Did Jesus offer sacrifices? –
Have you ever wondered if Jesus offered sacrifices himself, before he died on the cross? You likely thought he wouldn’t have to because Jesus never sinned. This blog is about the sacrifices in Leviticus and about living as a clean and unclean Jew during bible times. You will likely change your mind about whether Jesus must have offered at least some sacrifices. He didn’t sin, but we just don’t get what it was to become ceremonially “unclean” so easily.
Would Jesus Become Ceremonially Unclean?
What if Jesus tripped and fell on a dead rodent? What if Christ walked after dark and ran into a cobweb with dead flies on it? Or woke up and realized he just smacked a mosquito that was biting him in his sleep? These things would make him unclean.
All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be regarded as unclean by you…. You will make yourselves unclean by these; whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean till evening. Whoever picks up one of their carcasses must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening.
Leviticus 11:20-25
When Jesus touched the leper in Matthew 8:1-4, he became ceremonially unclean. When the woman with a flow of blood touched him in the crowds, he became unclean (Luke 8:43-48). Note also about the sin offering in Leviticus 4:1-35,
These violations are perpetrated “unintentionally,” that is, they are committed inadvertently or unwittingly. Thus, an individual’s ignorance or lack of awareness regarding God’s law is a mitigating circumstance. These sins are clearly less serious than sins that are intended, ones that are in direct defiance of God and his law. In Numbers 15:22-31, the latter is seen as deliberate and committed with “a high hand” (v. 30). Yet it should be noted that even unintentional sins need to be taken care of through sacrificial ritual…despite a lack of intentionality.
An EP Study Commentary Leviticus
Do I think Jesus ever had to offer any sin offerings for such unintended offenses? Yes! Think about why Jesus was baptized. He never sinned so never needed to turn from his sin. Yet he told John the Baptist, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:13-15). In Matthew 5:18 Jesus said, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” He had to fulfill it all himself, or it just wouldn’t get done!
Balancing the Legalism of Christ’s Era With Fulfilling the Whole Law
Leviticus 4-5 speaks of sacrifices for unintentional sins. I believe Jesus had a misunderstanding at least once with his parents, so had to offer an appropriate sacrifice for this. The Bible is silent on whether he warned everyone he was unclean after the woman with a flow of blood touched him in the crowds. So we as Gentiles always assume since Jesus healed her, he didn’t need to be considered ritually unclean. Same with when he touched the leper. But we should think twice about this.
Jesus did stand up to the Pharisees about washing hands because that was a controversial issue at the time (Mark 7). But he also taught his disciples to practice what the Jewish leaders say, and not what they do (Matthew 23:3). He told the Jewish leaders he was the Lord of the Sabbath (and therefore He made the rules, Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5). But again, in Matthew 5:18 Jesus said, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” So He did it all himself, and we should think more about that whenever we read Leviticus. He did it all!
Did Jews From Far Away Offer Sacrifices?
What about the Diaspora during the first century, i.e. Jews that lived far from Palestine? What about the Galilean Jews who lived about a week’s walking distance (one way) from Jerusalem? They couldn’t offer sacrifices anywhere else but in Jerusalem. Alfred Edersheim has reliable answers for this from ancient Jewish sources:
…three festivals of Easter, Pentecost and Tabernacles, in which all males were to appear before the Lord in His sanctuary…. Indeed, the Rabbis expressly mention these three as marking the great festivals…the appointed festive offerings of the worshippers, which are not to be confounded with the public sacrifices offered on these occasions in the name of the whole congregation; and joyousness, with which they connect the freewill offerings that each brought, as the Lord had blessed him, and which afterward were shared with the poor, the desolate, and the Levite, in the joyous meal that followed the public services of the Temple.
The Temple
So how did the Jews become clean after becoming unclean?
They had mikvehs they needed to immerse in. Archaeologists uncovered mikvehs even where the Hellenist Jews lived, in the opulent cities Herod the Great built, mostly populated with heathens. They had to bathe in bathtubs first, then immerse in mikvehs to become ceremonially clean.
Conclusion
Sacrifices for unintentional offenses shows just how much God cares about everything that happens to everyone of us. Nothing should be brushed off as insignificant, because nothing is insignificant with God. Of course, Christ’s parents probably realized after they collected themselves that Jesus would’ve naturally assumed he should have been about his Father’s business. Hind sight is always clearer. But with God, all things are to be taken seriously–every offense.
Jesus set a perfect example for us and identified with us in our sin, becoming a perfect high priest for our weakness and infirmities (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15-16, 5:7-9). What a Savior!
The above pictures were scanned from The Holy Temple of Jerusalem
