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May 28, 2025 |
| The Guilt Offering | ||
This study is about something the Bible calls the guilt offering.
Guilt is what we feel when we've failed to meet the standard.
We aren't talking about being guilty, like being declared guilty for something we have done, but feeling guilt. When we feel guilt, we often feel like everyone is looking at us, even when no one is.
The Bible talks about guilt in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, there was an offering for guilt. We'll look at that as our starting point. We'll see what that was about.
Then we will see if that applies in the New Testament. When we are done, we'll understand something Paul says that few Christians understand.
Judaism had about 4 different kinds of sacrifices, depending on how you count them. They weren't all for sin, and they didn't all involve animals. Many people don't understand that. Some of the sacrifices were thank offerings and love offerings. But two of them were for sin.
Everyone knows the Sin Offering. The person seeking atonement for his sins would bring a goat or a sheep and place his hand on the animal. Then the animal was sacrificed, and some of its blood was splashed on the altar.
Given that there was a Sin Offering that covered sin, you might wonder why there were two kinds of offerings for sin. You would expect the Sin Offering to take care of all sin. Many people have wondered about that. The other kind of offering for sin was called the Guilt Offering, but very few Christians know of it. It was very similar to the Sin Offering, making people wonder even more why there are two.
From the Christian perspective, we know that Jesus' sacrifice of himself was the one-time offering for sin. The book of Hebrews tells us about that. Therefore his sacrifice replaced the Sin Offering and eliminated the need for it.
But what about this Guilt Offering? What is our relationship to it? That's what we'll look at.
As I said, many people have been confused by the two sin offerings in Judaism. From Old Testament times and even now, people have trouble telling the difference between the sins that require a Sin Offering and those that require a Guilt Offering
Both were for unintentional sins. Both required an animal sacrifice. To help us, God provided examples of the kind of sins that were "guilt" sins. These were to lead us to the underlying principle.
I'll only look at one example.
Now if a person sins after he hears a public oath to testify when he is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise known, if he does not tell it, then he will bear his guilt. (Leviticus 5:1)
In this example, a witness hasn't told the whole truth, but he didn't lie either. The 9th Commandment is also an example of a bigger principle, like all of the commandments. The 9th commandment example is also worded in terms of being a witness, but it talks about being a false witness, that is, lying on the witness stand. That isn't the case for this guilt example. He didn't break the 9th Commandment by bearing false witness; he just didn't tell all of the truth, but he still doesn't feel good about what he did. He feels guilt.
Even with this example and others, people have trouble understanding the difference. Some don't realize these are examples, so they limit the guilt sins to only the things listed in the examples. Others can't see the difference between the guilt sins and the moral sins in the Ten Commandments.
I think the proper understanding is not so difficult. These sins are things that you are doing or did do that you don't feel good about. They are those things you may have done that didn't break a commandment, but you still feel guilty about what you did. Or, they are those things that you may have done that did break a commandment, but you only realized it now, at a much later time. In both cases, the result is that you are left feeling guilt.
So the Guilt Offering was for dealing with the guilt you feel for doing something that wasn't a moral code violation.
We need to understand God's perspective on this. We might think that we are feeling guilt, but for no reason, because we didn't do anything wrong. Therefore we just need to work through it. But, from God's perspective, it was still a sin.
He shall also bring his guilt offering to Yahweh for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin. (Leviticus 5:6)
In this verse, we see that there was an offering that needed to be made to atone for this guilt. We also see that this offering is called both a guilt offering and a sin offering. Therefore, a Guilt Offering was a kind of Sin Offering. Therefore, guilt is a sin. That might be shocking to some people.
We might wonder why it was a sin when it wasn't in the moral law. Isn't that unfair to have sins that aren't in the moral law? How are we supposed to know about them if they aren't in the moral law?
That's the right question to ask. We'll start by asking a different question: what's the source of guilt? The answer is: our conscience. Each of us was born with a built-in understanding of right and wrong that comes from God. Paul talks about this in the book of Romans. The problem is that a conscience can become what he calls "seared."
We sear our meat on the grill to seal in the juices. That's good for meat, but bad for a conscience. If we do something wrong over and over, our conscience becomes numb to it, and the "juices," in finger quotes, that would make us feel guilt for it, stop flowing.
Therefore God gave the written law to show us what was wrong in the areas where our conscience has become seared. If we know what is wrong and stop doing it, our conscience will, in time, function again in that area.
But the written law can't cover every possible situation. If it were tried, it would be too long to read and impossible to learn.
So God's intent was that the law would only restore the conscience, not replace it. Therefore the conscience was always to be the source of right and wrong, because it knows all of what is right and wrong. That means it triggers on some things that the law doesn't say are wrong. It functions through guilt, so we feel these as pangs of guilt where we don't think we've done anything wrong.
So how do we connect this to the Christian life? Some of the Bible's examples of guilt sins don't even apply to our lives. For example, how would we mishandle things in the temple?
For whoever is doubtful and eats is condemned because it is not in faith, for everything that is not from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)
When he says "doubt" about eating, he means doubting that it is right to eat some food, but eating it anyway. He also uses the word faith, which is the opposite of doubt. You cannot have doubt and faith at the same time. As your doubt increases, faith decreases, which causes doubt to increase even more.
In this chapter, Paul has been talking about eating, drinking, and days of observance, not only about eating. He is specifically talking about being doubtful about doing any of these, but again, these are only examples. Generally, he is speaking about doing anything with doubt; therefore he says, "everything that is not from faith is sin."
Paul doesn't use the word "guilt", but that's his focus. If you eat food that you doubt you should be eating, that results in guilt.
This idea will be a shock to most Christians, as they only understand sin as doing something wrong. They don't understand why they feel guilt sometimes, so they shrug it off until it goes away.
As Christians, we should not be living by the law. Its purpose was to help restore a seared conscience. We should be living by the Spirit, who restores our conscience and uses it to show us what is wrong and when we have done wrong. Ideally, the written law should only be used to explain why something is wrong that our conscience has told us is wrong. Guilt is an important aspect of Christianity - not something to be discarded.
Our original question was whether Jesus' sacrifice also replaces the Guilt Offering. The answer is yes. His sacrifice replaced all the sacrifices … for those who believe.
We don't always recognize what a blessing this covenant is to us because we've never needed to make an animal sacrifice. We don't need to make a trip to a distant temple, buy an animal when we get there, and wait in line for a priest.
All we need to do is ask for forgiveness. It's easy, and we can do it anywhere. Sometimes that seems too easy, and we should have to do more.
Really, we should ask forgiveness for any kind of sin.
Still, forgiveness requires a few things:
Having done those, all that is left is to ask for forgiveness.
Then comes the hard part, letting go of it. We need to accept that we are forgiven. The guilt is gone, but the memory is still there. It's natural to be reminded of it and to have regrets. But the regrets are only there to help you learn from what happened and why and how. There is no need to ask for forgiveness again; it's gone as far as God is concerned. You've been washed by the blood of the lamb.