Observation Regarding Sacrifice

It is often interesting to examine the ideas culture promotes, and compare them with the same ideas in Scripture. Often the cultural take on these ideas is 180 degrees from the biblical. This is evident in the idea of a what constitutes a sacrifice, and what makes it acceptable.
George Barna, a pollster of Christian thought, reported recently that 51% of American Christians believed Jesus sinned during his life on earth. While this reveals a misreading of scripture, it also shows a lack of understanding about the nature of sacrifice as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. To even begin to get an understanding of the nature of a sacrifice, as delineated by God, we must look into the book of Leviticus which is the ‘handbook’ for the sacrificial system in Scripture. Leviticus lists the various sacrifices the Israelites were to present to God beginning with the Burnt Offering. This particular sacrifice required an animal from the herd or flock; “a male without defect.” In similar vein, the fellowship offering required an animal; “...male or female...without defect.” The Sin Offering and the Guilt Offering, offered to make atonement for one’s sin and guilt for breaking the laws of God, also was to be an animal, “without defect.” All the sacrifices were to be perfect, complete and without any defect.. Later on in scripture, in the book of Malachi, God condemned the Israelites for offering crippled, diseased and blind animals for sacrifices. The clear message is that a sacrifice was to be without defect, perfect.
It is in this context that the poll results of Barna give cause for concern. If as many people believe, Jesus, the sacrifice for our sins, was not without defect, then as Malalchi quotes God “With such offering from our hands, will he accept you?” becomes our concern. A sinful Jesus as our sacrifice, would be, by definition, defective. In essence many are saying that our sin offering, our guilt offering, Jesus, was defective and imperfect. A sacrifice that, by its very nature would be, unacceptable.
However, there is a further problem with the idea of a sinful Jesus. All sin has been given a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death since the first sin in the Garden of Eden. The book of Romans records the reading of the sentence: “The wages of sin is death.” The just sentence for a sinner is death, which in the Scriptures means physical and spiritual death; death of the soul and the body. Therefore, if Jesus was a sinner, He was deserving of death for his own sins. If he sinned during his life on earth, then he was sentenced to death, died, and did not rise, because all sinners die and stay dead, banished from the presence of God, never to be in His presence. That is the fate of Jesus if He indeed sinned. It may be somehow comforting, in a fellowship of thieves kind of way, to think of Jesus as just like us, but if He is, then we are never going to be anything like God. IF Jesus sinned, our sins are still on our souls, not having been paid for, because our sin offering was not perfect, without defect and therefore was not sufficient and not acceptable.
It is time for Christians to think through the ideas currently in vogue and to do so with a background of biblical knowledge.