Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament

Some people read the Levitical system as primitive religion. On that view, God put up with the sacrifices and the holy days until something better came along. That is not what it is, and God set the whole thing up to answer one question. How can a holy God live in the middle of an unclean people without destroying them? Every sacrifice is a way of drawing near. Every feast is a set time to be drawn near.

The system worked, but it had limits, and the limits are the point. It paid a ransom and it cleansed, but it could not cure the human appetite for sin. It gave real forgiveness, and it had to keep being repeated to keep giving it. Christ fulfils the whole thing. He does not abolish it. He is the substance that every part of it was pointing at.

This document is a plain-English essay on the Levitical system: what it meant, and how it has been fulfilled in Christ. There is also a Master Index of each individual rite, with study notes (way less organised) for each. Skip to Overview

Master Index

The sacrifices

The appointed times

Table of Contents

Leviticus is not Boring

Most Christians read Leviticus like a phone directory, which is the wrong way to read it. The book sits at the centre of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and the question it answers is the question that the whole Bible is asking.

Exodus ends badly. The tabernacle is finished, the glory of God comes down, and Moses cannot get in (Exod. 40:35). The tent built to house God's presence has put that presence out of reach. Michael Morales reads the whole of Leviticus as God's answer to that problem, because Exodus closes with God shut away in his own house, while Leviticus opens with laws 'aimed at allowing Israel to draw near' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). The first words spoken out of the new tent are instructions for how to come close to God rather than a telling-off.

So the sacrificial system is a gift rather than a burden. Leviticus 17:11 makes that clear in the Hebrew, with an emphatic 'I': 'I myself have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your lives' (Sklar, 2014). Israel gives sacrifice to God only because God gave sacrifice to Israel first.

Paul Williamson speaks about God's holiness as the one thread running through all these laws. Sacrifice 'was the means by which the central blessing of the covenant, communion between Yahweh and his people, was ensured and maintained' (Williamson, 2007). God is more committed to dwelling with His people than His people are to dwelling with Him and Leviticus is what He built so that it could happen.

Drawing near - the Theology of Qorbān

The Hebrew word for 'offering' is qorbān whose root (qrb), which means 'to draw near'. Leviticus 1:2 uses that root four times in one verse: 'When anyone brings-near (yaqrîb) an offering (qorbān) to YHWH, you shall bring-near (taqrîbû) your offering (qorbankem)' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). A sacrifice is a coming-close to God.

Worship by sacrifice was a journey, and Morales calls it 'a rite of passage', a process that changed the worshipper and set him apart (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). Atonement matters hugely, but it's a means rather than an end, which is fellowship. 'Atonement is a means to an end, a means to Israel's fellowship and communion with YHWH God.'

Read the system as a way of clearing a debt and it looks grim and bloody, and the obvious response is relief that it stopped. Read it the way Leviticus tells it and it's an ascent. A way is opened, at cost, so that a creature made of dust can stand in the room where God is and not die. Even the altar in the courtyard carries the idea in its name. It is called 'the altar of the ascension offering' (mizbaḥ hā'ōlâ), and Morales draws the obvious conclusion from that name: the altar 'exists for Israel's cultic ascent to God' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4).

Atonement as Ransom and Cleansing

The Hebrew verb we translate 'make atonement' is kipper. What it means is disputed, because scholars trace it to three different roots. The Arabic one meaning 'cover' is now mostly abandoned, and the remaining two are an Akkadian and Aramaic root meaning 'wipe off', and the Hebrew noun kōper meaning 'ransom' (Morales, 2015, n. 28).

Jacob Milgrom argued that kipper means purgation or a scouring. So, sin and impurity build up on the sanctuary like a stain, and the sacrificial blood is like a detergent that scrubs it off. Jay Sklar says that cannot be the whole story, because kipper also shows up where the language is plainly about paying a ransom, and in Leviticus 17:11 the animal's lifeblood saves the offerer from death (Sklar, 2014).

Sklar's answer makes sense as it explains why one verb covers both moral sin and ritual impurity, where nobody has sinned at all. Sin and impurity share two features in that both put a person in danger, which calls for a ransom, and both leave a stain, which calls for cleansing.

