o be forgiven. That’s God’s way of teaching us how awful sin is. On this day of atonement, one goat is killed (see verses 15-16) and one goat is set free to wander off into the desert. This is a symbol of God setting people free from sins. You may have heard the word “scapegoat” – someone taking all the blame when it’s not necessarily their fault? This is where the word comes from. This was the scapegoat (verses 21-22).
So when atonement is made, it’s the same as being cleansed from sin. But something doesn’t sound right: can you really transfer sins onto an animal, who doesn’t understand God, and who has no morals?
Let’s try and solve that problem by looking at the original words. If you use a Hebrew dictionary, you will see that the Old Testament word for atonement means to cover. Whereas a Greek dictionary will tell you that when we read atonement in the New Testament, the original Greek word means an exchange or restoration. This shows us an important difference: in the Old Testament, God was covering people’s sins but not actually taking them away. Whereas in the New Testament they were completely removed.
Imagine a plate of food in a hot country, which you might cover to keep the flies off it. You can still see the shape of the food underneath the covering, so you know it’s still there even though you can’t see it. But as you keep trying to push more food under the covering, it doesn’t work as well, until eventually the plates are showing at the edges. Then you will need to find another covering. It was the same with sins in the Old Testament. They would keep mounting up until that day came round when this symbolic act would happen again.
But why don’t we need to do this today? Because a perfect sacrifice, who was moral and who understood God, came along. God promised to accept that sacrifice for all time, as long as people associated themselves with it. This would be real atonement that would last, as the book of Hebrews tells us:
“And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins… by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:11-14)
So in summary, atonement is a bringing back together between mankind and God. To do this, sin has to be removed first because God cannot associate with sin. And it took the perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ to achieve this for all time – before that, it was just a temporary solution. Because of Jesus Christ, if we confess our sins to God, and commit our lives to Him, they really will be forgiven.