True repentance requires more than just words; it demands a heart that takes responsibility through confession and restitution. Explore how the guilt offering teaches us to make our repentance perfect by compensating for losses and honoring God’s sacred things.
2. How to Give the Guilt Offering
Leviticus 5:5-13 explains how we should give guilt offering. First Leviticus 5:5 says, “So it shall be when he becomes guilty in one of these, that he shall confess that in which he has sinned.” It is not enough to think in your mind, “I have sinned.” You acknowledge your sins before God and confess them through prayer.
Verse 6 says, “He shall also bring his guilt offering to the LORD for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin.”
Why does God suddenly tell them to give a sin offering while He explains about guilt offering?
That’s because the guilt offering must be given along with the sin offering. A sin offering is given when you repent your sins and completely turn your ways from the sins after you have sinned. But there are some kinds of sins that you must repent from your heart and at the same time take the responsibility as well. Guilt offering is when you make your repentance perfect with compensation. You must not only compensate the person but also repent before God. Therefore, you must give sin offering along with guilt offering.
Even when you have sinned against others, you must solve your problem of sin by confessing it before God because His children must not commit sins against others.
For example, suppose there is a man who cheated his brother and swindled his brother out of some money. What should he do to repent his sin and be forgiven? First he must repent his sin with tears and cast away greed and falsehood. Then, he must confess his sin to his brother and ask his brother to forgive him. Here, he must not only repent with words but compensate his brother for the money that was swindled form him.
In the Old Testament we can find how to compensate in detail. In this case, repenting his sin before God and turning his way from sins are giving the sin offering, and the action of compensating for the swindled money is the guilt offering. In this way, repentance acceptable to God must be followed by compensation for the actual loss or damage. In other words, a guilt offering must be accompanied with sin offerings.
So from verse 7 onward it says that they should give a sin offering along with a guilt offering and bring a female lamb or goat as the sin offering. And God tells that poor people should bring two doves as sin offering when they are too poor to bring a female lamb or goat. Between the two doves, one is for sin offering and the other is for burnt offering.
Then, why should a burnt offering be given with sin offering of a dove?
A burnt offering indicates keeping the Sabbath, namely worshipping God in spirit and truth. Therefore, giving a burnt offering along with sin offering of dove indicates that our repentance is made perfect through keeping the day of the Lord.
When I explained about sin offering before, I told you we must not only repent our sins the moment we find them but also come to God on Sunday and confess our sins to Him so that our repentance may be acceptable to Him. Only then will our repentance be sealed as acceptable to God.
Because of this spiritual meaning, we must bring two doves and give one dove as the burnt offering when we give a sin offering that is a dove. However, if you are too poor to bring two doves, you are allowed to bring fine flour, like the grain offering.
When you remember that sin offering must be the sacrifice of blood, you must naturally give an animal as sin offering. But because you must be forgiven of your sins however poor you may be, God gives you mercy and allows you to give sin offering with fine flour. Nonetheless, you must remember you basically have to give the blood of an animal as sin offering although God allows you to give fine flour as sin offering.
You should keep in mind that in the offering given with fine flour it is different from the grain offering with fine flour. When you give grain offering with fine flour, you must put the incense and oil on it to make it sweeter and beautiful.
But neither oil nor the incense is put into fine flour as sin offering. What is the reason?
Burning an animal as a sin offering on the altar symbolizes burning our sins. It is not right to put the incense and oil on a sacrifice of burning sins to make it look sweeter or prettier! Not putting oil and incense in the fine flour tells us what kind of attitude we should have when we come to God to repent our sins.
In 1 Kings 21:27 it tells us what attitude King Ahab had when he repented his sins before God. “It came about when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently.” He looked meek outwardly because he repented his sins tearing his heart with fear of God.
He did not decorate his hair beautifully, nor did he oil his face and head. He did not wear majestic clothes. He wore sackcloth, lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. He did this even though he was a king.
If you enjoy worldly entertainments, delicious food, splendid clothes or joking and gossips with others when you repent your sins, God can never recognize your repentance or say, “You truly turned from your sins.” If you repent your sins from your heart, you should be self-controlled and humble yourself. In this way, God tells us not to put oil and incense on fine flour of the sin offering to let us understand what attitude we need to repent our sins before God.
I have explained sin offering accompanied with guilt offering. Now let’s delve into ways of giving guilt offering in detail.
In Leviticus 5:15-16 it says, “If a person acts unfaithfully and sins unintentionally against the Lord’s holy things, then he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD: a ram without defect from the flock, according to your valuation in silver by shekels, in terms of the shekel of the sanctuary, for a guilt offering. ‘He shall make restitution for that which he has sinned against the holy thing, and shall add to it a fifth part of it and give it to the priest. The priest shall then make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and it will be forgiven him.’”
When you committed the sin of defiling God’s sacred property, you must give guilt offering with a ram that costs as much as the damage that you caused.
The things in the church belong to God. Even an envelope, a sheet of toilet paper, and a drop of water in the church all belong to God and are supplied for you with His money. God’s sacred property must not be used for personal use. God’s sanctuary is not only this sanctuary building. Everything within the fence of the church belongs to the sanctuary. So, even a tree in the church yard is a sacred thing. If something wears out and must be thrown away, you can use it following the proper procedure. If we follow all of the proper procedures, then we can use them. Otherwise, we can never use anything for our personal use.
