CHAPTER  SEVEN 

SINS OF NEARNESS
THE DEFINITION

God is holy.  It is his ultimate attribute.  It is the only divine attribute that is repeated three times when it is ascribed to him.  He is the thrice holy God of whom the angelic beings in the heaven of heavens declare his holiness.  

"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.  Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.  And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:1-3).   

Because he is holy he cannot tolerate any sin.  Therefore the prophet says of him, 

"Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy One?.....Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity" (Habakkuk 1:12-13).   

Because God's holiness is totally adverse to all sin and iniquity therefore he cannot regard it in his sight.  When sin exists in the presence of God his holiness breaks out against it.  Sin cannot exist in the presence of God.  Therefore as soon as Adam and Eve sinned in Eden, the Garden of God, where they fellowshipped with God on a daily basis, they were driven from the garden and from his presence.  When the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush he was instructed to remove his shoes and not to approach any closer. 

"Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.  And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.  And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.  And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.  And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (Exodus 3:1-5).   

Sinful man cannot approach too closely to a holy God.  This was Isaiah's fearful concern when the Lord appeared to him.   

"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.  Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:  And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" (Isaiah 6:5-7).   

Isaiah was concerned lest God's holiness break out and consume him.  He specifically felt the sinfulness of his lips, that his words were not sanctified enough to be heard in the holy presence of God.  An angel takes a coal from the altar of burnt sacrifice and sanctifies Isaiah.  This teaches us that only those who are sanctified by the blood of Christ can withstand the presence of God.  This truth was indelibly impressed on Israel when they were at Mount Sinai. 

"And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes,  And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.  And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:  There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.  And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes.  And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives.  And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.  And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.  And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.  And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.  And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.  And the LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish.  And let the priests also, which come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them" (Exodus 19:10-22).   

The length and detail of this passage demonstrate the importance that the Holy Spirit has laid on this issue.  It is no light thing for sinful creatures to approach into the presence of a Holy God.  God wanted Israel to understand this and gave these detailed instructions to Moses.  He wants us to understand it that we too might fear him and live.  As God manifested his special presence on Mount Sinai, a presence marked with fire, smoke, and earthquake, the people had to keep their distance.  They had to sanctify themselves and keep their distance upon penalty of death.  Even the priests are warned and the terminology used is instructive, "lest the LORD break forth upon them".  The reference is again to the Lord's holiness breaking forth upon them.  The Hebrew word for break forth is "parats".  It means to make a breach, to burst upon.  The closer men draw nigh into the presence of God the greater the danger that God's holiness will break out against them and consume them for he is of purer eyes than to behold evil.  As Paul warns the Hebrew Christians, "For our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29).   

This brings us to the definition of a whole new classification of sins; sins that take on a special degree of wickedness because they are committed in the very presence of God:  a class of sins that are aggravated in their heinousness because they are committed before the very face of God.  We call these sins "sins of nearness"1 because they take their character from having been committed in a special way near to the presence of God.  Like the other classifications of sin that we have studied the classification has nothing to do with the overt act.  It can be a minor sin or a major act of wickedness.  It can be an inadvertent or a willful act.  But it takes on its character as a sin of nearness because it was committed near to the presence of God.  But what does it mean to be near to the presence of God?  Is not God omnipresent?  Is not God's presence everywhere?  Does not the psalmist say, 

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?  If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.  If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;  Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.  If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.  Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee" (Psalms 139:7-12).   

While it is true that God is everywhere there are places where God specially manifests his presence.  One such place we generally think of is heaven where he is constantly present basking in the worship of innumerable angelic hosts.  But the Bible also teaches us that the very heavens cannot contain God, as Solomon states in his dedicatory prayer for the temple. 

"But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?  Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day:  That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place" (1 Kings 8:27-29).   

Solomon acknowledges that although there may be a special presence of God in the temple, that God can no more dwell there, and the temple can no more contain him than do the heavens.  Prayer was to be directed to the temple, as Daniel did while he was in Babylon, because that was where God was especially present to hear the prayers of his people.  There he ruled over them and from there he watched over them and protected them.  This special presence of God, evidenced by the Shekinah glory that manifested itself at first over the tabernacle and later over the temple, was one of the great blessings of the Sinaitic Covenant.  It is when we intrude into these special presences of God that we have to sanctify ourselves and guard against committing any sins of nearness. 

