Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 1-4.

As I read this I was not sure what I would write about since we no longer offer sacrifices on an altar.  However, I noticed one thing as I was reading.  Some of these sacrifices, the entire item being sacrificed was burnt on the altar.  For other sacrifices, only a portion was burnt on the altar.  I am not sure of the overall significance of this difference, but I noted that certain sin offerings fell into the first category and some fell into the latter.  The sin offerings for a priest and the sin offering for the entire community were to have a portion burned on the altar, and the rest burned outside of the camp, while the sin offering for a leader and the sin offering for individuals (other than priests) only a portion was to be burned on the altar, and the rest was left unburned.  The passage even tells us why the priest sin offering was treated the same as the community sin offering.  It was because if the priest sinned he brought guilt on to the people as well.  The more I think about it the more I think the fact that sin offerings for political leaders being treated the same as sin offerings for individuals while the sin offerings for priests (religious leaders) being treated the same as sin offerings for the entire community tell us a lot about how we should think about political leaders.

As I thought about that distinction between the sin offerings for priests and the sin offerings for secular leaders I thought about our role as Christians in our society.  I had mentioned earlier this year about how we, as Christians, are all priests.  When we look at society around us, the terrible things we see result from our sins as priests for our society.  When we sin, we bring guilt on society around us.  Sometimes we blame the debauchery of society around us on the failings of its political leaders.  Instead of doing that, we should examine ourselves, we should examine how our sins may have brought guilt on those around us.  We are called to be salt, which transforms the food around it.  So, we should transform society around us for the better.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.