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Well we really opened a can of worms with that first article but my intention is to make the reader "think" and hopefully begin his personal study into these areas which I address. That being said contrary to the Christian claim and New Testament teaching that blood sacrifice is the only method of atonement in the Bible, there are three methods of atonement clearly defined in the Jewish and Hebrew Scriptures:
Answer for yourself: Is it possible to understand the "sin sacrifice" without study of the dynamics involved in such a sacrifice as expounded by the Jewish Rabbis and others knowledgeable of Judaism? No, not really. Without such knowledge one approaches these "texts" and reads concepts into the often repeated word "blood" that are simply not there and you will come to see that very soon.
Answer for yourself: Do you know that all 3 of the above methods of obtaining atonement are related and can be thought of as "identical"? Can you see a link?
Maybe you can already. More, on that later when we look at "life" as related to "blood" as Judaism teaches and not "death" as related to "blood" as Christianity has taught for 2,000 years. Early on I saw it clearly in my studies in Seminary in my outside reading and in my early years of study into Judaism following Seminary. Christianity, my birth faith, is built upon "death" and Judaism is built upon "life".
Answer for yourself: Have you ever stopped long enough to wonder what the true God and the revelation of Himself to mankind was to teach? Is God focused on teaching us about "life" or "death"? There is only one correct answer to the last question. Take a guess! If you cannot see it yet from what I shared so far on atonement then we must press one for you must see this Divine truth before we finish these articles. Now we go deeper.
You can imagine my shock as a Christian pastor while studying intently the Jewish Roots of my Christian Faith that the sin sacrifice (known in the Jewish scriptures as korban chatat) did not atone for all types of sin, but rather, only for man’s most insignificant iniquity: "unintentional sins." I began having thoughts that scared me really as I was beginning to see cracks appear in my "Jesus theology" which I had trusted since I was a child. This is never easy.The facts of my study were before me; the sin sacrifice and blood sacrifice of animals has always been Biblically inadequate as found in the Hebrew Scriptures to atone for a transgression committed intentionally. The brazen sinner was barred from the sanctuary, and had to bear his own iniquity because of his rebellious intent to sin against God. The sin sacrifice was inadequate to atone for a transgression committed intentionally no matter how much "blood" was spilled or sprinkled on the altar. The Torah teaches this fundamental principle in Numbers 15:27-31.
27 And if one person sin through error (unintentional), then he shall offer a she-goat of the first year for a sin-offering. 28 And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that erreth, when he sinneth through error (unintentional), before the LORD, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven, 29 both he that is home-born among the children of Israel, and the stranger (notice....the "non-Jew" as well) that sojourneth among them: ye shall have one law for him that doeth aught in error (unintentional). 30 ¶ But the soul that doeth aught with a high hand (intentional), whether he be home-born or a stranger, the same blasphemeth the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 31 Because he hath despised the word of the LORD, and hath broken His commandment; that soul shall utterly be cut off, his iniquity shall be upon him.
I would like to include at this time a comment by a famous Rabbi on this passage which deals with the subject matter of this article:
The Stone Chumash notes the words of Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, (Moreh Nevuchin 3:41)
And the nefesh (SOUL) that make (SIN) with high handedness, {whether} from the native-born or from the convert (Gentile), scorns Hashem; cut off the nefesh (SOUL) of that one from within the nation. Because he has despised Hashem's Word and broken His Commands, that nefesh (SOUL) must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.
This statement from God immediately follows the procedure for atonement of accidental, unintentional and unwitting sins. These were sins that just happened along the way in the normal course of one's life and they just accidentally occurred. They were not premeditated. They were not planned. They were not intended to be defiant. They were thoughtless sins. They were spontaneous sins. Many were unrealized even as sins. There is a very big difference between this category of sin and deliberate, defiant, premeditated, high handed sins. Just the same, that does not let us off the hook for our sins because Leviticus 5 states that man is guilty before for "unintentional sins" and "sins of ignorance" as well.
To understand this better all that is necessary is to look around and to examine our own actions.
Each of us knows, we have all at time or times in our lives individually scorned and embarrassed God and His Laws by breaking them thus shaming His Name! That being the case, doomed. Many would say "Yes", God has clearly stated, "...cut off the nefesh (Soul/life) of that one from within nation." Even worse, God says, "his guilt remains". Christianity's answer is Jesus but Judaism says differently and they, remind you, don't have these forged Scriptures that we do in Christianity. Therefore Judaism's answer demands our utmost attention.
Answer for yourself: Does this mean that if we are not believers in the Christian Jesus that we are sentenced to wander through life carrying our increasingly heavy pack of deliberate, defiant, premeditated, high handed sins? Christianity would say "Yes", Judaism says "No". We need to look at examples in the Bible that teach us how God handled sin in the lives of others and apply these Divine Principles to our lives if we ever hope to find the truth about this matter.
