I was having breakfast the other day with a friend. I mentioned to him that I had been studying through Leviticus and his eyes became a little glazed over. We both confessed that we haven’t studied that book enough and even though had been a pastor, he admitted that maybe he had only read it once or twice. Studying it? He couldn’t think of a time.
Then I told him of some of what I had learned from the book. We both laughed at how ignorant of the book we were. But he noted how important this was, because it increased importance of the role of the prophets and the priests. But more importantly, the visible imagery created by the rituals increased our understanding of our role and it helped us see Jesus’ life as even more important – if that was possible – than it had been in the past.
There could not be a more important role in the ritual offerings instituted by God in Leviticus than the role of the priests in general and the high priest in particular. And Christians, as a kingdom of priests, we need to consider how this affects us. We need to understand how the process of forgiveness, and how we extend forgiveness, was expressed in the Levitical offerings.
That important is demonstrated by an obscure statement by Moses to the High Priest Aaron in Leviticus 10:17-18:
17 “Why did you not eat the sin offering at the holy place? For it is most holy, and He gave it to you to bear away the guilt of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord. 18 Behold, since its blood had not been brought inside, into the sanctuary, you should certainly have eaten it in the sanctuary, just as I commanded.” (NAS)
According to Roy Gane, in the NIV Application Commentary on Leviticus, this passage has been the subject of intense debate. Biblical scholars have been divided over the question of whether “priestly consumption of a purification offering contributes to expiation or not.” Gane goes on to note that Baruch A. Levine, one of the foremost Jewish scholars on the book of Leviticus, concludes that this meal accomplished two things at the same time. First, it was “priestly enjoyment of compensation for service already rendered, including applying the blood to the altar.” Also, “it made some kind of contribution to expiation.”
Gane notes three pieces of evidence to help with all this. First, whether “a purification offering to remedy moral fault was to be eaten or not made no difference to the overall goal of the ritual: to expiate evil from the offerer’s, prerequisite to divine forgiveness… So what difference did it make whether a priest ate from the sacrifice? He was only permitted to eat a purification offering that he officiated if it was for the benefit of someone else, that is, if he was acting purely in a mediatorial capacity.”
Second, Gane says that as “mediator for another Israelite, the priest received part of that person’s purification offering by eating it, just as the Lord received the suet/fat of the same sacrifice on his altar. So there is a close parallel between the role of the priest and that of the Lord.”
Lastly, in 10:17, “the priests must eat purification offering meat to accomplish the following two goals, which would apply to this kind of sacrifice to remedy moral fault but not physical ritual impurity:
to bear the culpability of the community
to expiate on their behalf before the Lord”
According to Gane, syntax is parallel and indicates that bearing the people’s culpability and expiating for them before the Lord mean basically the same thing. As a result, “by participating with God in receiving purification offerings, the priests expiated for the people as the Lord does. He bears culpability when he frees wrongdoers from the consequences of their sins, which they would otherwise continue to bear. Thus the priests intimately participated in the process through which God extended mercy to sinners!”
Don’t gloss over that last paragraph. The priest who received the offering bore the sin of the one making the offering. God’s representative of forgiveness became culpable for the sin from which the offerer sought forgiveness. Theoretically, the priest would deserve and suffer the consequences for the sins they were participating in forgiving.
As I read that, I sank in my chair. I understood immediately what that meant, and I hope you do as well. If you or I were a priest back during that day, we would assume responsibility for every sin committed by every Joe and Suzy in the community that we officiated purification offerings. As the conduit of forgiveness, it would be as if their sin was placed upon us. The punishment for that sin would, theoretically, fall on us.
But the punishment never fell upon the priests. Though legally culpable, the priests were never punished. God himself seems to bear the punishment in some way, even then.
As priests ourselves today, we bear the weight of forgiveness as well. Forgiveness is costly to those who extend forgiveness, because they have to give up something. Something of us dies when we extend forgiveness. What dies? Pride. Anger. Hate. But what dies allows something else to live… love and mercy and grace. Getting there, however, is a process, which I will talk about in another post.
So as priests in God’s kingdom, we have a responsibility to participate in God in the forgiveness process. We need to bear the burdens of others with them. We need to relieve suffering. We need to help others, and intervene for others. In doing, we are not culpable – justice has already been executed. But we do help others appropriate the forgiveness God extends.
Now consider how the role of the priest, and particularly the High Priest, was a foreshadowing of the role of God the Son, Jesus Christ. As the great High Priest, his work was complete. His work was greater. And as God the Son, he took responsibility for sin as God the Father did in Leviticus. He was not only culpable, but received the consequences of the sin. This is why his mediation as the great High Priest is greater, superior, and eternal (see Hebrews 5-10).
Some days I can’t believe what He has done for me. Some days I’m thankful for what he has done because I need to receive His grace. I wish I could say I wake up every morning thankful for it, but to be honest, some days it doesn’t pass through my mind. But during those times when I recognize it as it passes through the connections in my brain, I am in awed by it, and though imperfect, I try to extend that same grace to others, remembering that it is indeed a process that takes time.
You think about too… Amen.
