Troublesome Topic: Jesus is Our Oops Offering and our Restitution Offering
Jesus Is Our Oops Offering
By the oops offering I am referring to what is usually called the sin offering.
Jesus atoned for our unintentional sins. He grants justification and atonement for the ways we displease God or offend His holiness without even knowing it.
Jesus Is Our Restitution Offering
The reparation offering was usually called the guilt offering.
One could say that the reparation offering has three main components:
Expiation
Restoration
Addition
Expiation was intended to remedy the guilt of sin; another word for it would be atonement. Atonement was required because God considered an offense against another person as an offense against Him. Therefore a sacrifice had to be offered.
Restoration was intended to repair the damage done to a relationship with another human being. The payment of reparation or restitution began the healing of the damaged relationship.
The idea of addition comes from the fact that God required that the person paying reparation add 1/5th (20%) to the value of the item lost or damaged.
Jesus fulfilled all three of these components of the reparation offering.
His sacrifice on the cross offers us expiation, or atonement for our sins. We can have full confidence that God accepts the offering of Jesus on our behalf; Jesus is God’s son, the true Lamb of God.
Jesus restores our relationship with God. He still expects us to work at restoring the relationships we have damaged; He will help us but He will not do that for us. After we have come to Him in repentance, He often restores our lives to a level of fullness greater than what we knew before. He restores what sin had stolen from us (Joel 2:25). What Jesus restores will look different than what we had before; He does not always restore dollar for dollar, but it will be properly restored according to His knowledge of what is best.
Jesus also adds to our lives much more blessing, power, joy and peace than any of us deserve. The joy that will characterize our lives after Jesus has forgiven us, restored us and added to us will be much greater than any joy produced by an accumulation of material wealth or by human achievements. We may not look richer in the eyes of this world, but we will know deep down inside that we have been the recipients of true, lasting riches.
The next lesson in the Full Series on Covenants is: Jesus Is Our Burnt Offering