Pixel--Dude wrote: ↑July 19th, 2022, 1:10 pm
Sacrifice of animals was common before the times of Jesus Christ, because as Paul said "The wages of sin are death!" People today value different things, but back then people would have valued animals for their food, clothing and financial security. So someone committing a sin would sacrifice one of their valued animals to God to atone for their sin.
There were many other types of sacrifices, but atoning for sins was one of them.
I have been wanting to respond to your post for a long time, but when I saw it, it was too long to respond at that time, and I have a few minutes now. Regarding animal sacrifice in some branches of Hinduism, I don't see that in this post, but I also wanted to respond to that. I think having animal sacrifice in some ways could open up the minds of Hindus or other people-groups to understand certain things when they encounter the Gospel, but I do not agree with their sacrificing to the spirits they sacrifice to, as opposed to the most high God who does not want to be worshipped through idolatry. The other issue is that Christ's sacrifice was for sin and accomplished what the blood of bulls and goats could not.
The reason Christians don't sacrifice animals anymore is because of the substitutional sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Both were means to the same end, which was accounting for sin. Here are 5 distinctions between the two forms of sacrifice:
1. The first important distinction is that when an animal is sacrificed it does not come back to life. It is a permanent loss. If among your flock you had an animal that could bring itself back from the dead, how meaningful would it be to sacrifice that particular animal? How would that even be a loss or a sacrifice if the animal just came back to you after you lost it?
An animal sacrificed is just an animal, though, and not the sinless Son of God, not the Word of God incarnate, not the Messiah. There was more going on than what happened with an animal sacrifice, which prefigured the death of the Messiah. Christ also conquered death.
2. The second distinction is that animal sacrifice was not retroactive like the sacrifice of Jesus. First came sin and then the sacrifice followed. This is true for everyone before the sacrifice of Jesus Christ but not after. It would be shallow and insincere to kill an animal as an insurance policy just in case you sin in the future, or preemptively performing a sacrifice today so you can sin tomorrow. The sacrifice loses its meaning when you can sin with the knowledge that a sacrifice has already been made on your behalf. With the knowledge of the sacrifice of Jesus people know their sacrifice was already made and this can become a consideration for pretty much any sin.
Except the New Testament strongly warns against sinning with such an attitude, especially the book of Hebrews, the same book that describes Christ's sacrifice as 'one sacrifice for sins forever.'
5. Finally, animals were sacrificed to atone for the sin of the person who killed them. A sacrifice must be an intentional act for it to be considered a sacrifice, yet the people who killed Jesus didn't kill him for him to be offered as a sacrifice.
Why do you get the make the rules? The animal sacrifices prefigured what Jesus did, but they are not the same in every aspect.
When someone offered an animal as a sacrifice they intended that animal to be a sacrifice for their sin, in Christianity however it was God who valued Jesus and God who intentionally offered Jesus as a sacrifice. Given what we know about sacrifice this tells us that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was because God did something wrong and God offered a valued sacrifice to atone for God's wrongdoing. Because sacrificing Jesus would not be a logical way for humans to atone for their sin, but it would be a logical way for God to atone. Jesus never belonged to us, he belonged to God and therefore wasn't ours to sacrifice.
Again, you do not get to make the rules. The Old Testament also predicted the Messiah's death hundreds of years before it happened, for example in Isaiah 53.