived as that set against the will and purposes of God as it is revealed in the form of “the law,” or God’s revealed will as torah(instruction)— [similar in many aspects even as the intended purpose and form of those products we purchase are accompanied by instructions].
When man was exiled from God’s immediate and abiding presence, he was also separated from the immediate and abiding life-giving spirit of which man (in the Garden before he became constituted a “sinner” by his act of transgression/sin) could “freely take” and thereby freely live and abide in communion of God’s own life— which life is sustained by God’s own essence, which is spirit.
But man’s exile from that Garden paradise and God’s immediate and abiding presence meant that man would live out the remainder of his days in another context of existence, which form served as a constant and persistent pointing to the death sentence that loomed before him.
By God’s grace and prevenient character of love, God strives with the spiritual power and authority of sin held over mankind by the true form— that is, God’s own life-giving spirit— effecting that spiritual work by God’s own almighty power which is of himself— that is, spirit. While God’s torah is spiritual, it’s form is able to serve only as spiritual instruction, by which a person (under the forming of the Sinaitic Covenant) who responded in faith of the faithfulness of the Giver of that torah would be preserved in the communion of obedience for the ultimate and supreme work of God— man’s redemption and restoration to that supernal life that is God’s of himself… God’s Holy Spirit of Truth and Life.
This ultimate and supreme work was undertaken by God himself through the mission and work of his only begotten and beloved Son, his anointed Messiah. This work was effectively undertaken and made complete by no mere ordinary man… this was the only man in whom the fulness of the communion of the Godhead dwelt in bodily human form as spiritual being, thereby condemning and destroying the power of sin made manifest in the form of “the law”, “by having destroyed the certificate of indebtedness in ordinances that stood against us,”whereby, through the execution of this Christ’s work, our record of indebtedness was lifted up so as to remove it out of the way by nailing it to the cross of his execution.
To be clear, it IS NOT the LAW (Torah) that was nailed to the cross. Rather, it was the “certificate of indebtedness” AGAINST God’s Law/Torah, which is effected against and by each and every human person through the power of sin (“For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”)… This is the certificate that substantiates the death sentence by which each and every person is deposed—testifying by their lives to the power of sin. This is the ENMITY that the Apostle Paul speaks of, and this is the indebtedness by which the sentence of death is justly and righteously served to all who stand in defense of themselves and apart from God’s assumption of sin and death through Christ Jesus, “…killing the ENMITY in himself.” (Cf. Ephesians 2:14-16)