Why Breaking One Law Breaks Them All

For folks who haven't studied the Bible in depth, this is an obvious question. How can breaking one of God's laws break them all? To them, it's as if a person parked in a NO PARKING zone but were charged with every single law on the books.

This is how I understand it. The Law is holy. Any sin against God's decrees is a contamination of the entire holy law.

Imagine going to a shop and buying some sort of medicine or food product. If the seal is broken, it has become contaminated. You would have no idea if a person just opened the packet or bottle just to see what the contents looked like or if they might have put poison in it. That's what happened to bottles of Tylenol in America a few decades ago.

So it is with sin. Breaking one of God's commands contaminates our entire being. James 2:10 (BBE) explains, "For anyone who keeps all the law, but makes a slip in one point, is judged to have gone against it all."

When my sister Diane and I were children, we raided Mom's pickled beet jars. Not realizing what the consequences would be, the jars we opened and put back became moldy. Defilement is like the mould we inadvertently allowed to grow in those bottles.

One big issue in the first-century church was circumcision. Certain Jewish Christians insisted that just trusting Christ and following him wasn't enough. Paul addressed this matter in  Galatians 5:3 (BBE). "Yes, I give witness again to every man who undergoes circumcision, that he will have to keep all the law."

God spoke through his prophets about how ceremonially unclean things contaminate the clean. Haggai 2:12 and 13 (BBE showed how sin contaminated the whole Israelite nation. "'If anyone has some holy flesh folded in the skirt of his robe, will bread or soup or wine or oil or any other food be made holy if touched by his skirt?' And the priests answering said, 'No.' Then Haggai said, 'Will any of these be made unclean by the touch of one who is unclean through touching a dead body?' And the priests answering said, 'It will be made unclean.'"

So it is that one seemingly small sin contaminates purity whereas purity can't make the impure pure.

If Christ doesn't return by Thursday, I hope to post about how faking piety can be dangerous to your health. It proved fatal for one couple.