Do Not Add a Second Sin to the First.

It is easy for the naïve to assume the best.  But God is not naïve.  “Jesus knew what was in the heart of man” John 2:25.  In situations where well-meaning parents or teachers might think minimal guidance is enough, God spells things out in detail.  Consider sexual sin, for example.  Most of us think there’s one rule: no sex outside of marriage. 

But God “knows what is in the heart of man” and thus, provides great detail, addressing some of the more unusual situations—situations that are not unusual at all on TV situation comedies and rom-com films like “Rumor Has It.” 

But this is no laughing matter: 

Do not have sex with close relatives for that is depraved: mothers or stepmothers, sisters, stepsisters, or half-sisters, daughters, grand-daughters, or step-granddaughters, aunts, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, or any mother and also that mother’s daughter. Don’t marry two sisters. “Do not have sex with a man as with a woman; it is detestable. You are not to have sexual intercourse with any animal, defiling yourself with it; it is a perversion.” Leviticus 18:1-23.

God is a realist; He knows people—even the people of Israel—will violate the simple rule prohibiting sex outside of marriage.  Knowing the first rule will be broken, God warns us not to add a SECOND sin.  It’s as though He says, “if you must fornicate, do not ALSO violate a close family member.  If you must fornicate, do not also violate your nature by exchanging sex with a woman for sex with a man or an animal. 

Why the extra warning? Because each additional sin comes with additional consequences.  What consequences?  Consider the Promised Land.  God is going to overthrow every nation living there because of their depravities, perversions, and detestable acts.  If Israel sows the seeds of the sins of the Canaanites, Israel will reap the same harvest, the grapes of God’s great wrath.  So He warns His people: do not add a second sin to the first. 

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