God does not consider
ignorance an excuse for sin and will not overlook a sin because you or I were
ignorant of the sin when we committed it.
The verse that teaches this is found in Lev. 5:17, “If a person sins,
and commits any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the
commandments of the Lord, though he does not know it, yet he is guilty and
shall bear his iniquity.” (NKJV) (See
also Lev. 4:1-2, 13, 22, 27 and Lev. 5:2 and 5:15 bearing in mind as you read
that to sin unintentionally in these verses is to sin in ignorance.)
God’s nature is such
that he cannot bear nor tolerate sin. The
Psalmist said, in prophecy of Jesus, “You love righteousness and hate
wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness
more than your companions.” (Psalm 45:7 NKJV)
Jesus hates wickedness and wickedness is just another name for sin. God’s people are also to hate evil. “You who love the Lord, hate evil!” (Psalm
97:10 NKJV) That is what it will take
within us to develop a Christ-like character.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” (Prov. 8:13 NKJV) “Hate evil, love good.” (Amos 5:5 NKJV)
Since, as the Psalmist
says in Psalms 119:172, “all your commandments are righteousness” (NKJV)
deviation from them, whether it be intentional or not, is unrighteousness, thus
evil, thus the thing God cannot tolerate and hates. In Isaiah 61:8 the Lord says, “For I, the
Lord, love justice.” (NKJV) Thus when
Jesus returns to judge the world he will be judging it in righteousness. (Acts
17:31)
It is obvious that if
God had not loved us and intervened on our behalf his righteousness would have
demanded our condemnation for our sins, “for all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23 NKJV) Fortunately,
God does love us and did intervene for us by sending Jesus into the world to be
a propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10) which simply means Jesus paid the
penalty for our sins so that we will not have to. This allowed God to be just in punishing sin,
for in Jesus and the cross he did punish it, and yet give unto us a way to be
saved through faith in Jesus. This is
the gospel story.
We need to make
applications of these truths regarding sin and ignorance. What do we learn?
(1) The person who has
never heard the gospel is lost. We all
have a tendency to say to ourselves, based on emotion, not the truth of God’s
word, that if a person lives in a remote land far away where the gospel has not
been taught and/or it is not readily available to him he will be saved without
the gospel. The Bible teaches just the
opposite.
Why go preach the gospel
anywhere if a person is saved without it?
Why bother a man if he can be saved, and already is, without the gospel? If a man is saved without the gospel it is
better to leave him that way than to teach him the gospel. Why?
Because if you teach him the gospel and he rejects it he will be lost.
Why did God command the
gospel be preached in all the world to every creature (Mark 16:15 NKJV) if it
is not needed? If a man can be saved in
his sins then the conclusion must be that sin is no big deal and Jesus died for
nothing. Do we believe that?
(2) Another lesson learned is that there is an
enormous burden upon Christians to preach the gospel throughout every corner of
the world no matter how remote. If a
person is lost without the gospel and we were commanded to take the gospel to
them (the Great Commission) but did not nor did we make any efforts to do so
then what becomes not only of those who did not hear but to those of us who
made no effort that they might hear?
(3) Another lesson we learn from this is that if
ignorance is not an excuse that God will accept then it is our duty to study
and work as hard as we can to learn all we can about God’s word. We accept the fact we will be saved by God’s
grace and not by perfection in commandment keeping and rejoice in that but, that
having been said, what about the individual that takes a lackadaisical attitude
toward learning God’s will and obeying his commands? Does God’s grace cover man’s indifference?
Does a man want to try
and go to heaven as one who never cared enough about God and his will to try
and learn his commands so he could obey them?
I fear such a man may well meet up with 2 Tim. 2:15 on the Day of
Judgment, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does
not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15
NKJV) The indifferent man has not been
much of a worker in God’s word.
God’s grace covers only
a certain class of Christians and that class does not include the lukewarm and
indifferent. Jesus described the church
at Laodicea as wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked (Rev. 3:17) and
says, “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew
you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:16 NKJV) God’s
grace is not for the lukewarm, indifferent, and disobedient unless and until
they repent.
In closing I reiterate
ignorance does not excuse sin with God. We
have an obligation to live a life of knowledge which means for all of us it is
time to get the Bible out and read and study it. The old King James Version says, “Study to
show thyself approved to God.” (2 Tim. 2:15)
Let us not sin because of willful ignorance of God’s word--willful in
that we prove ourselves to be too indifferent and lazy to study and try to
learn from it.
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