The Gospel According to 6:7

I wasn’t going to share this, but once I wrote it up I realized it’s actually low-key fire. So let’s lock in here:

Open your Bible to the first 6:7, which is Genesis 6:7:

So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

God creates everything, including humanity. But humanity sins against him and just keeps sinning. Here in chapter 6 the human race just keeps spreading out its sinfulness and striving against their maker, to such an extent that God declares his intention to “blot out man.” In fact, somehow human sin is so pervasive that it catches all the animals in its net and spoils them too. When God says “I am sorry that I have made them,” he makes it sound like he is just now figuring out how bad they have become, as if he hadn’t seen it coming. But if you’ve been reading everything up to 6:7, you know that God is not just bumbling along on the timeline with us, responding to surprising turns of events and having his emotional day ruined by negative outcomes. He is perfect and exalted, seeing all things from heaven, and carrying out his steady will. His regret means what we already know about him: he judges sin and punishes sinners. This is a problem for sinners. The rest of Genesis 6 tells the story of Noah, but as we jump forward let’s take with us from the first 6:7 the main ideas of creation, sin, and judgement.

The second 6:7 is Exodus 6:7:

I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

We already knew something about God’s character as the good and righteous creator before, but here he makes himself personally known to his people, with his actual, revealed, personal name (all caps LORD in an English Bible means the divine name YHWH is what’s written in the text). He also announces his promise to deliver them, which introduces a lot more hope than we had dared to have before. Somehow this holy God will bind himself to his people and vice versa, making them his own. How will this kind of fellowship be possible or sustainable? The next 6:7 gives us the key words.

Leviticus 6:7 says

And the priest shall make atonement for him before the LORD, and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty.

There’s the word: atonement. Our English word for this really is assembled out of the root words “at” plus “one,” reconciling two things by a costly sacrifice. The kind of atonement that reconciles a holy God and sinners who do things by which they “become guilty” is the kind that requires a priest (a key word in this 6:7) to do something that decisively brings about forgiveness. Those are the main ideas in this third 6:7: atonement, priest, guilty, forgiven.

Creation, sin, judgment, God’s holy name, God’s great promise, the atoning work of the priest bringing forgiveness: this is the gospel according to 6:7. Of course there are a lot more 6:7s in the Bible: 42 of them, actually. It’s hard to say which one’s the GOAT. Ecclesiastes 6:7 knows all about how meaningless a life of working for food is: “All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.” Isaiah 6:7 brings us back to atonement, as God’s angel says to his prophet, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” In Hosea 6:7 God laments about people that “like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” They’re all worth reading!

But number games aside, the main message of the Bible is that God so loved the world he sent his Son to die for our sins, rise again to bring us back to God, and send his Holy Spirit to complete our fellowship. Everything comes down to knowing about that and accepting its reality. How? Jesus says in Matthew 6:7–we’re back to 6:7–“when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” Just pray, from the heart, to the God who has made atonement available and will forgive you.

After that you can join the story of the other 6:7s, to learn how Jesus sent out his disciples (Mark 6:7, “he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits), and then how the church grew (Acts 6:7, “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith). As one of those disciples you can discover how to live a life full of meaningful work (Ephesians 6:7, “rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man,”) and prepare for the day when you will meet God face to face: 1 Timothy 6:7, “for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”

Someday very soon people will stop saying 6,7. The fact that someone my age wrote a sermonette blog post on it means it must already be very much on its way out. But if you hear the gospel according to 6:7, nobody can ever take that away from you, and you’ll be in on the secret of something great forever.