Israel’s sacrificial system pictured, in the language of this sermon, ‘the complete works of Christ’: the burnt offering answering the debt of lust and folly, the peace offering bringing reconciliation, the sin offering purifying God’s holy temple defiled by man’s sin, and the guilt offering settling the deep problem of man’s guilt – his lost innocence.
What set the guilt offering apart was its repair procedure. It required not only the presentation of a sacrifice and confession of sin but restitution to the person actually wronged, plus an added fifth, before the priest could offer the sacrifice to make atonement. Guilt, in other words, was never merely a private matter between the sinner and God; it demanded that a wrong done to another person be made right.