IN A SCIENTIFIC AGE, the concept of animal sacrifice seems altogether primitive and barbaric. Thoughts of tribal people offering bloody remains to appease angry and malicious gods come to mind. In the movie King Kong, a beautiful maiden is offered to the island monster to assuage his wrath. All this, in an enlightened world, seems uneducated and backwards.

When I first read about animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, I must admit a certain amount of confusion and distaste for the entire affair. Why would a good and perfect God require people to do such a strange and cruel act? Why would a God who is gentle, forgiving, and merciful want to cause so much seemingly needless pain to poor cattle, lambs, pigeons, doves, and other animals? Now don’t get me wrong—I’m definitely not the granola-vegetarian type. I like animals (preferably medium-rare) just as much as any other carnivore. But to be honest, the entire situation still makes a Christian who has had any type of scientific education take pause.

However, as I read the meticulous, detailed preparations needed for certain sacrifices, a nagging question started to bother me: could it be that my preconceived stereotypes of animal sacrifice were somehow tainting my understanding of deeper spiritual truths? That’s exactly what happened! Here’s what I learned…

1. We Live In A Moral World

If right and wrong did not exist, then there would be no need for the Old Testament animal sacrifices. The reason that these sacrifices were required by God was because an underlying Moral Law was broken. In other words, we do not simply live in a material world of cars, wood, money, and ham-and-cheese sandwiches. We also live in a world where right and wrong exist—where rape is detestable, stealing is criminal, and child abuse is despicable. In fact, we live in a world where moral realities are just as tangible (if not more so) than material ones. When we see or hear of the genocide in Rwanda or the Holocaust, there is something in us that knows and feels the moral violation.

2. Sin Has Consequences

The animal sacrifices were a constant reminder that breaking this Moral Law had consequences. First, there were practical consequences. For the people in biblical times, livestock was equated with money. And every animal that was sacrificed meant less money in the pocket and less food on the table. A modern day analogy would be for us to give away a prized possession such as a bed or sofa whenever we committed a sin (it’s a good thing that we don’t live in that time anymore because my house would be unfurnished).

Second, the sacrifices were a reminder that the ultimate consequence of sin was death—both physical and spiritual. Whenever an animal was sacrificed because of sin, it violently reminded the transgressor of the horror and depravity of his moral failure. It was a reminder also that, to a perfectly holy God, this problem of sin was much bigger than anyone had ever anticipated. Our response, for instance, to a small and seemingly innocent lie is to say, “Come on! It was just a small lie! Everyone does it! Who really cares?” But to a purely holy God, any sin is an essential violation of His very personhood—just as rape is a horrible violation of that person’s very being. This situation is the nonnegotiable consequence of an utterly holy God.

3. Animals Are Inadequate

I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe that there are enough animals in this world to cover all of my sins. And I say this with absolutely no false humility (who knows—it may be that your life may require more animals, and may even require sacrificing insects and squids too).

During Old Testament times, there was a sense that these sacrificial rituals did not supply the definitive solution to man’s moral predicament. Instead, they pointed outward to something far better. Although nobody fully understood how God would finally provide that answer, there was, nevertheless, an expectation that a complete solution would one day be given. But when that solution finally arrived in the form of Jesus Christ, humanity assumed that he would be a material king who would save them from political oppression, not the spiritual King who would save them from moral crisis. On the cross, Jesus became the ultimate and final sacrificial lamb and the consummate propitiation for the Moral Law. As C.S. Lewis so creatively writes in The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe:

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”