When Mercy Is Treason

You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst (Deut. 13:4-5).

Israel’s survival depended on their ability to identify and purge sin from their midst. They were called to do so in the most personal and intimate ways—within their own families and marriages:

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you (Deut. 13:6-11).

That doesn’t leave much room for hesitation or negotiation, does it? No yielding, no listening for an explanation, no pity, no sparing, no concealing—it’s hard to misconstrue God’s expectation here. It’s also hard to ignore His hatred of sin. It didn’t matter if the guilty party was your own spouse or children or dearest friend—whatever relation you had to them was now destroyed by sin. God has zero tolerance for rival altars and any heart that entices others to kneel before them.

When Israel worshiped the calf, Moses called for those “on the Lord’s side.” Here’s how the sons of Levi responded:

He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword on his side, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his friend and his neighbor.’” So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and that day about three thousand men of the people fell (Ex. 32:27–28).

This is Deuteronomy 13 in action—the language is nearly identical. Their zeal for God over family loyalty purified the camp, and God blessed them: “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord” (Ex. 32:29). Only when allegiance to God outweighs every human tie is there blessing; every other path ends in death.

Take Achan as another example: When Israel destroyed Jericho, they could take nothing the Lord had banned, but God reveals to Joshua, “Israel has sinned… They have even taken some of the things under the ban…” (Josh. 7:11). The lot fell to Achan.

Achan’s family and tribe were complicit through silence. When confronted, Achan confessed, and he and his family were executed—“they raised over him a great heap of stones” (Josh. 7:26). Sin concealed for the sake of family was treason. Love and loyalty to God must outweigh all human attachments—even the strongest ones. Centuries later, Jesus would demand the same undivided loyalty—not with stones, but with the cross.

He put it this way: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:37).

Satan knows how to exploit human relationships for his own gain. He seeks the death of your soul, and will use those closest to you to make you his own. Sin always seems softer when it wears the face of someone we love—a grandmother we cherish or a child we raised (see Eli, 1 Sam. 2). It’s one of his oldest ploys to blur the lines God has drawn—to get you first to hesitate, then negotiate, and finally embrace your own destruction in the name of compassion and understanding.

The delusion can become so convincing that any righteous appeals from concerned brethren must be secret power plays to feed their own egos. That is how Satan would have us view all Truth and the discipline it imparts—as cruel judgements from those who should be ashamed of their convictions. But God’s people have always been marked by holy intolerance of sin—starting with their own. To “walk after the Lord your God” (Deut. 13:4) is to value His holiness above every human bond, to love Him more than life itself, and to purge from our hearts every affection that dares to rival Him. We must be people who take His command seriously:

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into Hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into Hell (Matt. 5:29-30).

Satan would rather train your conscience to hesitate. The kind of conviction Jesus preached is “dangerous” and “unreasonable”—“give the hand or eye a chance,” he whispers. He is pleased so long as you show sin mercy, rather than repent of it. That’s the whole rub—see evil as benign at first, then see evil as good. He would have you believe the cancer is harmless, then beneficial as it eats away your bones. Christ would have you see it for what it is. God’s intolerance of rival altars isn’t spite; it’s mercy. To spare an idolater is to tolerate a cancer in the body. Satan still speaks through the voices we love most: “Surely you won’t die.” His aim is unchanged—to make pity our creed and holiness our shame. But God still asks the same question He asked at Sinai: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” The covenant has changed, but the call has not: holiness still costs something, and compromise still kills.

The cross demands the same clarity Deuteronomy required of the sword. God no longer commands stoning under the new covenant, but the principle remains: sin must be exposed and purged. The weapons have changed—from swords and stones to the Word of God and church discipline—but the seriousness of sin has not (1 Cor. 5:6–7).

When men cease to believe in evil, they lose the courage to resist it, and so lay down their weapons. Our sin doesn’t need therapy or counselors. It needs to be removed. We must take up the sword of the Spirit again, and lay it to ourselves first (Eph. 6:17)—to cut away every affection for sin.

Christ’s call to repentance is not cruelty but mercy. Evil is real, God wills its destruction, and goodness is worth defending. To tolerate what He died to destroy is not compassion or mercy; it is treason. Don’t make peace with the very sin He died to save you from. Don’t embrace what nailed Him to the cross.

The cross that condemns sin also offers mercy to the sinner. Be done with rebellion, take up your cross, and find in His wounds the freedom your pity could never give. “He who believes and is baptized will be saved, He who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16:16).

Extra Thoughts:

Judas Iscariot embodies the warning of this study.

"He was a thief; having charge of the moneybag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (Jn. 12:6).

His kiss in the garden wasn’t the beginning of treason; it was the culmination of every unchecked indulgence he’d refused to cut out.

Rather than slay the greed in his heart, he spared it, and nurtured it, until it grew and murdered Christ. He tolerated what he should have killed and, in the end, it killed him.

Judas may have justified his greed — “I deserve this,” “it’s harmless,” “I can still serve Jesus.” We know that he tried to mask it with generosity for the poor (Jn. 12:5).

He believed he could coexist with sin if he managed it gently enough.

But sparing sin never ends in peace — it ends in betrayal of the Lord Himself.

Every sin we refuse to crucify, crucifies Christ anew (Heb. 6:6).

Judas shows where false mercy always leads. He didn’t betray Christ in a moment of madness; he betrayed Him after years of sparing the greed in his heart. What he refused to crucify finally crucified the Lord. The kiss that sealed his treason began with a compromise he once called harmless.