Grossed Out By the Cost of Sin

Martha_Martha has been posting on law and gospel. It is something that has also peeked my interest lately because I have been reading Leviticus. This time, I am going through it in more detail than I have previously, and pretty much every morning when I read, I'm totally disgusted.

The things they had to do in order to appease God's wrath against their sin under the law horrifies me. It makes me extremely thankful that we live in a time where Christ has fulfilled the law. (Matt. 5:17)

Although, I suppose when the priests performed those awful sacrifices, it would be a good reminder of just how disgusting sin actually is.

It seems like we, living under the new covenant, often view our sin through 'rose colored glasses.' It's so typical of Evangelicals to downplay the gravity of sin and therefore downplay the significance of the cross.

As my favorite cowboy likes to joke, "If you're going to wear a cross around your neck, you might as well wear an electric chair as ornamentation." I suppose if you were going to make a comparison, execution on a cross is a lot more grotesque than execution by an electric chair, and yet too often we think of Christ's death for our sin as a sanitized and almost romanticized event.

...He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our grief's and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (Is 53)