King David was also involved in a deliberate, defiant, premeditated, high handed sin by killing Uriah and taking his wife, Bath-sheba... as his wife. In addition the Prophet, Nathan, said, "Why have you despised the Word of God to do this evil in His eyes?" From this we see King David was guilty of this very serious sin.
Answer for yourself: What did he do? How did he react?
King David immediately owned his own actions. He recognized his sin! He confessed his sin. He didn't hesitate! He didn't fudge on words. He said, "I have sinned against God." The incredible beauty of David, who is just like us, is that he understood his sin was against the Torah of God. He acknowledged his wrong immediately, beginning the path of repentance. David's failure was horrendous. His fall was great, but his rise through repentance was phenomenal. We see the beauty of his rise in Psalms. His tremendous repentance is recorded in Psalms 51. He confesses his sin and requests graciousness, kindness and mercy. He pleads with God to blot out his transgressions and all of this is accompanied with being cognizant of his sin and being broken in spirit and humbled in heart. Anyone who has failings of high handedness and "intentional sin" can, as we learn from Kind David, be on the road to repentance and forgiveness as he by following his example.
Answer for yourself: Let us go deeper for a second. In the above passage did you notice that the same atonement for "unintentional" sin is required by God of both the Jew and the "non-Jew"? Did you notice that the same verdict applied to both the Jew and the "non-Jew" when speaking of "intentional sin"? So does God treat both Jew and "non-Jew" the same regarding how to atone for sin? He sure does!
If you never noticed this then please take time to notice that God puts a big difference between "unintentional" and "intentional" sin but does not make any difference whatsoever between "Jew" and "non-Jews" as to how to atone for sin!
The Hebrew Scriptures teach that if a person sins unintentionally, then he shall offer a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering. The priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the person who goes astray when he sins unintentionally, making atonement for him that he may be forgiven. Now "intentional" sin is a whole other matter.
The person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien ("non-Jew"), that one is blaspheming the Lord; and that person shall be cut off from among His people, because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken His commandment (Law....66 given to the "non-Jew" in the Covenant of Noah and 613 given to the Jew in the Covenant of Moses), that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt shall be on him. But there is a remedy which we saw above for such "intentional sin".
Answer for yourself: If the sin sacrifice was necessary in order to atone for "unintentional sins" only then how can this Jesus atone for "intentional sins" when the blood sacrificial system made no such provision? That is the $64,000 question which Christianity cannot answer for all "Jesus Saves" theology falls on this one issue which lies at the heart of the Sacrificial System.
Answer for yourself: If we hold to the rule of "types and shadows" then does it not appear that if Jesus' death was somehow an atonement for sin that it only would have to apply as well ONLY to "unintentional sins" and not "intentional sins"?
Answer for yourself: What are we to do with our "intentional sins" and how are they to be atoned since the blood sacrifices never applied to "intentional sins"? Would this not apply to Jesus if we are to be true to "types and shadows"? Is Christianity right and Judaism wrong or is Judaism right and Christianity wrong? What of God's Word which is Eternal? Can God change to "Plan B" and not violate Himself? What of the God "who changes not"?
Mal 3:6 6 For I am the LORD, I change not;.... (KJV)
This is a serious question going to the very issue of the death of this Jesus for sin. Wow, what a thought and with it should come the courage to investigate the Sacrificial System of Judaism for yourself and see just how and what role the "blood" actually played in such a process and if it had anything to do actually with "forgiveness" or if it was only a vehicle for the "life" or "soul" to be placed upon the Altar. What we don't see or understand yet without more study is that in such a blood sacrifice it really is the "life", called the "Soul" in the Hebrew, and not the "blood" that is placed on the altar in the form of the "blood of the animal". The blood is but an inert vehicle that carries the Soul whereby one's Soul can be placed on the Altar in communion with God. What we find out when we do such studies is that it is not so much "the blood" which does the actual accomplishment of forgiveness but the Soul which "is in the blood".
Answer for yourself: Is this not what we saw with King David? It was he, himself, who cried out to God and had a broken heart and asked for forgiveness earnestly and repented. It was David's Soul, the "Soul/Life" in his blood, as Leviticus 17:11 says, that cried out to God in repentance. Here is a nugget: The "blood" is used in Scripture ONLY as an allegory for the Soul, that Divine Life of mankind expressed through his mind, his will, and character. It is this which is placed on the altar in the Sacrificial System and is the goal of the whole Sacrificial System which begins with repentance which achieves restored communion with God as pictured when the blood (man's Soul) is placed on the Altar with God after identifying with the animal's soul (his blood). It is the Soul, the very person himself, when he repents and turns from sin that gets God's attention and in so doing God responds with forgiveness for such repentant sin. Through the blood it is the "repentant Soul" that is placed upon the Altar with the Presence of God and this is the way it should be and is according to proper understanding of the Sacrificial System. It is the "Soul", your Soul and my Soul which repents that procures our atonement! But we never learned this in Christianity for we could only see the word "blood" and the focus was always on "blood" when the real agent procuring the atonement before God is the "life" or "Soul" in the blood. Let me show you.
