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The
Necessity of Sacrifice
One of
the most hotly debated items in the Jewish-Christian controversy centers around
the necessity of blood atonement. Christians maintain that reconciliation
between God and man has always been on the basis of the blood sacrifice. In
times past, this took the form of animal sacrifices. Today, during the day of
God's favor, it is obtained through the blood sacrifice of Jesus. In stark
contrast, Judaism asserts that there are three forms of atonement: prayers, good
works, and animal sacrifices. The animal sacrifices were the least important of
the three and has since been replaced by the atonement of prayer and good works.
Therefore, since blood atonement is not needed, then certainly there is no need
for the blood sacrifice of Jesus. We must appeal to the Scriptures to settle
this controversy.
The Reason For Sacrifices
If one has a misunderstanding of
the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant, he can never comprehend the one and
only sacrifice of the New. Therefore, before showing why the blood atonement of
the Messiah was necessary, we must begin by considering why God instituted the
sacrificial system.
To the uninitiated, the
sacrificial system may seem rather bizarre. Why would God require the slaughter
of innocent animals for His appeasement? Why would He insist that the blood of
an animal be poured out in a basin and sprinkled on the people, initiating the
Mosaic covenant (Exodus 24:3-8)?
God's Righteous Anger
We are made in the image of God.
The way we vent our anger in some way reflects our Divine imprint. It can help
us understand why God requires blood atonement. Have you ever been so mad that
you banged a table, kicked a door, or smashed a window? I vividly recall when I
was ten years old how I, through a particular incident, so provoked my father by
my rebellion and disrespect that he picked up an oak stool and slammed it into a
fish bowl that was sitting across from me. In the absolute quietness of the
ensuing moment, I stared at those fish flopping around on the floor and thought,
"that could have been me." Had my Father not vented his anger on
something else instead of the one deserving the punishment, I might not have
been around to tell the story today.
Our Sins Provoke God
The most obvious difference
between God's anger and ours is that His is always holy and justified, but ours
often is not. He is, as Moses said, "a perfect God
who does no wrong, faithful and just is He" (Deut. 32:4). But every
one of us has sinned greatly against Him as both the Old and New Covenants
unequivocally attest. At the dedication of the temple, Solomon appropriately
stated, "...for there is no man that sinneth not.." (1 Kings 8:46).
Even the godly prophet Isaiah recognized this when He said "...we all like
sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way...(Isa. 53:6).
Paul put it in these words, "...for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God..." (Rom. 3:23).
Given the freedom of choice to
follow either God or Satan, our great-grandparents (Adam and Eve) chose to obey
the voice of Satan (Gen. 2-3). By our willful choice to sin, we join with them
in that rebellion. But the God of the universe is a holy God exalted far above
the heavens. He cannot dwell with sinful, unregenerate men. Habakkuk said of
Him, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on
iniquity..."(Habakkuk 1:13). This is why our sins have
"separated" (Isa. 59:2) us from the Creator. Being fallen, sinful
creatures, we have become desensitized, if not totally oblivious, to just how
much our sins have hurt and angered God. Perhaps this is why, since the fall of
man, God has always required a blood sacrifice. He wanted him to see, in the
innocent sacrificial animal, the penalty of sin. He wanted him to think,
"that should have been me." He wanted him to see just how scandalous
sin was in the eyes of a holy God. Truly God's rationale for instituting the
sacrificial system is found in the concept of substitution.1
Before, During and After
Death was not in God's original
blueprint for the world. Men were designed to live forever. At the beginning,
animals were not carnivores but herbivores (Gen. 1:30 cf. Isa. 11:7-9). But that
changed with the fall of Adam and Eve. The sentence of death entered the world
through their sin. Animals were killed to provide them with coats of skins to
cover their nakedness (Gen. 3:21). Man became a mortal being. From this
juncture, we find the doctrine of blood sacrifice inextricably woven throughout
Scripture.
Before the Law
After the fall of man, God had
the choice of either destroying man whom He had created, or taking out His anger
on an innocent substitute. He chose the latter and instituted the sacrificial
system. In Genesis 4:3-6, we find that Abel was accepted for bringing a blood
sacrifice of the "firstlings of his flock." But Cain was rejected for
bringing "the fruit of the ground" (a sign that salvation must be
according to God's standard and not by presumptive works of human origin). Soon
after exiting the ark, Noah built an altar to the Lord and "offered burnt
offerings on the altar." This sacrifice gave off a "soothing
aroma" which pacified God's anger. In fact, He was so appeased that He
vowed to never again destroy every living thing by means of a flood (Gen.
8:20-21).
After leaving Ur of the Chaldeans,
Abraham built an altar to the Lord and called on His name through sacrifice
(Gen. 12:7-8). After the Lord appeared to Isaac at Beersheba, Isaac, like his
father, built an altar to the Lord and called on His name through sacrifice
(Gen. 26:25). The Israelites were called out of Egypt that they
might offer a sacrifice to God in the wilderness (Exod. 3:18). Before
they left Egypt, they were required to kill a Passover lamb2 in order to save
the lives of their first-born sons.
