CHAPTER TEN

A PASSION FOR HOLINESS

We must understand not only the particular history of Israel, as we did in the last chapter, but we must also consider God’s passion for holiness.

Like I said there, many people associate the Old Testament with an angry God, and they condemn him as unjust. It’s true that God does become angry, but he becomes angry precisely because he is just! In short, I think that we will better understand God if we better understand his character.

Relationship through Covenants

When we Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, we often recite Jesus’ words from the Gospels, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Jesus took this language of “covenant” straight out of the Old Testament, where the concept of a covenant is crucial. Now, maybe such covenant language sounds cold and legal to you, but in the Bible it isn’t like that at all. It’s the language of relationship! God’s covenants were used to draw his people into a committed relationship with himself. And it is in the context of God’s committed covenantal relationships that we find God’s passion for holiness expressed.

In short, God was passionate for his covenanted people to be set apart unto him and to have characters and lives that were like his own. This is why sin is such a problem in the Bible, because sin is not like God. There is not the least trace of sin in God, and so it causes big problems for humans in relating to him. It separates God from us.

Anger at Sin

So does the Old Testament present a God who can be angry? Yes, but his expressions of anger are not whimsical tyranny. His anger expresses his commitment to his own holy character and his implacable opposition to human sin. Sin (the breaking of divine commandments) separates God’s people from God and shows clearly their need to be reconciled to him.¹ God can be angry, in short, because he is not indifferent to sin and he is angry at the destruction of his creation.

The Old Testament explicitly teaches that all people are sinners,² and the storyline as a whole quickly leads to the conclusion that people are not able to deal with sin themselves (see Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). Instead, the relationships that sin breaks require some sort of divinely initiated reparation. But how can this happen? Given God’s holiness, how can peace with God be restored?

Atonement Leads to Reconciliation

This is where the biblical references to atonement become significant. The Anglo-Saxon word we use—atonement—means, quite literally, at-one-ment. Atonement must occur for two warring parties to be made at one.

The idea of offering an atoning act or ritual to placate an offended deity was not unique to ancient Israel; in fact, it was common among ancient religions. But the Old Testament authors uniquely placed the idea of atonement within the context of a relationship, and so they refer to the need for reconciliation in a way that was utterly unique in the ancient world.

Sacrifice Leads to Atonement

A number of images are used to describe atonement in the Old Testament. But the most prominent image God used to teach the people about atonement was sacrifice. Sinners could seek to restore their relationship with God through sacrifice.

Now, the picture of sacrifice given is not of a moody tribal deity who required the people to throw a young virgin into the volcano in order to be pacified. You will find this picture if you read about other ancient cultures—blind attempts to get some god to calm down by hurting yourself. But you won’t find that idea in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God himself speaks and provides a way for propitiation—a way to turn his wrath aside and restore a rebellious people to himself.

In some ways, the idea of sacrifice almost seems innate. Shortly after Adam and Eve’s eviction from the garden of Eden, their sons Cain and Abel offered sacrifices, even though God had not yet revealed the law. Abraham and his descendants offered sacrifices as well. Perhaps this innate compulsion to offer sacrifices, along with the ordinary habit of human mimicry, explains why sacrifices were so common among ancient religions.

Yet what’s interesting about the Old Testament sacrifices, as we have already been suggesting, is how they differed from the sacrificial practices of the nations around them. Biblical sacrifices were not only for the grateful (to thank God for a wonderful harvest); and they certainly were not for the manipulative (to persuade God to send a good harvest). Instead, they were for the guilty—people who personally understood that they had violated God’s commandments. Not only that, biblical sacrifices were not only for the ignorant person who thinks, “Maybe doing this will make things better.” No, they were performed according to God’s own instructions.

Specifically, God required the animals used as offerings to be without defect, to be costly, and to be voluntary by the person bringing the sacrifice.³ The life of the unblemished animal victim, symbolized by its blood, would then be given in exchange for the life of the guilty human worshiper. In Exodus 12, for instance, the blood of the Passover lamb was given in exchange for a family’s firstborn, who in turn represented the whole family. In Leviticus, God told the people, “The life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Lev. 17:11). Furthermore, the guilty human party in a Levitical sacrifice was required to place his or her hand on the head of the animal being sacrificed in order to indicate the transfer of guilt.

Sacrifices Teach

I know that the whole idea of such sacrifices is unpopular with many people—maybe they sound primitive and cruel. But can you see what God was teaching the people? First, he was teaching about his holiness and his passion for holiness.

Second, he was teaching that sin is serious—deathly serious!—because it’s such an aberration from his holiness.

And third, he was teaching that atonement could be accomplished when an innocent one dies in place of the guilty.

In and of themselves, Levitical sacrifices were never the point (as you can tell by Jeremiah’s denunciations of what the people’s sacrifices were leaving out; see Jer. 7:21ff.). Ironically, sacrifices were most appropriate when the person offering the sacrifice realized that the offering was not sufficient to atone for sins. So you have the psalmist saying, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4 KJV). Sacrifices were not efficacious except by God’s grace. They taught that sin defiles. They taught that sin physically hinders access to God. They taught that purification was needed. And they taught that sin is so serious that only death can make atonement.

Salvation and forgiveness would be costly.

The Day of Atonement

Both God’s passion for holiness and the ultimately ineffective nature of sacrifices can be seen in the Old Testament through the Jewish Day of Atonement, a day on which a special sin offering was made for the whole nation. You can read about it in Leviticus 16.

Representing the people, the high priest entered the temple’s Most Holy Place on one day of the year in order to offer a sacrifice in the very presence of God. First, he would make atonement for himself, since he too was a sinner. Then, he would make atonement for all the people. Who could see that blood offering that the high priest brought? No one but God! The high priest then confessed the sins of Israel over a second goat, which would be released outside the city in order to symbolize the total removal of sin by the penalty of being alienated, cast out, estranged from God’s people.

It is particularly interesting that this ritual had to be repeated annually. Other nations would tend to offer sacrifices only when the nation was not prospering. But the Israelites were commanded to make sacrifice once a year regardless of the nation’s situation. Why? God was teaching them that they were needy and separated from God, regardless of what had occurred in the nation’s life. They regularly needed to make amends. They regularly needed to make atonement. They were in a state of sin, and no animal sacrifice could ultimately remove their guilt. There was no perfect sacrifice. If there had been, the people could have stopped offering them (Heb. 10:1–3). Instead, these imperfect sacrifices emphasized the fact that God is holy, that sin separates us from God, and that he provides a way for the forgiveness of sins and access to him.

A Riddle

This brings up the question that I have referred to as the “riddle” of the Old Testament. In Exodus 34, the Lord describes himself to Moses, saying “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Ex. 34:6–7a). Think about what God said: how can God both “forgive wickedness” and “not leave the guilty unpunished”?

There’s one more thing we need to observe in our study of the Old Testament if we want to understand it and its God: the Old Testament’s promise of hope. Thank goodness there’s another chapter!

¹ Prov. 15:29; Isa. 59:2; Hab. 1:13; Col. 1:21; Heb. 10:27.

² 1 Kings 8:46; Ps. 14:3; Prov. 20:9; Eccles. 7:20; cf. Mark 10:18; Rom. 3:23.

³ E.g., Gen. 9:5; Lev. 1:4; 4:4; 14:51; 16:21.