1. Sin endangers. Deliberate sin brings death or being 'cut off' (Lev. 7:20; 17:4), and even unintentional sin puts the sinner at risk, which is why Leviticus 17:11 speaks of blood ransoming the life.
2. Sin also pollutes. Israel is 'cleansed' from sin on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:30), and sin is pictured settling on the sanctuary like dust.
3. Impurity works the same way in reverse. It clearly pollutes, and it also endangers, because a person carrying major impurity defiles the sanctuary without going near it, and defiling holy things is the gravest sin there is (Sklar, 2014, citing Milgrom, 1976: 391, 394).

So kipper most likely means both things at once in that it rescues the person in danger, and it cleanses the person who is stained, with one side or the other in the foreground depending on the context. Beale takes the same view and applies it to Romans 3:25, where Paul is using the ransom side, because Romans is talking about wrath and condemnation rather than ritual defilement (Beale, 2011).

This entire word definition decides what you think the cross does. If atonement is only purgation, you get cleansing with no penalty paid, and Penal Substitution has no roots in the Old Testament. If it is only ransom, you lose the cleansing that Hebrews 9:14 leans on when it speaks of a purged conscience. It is both. Christ does both.

Blood, Life and Substitution

John Stott finds three claims in that verse (Stott, 1986).

1. Blood stands for life, and for life ended rather than life running in the veins. The stress falls on 'blood shed, the symbol of life ended, usually by violent means'.
2. Blood atones because it is life, so one life is forfeit and another is given in its place. Stott quotes T. J. Crawford: 'Life was given for life, the life of the victim for the life of the offerer.'
3. God gave it for this purpose. It is not a human scheme for calming down a god, which is what the nations around Israel were doing with theirs.

Geerhardus Vos suggests three readings of Leviticus 17:11 that could be logically viable (Vos, 1948).

1. The animal's life stands in for the holy life the offerer owed and failed to give. Substitution survives, but suffering and death drop out of it.
2. God deals with sin by asking for a gift in compensation, so Christ's obedience persuades God to let the punishment go.
3. The animal's death takes the place of the death the offerer owed. Forfeit for forfeit.

Vos takes the third opinon as the first two 'do not place the most natural construction upon the words'. His reasoning is based on the word soul (nepeš). A soul is what makes a creature an individual, and what makes it able to feel. So a substitute has to be an individual, and a substitute who takes punishment has to be able to suffer.

Morales adds that the blood is not mainly about death, but about life brought into contact with God. The worshipper has already been joined to the animal in the hand-leaning rite so, when the blood is handled, 'the soul of the worshipper… is being brought into contact with the divine' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). Ransom and cleansing are combined here because both of them run on life. Life ransoms from death, and life wipes away the stain of death.

'Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness' (Heb. 9:22) means there is no atonement without a substitute. 'It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins' (Heb. 10:4) means the substitute has to be worth what it replaces, and a sheep is not worth a human being, as Jesus points out in another context (Matt. 12:12). Only 'the precious blood of Christ' was valuable enough (Stott, 1986). These two lines from Hebrews only make sense with this understanding of blood, life, and substitution

Three Kinds of Sin

Leviticus, Exodus and Numbers together recognise three kinds of sin, and the Levitical system treats each one differently (Sklar, 2014).

Unintentional sin is sin done by mistake, whether the person knew the law and broke it without noticing, or did not know the law at all. This doesn't mean you are exempt just as a driver who speeds by accident is not exempt. But because the sin was a mistake, God supplies an automatic remedy, which runs all the way through Leviticus 4: 'the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven' (Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35).

High-handed sin is defined in Numbers 15:30-31. The phrase 'with a high hand' is used elsewhere for open revolt against a king (1 Kgs 11:26), and the words around it agree. The sinner 'is blaspheming the LORD', and he has 'despised the word of the LORD'. This is apostasy, walking out on God, and for it there is no sacrifice at all (Heb 10:26). The person is to be 'cut off', which means excommunication at the least and death at the most (Matt 18:17; Lev 7:27). That does not make atonement impossible. What it removes is the automatic guarantee of it.

Deliberate sin that is not high-handed sits between the two. Leviticus gives two examples, refusing to give evidence about a crime (Lev. 5:1), and swearing a false oath (6:1-7). The 'unintentional' wording of Leviticus 4-5 is missing here, and so is the 'cut off' penalty. Sacrifice is then prescribed. Numbers 15 does not even mention this middle group, which Sklar reads as deliberate as 'black looks blacker when placed beside white, rather than beside grey.'

