Atonement and sins against fellow man

Remember that Atonement means covering. It doesn’t mean repentance. The first time the Hebrew word is used is when Noah sealed/painted the arc with pitch inside and outside.

Atonement speaks to what God does - he COVERS us..

This is important because are fallen and we live in a fallen world. There are no perfect solutions - only practical ones. And practical solutions means that we are going to mess something up in the execution.

And so because of this - we can’t actually repent because we have no way to fix the nature of creation.... For example - Aaron was not allowed to participate in the burial of his firstborn and second sons killed in the Profane Fire incident because he was not permitted to profane his vows even temporarily....

He was not even permitted to mourn their deaths. This must have been heart breaking as a father to have to stand off at a distance and serve others in stony silence as if nothing had happened while his favorite sons were buried - but he was commanded to soldier through. No doubt there was a lot of anger, hurt, and pain underneath the Ephod because of this.

But he can’t “Repent” his lack of care or mercy towards his family.... He can’t repent of his pain over the love for his lost sons....

That’s why we so desperately need God’s covering.

So for example within the context of Yom Kippur and dealing with other people.

It’s very important to allow God to open our eyes to this truth - that our hands are dirty even when we think our hands are clean. That we have no choice but to fall off the road into the ditch to the right or to the left.... We think we see but we are actually blind to this.

Dealing with other people - we generally offer either justice or mercy. We offer either fairness or love. We either offer grace or truth. Or sometimes we don’t offer any of these things... But we never do all of them at the same time.

Even when we have the best of intentions - the whole thing can backfire on us.. People hate us for our charity because they take it for condescension. People hate us because our charity inadvertently backfires and intensifies the pain and suffering of many people because we keep sending food and medicine into war zones and as a result it allows the war to extend forever - killing hundreds of thousands more innocents than it ever would have otherwise..... Or we do the wrong thing because we are afraid of being scandalized yet again.... Or they just hate us because they hate us... Jesus warned us that they would hate us because they hated him first - yet it still hurts when they do...

But because of our nature we can’t follow the middle of the path. We cannot turn the evil heart of the criminal - we can only offer them mercy and grace, punish them, or imprison them..... We cannot restore emotional trauma to the victim or replace lost limbs - we can only pay them or help them as they now are.... We can not undo the pain from the lost family of the orphan or the widow. We cannot undo the feeling of unfairness when someone is punished for what they did.... We ignore the warlords stealing all the food we send because we want to have mercy on the pain of the innocents. We want to appease and reconcile with those who hate us because they hate God... We have to rely on God to fix the mess because we can’t.

We like to think we will do better next time... We believe we will.... But we won’t - we will just fall off the other side of the road.. Or we will fall off the road the same way next time again.....

And so we desperately need God’s atonement. Because God’s covering is the only way we can get through The Way...

Yom kippur was/is about the national sins against HaShem. It was not for personal sins against God or man.

That is why on the Al Chet prayer it says "WE have sinned." Someone from our nation has done that; probably a LOT of someones.

chunkofcoal said:

Do we take too lightly our sinning against other people? What is a sin against other people? Things like - "gossip, slander, biting criticism, humiliation"?
Yeshua said to forgive others their trespasses, but do we consider that if others can trespass against us, then we can also trespass against them? Are we beating our fellowservants?

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Yes.

chunkofcoal said:

Yes, but they (you?) still try right wrongs against fellow Jews before Yom Kippur.

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Just covering your basis

chunkofcoal said:

Yes, but they (you?) still try right wrongs against fellow Jews before Yom Kippur.

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Absolutely.

1 John 2:2 actually uses the New Testament for atonement in the context of sin in the life of the believer. I'm pretty sure the intent here is to include all offenses. 1 John 2:10 goes on to explain that we are to love our brother and not to cause stumbling. This 'propitiation' correlates with the Yom Kippur of Leviticus chapters 16 and 17:

Clearly personal offenses are covered by the blood of Christ. This in no way releases the offending party from resposibility to reconcile or prevents being disciplined by God as a result.

Grace and peace,
Mark