Why did God punish Moses but not Aaron?

[KerryJ]

My Bible study group is having difficulty understanding why God allowed Aaron to remain a priest after the golden calf incident while not allowing Moses to enter the Promised Land because he struck the rock for water. Can you explain?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

It is impossible to say for sure why God does one thing and not another, but it is possible to speculate.

Aaron’s priesthood was not given to him as a reward for good behavior, but as a ministry of service to God and to the children of Israel. His ministry as a priest was not dependent upon his personal holiness but upon God’s choice to have him mediate between God and his chosen people. For God to have deprived Aaron of his priesthood would have meant to have denied the Israelites the access to him that he had chosen for them. This is analogous to the Christian priesthood in that Christian priests may sometimes fail personally and sin, but they still remain priests and the efficacy of the sacraments is not dependent upon their personal holiness. Like Aaron, sinful Christian priests do not stop being priests because such a loss would mean a loss of the sacraments for Christians.

As for Moses, the Promised Land was a figure of heaven and so denying Moses immediate entry into the Promised Land was a consequence of his sinful behavior. In this instance, God was dealing with Moses as a human being, not in his capacity as a mediator between God and the Israelites. (Aaron was also similarly dealt with as a human being and was denied immediate entry into the Promised Land.) Although Moses was not allowed immediate entry into the Promised Land (a figure of heaven), we do know that God sent the Archangel Michael to protect Moses’s body from the devil (Jude 9) and we also know that Moses appeared in glory with Christ and Elijah at Christ’s Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-3). So, perhaps the denial of immediate entry into the Promised Land for Moses was a figure of the reality of purgatory.