Board index ‹ Sin

[Reconnoiter]

Hey Jim!

A friend of mine had this question and I wanted to throw it your way. It is very interesting.

"The topic that interests me is the fact that sin has a real life consequence or a physical payment of perfect blood sacrificed required in order to be absolved. I just find it interesting that jews had to sacrifice a blood offering for Yom Kippur until right after Jesus was gone when the a Romans destroyed the one temple. The timing and the fact that they don’t feel an obligation to do it anymore is kind of crazy to me. The fact that God takes sin so serious that it really takes a physical sacrifice to absolve is something that our world today can’t understand. And how lucky Christians are to not have to make that payment. At all. So, I was looking at why perfection must be sacrificed to resolve the problem of sin."

Thanks for all the help!

[jimwalton]

Glad to chat about this with you.

First, I must address a few background items. Atonement and Yom Kippur had nothing to do with sin. I know, it was a shock to me, too, when I first learned it.

I have a very good friend who is a Jewish rabbi. I asked him once about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Leviticus 16. He said,

"The Day of Atonement was instituted after the defiling of the tabernacle by Aaron’s sons, Nadab & Abihu (Lev. 10). It is instructed in Leviticus 16. But what exactly is being purified away by the blood? Sin or contamination? It was the contamination of the tabernacle that was being purified, not the sin of the men. The blood—the life force—purifies the 'death' that entered the temple.

"Now, Ezekiel talks about 'purification from sin.' Here ritual impurity is equated with moral lapses, perhaps even extending from unintentional sin to intentional sin.

"We don’t have to cleanse the temple now with blood because there is no temple. So there is no reason for blood to be shed for atonement. The blood didn’t atone for sin anyway; it only cleansed from contamination. What atones for sin is good works: 'Good deeds do I require, not sacrifice.'

"Yom Kippur is telling the story. And we ask God to forgive our sins and failures. Yom Kippur gives us a sense of hope that relationship with God can be renewed because God forgives us. Our repentance is what atones, and our good works assure it."

My jaw just about hit the floor when I heard him say those things. I made me realize how I look at things through my Christian eyes.

My brother, John Walton, in The Lost World of the Torah, p. 71, agrees. He wrote,

"The term kipper has traditionally been translated as “atonement,” but that is misleading. More recently scholars have used terms like “expiation” (Milgrom) or “clearing” (Hundley). By virtue of the death of the animal, the blood accomplished the ritual role of a deterrent to expunge anything that would desecrate the sanctuary (whether unacceptable behavior or ritual uncleanness)."

And again, John wrote in [u]Old Testament Theology for Christians[/], p. 173:

"Blood rituals in Israel are designed to purify something from ritual contamination. In the OT they almost always focus on sacred space on objects that represent sacred space (e.g., ark, altar).

"The Hebrew verb kipper expresses this purifying action, the preparation of space to be suitable for God’s use by the clearing away of contaminates. Understood in this light, we can see that it is very different from the theological concept of atonement. The annual practice of Yom Kippur is founded on the idea that everyday life in the community inevitably creates incidental or unaddressed impurity that the sanctuary absorbs. Yom Kippur figuratively loads that impurity on a goat and sends it away. This action serves as a reset button for the sanctuary, and it takes care of the buildup in the sanctuary. The blood is the regular designated mechanism for kipper, and it deals with both the uncleanness (tame’) and the sins (hata’a, Lev. 16.16). These terms referred to the community rather than to the individual. The OT system was not trying to do what the new covenant can accomplish in Christ. The old covenant is not a failure; it has a different purpose altogether."

You may be wondering about the sin offering in Leviticus 4, but it's the same thing. It's more accurately a purification offering that has to do with morality and ritual purity.

Second item: blood. Blood was considered the carrier of the life force. Here in Genesis the blood represented almost a connection to God, as animal blood because acceptable for sacrifice, and human blood was partly seen as partially symbolic of the image of God.

By the time we get to Moses and the law (Lev. 17.10-14), God confirms that blood symbolizes life because the life is in the blood. Verse 11 is particularly instructive when it tells us that God considers that the life of a creature is captured, so to speak, in the blood, and just as in Gn. 9.6 when blood for blood (= life for life) was just, so also here blood represents life.

The whole sacrificial system was set up, however, not to spill the blood of humans as the pagans did with human sacrifice and child sacrifice, because human life was in the image of God. But God establishes a system of animal sacrifice as a temporary substitute that he would regard as far exchange until the real exchange could be made.

When we get to Jesus, God sends him as a man so now justice can be made complete and the scales truly be brought into balance, because now there can actually, literally, be a life for life to satisfy the requirements of balance in justice. So it was that Jesus could not be stoned to death, as was the Jewish way, or strangled, or thrown off a cliff (whatever), but his blood had to be spilled and drained, must like a sacrificial animal whose throat was slit. Hence the crucifixion, and God accepting that sacrifice as a blood sacrifice, symbolizing that his life was completely drained from him—death was absolute and complete—and in that sense he fulfilled the requirements of justice by his death.

Hebrews 9.22 seals it in for us: without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Why?

First of all, let’s look at the nature of sin. Is there anything in sin that would require blood in exchange for it? Well, sin is usually defined as missing the mark or falling short, or of being weighed in the balances and found wanting. That doesn’t have to do with blood. The first sin was disobedience, and involved fruit, so that doesn’t have to do with blood.

When we redeem, we usually exchange for something valuable, like money. So why is blood so valuable to God? What is it that makes him want blood?

It’s the nephesh (the breath of God, Gn. 2.7) that should be of value. When God created Adam, he breathed into him the nephesh. That is what should be of value. What does the nephesh have to do with blood?

According to Leviticus 17.11, the nephesh is in the blood. Just as our soul is located who knows where in our bodies, Leviticus says the nephesh is in the blood. So when the blood pours out, the nephesh pours out. It may have been first given as breath, but now resides in the blood.

Therefore, for the forgiveness of sins, death is required, because sin has to do with death, and a blood death is required because the nephesh is in the blood.

On to your real question: Why does perfection have to be sacrificed to resolve the problem of sin?

In the OT, "without blemish" symbolized that which was perfect, and therefore also a symbol of what was sacred. Since the world and its creatures are full of flaws, "without blemish" symbolized what was separated out from the world, viz. holy.

Jesus’s sacrifice was more effective than that of a lamb offered by a priest because any lamb, no matter how good, had some flaws, and any priest, no matter how noble, had some sin. Jesus was perfect in every way, and so truly qualified for the label of "unblemished." His death truly deals with sin because He is the one being in all the universe upon whom sin had no claim. If he deserved to die, deserved to suffer, or deserved any morsel of any accusation that was brought against him, then He could not have paid for our sin, He would have had to pay for His own, but would have been unable to do so because He was also guilty. The man in debt with empty pockets can't discharge the debt. Only the one who has assets can discharge the debt. Only the one who is not guilty of anything can stand in the place of the one who is guilty. Since sin is a lacking, it takes one who has no defects to address it.