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Atonement

Prologue

We examined the well-being sacrifices and touched on their significance/fulfilment in Christ over the last two weeks. Now we’ll turn our attention to the atoning sacrifices

Atonement - English origin

To understand the meaning of atonement, we can break it down into its three constituent parts: at-one-ment. The word refers to some sort of conflict between parties, and the process of resolving that conflict. It carries a sense of reconciliation or repair of relationship.

Atoning sacrifices

Grain offering

The grain offering serves an atoning function if offered as a substitute purgation sacrifice.

Too long, please open your Bible Leviticus 5: 11-13

Guilt/reparation offering

The guilt offering was designed to atone for specific sins, particularly those involving desecration of holy things and sins that required restitution (such as theft or deceit).

Too long, please open your Bible Leviticus 5:14 - 6:7

Zacchaeus goes even over this requirement when he makes a promise to Jesus

Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” Luke 19:8

Sin/purgation offering

The purgation offerings were applied not just in cases that were expressly sinful, but involved ritual impurity. The logic is that sins/impurity was “attracted” to the temple, and they had to be cleansed. Atonement is a ritual procedure that removes the contamination of these impurities from the sanctuary so that they don’t build up and cause God to abandon it.

With respect to sin, primary purpose of the purgation offering was to atone for unintentional sins by purifying the sanctuary from impurity caused by those sins (Leviticus 4 - 5:13). Depending on who sinned and the type of the offence, the blood of the animal which was killed was applied on different parts of the sanctuary.

It is important to state that there is no accommodation within the sacrificial system for the atonement of wilful/intentional sins (Numbers 15: 30-31), and sins which polluted or defiled the land; sexual sins, idolatory and bloodshed (Leviticus 18-20, Numbers 35:33). The only way to resolve the sin on the land was exile or death of the offender(s).

Ritual Impurity

Some ritual impurities are minor and resolve with the coming of sundown and a bath (Leviticus 15: 5-15); purifying the person, but some are so strong that the impurity essentially stains the sanctuary - we see purgation offerings used in the ritual cleansing of a woman after childbirth (Leviticus 12), the purification of a leper (Leviticus 14), and the cleansing of those who had become unclean through contact with a corpse (Numbers 19). It is important to note that the blood from the purgation offering was never applied on the people.

The reason that ritual impurity is to be dealt with (both major and minor) is that at the root of all conditions that made people unclean is death/mortality or procreation, and these are the opposite of God’s status as holy. In an impure state, however, a person could not come into the temple to fellowship with God.

Jesus and ritual impurity

Jesus, not just being the temple but also being God, obliterated the root causes of major ritual impurity when He came in contact with them during His earthly ministry.

“Command the sons of Israel that they send away from the camp every leper and everyone having a discharge and everyone who is unclean because of a dead person. “You shall send away both male and female; you shall send them outside the camp so that they will not defile their camp where I dwell in their midst.” Numbers 5: 2-3

Jesus heals a man with scale disease (Mark 1:40–45), then he heals a women with an abnormal genital discharge (Mark 5:25–34), and then he touches and raises the corpse of a twelve-year-old girl (Mark 5:21–24). Mark even records these events in the same order as listed in Numbers 5:2-3.

In the Gospels, we see the scope of impurity being expanded to include being occupied by evil spirits. Jesus dealt with those too.

Too long, please open your Bible Mark 1: 23-25

Jesus eventually dealt with death (the ultimate impurity) itself when He resurrected from the dead.

Too long, please open your Bible Romans 1: 1-4