With a High Hand

Passage: Numbers 15:22-31

Shortly before my wife and I moved to Toronto, we visited the city for a job interview.  The studio she was applying to overlooked Yonge Street, the artery that divides the city cleanly in half north to south.  It’s a busy street.  We were gratified to find a parking spot directly across from the studio.  But, shortly thereafter, we were shocked to look out and see a police officer beside our car signaling a tow truck.  I ran across the street and asked what was going on.  It turns out that from 3 to 6 p.m., street parking was prohibited to accommodate rush hour traffic.  Everyone from Toronto knows that.  I pleaded with the officer on the basis of my bumpkinish ignorance of the law.

As God gives the Israelites his law, he recognizes that there will be moments of collective ignorance.  God’s law is a new thing; and they are so accustomed to living lawlessly that their instincts can’t help but lead them astray.  So God makes provision.  Provision for “unintentional sins.”  God says,

“…if it was done unintentionally without the knowledge of the congregation, all the congregation shall offer one bull from the herd for a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord, with its grain offering and its drink offering, according to the rule, and one male goat for a sin offering.

“And all the congregation of the people of Israel shall be forgiven, and the stranger who sojourns among them, because the whole population was involved in the mistake.”

God doesn’t ignore the sin that’s committed in ignorance.  But God’s concern is not punishment.  It’s education.  The laws are all there for the good – the good of the individual, and the good of the community.  The sacrifice is instituted as a visual reminder that sin is costly.  But in giving them this reminder, God insulates his people from the true cost of living outside his created order. 

That being said, God imposes strict penalties for anyone who violates the law flagrantly.  God goes on to say,

“But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people.  Because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him.”

The penalty for living as though you’re better than the rules of the community is banishment from the community.  God’s gift to creation and to community is order.  To eschew the rules is to invite chaos – chaos into the community, creation, and your own life.  God doesn’t forbid people from introducing chaos into their own lives and bodies.  But God is intent on preventing the chaos from ruining life for everyone else.  In this case, willful, “high-handed” violation of God’s law is its own punishment.  In fact, this is true for us, too.  God’s response to those who consistently choose lawlessness over his law is to give them over to lawlessness.  In a sense, to give them what they want.  As CS Lewis says in The Problem of Pain,

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them! They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

Don’t ask to be left alone.  Welcome God’s oversight and the order that goes with it.  It’s the only way to live – now and forever.