More Sacrifices

Leviticus 4-6

            I have struggled with today’s reading. I’m writing this after an hour’s study. So, let me start by repeating myself: don’t worry if you don’t understand everything in the Bible, and don’t worry if some of these regulations in Leviticus make your head swim. Maybe someday you’ll come back to it and on a second or third or fourth reading, it will make more sense to you.

            Today, I want only to highlight one detail in the so-called sin offering and to reflect on a phenomenon common to the sin and to the guilt offerings.

            The detail? It’s this: the sin offering is conducted differently depending on who it’s for. If it’s a priest or the whole community, some of the blood was sprinkled inside the tabernacle. If it’s for an individual, all the blood remains outside the tabernacle. I think this makes an important point: from a human point of view, not all sin is equal. Some sin is more damaging in its human effects than others. Consider: if a regular, man-in-the-pew Christian commits adultery, that’s bad. He has damaged his marriage, perhaps irreparably, and he has brought dishonor onto the church (1 Corinthians 6:12:20). But if a pastor commits adultery, all that is true and the damage to the faith of his people is extraordinary, so much so that some might even abandon the faith altogether, thinking, “How can a man of God fall so horribly.” I think that’s worth considering, and it’s worth two things: 1) holding our leaders accountable, especially in the church, 2) being aware of the unique temptations that Satan places on them because of the consequences of their fall.

            The other thing I’ve been struggling with this morning is the emphasis in Leviticus 4-5 on unintentional sin. (The word “unintentional” is used six times in these two chapters.) What’s been bothering me is that, at first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any way out for someone who intentionally sins. I suppose part of the point is to demonstrate that sin is an affront to God and that to purposely insult Him is disastrous. But, still, doesn’t God forgive all sins? I have two thoughts. First, when we sin against better knowledge, that poses a terrible risk to faith. Intentional sin is a bit like Pharaoh hardening his heart; it runs the risk of driving out the Holy Spirit and thereby killing one’s faith. Care is needed: there is intentional sin and there are sins of weakness and they sometimes feel similar. I think of a person with an addiction: they don’t want to do it again; they know they shouldn’t; but they do. That’s a little different than just saying, “I don’t care what God says; I want to do this.”

            That leads to my second thought. How can deliberate sin be forgiven? Commentator Victor Hamilton drew my attention to Numbers 5:6-8, about which he notes, “What is novel and crucial in the passage in Numbers is that confession is essential in the case of a deliberate sin. It must succeed conviction and precede restitution. Thus the sin moves into the category of inadvertent sins and may be expiated” (Hamilton, 261). Confession, repentance, contrition—these things are essential. They are essential for any sin we commit, as Luther notes in the Small Catechism, “Before God we should plead guilty of all sins, even those we are not aware of, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer.” They are even more essential in the case of deliberate, faith-endangering sin. If such a sin is like a hardening of one’s heart, repentance is like the breaking of that heart into pieces, following which the Holy Spirit can re-enter that heart and make it alive again. There’s so much to say here, because repentance is also a work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one, working through God’s Word of Law, that convicts us of sin, casts down our faulty foundations. So, we don’t want to leave the impression that we somehow prepare ourselves for salvation through our repentance, yet we have to emphasize the importance of repentance in our restoration.