Numbers 35:12 And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger; that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment.
Lives of Deliberate Good
In my first semester of my freshman year of college, I took a Phys. Ed. class. We were playing soccer, a sport I know little about. All of a sudden someone kicked the soccer ball which came hurtling through the air and landed smack dab in my face. Whack! My nose was throbbing. The result was that the ball bounced off my head at a pretty high rate of speed and I had, in fact, accidentally defended our goal. The others guys said, “Hey, good header, Rice!” Well, it wasn’t a header. I just had my head in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do motives matter? Have you ever accidentally done something right, or have you ever accidentally done something wrong?
Numbers 35 tells us about the cities of refuge. The cities of refuge were for those who had unintentionally, without malice killed someone else. Verse 12 says, “And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger; that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment.”
There is a legal code here for the people of Israel which addresses the unintentional taking of life, manslaughter. Loss of life is always tragic, but motives do matter. When someone committed murder, God repeatedly instructed that the murderer should be put to death. He commanded life for life.
Here are three scenarios. The first is a case of the unintentional taking of life, manslaughter. The second scenario is the case of intentional murder. A third case is the punishment of murder.
The bottom line is that motives do matter. God takes that into account in Numbers 15, for instance. In that passage, God draws a clear distinction between sins of ignorance and sins of arrogance. So consider the scale of vice and virtue. At the bottom of the scale is deliberate wrong. Just a little better than that is unintentional wrong. Above that would be accidental good. In other words someone does right, but not because it was intended. Don’t each of these leave a little something to be desired? Deliberate wrong may not be as helpful as accidental good, but neither of those should define the way we live our lives.
Because motives matter, we should live lives of deliberate good. We are not merely to do right, but to actively do right by the grace of God. For instance, if you see someone who is in need, don’t just send them off with kind words that mean nothing. Take action and do right; ask God to use you to help them. In the end, none of us are inclined to do the good that only God can do. That is why every day we need God’s grace and His Spirit to animate our lives and guide our actions to do right on purpose.