Expensive Grace (Leviticus 5:15-16)

“If anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally in any of the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued in silver shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, for a guilt offering. He shall also make restitution for what he has done amiss in the holy thing and shall add a fifth to it and give it to the priest. And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and he shall be forgiven.”

‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭5‬:‭15‬-‭16‬ ‭ESV

The purpose of the book of Leviticus is to help God’s people understand His holiness and how sinful, broken people can approach a holy God.  Back in the Old Testament, before there was amazing grace, God sin must be dealt with entirely by animal sacrifice- you commit the crime, the animal gets the knife. 

In chapter 5 God makes it clear that whenever sin was present, death was sure to follow. However, anyone could quickly escape the death penalty by substituting the life of an animal instead of losing your own. Chapter after chapter God introduces this reality that sin always comes with a price tag. - always.

Every sin demanded payment with the life blood of animals you owned, and if you’d didn’t own one you could buy one and kill it in order to put things right again before God.  The chief lesson was that forgiveness always carries a cost and always demands payment. Sin cannot go unpunished before the holiness of God. 

Because they treated animals like currency, Gods demanded payment in a form that would truly understand - one life in exchange for another. Back in Moses day they had livestock much like we all have cars, cell phones, or ATMs, however keep in mind animals weren’t free, and neither was forgiveness. For the Israelites, sin was not cheap- every sin they committed literally hit them in their wallet. 

This was no copay system either. They paid full retail, out of pocket cost to have their forgiveness, not to mention the inconvenience of walking out to your herd, selecting a ram, physically transporting it to the priest, going through the entire process of dismembering the animal in cold blood just to make things right with God- until the next time. 

Imagine having to work sin into your family budget. How much would you even alot for that- $50/week? $500? $5000/month? I guarantee that the Israelites of Moses’ day had a much higher view of sin and understood it a much bigger deal than we do. They at least probably  thought twice before breaking God’s commands knowing that the consequence for disobedience could quickly land them in financial ruin or in some instances death row. 

Then along came Grace - The Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world (John 1). The perfect sacrifice for all sin for all time. One life given in exchange for another- The innocent fire the guilty. A cost paid that was not free but came at a high price. Jesus paid a debt He didn’t owe because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay and bought our forgiveness with his own blood. 

Sin is costly, but so was Grace. Given freely but it wasn’t cheap- so that we could be forgiven.