NOTES for Lev 6:1-30

In the Mosaic law we find more than regulations for worship. It also includes criminal laws, which we already encountered in part in the book of Exodus. Two things are striking in this law: God's uncompromising rejection of sin and every failure to love, and at the same time the relatively mild punishments, compared with the surrounding ancient world, and the possibility of receiving God's forgiveness. Why, then, is the sin offering called “most holy”? Sin hardly seems the most honorable sphere of relations between God and humankind. Apparently, His forgiveness truly is a great mystery: He Himself said that sin, the violation of His will, is incompatible with life—and He Himself agrees to restore life to the transgressor, provided that blood is nevertheless shed.