3. Furthermore, the more a person knows the law, the more it
becomes evident that the commandment allows the action and is in favor of it, then how sinful is it to go against the true light of the law!
3. Furthermore, the more a person knows the law, the more it binds them to obedience. Therefore, while it is a sin to transgress the law when one is unaware of it, it is an even greater sin when one knows it. It is true that conscience and the law, when combined, form a single law, not two distinct laws.
Hence, sinning against knowledge does not entail committing two distinct sins, yet knowledge of the law adds a further degree of sinfulness to it. It is like a cloth that remains the same cloth whether it is white or dyed with scarlet, but with the dye, it acquires a color that surpasses the worth of the cloth itself.
Similarly, when you sin without knowledge of the law, the sin remains essentially the same as it would be if you had known it.
However, knowledge dyes it, turning it into a "scarlet sin," as Isaiah describes it, greatly increasing its demerit. The reason behind this is that laws only become effective when they are promulgated and made known. Therefore, the more they are promulgated and made known, the stronger their binding force and thus the greater the guilt. Deuteronomy 12:3, 8 exemplifies this as God tightens the cords, intensifying the binding force of the law on the consciences of the Jews to whom He personally and majestically promulgated it in the beginning. This binding force is greater on them than on their children, although it still applies to the latter. Now, if all of God's laws, although unknown to us, bind us and are in force, then when we do know them or could know them, they bind even more. The clearer our knowledge of them, the greater the obligation and ensuing guilt.
Moreover, when we come to know them, they are republished as a special act of mercy, considering that we have lost the knowledge of them due to the Fall.