Atonement and Animal Sacrifices: What Do They Mean?

“Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest” (Hebrews 3:1).

Many kinds of thoughts swirl through our minds every day—anxious ones, wrong ones, inaccurate ones. Pressures, disappointments, memories, ambitions, and plans can weigh heavily upon our hearts. But the greatest of all thoughts is the Lord Jesus, and in Hebrews 3:1, God commands believers to fix their thoughts firmly on Him. He is the anchor of our souls (Hebrews 6:19), and when we fix our minds on Him, making a concerted effort to meditate on His work, our minds receive firm consolation (Hebrews 6:18).

How often do you think about Jesus? What place does He hold among the many thoughts you think each day?

In our last devotional, we traveled to the dark hill of Calvary to behold the dying Savior upon the Cross and to hear His final words, signifying the consummation of the great redemptive plan of God. Now, it’s time to look a little more closely at the significance behind the spectacle. One way we can do this is by studying the important theological words associated with the atonement. What better place to start than the word “atonement” itself?

From the beginning, God has required that blood be shed for people to be forgiven. Because we deserve death for our crimes against God (Romans 6:23), only the death of a perfect sacrifice on our behalf can remove sin’s guilt and penalty.

In the Old Testament, God required that animals be sacrificed so that their blood would atone for the Israelites' sin (Hebrews 9:22). On the great Day of Atonement, year by year, the priest would enter the tabernacle, bringing with Him the blood of an animal, which he would sprinkle before the ark of the covenant (Leviticus 16:15-19), a symbol of God’s presence with His people (Numbers 10:33; I Samuel 4:4; cf. Hebrews 9:24). (For more detail, read Leviticus 16 to see what measures the priest would take to cleanse the Holy Place from the Israelites' uncleanness and to remove their sin.) The symbolism suggests that God would look upon the blood of the animal, and His wrath would be appeased.

But . . . Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin! (Hebrews 10:4) Instead, it was a shadow of what Jesus would later do. When God saw the blood of animals, it would “remind” Him of the later work of His Son, just as today He sees Jesus’ blood upon believers’ hearts, reminding Him of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Atonement, then, is a word that entails the sacrifice of one on behalf of another. Jesus atoned for our sin when He died on the Cross by taking the punishment we deserve, cleaning away our uncleanness and guilt.

No matter how difficult life gets, this thought should stabilize you. Whatever you are doing, planning, experiencing—you deserve to be dead (and worse!) right now. Let the thought of God’s mercy, offered through the atonement of Christ, overwhelm all the other thoughts going through your head today.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.