Two things then follow. The first is that the Levitical system advertised its own ceiling. As in, it 'was effective, but only within certain limitations'. It cleansed impurity and secured forgiveness for small and unintentional sins. It could not, and never meant to, deal with high-handed sin. Neither could it 'overcome the source of sin' (Harper, 2018). The sacrifices kept going because the people kept sinning.

The second is that the Day of Atonement is the deliberate exception, and that is why it sits at the theological centre of the book. Leviticus 16:16 makes atonement for 'impurities' and also for 'transgressions' (peša'), which is a strong word for revolt against a superior. That is the same ground as the high-handed sin of Numbers 15. At the least, this assured Israel that one person's defiance would not sink the whole nation. At the most, it assured the rebel who repented that his sin was no longer hanging over him (Sklar, 2014). I don't believe this chapter is clear on which of those two is actually delivered. See The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

The Six Rites of the Levitical System

Morales categorises the journey of a sacrifice into six rites, which I found very helpful, because every sacrifice is a different arrangement of the same parts (Morales, 2015, ch. 4).

The Presentation Rite
The worshipper brings the animal or the grain to the entrance of the tent of meeting, with the choice of animal being important. Jonathan Klawans suggests that picking an animal, and so holding power over life and death, copies what God does, which fits the shepherd pictures of Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34 (Morales, 2015, n. 31).

The Hand-leaning Rite
The offerer leans both hands (sĕmikâ) on the animal's head as the moment of identification. Whatever else is argued about it, worshipper and victim are joined here, so that what happens next happens on his behalf.

The Slaughter Rite
The throat is cut, which drains as much blood as possible, and Morales reads the act as 'death to self' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). In the lay offerings the worshipper does the killing, so the person whose sin made this necessary is the one holding the knife.

The Blood-manipulation Rite
Now the priest's work starts properly, as he dashes, tosses, scatters, sprinkles, daubs or pours the blood, depending on the ceremony. Where the blood goes is important. Roy Gane's three-way split is a clear map of it: offerings handled at the outer altar, offerings taken into the outer sanctum, and the inner sanctum offerings of the Day of Atonement (Morales, 2015, citing Gane, 2005: 45-90). The rule is simply that the more important the sinner, the further into the sanctuary the pollution has spread, and the further in the blood has to go to clean it out.

The Burning Rite
The Hebrew verb is hiqṭîr, a technical word, and it's not the normal word for burning something up (sārap). Hiqṭîr means turning something into smoke, and it shares a root with qēṭōret, the word for incense. Christian Eberhart points out that all five major sacrifices include this rite, which makes it the part that turns each one into an 'approach' to God, and the high point of the whole act of worship (Morales, 2015, citing Eberhart, 2004). The smoke goes up, and the rēaḥ-nîḥōaḥ, the 'pleasing aroma', reaches God's home in heaven. Stephen Geller translates that phrase 'propitiating savor', a smell that settles anger, and the stories where the ascension offering appears bear that out.

The Communion Rite
Only the fellowship offering has this rite, and in it the worshipper gets a portion of the meat back and eats it with family and friends in God's presence. Morales calls it the rite of union, and 'the silhouette of the New Testament's pulsing heart: union with Christ' (Morales, 2015, ch. 4). See The Peace Offering (Shelamim).

The Shape of Sacred time

In addition to the sacrifice requirements of the Levitical system, Leviticus 23 lists seven "sacred times".

Leigh Trevaskis and others have set out the pattern:

• seven major festivals,
• seven days of rest built into the year,
• several festivals falling in the seventh month,
• a sabbatical every seventh year, and
• a jubilee after seven sets of seven years (Morales, 2015, ch. 6).
  Sklar says the entire pattern 'brings a Sabbath feel to the entire year', so the covenant that the Sabbath stands for is never far from mind (Sklar, 2014).

