Chapter 1: SIN

Sin was looked at as a disease that you could catch, not necessarily some spiritual thing on the inside of our hearts. This is why they believed in cleansing with blood when God’s laws were broken because the law exposed the sin in their life and the felt they were going to die or not be blessed if some sort of cleansing took place. From God’s perspective he is a Father so he is not necessarily mad that we broke some of his laws for his own ego but because it hurt others and us. 

 The reason Jesus had to die for our sins was to give us an example that the only thing that will change the world is if we forgive those who hurt us and they forgive us. It was the place where our sins were brought to their fullest and we saw our God forgive us so therefore we in turn should forgive others. The main sins that God was concerned about were rivalry, blame, scapegoat, and violence. 

Chapter 2: LAW

The law needs to be understood in the context of the definition of sin, which was given in order to stop rivalry, blame, scapegoat, and violence. However the law actually only increased these things because it allowed humans to rank their behavior against each other and other nations. One of the main problems in understanding the law is that most people don’t see the break up of the Civil law, which helped Israel govern as a Nation, Ceremonial law, which is what the priests did in their religious requirements and the Moral law which was given to all people everywhere and throughout time. The issue is it does seem they are all dependent on each other so this can be tricky unless you look to the New Testament where they broke down the laws to follow and specially Jesus “Love God Love people.” 

 The main point of the law was that it had to grow because they kept breaking it. They broke it because there was no love involved in keeping the law so law after law had to be added to try and close some loopholes but it never worked. God kept moving on to plan B knowing that eventually plan A would put in and to all of this….Jesus. 

Chapter 3: SACRIFICE 

This week will break down what the Old Testament sacrifice system was for and who implemented it God or Man? Through the lens of Jesus we see that sacrifice was a bad thing created by humans to relieve themselves of their bloodlust and scapegoating. We know this because every culture then and some even now have a form of sacrificial system. Today that system has been turned into blaming others and scapegoating them for our own problems. For a time sacrifice was allowed by God to be performed on animals since that was better then humans but it was never his original design since blood cannot take away sin only a changed heart. He has always been a forgiving God and no transaction was necessary for him to forgive.  

 Abraham is the greatest example of God not wanting a sacrifice since just when Abraham was about to offer his child up to God the Angel stopped him and pointed him to the goat in the bush. The point was God never needed a sacrifice to forgive us, we needed the sacrifice in order to cure us of our violence and bloodlust. 

Chapter 4: SCAPEGOATING

This a part of human sin that always leads to violence in order to relieve a person or a group of people of the anger that is inside of them. Every culture and every person on the planet does this it’s a matter if your recognizing it or not. It is proven in science that there is a spiritual component to this where it does relieve people from their anger for a season but eventually a new scapegoat needs to be found again. The problem is eventually every person gets scapegoated which if not seen correctly will lead to more violence. 

 The biggest problem with scapegoating is that people end up using God’s name to justify our scapegoating on other people. For centuries every culture has used the name of God to do horrendous things while feeling totally justified and the USA is no different. Jesus became the ultimate scapegoat by people who thought they were doing it for country (Rome) and religion (Israel) in order to show us that scapegoating does not work and in fact it killed God. 

Chapter 5: BLOOD

We are told that the blood of Jesus “cleanses us of our sins” and is crucial for forgiveness but what does that mean? How does Jesus’ blood do this and was that the main point? In actuality the blood of Jesus was meant to expose us; that we are bloodthirsty violent people who proved it with the ultimate act of violence towards God himself. 

 The blood of Jesus was designed to prove to us that he has always forgiven humans, always wanted relationship not religions, so he gave himself over to our false religious, violent, and scapegoat views to make the most spectacular flip in history. Now that we can see that we have peace with God, and always have, we should now live as though we have peace with others. The blood was always a covenant of grace and God used goats and bulls to point us towards himself as the final agreement between man and himself.  Jesus did not need to spill his blood to forgive us, he spilt his blood to prove to us we are already forgiven! This should allow him to enter our lives and bring the Prince of Peace to our souls.