For fifteen centuries before Christ walked the earth, God ran a classroom.
The classroom had no textbooks. Its lessons were written in smoke and blood. Its curriculum was conducted at stone altars, in the courts of the Tabernacle, and later in the great Temple of Jerusalem. And the one truth it taught — over and over, year after year, generation after generation — was the most important truth the human race needed to understand before it could grasp the meaning of the cross:
Sin is serious. Sin requires blood. And the blood that is available within the human race is not enough to deal with it.
This is the Old Testament sacrificial system. And understanding it is not optional background knowledge for the Christian — it is essential foundation. Because the cross of Christ only makes full sense to someone who has stood at the altar and understood why the animal blood was not enough.
“Without Shedding of Blood Is No Remission”
Before we look at the system itself, we need to understand the principle on which it was built.
“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” — Hebrews 9:22 (KJV)
This is not an arbitrary rule God invented to make salvation difficult. It flows from the most foundational truth about sin: the wages of sin is death. Sin produces death. The penalty for sin is a life — a blood-life poured out. There is no way around this without destroying the justice of God.
God established this truth at the very beginning. In the Garden, after the Fall, the first blood shed in human history was God Himself killing animals to clothe Adam and Eve — the first picture of an innocent life taken to cover the guilt of sinners. From that moment forward, through every subsequent covenant and every sacrificial law, the principle held: sin requires blood.
But whose blood? That is the question the entire Old Testament system was designed to raise — and leave unanswered — until Christ came to answer it finally.
The Structure of the System — Five Types of Offering
God’s instructions to Moses in Leviticus laid out a detailed sacrificial system with five distinct types of offerings. Each addressed a different dimension of the sinner’s condition before God:
1. The Burnt Offering (Leviticus 1) — the whole animal was consumed on the altar, nothing held back. It was the offering of total consecration, complete surrender, an entire life given to God. Every morning and every evening, a lamb was burned on the altar of Israel — the nation’s daily acknowledgement that they lived under the provision of substitution.
2. The Grain Offering (Leviticus 2) — an acknowledgement of God’s provision and lordship. Combined with the burnt offering, it expressed the totality of life — labour, sustenance, everything — placed before God.
3. The Peace Offering (Leviticus 3) — the offering of fellowship, of communion restored. The sinner and God at the same table, sharing the offering. A picture of the relationship that sacrifice was meant to restore.
4. The Sin Offering (Leviticus 4) — the specific address of unintentional sin, the guilt that accumulated through ignorance and failure. The blood was brought into the sanctuary, sprinkled before the Lord, applied to the altar.
5. The Trespass Offering (Leviticus 5–6) — for specific, known acts of violation. Restitution was required alongside the sacrifice — the outward damage was addressed as well as the inner guilt.
Each offering addressed something real. Each required blood. Each pointed to the truth that access to God requires atonement — that the gap between a holy God and a sinful people cannot be crossed by good intentions alone.
But none of them were final. Not one of them closed the account permanently. And the annual calendar of Israel made this unmistakably clear.
The Day of Atonement — God’s Most Vivid Sermon in Blood
Once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, Israel observed Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement. It was the most solemn day in the entire Jewish calendar. And it was a sermon in two acts, performed with two goats, that contained within it the fullest picture of what God was planning to do.
“And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.” — Leviticus 16:8 (KJV)
The First Goat — the Lord’s goat. This goat was slain. Its blood was taken by the High Priest — and only the High Priest, and only on this one day of the year — through the veil, into the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Tabernacle where the presence of God dwelt. There, the blood was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat — the lid of the Ark of the Covenant — seven times. The penalty was paid. The blood was presented before God. And for another year, the sins of the nation were covered.
The Second Goat — the scapegoat. This goat was not killed. Instead, the High Priest laid both hands on its head and confessed over it all the sins, all the iniquities, all the transgressions of the entire nation of Israel. Then the goat was led out into the wilderness — alive — carrying the sins of the people away from the camp, away from the presence of God, never to return.
Two goats. One picture. The slain goat said: the penalty has been paid. The scapegoat said: the guilt has been carried away.
But here is what the Israelite worshipper knew as he watched the goat disappear into the wilderness: this is not finished. Next year, he would be back. Next year, another goat would be slain. Next year, another scapegoat would walk into the wilderness. The calendar kept moving. The debt kept accumulating. The same ritual, every year, without end — because the blood of the goats could not close the account permanently.
The Hebrew Word That Reveals the Limitation: Kaphar
The Hebrew word at the heart of the Old Testament atonement system is kaphar — usually translated atonement or covering. The root meaning of the word is to cover, to overlay, to wipe over the surface.
Not to remove. Not to cleanse. Not to erase. To cover.
The blood of the Old Testament sacrifices did something real and significant: it covered sin from God’s sight for a season. Under the Old Covenant, when a man brought his sacrifice in faith and obedience, God accepted the blood as a temporary covering — the debt was not called due that year. The worshipper could approach God, could experience His presence, could know His blessing — because the blood covered what was between them.
