Sacrifice + Atonement

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God would never and could never lower His standards or diminish His holiness. And since the fall, human beings are incapable of living sinless lives and enjoying God’s presence on the basis of their own moral purity.

So if God is going to bind Himself to human beings, something has to be done about the sin that inevitably enters the lives of the people of God.

God’s solution for the problem of sin is sacrifice.

Only when we understand the Old Testament sacrifices can we see how the Old and New Testaments dovetail perfectly into one amazing story.

God made clothes for Adam and Eve out of animal skins …an animal had to die so that the shame of sin could be covered. As soon as sin entered the world, God made a way to deal with that sin through sacrifice.

There are many, deeper implications of Abraham placing Isaac on the altar. Not the least of which is Isaac being the son of promise, firstborn, and human.

First, it suggests that God could potentially accept a human sacrifice for sin—though He did not allow it to go to this point until the death of Jesus.

And second, it shows us that God could accept a substitute—in this case, the ram was sacrificed so that Isaac wouldn’t be. Of course, it’s not until we see the sacrifice of Jesus in the New Testament that the significance of Abraham’s offering becomes clear.

Exodus 29:36-37 ESV
and every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement. Also you shall purify the altar, when you make atonement for it, and shall anoint it to consecrate it. [37] Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar shall become holy.

Word Study: Atonement

‘kaphar‘

kaphar: appease
Original Word: כָּפַר
Part of Speech: Verb
Transliteration: kaphar
Phonetic Spelling: (kaw-far’)
Definition: to cover over, pacify, make propitiation

source: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3722.htm

The word translated “atone” literally meant “to cover,” but in the Old Testament, it appears to have taken on the theological meaning of “to take away.” Even today, we can use the word cover to mean “take away”: if a person says, “Let me give you $20 to cover the bill,” this does not mean that debt will be merely covered or hidden or “swept under the rug” but that it will be paid and the obligation removed.

– https://www.gotquestions.org/meaning-of-atonement.html

For more, in-depth and theological treatments of ‘Atonement’, start at:
https://www.gotquestions.org/atonement-theories.html

Leviticus 17:11 ESV
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

Hebrews 9:22 ESV
Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.