I Sacrifici - Per la Colpa

This time we start with the Guilt Offering. The Guilt Offering is the basic and the most commonly made sacrifice. We find the Guilt Offering described in Lv 5:1-6:7 (Italian Bible: Lv 5:1-26).

Since the Guilt Offering and the Sin Offering are close to each other we need to anticipate on the Sin Offering.
They match in the fact that in both offerings an animal had to be sacrificed; that they were both compulsory and both did not produce an aromatic perfume. Both the Sin Offering as well the Guilt Offering is related to sins that were committed ignorantly, not on purpose, unknowingly. Despite their innocent appearance they were in conflict with the holiness of God and the sins made the person or persons being guilty. After becoming aware of the sin the person had to confess and repented by making the offering.

For sins that were committed consciously and intentionally no conciliation was possible! The only option was death. Neither Sin Offering nor Guilt Offering could cover the intentional sin. Intentional sin is brash, bold, direct, premeditated, and consuming. There are many descriptions in the Word of those who plan the next day’s evil when they go to sleep at night. Repentance is not in their vocabulary. One example is found in Is 5:18-23.
The people of Israel walked their way, although in an imperfect manner, with their God. Wicked people among them, who sinned intentionally, were to be eliminated amongst God’s people immediately. For them no offering would help.

But we need also to discern the difference between the Guilt Offering and the Sin Offering.
The background for the Sin Offering is the settlement of the sins as sin. The sins are a violation against the Lord. There is no possibility for repayment by the person himself; only the Sin Offering could make him free again.
The concept for the Guilt Offering on the other hand is compensation. An omission could be restored; a committed sin could be restituted; the guilt could be taken away by satisfaction.

Regarding the unintentional sin we have to consider that the term ignorantly sinning has to be taken amply. Sins that are committed in weakness are still under the law of the Guilt Offering. Within the frame of the people of God, like the Israelites, or like us as believers, the sins under the law of the Guilt Offering are eventually the most commonly occurring sins.

Let’s go back to our theme of the Guilt Offering.

Sins requiring penitence
The Guilt Offering was needed in the next cases of unintentional sins where penitence was required; Lv 5:1-5:

  1. Withholding evidence when hearing or seeing sins committed. A witness who did not come forward to testify was sinning when he had actually seen a violation. This is directly applicable on us as nowadays believers. We cannot dissociate ourselves from our environment, and especially not in relation to our brothers and sisters! When we see a brother committing a sin or going astray we have the responsibility to confront him with this. In Mt 18:15-19 we find the process described: first we have to show him his fault. If he doesn’t listen we have to bring a witness. If he still refuses we have to involve the church. In another passage Jesus says that if we are aware of a brother having something against us we are to suspend our offering at the altar (e.g. worshipping, Lord’s Supper) and first settle the matter (Mt 5: 23,24). We are called not to overlook sins committed in our environment.
  2. Touching something unclean. A Guilt Offering was required when a man or woman, under a Nazarite vow, came in contact with a dead animal. A Guilt Offering was as well part of the ceremonial cleansing of a leper. Also this type we can utilize: we also can come in contact with unholy things in our daily life, even when we don’t want to! Things of the world can defile us. Just imagine watching a movie with unholy elements, meeting people who practice ungodliness, etc.
  3. Swearing thoughtlessly. This suggests a reckless oath for good or bad or an oath that the person was not able to keep or unintentionally broke. Jesus warns us in Mt 5 (33-37) not to swear at all, but calls us to let our “yes” be “yes” and our “no” be “no”.

The Lord’s holy things
A second category of unintentional sins requiring a Guilt Offering was sinning against the holy things of the Lord; Lv 5:14-19
What were the Lord’s holy things for the Israelites?

  1. The Lord’s name is holy. The Israelites were commanded to not misuse it or take it in vain. Swearing falsely by the name of the Lord violates and brings dishonor to the Lord.
  2. The Sabbath was to be kept holy. An unintentional Sabbath violation would be one of the things that required a Guilt Offering.
  3. The offerings and the temple rites were holy. Much of the temple ceremony dealt with maintaining its holy character. An improperly trained priest could violate any part of the ordinance and be guilty.
  4. National purity was holy. The Israelites were to be holy just as their Lord God was holy. Not maintaining purity in their worship of the one true God and by their inter-marrying, they violated the Lord’s holy things.

