<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not proud of this, but I\u2019m a recovering guilt-denier. When confronted with something that I\u2019ve done wrong, my first reaction is to deny, argue, or even blame others. Many of us do that. Others, however, absorb guilt and get stuck in shame and self-loathing. Still others take their cues from our feel-good culture and deny that there\u2019s anything wrong with us to begin with. But our conscience won\u2019t let us off so easily. Deep down, we all have a nagging awareness that we fall short, even of our own standards.<\/p>\n
God offers a better alternative. In the opening chapters of Leviticus we find pictures of hope and forgiveness. Each offering of a type of animal or food served a different purpose, and each sacrifice could be different, depending on a family\u2019s income. The burnt offering dealt with the people\u2019s fundamental problem of guilt. The person laid their hand on a bull, a sheep, or a bird, and the animal would be killed in place of its family. In this way the penalty for sin would be covered, and the offering would make \u201can aroma pleasing to the Lord,\u201d signifying God\u2019s favor and blessing.<\/p>\n
Of course, as Hebrews 10:4 explains, \u201cIt is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.\u201d Those offerings illustrated that Jesus, the Lamb of God, would eventually become the ultimate sacrifice for us. Jesus\u2019 death was an offering pleasing to God, and now God\u2019s favor shines on us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m not proud of this, but I\u2019m a recovering guilt-denier. When confronted with something that I\u2019ve done wrong, my first reaction is to deny, argue, or even blame others. Many of us do that. Others, however, absorb guilt and get stuck in shame and self-loathing. Still others take their cues from our feel-good culture and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[86,876,269,877,181],"class_list":["post-9148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-daily","tag-dealing","tag-devotional","tag-guilt","tag-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}