1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the Lord your God. 

3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. 

4 Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. 

5 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.

Over the next 3 chapters we will have a long series of evil practices explicitly forbidden by God. These will include some of the darkest and most corrosive behaviors that man can engage in, from sexual immorality to child sacrifice to occult practices. Of course, these lists of sins should not be considered as exhaustive, as man ever finds new and ingenious ways to desecrate the sanctity of one another.

That is, indeed, what the sins described in these chapters largely are: desecrations of the divinity in one another. Elsewhere God has forbidden behaviors that desecrate our relationship with Him. Sins that are contrary to the first great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” In these next chapters He will now forbid those relative to the second great commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

It is popular in today’s culture to point out that some of the Mosaic Laws do not apply to Christians today, such as the wearing of mixed threads, and thus why are other laws, like those against homosexuality, “arbitrarily” chosen to still be in force? These arguments are made in ignorance (sometimes genuine, sometimes willful) of how these laws are actually separated in the text. Over the next few chapters, we will see both of these commandments, and it will be clear that those against homosexuality are located in the midst of the most extreme sins, the ones focused on the desecration of one another’s sanctity. Meanwhile, the ones of wearing mixed threads are in a totally separate section of symbolic anti-mingling laws. There is an explicit revocation of those symbolic anti-mingling laws in Acts 10, and absolutely no precedent for any of the laws against the desecration of one another ever being rescinded, and for obvious reason! The laws against the desecration of one another will remain in force so long as the members of the human race are children of God, carrying a divine spark within them that must not be violated.