What are some of the Lord’s holy things for the believers?

  1. The Lord’s Name. Also we are commanded to not misuse the name of the Lord. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray “Hallowed be Thy name.”
  2. The Gospel. Paul says in Gl 1:8: But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
    We are not to bring a different gospel, not to add elements or leave out fundamental principles. We are to repent from being involved in misleading or false doctrines.
  3. Our Bodies. As Paul says again in 1 Cr 6:19-20: Or, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and that you are not your own. For you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body.
    This does not only mean to abstain from physical sins were our body is involved, but also means that we have to take care for our body in a responsible and healthy way; maintaining the temple of the Holy Spirit.
  4. The Lord’s Supper. In 1 Cr 11:27-29 Paul says: Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
    We cannot always avoid that we partake in the Lord’s Supper with unconfessed sin; there can be sins in our life that we are not yet aware of. When Paul says, whoever eats or drinks in an “unworthy manner”, we have to regard the Lord’s Supper as holy. Therefore we need to pray the Lord if He will show if there are things in our lives that are not according to His thoughts. Let us take an example of David when he says in Ps 139:23-24: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Sins committed in weakness
Then there is a third category of sins that demanded a Guilt Offering. Being a member of the people of God does not make them holy and sinless. Even as believers we can be tempted to commit sins in weakness. Situations invite us to handle in a wrong way and only later we become aware of the unholy character of it. Examples are mentioned in Lv 6:1-7 (Italian Bible Lv 5:20-26):

The compensation
The law of Guilt Offering says that for the kind of sins against the holy things of the Lord and the sins committed in weakness a compensation is obligatory. Three actions have to take place to become free of guilt:
A Guilt Offering had to be made as a penalty
The loss had to be paid back to the victim
In addition the victim had to be given 20 percent of the value of the loss

The sacrifice
Then some words about the sacrifice that had to be brought, imposed by the law of the Guilt Offering.
For the first category of sins we read about three different sacrifices that could be brought for Guilt Offering, depending from the offerer’s capability:
A ram, a female lamb or goat from the flock
Or if the offerer could not afford the ram he could bring two young doves
Or if this was still too much he could bring a tenth of an ephah of fine flour
Let us keep in mind that it was the responsibility of the offerer to bring what he could afford himself. Remember, as we saw in the first study, making a sacrifice was a matter of the heart and not of economical deliberation!
For the other two categories – sins against the holy things of the Lord and sins committed in weakness – the law prescribes that only a ram from the flock could be sacrificed. No exemption was possible; probably because of the more severe nature of the sins.

Examples of unintentional sin in the Word
The Bible describes a number of occasions when Guilt Offerings were made.
The most interesting illustration of unintentional sin is told in 1 Sm 6. The Philistines had captured the ark of God. Their excitement turned to dismay as problems increased from having the ark in their possession. In particular, their god Dagon kept falling over and the people suffered from rats and tumors. Their recourse was to “invent” a Guilt Offering, for sinning against the Lord’s holy things. They sent the Ark back to Israel, adding 5 golden tumors and 5 golden rats (1 Sm 6:1-5).

Another example we find at the end of the Book of Ezra. The exiles had returned from their captivity, and Guilt and Sin Offerings had been made. Afterwards, the leaders came to Ezra and told him that the priests, Levites, and others had married foreign wives. Read Ez 9:2. Ezra was so disappointed that he literally pulled his own hair out. He asked the Levites to repent and put away their foreign wives. Many offered Guilt Offerings (Ez 10:19). They perhaps had sinned without knowledge or had sinned in weakness. Anyway it was a violation against the holy things of God: the intermarriage with foreign wives was forbidden as we know from Dt 7:3.