It is easy to miss why sacred time is needed at all. Morales has a a great point on it:

without appointed Sabbaths and festivals for fellowship with God, the tabernacle, along with its priesthood and rituals for drawing near, would have no telos or purpose. The tabernacle, after all, was meant by God to be a tent of meeting. (Morales, 2015, ch. 6)

Telos means goal, the thing something is for, and that is the point of the festival calendar. The sacrifices open the way, and the appointed times are what the way is for (the telos of the sacrifices). Morales argues that Leviticus 24:1-9 sits at the heart of chapters 23-25 as a picture of the goal: the lampstand shining on the twelve loaves of the bread of the Presence, Israel basking in the light of God's blessed presence.

The calendar also splits in two.

1. The first half of the year, from Passover through to Weeks, celebrates rescue out of the old land and provision in the new.
2. The second half all falls inside the seventh month, and it moves from the trumpet call for remembrance, through the cleansing of the Day of Atonement, to the joy of Booths.
   Sklar puts it as the spring feasts look back to the rescue from Egypt, and the autumn feasts look forward to dwelling with God in the land (Sklar, 2014).

Shadow and Substance - how Fulfilment Works

We don't have to wonder how to interpret these as the New Testament gives us its own rule for reading the sacrifices.

The word behind 'substance' is sōma, which means body. Paul is borrowing a shadow-and-substance contrast that was common in Greek thought, where the usual pairing was skia with eikōn (Moo, 2008). What he does with it is not Platonic where there's a lower copy of a higher reality, but about history. The shadow came first in time and pointed forward, and the reality has now arrived.

Beale reads Colossians 2:17 as the clearest statement of the rule, since the law's job was to cast a shadow of what was coming, and that job 'has come to an end because the messianic "substance" to which it pointed has arrived' (Beale, 2011). Hebrews says the same thing twice in its own words, once about the tabernacle (8:5) and once about the sacrifices (10:1). Beale sets it out like this (Beale, 2011, adapted from Beetham, 2005: 313-14):

One important note is that 'shadow' does not mean 'worthless'. The old tabernacle and its ministry 'were valid and real' because of the heavenly reality they pointed to and shared in (Lane, 1991). Shadows are cast by real things. In that sense, the Levitical system really did secure forgiveness, it really did cleanse, and it really did carry people into fellowship with God. Morales suggests thinking of it as a credit system, in which Israel received real spiritual goods while the real payment of the debt waited for the cross (Morales, 2015, n. 89).

Christ as the Fulfilment of the Whole System

Hebrews 8:1 to 10:18 is the New Testament's long argument on this, and Matthew Emadi shows how Psalm 110 shapes all of it. The psalm turns up at the start (8:1) and near the end (10:12-13), and it is steering the argument in between even where it is not quoted (Emadi, 2022).

The argument goes like this:

• Christ has sat down at the right hand of God as a minister of the true tabernacle, not the copy (8:1-2, from Ps. 110:1).
• Getting in there needed a better sacrifice, because the heavenly things need better sacrifices than the earthly copies did (9:23).
• That sacrifice was Himself, offered once, and the fact that it cannot be repeated is exactly what proves it works (9:25-28).
• The old priests stand up day after day, offering the same sacrifices over and over, because those sacrifices cannot take sins away.
• Christ offered one sacrifice and sat down (10:11-12). 'Sitting suggests completion, finality and sufficiency, whereas standing implies insufficiency and repetition with no end in sight' (Emadi, 2022).

The Socinians (a non-trinitarian group founded in the reformation) argued from Hebrews that Christ was not really a priest on earth. On their reading the cross was preparation, and the real sacrifice is His ongoing self-offering in heaven. The logic was that under the old covenant the atoning act was not the killing but the sprinkling of blood inside the sanctuary (Lev. 16:11-16), so by the same analogy Christ deals with sin in heaven and not at Calvary.

Herman Bavinck's answer to this is based on one word (Bavinck, 2006). Hebrews never says Christ entered heaven with his blood, the way the high priest carried blood into the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement. It says He entered 'through' or 'by means of' His blood (9:12). The blood was not carried up to be applied there. It was the ground on which He had the right to go in at all. Bavinck's summary is that 'in heaven there is no repetition, no renewal, no reproduction of the sacrifice of the cross. For in the innermost and true sanctuary, there is no room for an altar.'

What Christ does in heaven is intercede, which means He prays for us, and Hebrews 7:25 makes that ongoing. The sacrifice is finished and the priesthood is permanent. That combination is what Psalm 110 promised, and nothing in the Levitical order could deliver it, because its priests kept dying (Heb. 7:23).

