Here we go again! It’s early morning, on a holiday weekend, but does it feel like the ones from the past? Not to me. Real life experiences and early morning thoughts inspire what I often write. So how appropriate to all of us is the topic of sacrifice right now? I’m betting this topic’s relatable to most of us.
Some words get overused, so while the meaning is known, it’s original meaning is diluted, or no longer thought about. So here is the definition:
sac·ri·fice/ˈsakrəˌfīs/ sacrifice; plural noun: sacrifices
- an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure.”they offer sacrifices to the spirits”
- Similar: ritual
- an animal, person, or object offered in a sacrifice.
- an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.”we must all be prepared to make sacrifices“
So the “sacrifice” concept is something that NEVER made sense to me in the Bible, until now. I seriously struggled with this, it didn’t make sense to me, but it does now. Anyone who truly believes there is a God, will understand this after I explain, but if you don’t believe in God, you’re going to have a hard time comprehending this. While reading the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, there is a lot of ugly, disgusting, repulsive stuff that happens and some of it, I don’t want to read again; it’s that bad. It’s historical “Netflix”, documented in the Bible, for real. At least on some of Netflix, a person can think: “it’s just a movie” or a “show” but this was real life and really happened.
I had so many questions: Why would God do this? Who made this “rule/ritual”? Why is “sacrifice” required? Why would God, who created everything and told us “not to kill” be okay with “sacrifice”? It certainly seemed to contradict the messages and made it confusing: “don’t kill”, then “slaughter this specific animal, in a certain process”…What? I think many of us who get that far, may stop and say…”Well I don’t believe in a God like that, so I’m going to ignore that. It doesn’t make sense.” I did that for awhile, but covering up your eyes and ears doesn’t make something go away. So then “why”?
First, let’s start with those who believe in God. If you truly believe in God, you believe in a spiritual being that you cannot see. Let that sink in. Sounds crazy, right? If you believe in God, you need to acknowledge that believing in God, to those who don’t, does sound primitive and crazy. And yes, I personally believe in God, but let’s be honest about it from the world’s view today. Then if you know the Bible, and even if you don’t, I’m telling you right now: The Bible is about a loving God, but a spiritual war that commenced with us in the middle shortly after God created people.
The Bible doesn’t explain, in detail, why this war started, it only tells us there was a dispute and Satan (the devil) was thrown, cast, hurled from Heaven down to earth.
So as I write this, I think, uh this sounds like a fictitious story we tell kids to make a point! I thought that for a long time. There is so much today that makes fun of those who bring up Satan, and maybe solidify or perpetuate the thought this is fictitious, like the “church lady,” which I personally find humorous, but disrespectful at the same time because it presents people who believe in a laughable way – and I’m one of those people, but I always thought we can’t be too serious all the time, it’s okay to laugh at ourselves, others might disagree with me about that? I disregard that comedy, just like it disregards Christians. But as soon as you realize the Bible lines up with history and historical events were predicted in the Bible by prophets and actually came true, and the people in the Bible are real people, with a documented lineage, ancestry; then that concept of “story-time” fails. You have to not only read the Bible, but study the Bible and compare to history books for this proof.
Anyway getting back to the explanation: Satan (the devil) is real, is part of that history and has a role/a place in the Bible from the beginning until the end. We need to acknowledge that, as weird as it sounds; it has a profound impact, back then and today. If you don’t comprehend that, you’re missing the warning for all of us given throughout the Bible. So this dispute between God and Satan occurred and I don’t know why God didn’t just immediately destroy Satan, but knowing God’s character from the Bible, it could be that He allowed Satan to continue in existence possibly because God is loving but just. He doesn’t act impulsively, He is patient, He gives people time, but in the end, God is just.
To put this into a modern day concept: think about a business leader/boss, who has a star performer employee and this star employee is phenomenal, but then pride takes over for the star employee and based on pride, selfishness, and love of money, the star employee starts thinking they are better than their leader – for this example, it is important to use the assumption here that the leader is a good one, a caring one, a fair person, honest, looks out for the employees, provides for them, etc. (because there are many leaders who don’t exhibit those qualities today) – but this star employee is no longer a team player, just out for their own personal benefit. So the star employee leaves and competes with the former employer to prove their superiority. The leader has been around a long time, with a loyal customer base and a proven business, so the leader just lets this former “star employee” have its own way. knowing eventually those character flaws/qualities of pride, selfishness and love of money will self destruct the former star employee. The leader doesn’t even need to fight it, the former star employee’s own motivation and actions will end up bringing the star employee to ruin. Haven’t we seen that today? Does it make more sense now? This leader is like God and Satan is like the star employee. Is fighting or immediate destruction even needed, for God to prove He is right? No. Also, knowing God’s character from the Bible, do you think maybe He loved Satan/Devil/Lucifer at one time? I do. Have you ever loved someone that turned on you? If you really loved them, then you wouldn’t want to destroy them, you’d be more hurt than anything.
