Bible Synapse
Did animal sacrifices take away sin?
Hard question · Salvation and the Christian life · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
For the sin of the whole congregation, “the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them”.
And he shall do with the bullock as he did with the bullock for a sin offering, so shall he do with this: and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them.
The life is in the blood: “I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls”.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
The law was a shadow of good things to come; “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins”.
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
The objection
Leviticus says again and again that when the priest made atonement with a sacrifice, the sin “shall be forgiven”, and that the blood makes atonement for the soul. Hebrews says it is “not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins”. Did the sacrifices take away sin or not?
The answer
Leviticus says who forgives and on what terms; Hebrews says what the animal’s blood could do in itself. In Leviticus the forgiveness is God’s. The Hebrew of 4:20 is passive, ‘it shall be forgiven them’ (nislach), and God says of the blood, “I have given it to you upon the altar” (17:11). The sacrifice was the means God appointed. When an Israelite who had sinned through ignorance (4:2) brought it in repentance and faith, God really forgave him. The law offered no sacrifice for sin done “presumptuously”, in open defiance (Numbers 15:30-31), and the prophets and psalms warn that offerings without a contrite heart were worthless (Isaiah 1:11-17; Psalm 51:16-17).
Hebrews does not deny any of this. It asks what gave the sacrifices their worth, and answers that it was not the blood of animals, which could never purge the conscience (Hebrews 9:9; 10:1-4). The law was “a shadow of good things to come” (10:1). The sacrifices pointed forward to Christ, whose death was “for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament” (9:15). Paul says the same: in his forbearance God had passed over “sins that are past”, and the cross shows that he was just to do so (Romans 3:25). So God truly forgave those who brought the sacrifices he commanded, but the ground of that forgiveness was the sacrifice of Christ to which they pointed, not the blood of bulls and goats.
Other answers Christians give
Outward cleansing and inner cleansing
Some, such as Albert Barnes, hold that the sacrifices did win pardon for breaches of the ritual laws of Moses, but that an animal’s blood could not cleanse a moral wrong. They point to the line Hebrews draws between the purifying of the flesh and the purging of the conscience (9:13-14). On this view the sacrifices restored a worshipper’s standing in Israel’s covenant community, while forgiveness of sin before God came only through what Christ would do.
Still open
Christians agree that the sacrifices did not save by their own power and that they pointed to Christ. They describe differently how much Old Testament believers understood of what the sacrifices foreshadowed.
From the classic commentators
According to the divine arrangement, expiation was made by those sacrifices for offences of various kinds against the ritual law of Moses, and pardon for such offences was thus obtained. But the meaning here is, that there was no efficacy in the blood of a mere animal to wash away a "moral" offence.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Hebrews 10