Three Errors to Avoid

Bringing the Sacrifices back

Some beliefs, such as Dispensational premillennialism teaches that God will restore the temple, the Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices during a future thousand-year reign, and it appeals mainly to Ezekiel 40-48, Jeremiah 33:17-18 and Zechariah 14:16-21. See Millennial Restoration of Israel.

The problem is not really about the end times view of this, but more that bringing sacrifice back contradicts what Hebrews says the cross achieved. 'We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all' (Heb. 10:10). 'Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin' (Heb. 10:18). The old covenant is called 'obsolete' and 'growing old' and 'ready to vanish away' (Heb. 8:13). Even reading those future sacrifices as memorials doesn't save the position, because Colossians 2:17 has already put the whole festival and sacrifice system in the shadow category, and shadows do not come back once the body has arrived.

There is a stronger version of this argument. It says the ceremonies would work as memorials, the way the Lord's Supper does, rather than as payment for sin. However, Ezekiel's temple vision prescribes purification offerings 'to make atonement' (Ezek. 45:15, 17, 20), which is not memorial language. More basic still, the New Testament never endorses a return to the sacrificial system in any form, and the burden of proof sits with the view that needs one. Emadi's seated priest is the best form of the argument. A priesthood that stands back up has un-finished something.

The questions underneath are whether Christ fulfils Israel's institutions or only suspends them, and whether The Church is the Fulfilment of Israel.

Turning the System into an Object Lesson

The opposite error is more common, especially in preaching. It treats the Levitical system as a type of teaching aid. The Levitical system is seen as almost like God set up an elaborate visual so Israel could grasp ideas they would need later, and once the lesson landed the props were packed away.

Leviticus does not say the sacrifices illustrated forgiveness, but that they secured it: 'the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven' (Lev. 4:35). The wording carries weight, the priest performs the ritual but 'has no authority to forgive', and the Hebrew verb for forgiving never takes a human subject (Morales, 2015, citing Milgrom). Real forgiveness was granted, by God, through the rite.

The New Testament's own arguments depend on the system having worked. Hebrews 9:13 argues that if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer really did cleanse the body, 'how much more will the blood of Christ purge our conscience'. That logic falls apart if the previous case did nothing.

We are meant to hold both. The system was genuinely effective and genuinely temporary. It did what it claimed, and it never claimed to reach the conscience.

Keeping the Feasts Ourselves

Some believe that Christians should be keeping Passover, the Sabbath, the food laws and the appointed times now, either because they were never actually cancelled, or because keeping them produces a deeper and more rooted faith. It turns up in the Hebrew Roots movement, in Torah-observant strands of Messianic Judaism, in sabbatarian teaching, and in a much softer form in any church that starts running a Passover seder and quietly implies that the people who attend are getting something the others are missing.

Paul deals with this directly:

Douglas Moo works out what each word is pointing at. 'Days' are the Sabbath and probably other festival days. 'Months' are the new moon festivals. 'Seasons' are the Jewish festivals that run over several days, like Unleavened Bread. 'Years' are the sabbatical years of Leviticus 25 (Moo, 2013). That is The Sabbath, The New Moon (Rosh Chodesh), The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzot) and The Sabbatical Year (Shmita), named in order, and Paul's reaction to Gentile Christians taking them up is to wonder whether his whole ministry among them has been wasted.

The tone right through Galatians is worth noticing, because Paul is not usually like this. He calls the teaching 'a different gospel' (1:6), pronounces God's curse on anyone preaching it (1:8-9), tells the Galatians that if they take the step of circumcision 'Christ will be of no value to you at all' (5:2), and says they have 'fallen away from grace' (5:4). Köstenberger, Alexander and Carson note that this was a hill Paul was willing to die on, because the saving message of the cross was at risk on it, and he was prepared to confront Peter and Barnabas in public over it (Köstenberger, Alexander & Carson, 2020).

