Deuteronomy 21-23
So you shall purge the evil from your midst…
Deuteronomy 21:21b
This is an oft-repeated refrain in Deuteronomy. (See Dt. 13:5; 17:7,12; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21,24; 24:7; as well as 1 Corinthians 5:13.) Maybe we should pay attention.
It would be easy for us to get side-tracked here (again!) by our own discomfort over these statements. We think that God should be “nicer” to the guilty parties. Or we perceive some disconnect between the LORD here and the God that Jesus calls “Abba”. But let me again just say that God does not change, and if we feel like He is somehow in the wrong, the problem lies somewhere on our side, not His.
My guess is that for most of us the real problem is that we do not take sin seriously — at least, not nearly as seriously as God does. Nor do we understand what constitutes life. Life is not mere existence. Life is relationship with God. So when we say that sin should be ignored or treated lightly, what we’re really saying is that we think sin is no big deal — and that our life with God is no big deal, either. So let’s be clear: Sin breaks our relationship with God; it destroys our life; so God hates sin.
So you shall purge the evil from your midst…
The lesson for us here is not that we should go on witch hunts, killing anyone guilty of anything. (We would all be dead!) The lesson is that we should be ruthless in our treatment of our own sin. We are not to tolerate sin within ourselves. We are to kill it. But we tend to treat the Cross of Christ as a mere “get out of jail free card”. We see the Crucifixion as merely taking our penalty — which then just enables us to keep on sinning, penalty free. That is not the Gospel. That is ludicrous! As Saint Paul explains in Romans 6, we have been crucified with Christ, and so Paul rhetorically asks, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (See also Romans 8:13 and Colossians 3:5.)
Let’s start treating sin — our own sin — that thing we cozy right up to — as the disgusting, horrendous abomination that it is and let God nail it to the Cross.
So you shall purge the evil from your midst…
Amen, John!
Thank you, John, for pointing out once again the seriousness of sin. As we read the laws in these chapters, it behooves us well to take stock of ourselves and our own thoughts, words, and deeds.
Meanwhile, “… for anyone who is hung [on a tree] is cursed in the sight of God…” (Deuteronomy 21:23 NLT). As I read this verse, I was overcome by the thought of what Jesus suffered for us. His physical suffering compounded by the fact that God cursed him in his death is also not to be taken lightly. How grateful I am for my Lord’s sacrifice for me!