But the covering was not permanent. The sin was still there, under the covering, waiting. The books were not balanced — they were deferred. And every Israelite who understood what the system was saying knew it: this is not the end. Something more is coming. Something better. Something that will not merely cover the sin but remove it permanently.
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” — Hebrews 10:4 (KJV)
The New Testament makes explicit what the Old Testament system implied: impossible. The blood of animals cannot take away human sin. The debt is of a different order than the payment. An animal cannot stand in the place of a human being permanently — because an animal is not of the same kind, does not carry the same moral weight, and its death cannot match the infinite gravity of the offence against an infinite God.
The system was never designed to be the final answer. It was designed to be a preview.
Fifteen Centuries of Preparation
This is the part that most treatments of the Old Testament sacrificial system miss — and it is the most important part.
God did not establish the sacrificial system because He thought animal blood would work. He established it because He wanted fifteen centuries to teach the world what the cross would mean.
Every Passover lamb that was slain and its blood applied to the doorposts of Israel was teaching the same lesson: an innocent life, shed in your place, is what stands between you and judgement. — Exodus 12:13.
Every sin offering was teaching: you cannot approach a holy God without blood between you.
Every Day of Atonement was teaching: sin requires a penalty, and guilt must be carried away — but this system cannot do it permanently. You are waiting for someone who can.
Every annual repetition — every year that the High Priest had to go back into the Holy of Holies, because last year’s sacrifice was not sufficient — was God’s built-in reminder that the system was incomplete. The very inadequacy of the system was part of its message.
“And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” — Hebrews 10:11 (KJV)
Every priest standeth. Standing — because the work was never finished. The priest at the altar never sat down, because there was always more sacrifice to offer, always more blood to pour out, always another sin to cover.
One day, a Priest would come who would not stand. He would sit down. Because His work would be finished.
The Single Most Dramatic Contrast in the Bible
The contrast that the book of Hebrews draws between the old system and Christ is one of the most powerful passages in all of Scripture:
“But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.” — Hebrews 10:12 (KJV)
One sacrifice. For sins. For ever. Sat down.
Every element of that sentence is the deliberate opposite of the Old Testament system:
- One — not thousands, not the same sacrifice year after year, but one, single, unrepeatable offering
- For sins — not a covering placed over sins, but an offering that actually, permanently addressed sin itself
- For ever — not valid until next year’s Day of Atonement, but valid for all time, for all people, for all sin
- Sat down — the first High Priest in history to sit down at the altar, because His work was done
When Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He was not expressing relief that the suffering was over. He was making a theological declaration — the Greek word is tetelestai, a commercial term meaning paid in full. The debt that had been accumulating since Adam, that fifteen centuries of animal blood had only deferred, was now settled. Completely. Permanently. For ever.
What the Old System Could Never Do — and What Christ Did
The Old Testament sacrificial system, for all its God-given significance and all its real, temporary efficacy, had four things it could never accomplish:
It could not cleanse the conscience. The worshipper who brought his sin offering went home with the external requirement met — but his inner man still carried the weight of guilt. The blood had covered the debt before God, but it had not removed the consciousness of sin from the heart.
“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.” — Hebrews 10:1 (KJV)
It could not deal with the sinful nature. The sacrifices addressed the acts of sin — specific transgressions, specific trespasses. They could not touch the root — the sinful nature that kept producing those acts. Even a perfectly faithful Israelite who brought every required sacrifice, every year of his life, still went home with the same nature he came with.
It could not provide permanent access to God. The veil in the Temple — the thick curtain separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies — remained in place. Only one man, once a year, could pass through it. The rest of the nation waited outside. The system maintained a distance even while it provided a covering.
It could not give eternal life. The Old Covenant system provided temporal blessings, national identity, and a temporary covering for sin. But it could not impart the life of God into the spirit of the worshipper. It could not make a spiritually dead man alive.
When Jesus died on the cross, the Temple veil — sixty feet high, four inches thick, the boundary between man and God’s presence — was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). Not torn from the bottom up, as a man would tear it. Torn from the top down. God Himself opened what the system had kept closed. The veil was gone. The distance was ended. Access was secured — not for one man, once a year, but for every believer, at any moment, for ever.
What Comes Next
The Old Testament system has done its work. Fifteen centuries of preparation. Fifteen centuries of blood. Fifteen centuries of a system that said: this is not enough, but Someone is coming who will be.
He came.
In the next article we look directly at the One to whom every lamb, every altar, every Day of Atonement, every drop of blood was pointing: Jesus Christ — the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” — John 1:29 (KJV)
Not covers it. Takes it away. For ever.
Bible Verses Cited: Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:1, 10:4, 10:11–12; Leviticus 1; Leviticus 16:8; Exodus 12:13; John 19:30; John 1:29; Matthew 27:51 (KJV)
Series: New Creation in Christ Jesus — Article 6 of 35
Author: Joseph Olarewaju | FaithBibleStudy.org