The Galatians thought that they were completing their relationship with God by observing these. 'Such a step of addition is in fact subtraction, implicitly calling into question the adequacy of God's provision in Christ' (Moo, 2013). Adding the law to Christ does not give you Christ plus something. It gives you a Christ who was not enough on his own, which is a different Christ an different gospel. Peter calls the law a 'yoke' that neither their fathers nor they had been able to bear (15:10), and then says that Jews are saved by grace through faith 'just as' Gentiles are (15:11). The implication is that circumcision 'is not even required for Jews, let alone Gentiles' (Thompson, 2011). The Jerusalem council's ruling in Acts 15 was that Gentile believers should not be burdened with the law of Moses.

A few important points on this:

• Paul himself kept Jewish customs.
  • He took a vow (Acts 18:18), he circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3), and in Acts 21 he paid the expenses of four men completing a vow and joined them in purification at the temple. Darrell Bock's summary of Paul's actual position is that 'Paul does not teach nonobservance, but neither does he insist on observance where Gentiles are involved' (Bock, 2007). A Jewish believer who keeps Passover because it is his family's and his people's is not doing what the Galatians were doing.
• Paul is actually relaxed about days when nobody is being required to keep them.
  • "One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honour of the Lord" Romans 14:5-6
  • Thomas Schreiner makes an observation about the 'weak' in Romans 14: They were not claiming their observance was necessary for salvation, and they were not trying to impose it on anyone else. 'It seems likely that they believed that one would be a stronger or better Christian if one observed their prescriptions.' Schreiner then draws a modern parallel that sabbatarian Christians do not normally argue that those who disagree are heading for judgment, only that the observance matters for living the Christian life (Schreiner, 1998). Paul's answer to that is 'let each one be fully convinced in his own mind', plus a warning to the strong not to look down on them.

The line doesn't fall between observing and not observing but between liberty and obligation. A personal conviction that is held without judging anyone else is where Romans 14 applies. Where it becomes a requirement, a condition of full membership, or a mark of the serious Christian as against the shallow ones, Galatians applies and the right response is to say so plainly.

The Sacrifices of the New Covenant

The old system is not abolished under the new covenant. Rather, it is relocated, which the New Testament does deliberately. Douglas Moo notes that using sacrificial language for ordinary Christian living is 'claiming for Christianity the fulfillment of those institutions so central to the OT and to Judaism' (Moo, 2018). The vocabulary the New Testament authors use is chosen on purpose.

The offering is the offerer. Romans 12:1 asks believers to present their bodies as a sacrifice, 'living, holy, and well pleasing to God'. Moo's phrasing is the best I've read on it: 'It is not only what we can give that God demands; he demands the giver.' Thomas Schreiner adds that all three adjectives describe the sacrifice rather than the bodies, and that 'living' points to people who are now alive to God in Christ (Schreiner, 1998). Both of them see Romans 1 running backwards here. False worship becomes true worship. A ruined mind becomes a renewed mind. Dishonoured bodies become presented bodies.

Praise is a sacrifice. Hebrews 13:15 speaks of 'a sacrifice of praise… the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name', which echoes the tôdâ, the thanksgiving version of the fellowship offering. Verse 16 adds doing good and sharing what you have.

Ministry is priestly work. Paul describes himself in Romans 15:16 as working 'in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit'. N. T. Wright comments that the Gentile Christians are the sacrifice here, and Paul is the priest presenting them (Wright, 2013).

Martyrdom is a drink offering. Philippians 2:17 and 2 Timothy 4:6 both use spendomai, the verb for pouring out a drink offering. The passive voice matters and shows that God is the one doing the pouring rather than Rome (Mounce, 2000). See The Drink Offering (Nesek).

Generosity is a fragrant offering. Philippians 4:18 calls the Philippians' gift 'a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God', reaching back for the rēaḥ-nîḥōaḥ of Leviticus.

The church itself is the priesthood. 1 Peter 2:5 has believers 'built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ'. Peter never explains what those spiritual sacrifices are, and Daniel Block reads the phrase from the rest of the chapter: living right, and carrying the Lord's name well (Block, 2014).

Notice what is missing from that list. Not one of these texts describes a sacrifice for sin. Christ has taken that work over, permanently and exclusively. What is left for the church is everything else the old system did, including praise, thanks, consecration, generosity, service, and a life ordered around the presence of God. The altar has moved into the ordinary week.

Sources For All Documents Related to This

Bolded works are the most frequently cited across the hub and the twenty-three linked documents.

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