Question: Why is the Law of God so harsh?

“Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORDyour God am holy.” Leviticus 19.2

Sin is affront to our holy God, especially sin committed by those He has redeemed, saved, and taken unto Himself as a peculiar people, to whom He has shown what the Lord requires of them in order to live together before Him in love (Eph. 1.4).

God’s people are called to be holy because God, their Father, is holy. All sin against the holy God must be removed if fellowship with and benefits from Him are to be realized. The system of sacrifices and offerings, instituted as part of the worship Israel owed to God, can seem like a bloody awful mess at times.

It was supposed to.

“See this?” God says to His people. “See these suffering, slaughtered, wholly-consumed lambs? This is what you deserve who are so ungrateful to and flippant toward Me, Who saved you, that you deliberately flout my holy and righteous and good Law.”

Besides the sacrifices required to restore fellowship with God – the lives of innocent substitutes, rather than the lives of sinners themselves – God regarded certain sins as more offensive to His holiness and more destructive of a just and loving social order than others, and thus He required greater punishments – harsh punishments – to check the sin-prone hearts of His people.

T. M. Moore

Got a question about the Law of God? Write to T. M. at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and your answer might appear in this series of In the Gates columns.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and the compilation, The Law of God,and study the question for yourself.