Getting back to sacrifice. Sacrifice plain and simple is for atonement.
a·tone·ment/əˈtōnmənt/: atonement; plural noun: atonements
- reparation for a wrong or injury.”she wanted to make atonement for her husband’s behavior”
- (in religious contexts) reparation or expiation for sin.”an annual ceremony of confession and atonement for sin”
- CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY the reconciliation of God and humankind through Jesus Christ.noun: Atonement; noun: the Atonement
The presence of sin (starting in the Garden of Eden) caused death, pain and sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to atonement. Sin is also referred to as “death.” There is no death for God; he is eternal. Those who make it to heaven will also become immortal/eternal too. These are concepts given to us in the Bible through prophets and through Jesus. When people choose to sin, people are ultimately choosing death. Death is the experience for sin; sin separates people from God. Satan is competing with God. What better way to separate people from God, than to entice people through sin, separating people from God. Sin is deceptive: it might be fun (for the moment) but isn’t there a time when we look back on sin and realize maybe it wasn’t worth the consequence? If it were this clear to people, people wouldn’t choose sin. But Satan is also known as the ultimate deceiver and then the accuser. Has anyone ever deceived you before? You didn’t expect it, right? When someone is good at deceiving, it’s a surprise when we figure it out. If it’s something no one wants (death), wouldn’t you have to be deceitful to gain people, coax them into death? Then after you deceive someone into sinning…don’t let them turn back “repent” to repair their relationship …keep reminding them (accusing them) of their sin so they feel so worthless and like they can’t go back. (which is also a lie) That’s exactly how Satan operates with his ultimate goal of separating people from God. This was shown to us in the book of Job; Satan was using all he could to get Job to turn away from God!
I’m going to assume that most people would choose living over dying, because people are sad when someone dies. So what better way for Satan to separate people from God, than through death? A sacrifice is exactly that: death of something. Sacrifices started because of sin. God put an end to “living being sacrifices” through Jesus’ death on the cross. That was the ultimate sacrifice: “Jesus/God dying” and what Satan wanted from the beginning, “the ransom” as we understand from the Bible. But that wasn’t the end as we are told through the Bible by prophets and Jesus himself; there is more to come. (Read more about the future in this link).
In summary, God created the earth and everything on it out of love. He created people to love Him back. We all know that forced love is not real love, so God doesn’t force people; He lets people choose. We ended up in a spiritual warzone without knowing this when we were born, but at some point in life, we will figure this out. When we figure it out, then we have to make a choice. Satan is opposing God and working hard to separate as many people from God as possible through deceptive ways. God was not pleased with the living sacrifices and responded to that by offering Jesus as the ransom, the ultimate sacrifice for us, no one has the value Jesus has, so that is what made Jesus an acceptable sacrifice, more valuable than any of us. Jesus’ sacrifice saves those who want to be saved from eternal Hell. But we still have a choice. Do we believe in Jesus? Do we have faith in this? Do we accept this “gift” from God? If you said yes, you are “almost” saved. I felt strongly about making this clear to people, because I think there is a larger number of people who think when they answer this “I believe”, “they’re good to go!” but that is not the full truth based on what I found in the Bible, and I see many churches appeal to people in this way and it’s sad to me, because they are misleading people and possibly keeping them from heaven. It is true that by faith we are saved, but faith alone is death – Jesus’ brother James told us that in the Bible. We didn’t get “off the hook” that easily, there is something more required of us by God: we are required to be obedient to his commands. We can’t do enough good things to earn our way to heaven; that would cause pride and God hates a prideful person. So it is by faith, but proving our faith by our actions. Becoming obedient prepares people for living in eternity with God and shows God we mean what we say. How many people are good at “lip service,” telling us what we want to hear, but not supporting what they say by their actions? Well this is the same between us and God. Are we giving God “lip service” or are we proving it by our actions? The obedience part is probably the most challenging part for all of us. It is not natural for us to be obedient, but God requires it. Thankfully, God is forgiving, so it doesn’t matter what we’ve done; He promises forgiveness, but with forgiveness, He also requires us to change our future actions and not do whatever it was anymore. None of us will be perfect, even after we commit to changing our ways, because we are human, so making mistakes requires us to take personal responsibility for them immediately, apologize and change. If we don’t, then we are going against God, we are just giving God “lip service” and He’s not fooled. He knows our intentions; He created us! So not taking action is not going to be a “success story” for those who give God “lip service”. Sacrifice today is still required though not through the death of a living being, thank God for that, but it still requires painful decisions for us personally. It won’t be easy, change isn’t easy. We want the immediate reward “here and now,” but the reward God has planned is promised to be greater than what we sacrifice “here and now”. What do you chose?
