Following the Lord’s critique of Israel’s superficial sacrificial system in Isaiah 1:11-16, we encounter this passage:
Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Correct oppression; Bring justice to the fatherless, Plead the widow’s cause. Isaiah 1:16b-17
Isaiah is communicating a sequence of moral development that avoids legalism in some important ways. It connects morality with two kinds of abstract ideas: those that are best understood attributes of God, and those that are the inverse and privation of those attributes in fallen man. The Israelites became legalists when they started following minute laws while forgetting the sources of those laws. The way to avoid a similar fate is to focus on the good and the just, and to understand the practice of the law in the context of who God is. The result is a spiritual morality based on emulation of these attributes of God, not a series of cultural practices in the process of ossification. Read More
