[This is the second part of a three part series on God’s Forgiveness. Part one is “Did God Forgive People Before Jesus?” and part three is “Jesus’ Death and God’s Forgiveness.”]

Does God need blood to forgive people? Of course not!

Do you need something to die or bleed for you to be able to forgive someone? I hope not. God doesn’t either.

“What about the sacrificial system and Jesus being the perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins?” you ask.

The most straightforward answer is that the sacrificial system was never about killing things so that God would or could forgive people. The sacrificial system was always about people offering something of value to God to help them get their hearts right with God. The sacrificial system was never about changing God or God’s heart, it was about changing ours.

Redemption, atonement, being reconciled with God are things that God has always wanted for us and has always eagerly given to people who were truly repentant – regardless of whether anything was killed or burned. The sacrificial system was a way to help people get on the same page as God about their sins, to repent and be forgiven. It was a mechanism for getting our hearts right with God so that we could receive what God has always longed to offer us.

If this is still confusing, here are some things that might be helpful to know about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament or the Tanak (See Leviticus 4 and 5):

1. Animals were a store of value in the agrarian society for which the sacrificial system was written.   Cows, goats, sheep, and birds were all stores of value. They would have been traded for other things or killed and eaten. In the sacrificial system, these stores of value were offered to God. The exceptional thing in this is not that the animals were killed. They were kept around to be killed. The exceptional thing is that their owners gave up their economic and culinary benefit to get right with God. The equivalent in today’s society might be burning up a stack of paper currency. The significance here is that something of value was being offered to God, not something that bleeds.
2. Not everything offered for the forgiveness of sins had blood. One of the things I love about the sacrificial system found in the Old Testament is that it was scalable based on a person’s wealth. If someone couldn’t afford to sacrifice a lamb, they could sacrifice two doves and their sins would be forgiven. If they were so poor that they couldn’t afford two doves, they could sacrifice a few pounds of flour and their sins would be forgiven. One of the interesting things about flour, is that flour doesn’t bleed. Even in the specifics of the sacrificial system, it is clear that it wasn’t blood that God was interested in.
3. At times God tells people that God isn’t really interested in sacrifices. Numerous times throughout the Old Testament God makes it clear that what God is really after is not burnt offerings but love for God, mercy towards others, repentance, contrition, obedience, justice for the poor and oppressed, and faithfulness to God (See: Psalm 50:7-15, Psalm 51:17, Proverbs 15:8, Isaiah 1:10-20, Hosea 6:6). God isn’t after blood. God is after our hearts.

The sacrificial system was never about God needing blood. It was a ritualistic way for people to get on the same page as God and offer God what God has always truly been after – us.

But if God doesn’t need blood to forgive, then why did Jesus die?  If God was already forgiving sins long before Jesus, why did Jesus come? What difference did Jesus make? What did Jesus do? How could Jesus be the atoning sacrifice for our sins if God didn’t need sacrifice to be at-one (atonement) with us?

We’ll explore those important questions in the next post, so stay tuned – or better yet, subscribe by email at the top or bottom of the page.