The Law of Moses
With the establishment of the Law
of Moses came a precise code for sacrificial offerings. The actual sacrifice was
to be offered by priests upon an altar. (Previously, the heads of families
offered sacrifices.) In order to be a priest, you had to be from the tribe of
Levi. At first, the priests offered sacrifices for themselves and the sins of
the people in the tabernacle that was also called the tent of meeting. It was a
mobile temple of sorts and was first erected and used by the Israelites during
their wanderings in the desert (Exodus 40:7,12). When they inhabited the land of
Canaan (Israel), the tabernacle was superseded by Solomon's temple. The temple
became the house of worship for the children of Israel. The sacrifices offered
there were of two kinds animal and vegetable. Animal sacrifices consisted of:
sin offerings (Lev. 4:1-35; 6:24-30), guilt offerings (Lev. 5:14-6:7), burnt
offerings (Lev. 1), and peace offerings (Lev. 3). Vegetable sacrifices consisted
of meal offerings (Num. 6:17; 15:1-12) and drink offerings (Num. 6:17; 15:1-12).
It is imperative to understand
that it was only the blood of the animal sacrifice that made atonement for sin.
Moses made this very clear:
For the life of the flesh is in
the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your
souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul (Lev. 17:11).
It never was said, "it is
the wheat or drink offering that makes atonement for your souls." This is
important to note, because the anti-missionary claims that atonement for one's
sins is procured through means other than blood sacrifice. The fact that the
blood sacrifice was offered first in the sacrificial services implicitly
suggests its supremacy.
Insufficiency of Animal
Sacrifices
Though God commanded that
sacrifices be made to atone for sin, there was something manifestly insufficient
about them. They had to be offered repeatedly, day after day, year in and year
out. God apparently was not completely satisfied with them. If He were, wouldn't
they have ceased being offered? This is the point the author of Hebrews made to
the Jewish Christians:
The law is only a shadow of the
good things that are coming never the realities themselves. For this reason it
can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make
perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped
being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and
would no longer have felt guilty for their sins...(Hebrews 10:1-3 NIV).
The Sacrifice of Jesus
Ultimately, God was not happy
with the sacrifices of the law. We find this substantiated in David's prophecy
concerning the Messiah:
Sacrifice and offering thou didst
not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast
thou not required. Then said I, 'Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is
written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my
heart' (Psalm 40:6-8).
Who is this one that God truly
desired? Paul applies Psalm 40:6-8 to the sacrifice of Jesus:
First he said, 'Sacrifices and
offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you
pleased with them' (although the law required them to be made). Then he said,
'Here I am, I have come to do your will.' He sets aside the first [covenant] to
establish the second [covenant].
And by that will, we have been
made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus the Messiah once for all.
Day after day every priest [of the order of Aaron] stands and performs his
religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never
take away sins. But when this priest [Jesus the Messiah, a priest in the
prophesied order of Melchizedek, Psalm 110:4] had offered for all time one
sacrifice for sins, he sat down on the right hand of God. Since that time he
waits for his enemies to be made his footstool because by one sacrifice he has
made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Heb. 10:8-14 NIV).
Why was God dissatisfied with the
sacrifices that He commanded? The answer is related to the definition of the
Hebrew word for satisfied, saw-bay'-ah, which means, "to gratify the need,
desire or expectation." This word is often translated "full" and
"filled." In numerous references, it means eating until you are full.
(Deut. 6:11; 8:10; 11:15). Though the Israelites had offered millions of
sacrifices over the span of a thousand years, they did not come close to fully
appeasing God's anger. Nor could they for "...it is not possible that the
blood of bulls and goats could take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). Truly, God
was never satisfied or pleased with animal sacrifices. But when God saw the
"travail" of Jesus' soul He was "satisfied"! "He shall
see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied..." (Isaiah 53:11).
This is the only place in the Tanakh where it says that God was
"satisfied" with a sacrifice and it was the sacrifice of Jesus!
The Terrible Price
Reflect for a moment on just how
terrible our sinfulness must have been for Him to only be satisfied with the
sacrifice of His Son Jesus. Jesus was beaten with a cat-o'-nine-tails, spat upon
and had parts of His beard torn from His face (Isaiah 50:6). He was punched and
smitten in the face with a staff. Then He was crucified. Crucifixion entailed
having large spikes nailed through the victim's hands and feet with a mallet
onto an upright stake. It was one of the cruelest forms of torture ever devised
by man. Just to take one breath of air, the victim had to push up from the
spikes tearing at his own flesh. He would literally babble in delirium from the
pain, driven to a point just short of passing out. How hideous our sins must
have been that God would only be satisfied with this type of death. It was while
Jesus was on the cross that God turned and forsook Him, because it was at that
precise moment that Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the world.
Greater Love than This
Perhaps the greatest revelation
of God's love for fallen man is found in the fact that God the Father was
actually pleased to give His Son over to death: "But it pleased the Lord to
bruise Him..."(Isa 53:10). What a startling thought! Would you be pleased
to have your precious son or daughter killed for a world of sinners, most of
whom would be unthankful and belligerent? We know from the prophet Ezekiel that
God has "no pleasure in the death of the wicked" speaking of the
rebellious nation of Israel (Ezek. 33:11). So why would God by pleased with the
death of His righteous and innocent Son? We are provided the answer in the New
Covenant: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John
3:16).
Of course, God was bitterly
grieved to see Jesus suffer. He certainly was not pleased to see Him go through
excruciating pain and anguish. What pleased Him was the end result of that
suffering reconciliation of us to Him!