Theological Commentary: Click Here
I’ve always
found it odd that this chapter is called the Peace Offering chapter. After all, I doubt that the sacrificed animal
felt very peaceful about being sacrificed.
But then again, that is my very modern lens coming through. It is a lens through which I am allowed to
see animals more as pets and less as a means of survival. Our modernity often gets in the way of
understanding God because we so readily rely upon our human inventions for
survival and not God’s provision.
It is
important that we understand that this chapter is properly titled, though. This is the peace offering. This is not the mandatory offering for
atonement. This isn’t an offering given
to God to make up for something done wrong.
This is an offering made to God because we would simply like to give
something to God.
In a sense,
this is an offering of gratitude. This
is an offering made to recognize that we are even able to be at peace with God
in the first place! This is an offering
that is made to remember that we are participants in a relationship in which we
have no business belonging. We are at
peace with God because He brings peace to us, not because we do anything of an
importance to deserve it.
In those
days, I don’t think this was an easy thing to forget. I think that it was hard to look past how
human beings cannot attain God’s righteousness on their own. In today’s age, however, I think we have made
it all too easy to look past the human inability to be righteous. We like to say that “God loves me the way
that I am.”
I think this
is wrong. If God was okay with me the
way that I am, then there was no need to send Jesus to die for anything. God loves me in spite of who I am. God loves me because of who He is.
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