Unintentional sins

Yesterday our text was Leviticus four and the topic was unintentional sins.

Repeatedly in that chapter, God calls unintended sins – sins – for which the worshiper must bring a sin offering of atonement and receive forgiveness. In other words, though the sin is hidden from the sinner it is still chargeable to the sinner.

Here are the David Powlison quotes I mentioned in yesterday’s sermon.

The Bible’s view of sin certainly includes the high-handed sins where evil approaches full volitional awareness. But sin also includes what we simply are, and the perverse ways we think, want, remember, and react. Most sin is invisible to the sinner because it is simply how the sinner works, how the sinner perceives, wants, and interprets things.

Sin – the desires we pursue, the beliefs we hold, the habits we obey as second nature – is intrinsically deceitful. If we knew we were deceived, we would not be deceived. But we are deceived, unless awakened through God’s truth and Spirit. Sin is a darkened mind, drunkenness, animal-like instinct and compulsion, madness, slavery, ignorance, stupor. People often think that to define sin as unconscious removes human responsibility. How can we be culpable for what we did not sit down and choose to do? But the Bible takes the opposite track. The unconscious and semiconscious nature of much sin simply testifies to the fact that we are steeped in it. Sinners think, want, and act sinlike by nature, nurture, and practice.

Some texts to meditate on…