Let us read the verse in the Tanakh:
11 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 maketh atonement by reason of the life.
Now the KJV:
Lev 17:11 11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Do we have an accurate translation in our Christian Old Testament? No! What is missing? "BY REASON OF THE LIFE"!
Again, the Hebrew Scriptures teaches us the truth. The Hebrew Scriptures makes is very clear and apparent as to what actually is the "atoning agent" in the whole of the Sacrificial System as it operated in the first place. Atonement is procured from "life" and not "death"! I mentioned that before.
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon: the Hebrew word for "life" in the verse is "nephesh"!
Answer for yourself: What does "nephesh" mean? It means "your Soul". It is the "Soul", your Soul which atones and which resides in "the blood" as the passages says:
life (nephesh-Soul) of the flesh is in the blood
and it is this same Soul which procures atonement for sin.
I have given it (nephesh-the Soul which is carried in our blood) to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls
So, by proxy, the blood, as the vehicle for the Soul, is placed upon the altar and this placing of the Soul on the altar following ones repentance, confession of sin, prayer, restitution if needed, and charity atones for "intentional sin" with God. Don't get confused by the reiteration in the second clause of Lev. 17:11 since Hebrew is a language of synonymous parallelism and often says the same things twice in a row as we find here. The second clause reiterates the first. As the Soul is "in the blood" this same blood, by carrying the Soul, allows the Soul to be placed on the altar with God when this same blood is placed on the altar. So goes the blood, so goes the Soul. Understand it is the Soul by being placed on the altar following repentance that the picture is complete; namely, that all is well with this Soul representing the person bringing the sacrifice since he had been assumed to have repented, confessed his sin, been remorseful of his sin, prayer, made restitution if needed, and provided charity before brining his offering and identifying with the innocent animals by laying on of hands. By proxy the animal's blood and Soul will be the actual Soul placed on the altar but through identification it is reckoned by God as if the person had brought his own blood and his own Soul before God and placed it on the altar. Thus you now see how the sacrificial system worked in detail and how now the "death of another" for the guilty has no place in Judaism or with God. This is the true "type" and "shadow" that we should have learned from the beginning.
This is the principle for all atonement; that which required the Sacrificial System (unintentional sin) as well as that which did not (intentional sin).
Answer for yourself: What should we learn here?
For "unintentional sin" your Soul was placed on the altar with God by the Priest for you but for "intentional sin" your repentance before God was necessary before God would accept your Soul on the true altar in Heaven (remember the "pattern in the Mount"). For in this way ONLY, and by that I mean repentance for "intentional sin", would God accept your Soul as atonement for your personal "intentional sin". And this repentance required several things that we will get into in later articles.
Now let us look at the definition in detail as taken from Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon:
5315 nephesh- a soulself, life, a creature, a person, an appetite, a mind, a living being, a desire, an emotion, a passion
Answer for yourself: What do these last 5 statements all have to say about "atonement"? Simply, that it resides in the free will of mankind and in his desires to live for God or not, to repent when it hits home to him that he has sinned against the Laws of God. It resides in the desires and "appetites" of man either to repent or not and of course you see immediately the connection to his emotions such as the presence of brokenness or not and others issues of the heart that affect his heart and his will to repent.
As Christians we have always heard of animal sacrifices and the blood being sprinkled on the altar and that this is how one made atonement for their sin. Truthfully, this interpretation and understanding voiced by Christianity concerning the Sacrificial System and atonement is not actually correct and fails to teach the truth about the Sacrificial System and how one actually obtained "atonement". The reader will hopefully now come to see this the more he reads and studies these articles. I would find these truths out when accidentally reading a Christian commentary on Leviticus and would be shocked to read the real dynamics of "how" the sinner actually obtained atonement "before" the actual animal was slain and its blood placed on the altar. And this, mind you, was never taught to me in church or in Seminary; I would find out accidentally when studying Judaism intently for several years following Seminary while searing out "the mind of Christ" (through the eyes of Judaism). In fact although the blood is a big part of the sacrificial system and although we read "blood, blood, blood" all the time in these passages actually it is not the "blood" at all at obtains one's atonement; the "blood" is actually "inert" and has no power whatsoever. The "active" agent in procuring one's atonement was one's previous repentance, his prayers, his contrite and broken heart, and his deeds of charity and it was these actions, if he did them and which were done long before he brought a animal or purchased an animal at the Temple, that made his atonement and restored his right-standing before God. If the sinner was repentant and his life exhibited these spiritual efforts then his soul was "at-that-moment" [notice the word-play with "atonement"] considered by God as "if it had never sinned". Then and ONLY THEN was he commanded of God to go to the Temple and bring a "blood sacrifice" and put that blood on the altar.
