A few days ago, a friend of mine told me he believes God cannot or will not forgive the sin of intentional murder. Of course, this doctrine raises up several questions: Where did God say this? If other sins are forgivable, where is the line of forgiveness drawn? What about accidental murder?

The first question is perhaps the most important, but he was unable to answer it due to a lack of biblical knowledge (he learned this doctrine from his family and church). So I ignored the others and cut to the chase with a quote from Jesus connecting murder to hate:

Coincidentally, a few days earlier, my men's group was studying James 2 where we talked about this verse that helps explain Jesus' words:

There are two ways to approach this: One, God demands perfect obedience; if a man disobeys even the smallest command, he has become unrighteous and worthy of eternal separation from God, the same fate that murderers share. Two, it is from a man's heart that sin is birthed, be it nasty words or murder. I gave my friend the first one since it's a bit more cut and dry and guys can handle that better. I then told him that I had proof that he's said nasty words about his own blood brother the week earlier, whether he meant it or not. I let it at that, hoping these things would sink in on their own: Is murder really unforgivable? Is hate unforgivable? What kind of a position am I before God?

Since then, in my daily readings, I ran across some very interesting verses in Leviticus that tie in well with this topic, which I plan to share with my friend later:

That is for the sin offering. The same phrasing appears in Leviticus 5:17, 18 for the guilt offering.

Interestingly, I didn't notice this until just now as I looked at different translations, but the NLT and NIV, among a few others, say guilt is declared even on the unintentional, but other translations such as KJV suggest that both the sin and guilt are conditional ("if any one...sin through ignorance, while he doeth...which ought not to be done, and be guilty..."). Going by all the translations, I'm inclined to think the NLT translation above is the spirit of what's being said. On the negative, this is a harsher sentence. On the positive, all are without excuse and God demands perfection. Thoughts?

Anyway, moving on, this morning I read even more from Leviticus that ties in well with this subject:

Every occurance of "sin" in Leviticus 16 has the word "all" or "whatever" nearby. Isn't that cool? Who says reading Leviticus is boring and outmoded? Forsooth! ;)

And to those that think the sacrificial laws are obsolete and do not apply to us today: The Old Testament sacrificial system was set up by God as a shadow (or foreshadow) of the Real Deal to come—Jesus on the Cross. Jesus was threefold (1) the bull and goat sacrificed and blood spilt (details omitted above for brevity), the scapegoat on which all of our sins have been laid, to which Jesus took into the "wilderness" of "Hell**," and (3) the High Priest who performs the sacrifice and sprinkling of blood and enters the Holy of Holies to speak on our behalf to the Father. And lest anyone still doubt:

This is why I am absolutely certain in this dogma: That Jesus Christ died unreservedly for every single sin (past, present and future) of those people that are His.*** That is something you can take home to the bank, or as Paul would say, that is a trustworthy saying.

Amen and amen!

The only question remaining you should ask is, am I His?

Footnotes:

* Leviticus 16:21-22: You can see this in action in last winter's movie The Nativity Story. Very cool!

** Hell: whatever that may be, a whole discussion in of itself. My friend does not believe in a literal hell, and I personally know of no scriptural reason to dogmatically assert a physical or spiritual place of fire and brimstone exists.

*** Those people that are His:  This is a bit off-topic, for some believe Jesus died for every single person on the planet.  To keep it as much as possible on-topic, all the Levitical quotes apply atonement to the Israelites, or Those of the Promise of Abraham.  Gentile Christians like me (and probably you) fall under Those of the Promise of Abraham as spiritual descendants, descendants of the promise of spiritual salvation.  This is why Paul writes, "For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel" (Rom 9:6).  Those in Christ are the Israelites that were atoned for.  (To get into this more fully, the Elect and the Predestined would have to be discussed.)