The sin offering and Christian worship (Leviticus 4 and 5)

As with the other offerings, there are some important lessons for our worship of God from the sin offering. What are some of them?

First, we should be thankful that we have a high priest, Jesus Christ, who has never failed, who never had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins. Jesus is our priest, who is our representative, and he perfectly and completely fulfilled all the demands put upon him by God.

Second, we should learn that the biggest dangers to our spiritual walk are little, inadvertent sins. Such can happen in unsuspecting ways. For example, the sin of covetousness can happen anywhere. When that happens, we need to go to God and ask him for Christ’s sake to cleanse us from the polluting effects of external things.

Third, the details of the sin offering remind us that sins connected to the worship of God are more serious that sins found elsewhere. More was required of the priests and of the elders of the community for inadvertent failures in public worship that was asked of politicians and ordinary people when they became unclean accidentally. For example, it is worse for us as Christians to have wandering thoughts during a church service that it is for us to have them at the dinner table. The first is inadvertent sin, the other is not.

Confession of sin is an important part of corporate Christian worship. We gather to worship the Lord, an activity that involves giving to God certain requirements and receiving particular blessings from him. He requires us to confess that we are sinners, and he assures us that when we do we will receive from him a full and free pardon. We don’t come to him leaning on an animal sacrifice. Instead we come, leaning the full weight of our souls on Jesus Christ; we don’t come with a sacrifice about to be slain, but with One that was slain at Calvary.