Concerning Sin Offerings

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A monochrome graphic of a slaughtered lamb to be used for sin offerings

As I said yesterday, the Book of Leviticus deals with the activities of the Levites in their Tabernacle responsibilities. In today’s Bible reading, Moses spells out how sin offerings are to be handled.

One things that glaringly stood out as I began today’s reading was that even if you did something that you didn’t know was sin at the time or did something that made you “unclean”, but later found out it was sin, or later learned that something had made you “unclean”, God still held you responsible and you still had to make a sin offering.

You’re still guilty of, even if you didn’t know it was sin.

“That’s not fair!” I can hear someone say. “How can you be held responsible when you didn’t know at the time?”

Application

I keep referring back to The Fall of Mankind. To look at the question above — “How can you be held responsible?” — demonstrates that we don’t understand either 1) how deeply affected we are by The Fall, 2) how grievous our sin is, or most importantly 3) how holy God is.

Understanding how holy God is will explain how grievous our sin is and how deeply affected by The Fall we are. The Fall affects us down to the root of our being. That’s why theologians call it “Radical” Corruption (radical meaning “root“).

What about little children? They’re created in God’s image. But they’re still affected by The Fall. From my example above, we know that at some point, children will reach an “age of accountability”, when they will know they are guilty of sin. (Paul reminds us in the book of Romans that none of us have an excuse) When they realize that they’re guilty, they’ll need to repent of their sin and come to Jesus, or they will be as liable as the “vilest offender”.

Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

On an interesting side note, it took me a while to find an image to add above. It was difficult to find a picture of an animal sacrifice. Evidently the subject of sacrificing animals is too offensive to us, but images of Jesus wearing a thorny crown, hanging on a cross aren’t. Yet, as repulsed as we are about the subject, God required it. And He required it often.

Yes, the subject is very offensive to us. And the subject of sin was infinitely offensive to the infinitely, Holy God.

And that’s why the perfect Son of God laid down His life as our atoning sacrifice.
We were infinitely sinful.