NOTES for Lev 20:8

What is the Torah? Why does God give a person His commandments and laws? At first glance it may appear that the matter concerns a moral and ritual code that has meaning, especially if we speak of ritual, only within a concrete religious tradition. But what matters to God is not ritual, not morality, and not even religion. For Him, all that has been named is, in essence, only a means. The goal is what the biblical authors call sanctification.

Here the issue is no longer the observance of certain norms and rules that God needs for some reason, nor even morality as such, although without the observance of moral norms relationships of love with one's neighbor will hardly be possible. The issue is that entirely real, though not noticeable to everyone, effect that the presence of God has on all and everything that comes into contact with this presence. Of course, a stone remains a stone in such contact, wood remains wood, and metal remains metal. And yet stone, wood, and metal change after such contact. Before us is no longer simply nature, but nature and something else, something that is not in nature and cannot be there by definition. That very "something" that transforms nature when it is touched by the breath of the Kingdom brought into the world by the Savior.

Of course, in the times when the Book of Leviticus was written, the Kingdom was not yet so near, but its effect was still felt, and the result of this effect was called sanctification. For a human being, sanctification was connected with that meeting which a person, unlike stone, metal, wood, and even an animal, had to recognize and experience consciously. And here the commandment was absolutely necessary: otherwise the human heart could not be prepared for this meeting. That means there could be no question of the sanctification of a person without the Torah, without the commandments given by God. This is precisely why the Torah was given to man. This is precisely how, in its time, it would become, according to the apostle's word, a "guardian leading to Christ."