Answer for yourself: And why was that? Simply because the blood of the animal was the vehicle for the animal's soul, his "life" actually. The sinless animal's blood, in reality his "Soul", was put upon the altar in the form of his very own blood. Now the repentant sinner was not required to place his "life" or his "blood" on the altar for obvious reasons but following his authentic repentance then he was able by "proxy" to lay hands on that innocent animal and in so doing identify with this animal and the animal became his substitute and vehicle through this laying on of hands in which the repentant's sinner's life (his own blood, his own Soul) was reckoned as if it were placed on the altar in the form of "blood" instead of "blood/Soul" of the innocent animal. Thus it was not the animal and his life that was in communion with God or restored to communion with God pictured when placed on the altar but the repentant sinner who, through identification with the "innocent animal", was making a statement that his life had been restored to communion with God and it was this same repentant sinner that made a public demonstration of this Spiritual fact through this sacrifice and in so doing well telling God and all mankind that all was well with "his Soul" by going through with the animal sacrifice.
Answer for yourself: What should this teach us? The Sacrificial System is but a "picture" demonstrating for us one's Spiritual Condition with God that was obtained "before" he ever brought the sacrifice in the first place. It is but a picture of the spiritual reality that the one bringing the sacrifice was really placing "his Soul" on the altar to commune with God and this was again was done through identifying with the "blood/Soul" of the innocent animal. So if you get what I am teaching the Sacrificial System obtained "nothing" for those bringing the sacrifices.The "shedding of blood" in the Sacrificial System OBTAINED NOTHING" for the sinner. It was all about what he had done before God about his sin before he got there.
Answer for yourself: What does this say to us about the shed blood of Jesus as some form of atonement for us now that you know the truth? What does that do to the teaching of "types and shadows" as applied to Jesus' death? Could we have been misled as Christians and Judaism be correct all these years and we not know it because our Christian Bibles are "fixed" by Rome to hide the truth about how the Sacrificial System actually worked and this mind you was done to make sure that few, if any, found out the truth behind the Roman presentation of the "Jesus Story".
Answer for yourself: But what about Isaiah chapter one where it appears God does not want animal sacrifices and admonishes the people bringing them? That is an often repeated question that must be dealt with.
When you read Isaiah chapter one you see that God says that He is angry with the senseless killing of animals and most Christians read this as God is saying that the Sacrificial System is obsolete and is being "passed away" only to be later replaced by the death of Jesus.
Answer for yourself: Is there any validity to this idea?
We need to realize first off that the context of Isaiah chapter 1 refers to where non-repentant sinners were coming to the altar and slaying animals but their unrepentant Souls before God were not worthy to be placed on the altar with God and in so doing they were actually lying to God about their "repentant" condition as well as the Priests and others who witnessed their sacrifices. What we need take note of here is that these sacrificers were making a false declaration as to their spirituality before God as well as man and although man might not see the true nature of their spiritual standing before God the Creator sure did and seeing the "non-repentant" hearts of those just going through the motions and just killing animals "on the way to church" admonishes the useless and wanton destruction of life when those doing so were only "lying" to themselves and God as well. Thus, as we have learned, the Soul was to be placed on the altar which was to be a picture of the repentant condition of the Soul of the sinner but in this case this was not the true picture of the "blood" or "Soul/life" of the sinner who had brought such sacrifices without repentance in his life. Now you can see the importance of prayer and repentance before God in the Sacrificial System as it is connected with either "obtaining atonement" and "not obtaining atonement" and the senselessness of a later developed theological "vicarious atonement" created by Rome which lies at the very center of Christianity today which required no repentance.
Answer for yourself: Then is it beginning to appear that something other than "blood" is really "the" key to one obtaining atonement? It sure is.
Man is responsible, both "Jew" and "non-Jew" to place his repentant Soul before God in order to atone for his "intentional sins". It is rather simple when you see it. Is is our very "life", our "Soul" that resides "in our blood" that is the actual atoning agent if and when it repents, prays, confesses, and returns to God in obedience to His Laws and Commandments. This understanding always has and always will not allow the death of the "innocent" for the guilty let alone one die for another no matter how ennobling such a death might be considered later.
Let us continue in the next article in this series.