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Sins of ignorance

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J. C. Ryle on sins committed in ignorance:

But I do think it necessary in these times to remind my readers that a man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty. I fail to see any scriptural warrant for the modern assertion that: ‘Sin is not sin to us until we discern it and are conscious of it.’ On the contrary, in the fourth and fifth chapters of that unduly neglected book, Leviticus, and in the fifteenth of Numbers, I find Israel distinctly taught that there were sins of ignorance which rendered people unclean and needed atonement (Leviticus 4:1–35; 5:14–19; Numbers 15:25–29). And I find our Lord expressly teaching that ‘the servant who knew not his master’s will and did it not’, was not excused on account of his ignorance, but was ‘beaten’ or punished (Luke 12:48). We shall do well to remember that, when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. A deeper study of Leviticus might do us much good.1

  1. Ryle, J. C. (1952). Holiness (Kindle Locations 331-338). Heritage Bible Fellowship. Kindle Edition. [↩]

Closest book meme

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I’ve been tagged for one o’ them crazy memes. This one involves:

  • Grabbing the nearest book.
  • Turning to page 123.
  • Quoting the fifth sentence on the page.

I’m sitting in the front room near a bookshelf full of books. Strictly speaking, there are four books that are nearly equidistant from me, so I’m going to quote the requested passage from all four of them.

From Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible:

Thus the correspondence was to be first settled by a sensible appearance of the divine glory, which was afterwards to be carried on more silently by the ministry of Moses.

From the Reformed Expository Commentary on Galatians by Philip Graham Ryken:

Even though he did not use these precise words, Paul obviously believed that the Bible is infallible and inerrant from beginning to end.

From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

Because there is some common knowledge of right and wrong, Christians can often find much consensus with non-Christians in matters of civil law, community standards, basic ethics for business and professional activity, and acceptable patterns of conduct in ordinary life.

And the wildcard in the bunch, from Richard Lyman Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling:

The revelation on the millennial gathering brought all the routine activities of everyday life into question. End mark