Unknown sin is a class of unintentional sin. A sin can be unknown because we didn’t know that an action violated the Lord’s command. It could also be because circumstances hid from us the sinful nature of our actions. Here is an example in Gn 26:8-10:
When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.” Then Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the men might have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us”
Abimelech understood very well that he would have been guilty of adultery if he had slept with Rebekah, even though the situation suggested differently.

Another incident that combines elements of unknown sin and the Lord’s holy things occurs in Joshua chapter 9. The Gibeonites, marked by the Lord for destruction by the Israelites, dressed up and pretended to be from a distant land. They asked Joshua to make a treaty with them. Though Joshua asked some probing questions, he did not inquire before the Lord before making the treaty, and he swore by the Lord to make the treaty. When the truth became known, Joshua stood by the treaty he had made by swearing on the Lord’s name, but obviously he was guilty of an unknown violation of the Lord’s commands. In this case, the guilt was incurred in ignorance. Ignorance, however, is no excuse. The guilt exists and must be dealt with.

Jesus Christ, our Guilt Offering
For the believer, our guilt offering is Jesus Christ. Restitution is our responsibility, but cleansing is offered to us by the cross.
The prophet Isaiah wrote in Is 53:10-11 (New International Version): Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the LORD makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in His hand. After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by His knowledge my righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.

The Messiah was prophesied to be our Guilt Offering. The word “justify” means to "declare not guilty.” The moral and legal debt is cancelled.
In this passage we see also the way how the guilt is compensated: by suffering. Christ’ suffering restituted our shortcomings. Our unintentional sins had to be punished, but the punishment was on Him.
Anticipating on the Sin Offering we will see that the death of Christ was necessary for that. But for the Guilt Offering it was Christ’ suffering as recompense.
Unlike the other three offering types (Burnt Offering, Grain Offering, Peace Offering) both the Sin Offering as well the Guilt Offering did not produce an aromatic smell when the sacrifice was made. Christ’ suffering and Christ’ death were not pleasant to God; they only gave the essential satisfaction.

Hb 10: 17,18 says: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

Jesus Christ, our Guilt Offering, is the eternal solution to our guilt. He offered Himself for our guilt, but we must acknowledge our guilt and accept this Guilt Offering He made for us. Then we can rejoice in the knowledge that we will be forgiven.

How to handle guilt
Here are some concrete ideas for handling guilt:

  1. Our conscience must be correctly trained. It must alert us when we have failed to do as we ought. This requires faithful teaching:
    1 Tm 1:3: As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer …
    Hb 5:11-14: We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk not solid food! … But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
  2. Not all of our sin will be known to us. This is an extension of the first point, but it also covers those times when we just feel unworthy. Now that we know the Lord instituted an offering for this, we may have confidence that this is normal and covered by the cross.
  3. Confession is better than denial. 1 Jn 1:9 validates the role that confession has in the life of the believer. It contains the promise of cleansing. By faith we know that our confessed failings will be behind us and our unknown failings brought to light and cleansed. Also confessing unknown sinfulness is therefore appropriate.
  4. When restitution is possible, we must make it. And on the other hand: when restitution is offered, we must accept it. Restitution is what uniquely distinguishes the Guilt Offering from the Sin Offering. Restitution brings healing, and cancels the legal and moral debt on the horizontal level between men.
  5. Learn the lesson, and leave it behind us. I suspect that it the most difficult point. But consider the Israelite who appears before the priest with the property of his neighbour, plus 20 percent of its value, plus the ram. When all has been offered, what else is there to do? Nothing. He has a cleared conscience. Continuing to carry the sin around as baggage is not faith and may violate the holiness of the Guilt Offering.

Will any of us ever know the Scriptures in such a way, or be so led by the Spirit, that he will never commit an unknown sin and thus bring guilt upon oneselves? Probably not. Anyone who says we can live sinlessly has a shallow view of the human heart and also no understanding of God’s righteous character. Because the Guilt Offering demonstrates God’s grace to the Israelite and to us by making a provision for not knowing and not understanding certain sins.
I sinned, incurred guilt, and repented. Jesus, my Guilt Offering, paid my debt to God. Therefore, I can let the past be the past and move on with a clear conscience.

Questions