Numbers 15:23-36 KJB
These verses reveal God's attitude toward sin and evil among His people and any strangers who may dwell among them. God makes a distinction between sins of ignorance and presumptuous sins. Both Hebrews and Gentiles can be saved by God's grace. God has more compassion for sins of ignorance because God knows that the spiritual deaths that the Devil plants into the inner beings of all humans will inevitably cause every human to be overcome by temptation and fall into sin. Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:15 (KJB). The exception to this is children who die before they ever become overpowered by temptation. The Church calls spiritual death original sin, but the Bible calls it spiritual death. John 5:24; Romans 5:12; Genesis 2:17 (KJB). The sin offering with its shed blood of animals symbolized the shed blood of Christ on the cross that cleanses and saves by His grace all humans who repent and believe that Christ can save them from sin, evil, and spiritual death. Matthew 26:28; Genesis 3:21 (KJB). But the burnt offering symbolized that God will use His fiery wrath against evil to provide a lesser form of salvation for the rest of humanity when Christ visits all of His living humans "on the earth, and under the earth" in the end of the world. Genesis 820-21; Revelation 5:11-14; Matthew 13:36-43 (KJB). Christ will cause all of His living humans to repent and return to faith in Him as their Savior so that He can recover and recreate their souls and spirits with new bodies to live forever with Him on His recreated earth. Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 21:1-5; Romans 11:36 (KJB).
But verses 30-36 reveal that God takes a quite severe attitude toward presumptuous sins which are also always evil. God never forgives evil because it never repents. A presumptuous sin happens when a person deliberately decides to practice disobedience against God's law. Presumptuous sins are always evil and even if they apply to what one might consider a small sin such as picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. God provided an example of a presumptuous sin with a man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath day. He was not overcome by temptation, and he refused to repent. God commanded Moses to have this man stoned to death. People who practice presumptuous sins do so because they either disbelieve in God, or they have some wrong ideas about the nature of God, or they have just become defiant toward God.
Salvation always occurs because of repentance and faith in the deepest nature of God revealed in His Son. The Father was a God of justice in the Old Testament, but His Son is the same God of mercy, grace, and Love in the New Testament. God had the man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath day put to death as if he were totally evil. But God did not forget that He created that man with a good and living nature which is capable of repentance and faith. Genesis 1:26-27 (KJB). Christ will appear to all of His living humans in the end of the world, including that man, who have not been saved by grace, and He will cause them all to repent and return to faith in Him as their Savior. Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). Christ will then use His fiery wrath against evil to cleanse them of all sins and evil, and He will separate their good and living natures from their dead and evil natures. I Corinthians 3:11-15; Matthew 13:36-43; Luke 3:16-17; II Peter 3:9-13 (KJB). Christ will recreate their repentant, good and living natures with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12 (KJB). All of their sins will be attached to their dead and evil natures, and Christ will cast their separated, dead and evil natures into the lake of fire because evil never repents. Matthew 12:31-32; Revelation 20:11-15 (KJB). Christ will accomplish His salvation of all of His good and living humans because God can never lose anything He has ever created, and His Love can never fail. Genesis 1:31; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 111:7-8; Romans 11:36; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB).
The Apostle Paul provides an example of an evil human who became saved by grace. Very few evil people become saved by grace. Saul of Tarsus was evil because he had Christians murdered in defiance of God's Law: "Thou shalt not kill." Exodus 20:13 (KJB). But when Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he repented and believed, and Christ saved him by His grace. Acts 9:1-6 (KJB). Christ forgave Saul's evil acts because He understood that Paul had done them while in a state of ignorance for which he also repented. I Timothy 1:11-16 (KJB). Christ's compassion for sinners will cause Him to forgive and save all of the good and living natures of all evil humans because He will cause them all to repent of their ignorance of God's true nature. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). But Christ will surely cast the separated spiritual deaths of all of His living humans who were not saved by His grace, who are totally evil, into the eternal lake of fire because they will never repent. Revelation 20:11-15 (KJB). This verse clearly states that Christ will cast only dead humans into the lake of fire. He means exactly that which He states. Christ annuls the spiritual deaths of all humans saved by His grace the moment they repent and believe. John 5:24; Galatians 2:19-20 (KJB).
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