How do we know when we are in the special presence of God?  What are these special presences of God?  How can we define nearness to God?  First of all we have to recognize that there may be different degrees of nearness to the presence of God.  This was certainly the case under the Old Covenant.  In Old Testament Israel there were different degrees of nearness to God.  Starting at the furthest they were... 

1. The nations, as opposed to the elect nation, the covenant nation Israel.  That is where Jonah went when he fled from the presence of the Lord.

2. The land of Israel, the land of promise that God had set aside for his people by covenant and where he ruled them in a special way as both their God and their King.

3. The city of Jerusalem, the City of the Lord, where the people went up three  times a year to feast before the Lord, and where God had placed his name and dwelled with his people.

4. The outer court of the temple, the court of the Gentiles, up to the middle wall of partition.

5. The inner court of the temple for true Israelites.

6. The Holy Place where only the priests might go to offer incense.

7. The Holy of Holies where only the High Priest might go and only once a year and not without blood.

8. The heaven of heavens where God has his throne and is worshipped by the angelic hosts. 

We can see that under the Sinaitic Covenant there was great scope for committing sins of nearness.  It was for allegedly committing one of these that Paul was almost lynched by a mob in Jerusalem.  They thought that he had brought a Gentile into the inner court of the temple through the middle wall of partition.  In Herod's temple there was a sign on this wall in Latin and in Greek that no foreigner could proceed any further upon penalty of death.  At least in an external sense the Jews seem to have taken these things seriously.  But what about under the New Covenant?  Can we commit sins of nearness today?  Does a special presence of God exist here on earth in our day?  The answer is a very positive yes.  One place where God's presence is with us today in a special way is in the church.  In that sense the church has replaced Israel as that place where God dwells with his people.  As Peter taught as he addressed the church of his day, 

"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:  Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy" (1 Peter 2:9-10).   

What Israel was called to be of old, a holy nation of priests, a special people dedicated to the worship of God, is what the church is in our day.  The church is that holy nation where we are in a special sense in the presence of God.  Paul alludes to this also in his letter to the Ephesians. 

"Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;  That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:  But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.....Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:11-14, 19).   

Paul uses the analogy of the Old Covenant to describe their situation.  Once they were foreigners, members of the nations, and outside of Israel.  Now being members of the church of Jesus Christ they are part of that holy nation and have gained access through the middle wall of partition to that special presence of God that his people enjoy.  The elect of God in Jesus Christ gathered into his church have become that holy nation with all the privileges and the responsibilities of that special nearness to God.   

In his revelation to the Apostle John, Christ also refers to this. 

"And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;  And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man.....And he had in his right hand seven stars.....The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches" (Revelation 1:12-13, 16, 20).   

John sees the risen glorified Christ walking in the midst of the candlesticks, in the midst of the churches.  There Christ dwells with his people and manifests his special presence.  Paul impresses this truth upon the Hebrew Christians by comparing their situation with that of Israel of old at Mount Sinai. 

"For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,  And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:  (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:  And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)  But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,  To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,  And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.  See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:  Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:  For our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:18-29).   

Paul says that we have a better covenant, a greater nearness to God, a better Mediator than Israel of old.  But Paul also points out that we have a greater responsibility to sanctify ourselves and obey the word of God for one thing has not changed, the abiding holiness of God.  What is still true is that "our God is a consuming fire".  Israel of old so feared the presence of God that they told Moses 

"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.  And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die" (Exodus 20:18-19) 

They feared the presence of a holy God and called for Moses to be their mediator and speak to God for them.  We have a far better Mediator, Jesus Christ, who as our Advocate intercedes with God, lest his holiness should break out against us, his sinful children, and interposes the merits of his atoning blood.  Therefore Paul can exhort us saying, 

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,  By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;  And having an high priest over the house of God;Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Hebrews 10:19-20, 22).   

Let us rejoice that we can enter into the holy of holies, into the very presence of God, through the blood of Christ.  God's holiness is great.  Our sin is very great.  But we have a great salvation through our Mediator Jesus Christ.