The Beauty of the Cross

The Beauty of the Cross
Friday, February 15, 2019 by Zach Hunter

After a recent evening at church we discussed some of the different kinds of sacrifices the Israelites had to perform. There are a lot, many of them during celebrations or to remember specific events from their history where God delivered them. I found myself intrigued and so I went to Leviticus and tried to read some of them for myself.
When my head stopped spinning I found myself looking back over chapter 4 which defined different sins and what had to be done to be forgiven for those sins.

Rather than try and put it in my own words I am going to quote one of them here (Leviticus 4:3-12):

“If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without defect as a sin offering[a] for the sin he has committed. 4 He is to present the bull at the entrance to the tent of meeting before the Lord. He is to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it there before the Lord. 5 Then the anointed priest shall take some of the bull’s blood and carry it into the tent of meeting. 6 He is to dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle some of it seven times before the Lord, in front of the curtain of the sanctuary. 7 The priest shall then put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense that is before the Lord in the tent of meeting. The rest of the bull’s blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 8 He shall remove all the fat from the bull of the sin offering—all the fat that is connected to the internal organs, 9 both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which he will remove with the kidneys— 10 just as the fat is removed from the ox sacrificed as a fellowship offering. Then the priest shall burn them on the altar of burnt offering. 11 But the hide of the bull and all its flesh, as well as the head and legs, the internal organs and the intestines— 12 that is, all the rest of the bull—he must take outside the camp to a place ceremonially clean, where the ashes are thrown, and burn it there in a wood fire on the ash heap.”

All of that for one sin...one. The chapter describes a total of 5 and the steps required for sacrifice for each one, partially I imagine because there wouldn’t be enough room for more. I shudder to imagine what would happen if every sin and it’s required steps were to be written down, because I imagine it would make War and Peace look positively puny. Worse, if we still had to do those things to be forgiven our sins I at least would never him time for anything else. My day would probably be wake up, get dressed, go to work, sin on the ride over because somebody cut me off, sin at work because I am in customer service and anyone who works with customers will understand what I mean, sin on the way home because another person cuts me off then sin at home as I rant about my day. The next week would be spent preparing my sacrifices and going through them with my priest, with a few more possible added in for impatience during the buying the of the sacrifices.

This highlights one of the beauties of the Cross, the forgiveness of all our sins. We just saw the tortuous procedures for forgiveness of sin prior to the Cross and now our sins have already been forgiven. When we sin now, and lets be honest we do...we really do all we need to do is confess it with our mouth and ask God for forgiveness. Boom. Done.

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