Thoughts on Leviticus 1-2

Today’s reading: Leviticus 1-2; Colossians 3

My thoughts on Leviticus 1 and 2 are not really thoughts on the content of these first two chapters so much as they are important things to realize and pay attention to as we are going through Leviticus. The first one, and probably most important to understand, is that none of these offerings or sacrifices were for the forgiveness of sin, and the second is that there are important distinctions between how Israel was to make these offerings and how other cultures around them made offerings to their gods.

These offerings do not forgive sin

There is a very common misunderstanding among Christians today that the sacrifices and offerings Israel made granted forgiveness of sin. You hear this both from the average Christian sitting in a church, and you hear it at times from pastors and teachers. It seems like it generally comes from knowing that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice for sin, and that He is called our Passover lamb, so His is a greater sacrifice than the other sacrifices Israel made. Carrying that understanding back into Leviticus then, the assumption is read into the text that these sacrifices and offerings forgave sin, but only temporarily, requiring you to keep coming back for forgiveness over and over again, much like the Catholic understanding of confession today.

Pay attention as you read Leviticus though and you will see that these sacrifices do not address forgiveness of sin against God. There is one sacrifice often translated “sin offering” in English translations, but that is a poor rendering of the Hebrew and we will probably talk about that when we get there…

But the big question for a lot of Christians then is, if these sacrifices and offerings aren’t for the forgiveness of sin, then what are they for?

On the one hand, if we drop the idea that it is all about sin and pay attention as we read, we will get clued in on what they were for from the text. Some of the offerings are gratitude offerings, giving back to Yahweh what He has blessed them with as a reminder to the person making the offering that their blessings are not just good luck, and are not the result of some other god making the crops grow well, but are a direct gift and blessing from God. There are a handful of sacrifices and offerings like this, that are more about gratitude and remembering, but the majority of regulations in Leviticus are about sacred space.

Yahweh is holy. He is perfect and uncorrupted, and so the space where He resides must be kept sacred an undefiled. If He is to continue to reside among them, they must maintain sacred space, and this is the point of most of the Levitical regulations.

This is why we see language of “clean” and “unclean” throughout the book. A situation or circumstance that makes a person unclean doesn’t make them morally corrupt, but it does make them unfit to occupy sacred space. Even some of the priestly work would make the priest unclean and he would have to follow a prescribe ritual to be made clean again before he could return to service in the tabernacle, so we know that “unclean” does not equate to “sinful” since it happens in the normal course of life and service to God.

The only sacrifices that could be called forgiving sin are only given for unintended violations; times when a person, or the community at large, violated God’s commands without realizing it. Once it is recognized, they can make offerings to be “forgiven” for the sin they didn’t realize they were committing, but even still this is about sacred space as the closer that person enters into sacred space before Yahweh, the larger a sacrifice is required (e.g. larger offering for a priest versus the average citizen that doesn’t go into the tabernacle to make offerings).

So how is Jesus’ sacrifice better?

So if it is not that the Levitical offerings forgave sin but just had to be repeated over and over, how is it that Jesus’ sacrifice is like them, but better?

There is way more to that question that I am going to cover here, but in short, we can think about the forgiveness of sin as a big part of what makes Jesus’ sacrifice so much greater.

In Israel, there was no forgiveness of intentional sin, but in Christ we are forgiven for any and all sins, whether intentional or unintentional. This forgiveness though comes, not because we made a sacrifice in the temple, but because Jesus made a single sacrifice once and for all, and we are identified with Him and that sacrifice through faith. So if we, by faith, are in Christ, then we receive the forgiveness of our sins and inherit His worthiness to enter into sacred space. This is why, while Jesus was on the cross, the veil in the temple, blocking access to the most holy place, was torn in two, and why Peter, in the New Testament, can say that Christians are a royal priesthood. In Christ, all of our unworthiness to enter into sacred space has been resolved and we now have full, unfettered access to the Father. This is no longer graduated access, and we no longer have to “refresh” our cleanliness or worthiness to enter deeper into sacred space, but we are made perfect in Him and brought near before the throne of grace.

It is not because Jesus’ sacrifice was just a more permanent version of the Levitical offerings that it is a better sacrifice, but because it is qualitatively different, and offers us something that the Levitical system never could, forgiveness of sin and full access to God.

These offerings are unlike offerings to other gods

The other thing I wanted to point out is that the Levitical offerings have some key differences from the religious offerings of Israel’s neighbors.

I was going to talk more about this, but the first part took a lot longer than I had intended, so I’m just going to point out the obvious and call it a day for now.

But all the offerings to Yahweh are burned up, and this is a big deal. For the worship of other gods, they would leave food out because they believed their offerings were sustaining their gods, that the gods would consume the offerings they were making. Yahweh though, by having everything either be burned up or set aside to be taken by the priests (not left on the altar over night or anything), distinguishes His worship (and thus Himself) from those other gods.

There is a lot more to say on this and other distinctions, and we will probably talk more about it as we get further into Leviticus, but I wanted to seed that thought up front, that some of the rules and regulations that maybe seem a little odd to us would have made a theological statement to Israel and the surrounding nations that He is not like these other gods.