If you are in charge of God’s money, you must always be careful about your duty. You must thoroughly separate your money from the money that belongs to God. You must not use the money of the church for your personal use saying, “I will replace it in a few days.” You must not use God’s money for your personal use. Even if it is used temporarily and replaced fully, that money is not at your personal disposal at any time.
This is the same with workers in charge of finance of each cell or mission. If you misuse God’s money for your personal benefit, Satan will immediately accuse you and bring trials and difficulties to you and the church to stop God’s financial blessings.
If you conduct a church event with church money and have some remaining, you must not use that leftover for any other purpose. You must return that money to the church and ask for money again for other duties.
Also, what should you do if you break some item of the church’s properties? Suppose a preacher of the revival meeting drops a cup from the altar by mistake and it is broken into pieces. Then, what should he do? If the church says, “Speaker, it was just a mistake. So, it is OK.” Then, he won’t care about it. Can the church really tell the speaker to replace it? How much is it anyway? So, the church will clean it up and replace it. But the speaker shouldn’t do this. In that case, he must pay for it. He must not only replace the cup with a better one but also give guilt offering feeling sorry before God. Perhaps the church may try to stop him from because church workers feel embarrassed. Nevertheless, it is not acceptable for the church workers to stop him from giving a guilt offering and replacing it because the matter is between God and the preacher.
You must be careful in managing church properties and using them. Let’s think about a few examples. A church machine was broken down because you misused it. A fire broke out because you did not turn off an electronic stove before you left. Church money was stolen while you were sleepy during your guard duty. Then, what should you do? You should always be careful so that none of these may happen. But if those accidents actually take place, you should not simply say, “I’m really sorry.” You should compensate for the loss and destroy the barrier of sin against God by repenting your sins of carelessness.
When you give a guilt offering, you must not just compensate as much as the amount of loss but add one fifth of the loss and give it to the priests. In other words, you must give guilt offering with 120 % of the value of the loss.
Then, why does God command you this? That’s because you must learn how to fear Him. You should not think with calculation, “It is right to pay back the value of the loss,” but give guilt offering with 120% value of the loss feeling sorry for not managing God’s sacred properties with humble heart.
Lady attendants or eunuchs of ancient kings were very afraid of their king’s anger when they made mistakes. That was because they respected the king’s dignity and honor. Suppose you visited the house of your company’s president, and you broke a valuable vessel there. Then, will you just think, “It is enough to compensate for the value of the broken vessel”?
Even though you replace it with a better vessel, you still feel sorry and embarrassed because you made a mistake before your senior. If you have good conscience, you will still feel sorry even after buying the new one.
God tells us to give guilt offering with the loss and a fifth of the value of the loss when we damage His sacred property because He wants us to remember once again that we must be careful about His sacred property. We must not destroy or misuse God’s sacred property being always careful about them. If we damage any of God’s sacred property by mistake, we must repent our sin from our heart and compensate for the loss.
We must be godly and careful not only about God’s properties but also about everything in the sanctuary. Habakkuk 2:20 says, “But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.”
Especially, parents with little children should teach them to love and fear God. Parents should forbid their little children from running around, playing roughly in the sanctuary, and from wasting and defiling God’s sacred property because those things make a wall of sin against God.
When you are careful about each one of God’s sacred properties, it proves that you love and fear God. We should remember that God honors us when we honor Him by doing that. You can receive God’s love when you fear and respect God in this way. If you treat God as you want, how will God consider you? He will think you don’t fear or respect Him at all.
In addition, we should be careful about our words and actions toward God’s servants whom He guarantees. When we blame or slander God’s servants performing His power like Moses, it becomes the sin of slandering God Himself and causes Satan to accuse you.
When people stood against Moses, God said it was not against Moses but God Himself. Also, when people complained against Samuel, God said it was not toward Samuel but God Himself.
If you judge a servant whom God is with, you are judging God Himself. If you condemn that servant, you are condemning God. If you slander him, you are slandering God.
In that case, you should not only repent your sin before God but also confess your sin to God’s servant you slandered. In this way you should tear down all walls of sin against God. Only when we destroy all walls of sins, can we experience God’s power.
But if you damage any of God’s sacred property, you must add a fifth of the value of the loss to your guilt offering and repent your sins. This is the same with the case where you cause damage to other people.
Leviticus 6:2-5 shows how you can be forgiven when you are dishonest with a security deposit and take it by theft or extortion, when you find a lost item but take it by lying about it or other deception.
Of course God’s children must not commit these kinds of sins intentionally. This part explains to us how to be forgiven when we realize what we did before we accepted Jesus Christ, or when we find what we took other’s possessions unintentionally without knowing it.
When those sins are revealed and if we want to be forgiven, we should not only return what we stole or extort from other people. In addition to the value of the damaged or lost item, we must return a fifth of the value of the loss to the original owner. A fifth does not only indicate the value “a fifth” but also means that we must repent our sins with the wholehearted actions.
In Luke 19:8, Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” He wanted to compensate for the amount four times rather than a fifth because true repentance and the grace came upon him.
In this way, a fifth means that God forgives you when you show your repentance with actions and true heart.
Suppose a man who was a thief before he met God is going to compensate for the amount of the loss he caused. But he cannot visit each one from whom he stole something and compensate him. He cannot calculate all damage he caused before one by one to compensate each one. In this case, he can show the action of his repentance diligently.
He has to earn money through upright work, serve the kingdom of God, and help people who are in need. Only when we show the action of our repentance in this way, will God recognize our heart and forgive our sins.