“Anyone who steals music certainly make restitution but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their debt.” (Exodus 21:3 NIV)
We read Exodus 21-22 as some of the finer working details of God’s Big Ten: especially as they deal with personal property. It’s a little jarring to the grace-covered New Testament reader: stolen livestock leads to slavery. Parent cursers are put to death. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, hand for a hand and foot for foot. We wince at these thoughts. How quickly we forget, resting in the warm light cast by the cross, that God is just. Sin requires consequence. It’s call propitiation and thankfully for us, it’s been utterly satisfied in Jesus.
“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2 ESV)
Our God has not changed. He still demands restitution. It’s just that His Son, Jesus, stepped up and paid it on our behalf. The concern is that advance atonement makes us sloppy when it comes to sin. We tend to devalue things we haven’t paid for. Don’t believe me? Give a kid an expensive iPhone or count the non-emergency medicare card carriers clogging up the ER on any given day. Because we’e stopped paying the price for our sin, we’ve trended toward a general malaise about it. What’s the big deal? Didn’t Jesus go to the cross to cover it?
Perhaps the cure for our apathy comes through picturing that cross. Read the scriptures and maybe this medical description of our Savior’s death. Let your soul ‘see’ what He endured on our behalf. Our prefect Lord, beaten and whipped, stretched out on a cross to suffocate for my sin, for your sin. When I can conjure the cost in my mind: my bleeding, dying Friend, I am deterred from adding to the debt. Though, by His blood sacrifice, I won’t pay it, my debt is still being met by an innocent man.
“I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if the keeping of the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.” (Galatians 2:21 NLT)
We must regard Christ’s sacrifice. Grace is not cheap and if we treat it as such, isn’t it relationally destructive with our Savior? He’s afforded us such an extravagant gift and we tend to abuse it as something ordinary and disposable. No, grace is an invaluable treasure, to be received with deepest humility and gratitude, to be valued above all other gifts in our lifetime. Let us treat grace as the precious pardon it is: not exploit it as a common entitlements.
“How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:29 NIV)
Lord, forgive us for our sometimes flippant regard for Your grace. Show us again, what it cost to cover our sins. Strengthen our resolve agains sin. Make our hearts diligent in pursuit of You. May we never forget the price You paid to pull us close. Amen.