The Guilt or Trespass Offering-Your Walk with God

Leviticus 5:14-19 The LORD said to Moses: ¹⁵ "When a person commits a violation and sins unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD's holy things, he is to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. It is a guilt offering. ¹⁶ He must make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard to the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven.¹⁷ "If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible. ¹⁸ He is to bring to the priest as a guilt offering a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value. In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the wrong he has committed unintentionally, and he will be forgiven. ¹⁹ It is a guilt offering; he has been guilty of wrongdoing against the LORD."

This was a personal offering. A ram without defect is offered for your sins.  You lay your hands upon the animal as a symbol of passing your sin to the animal while confessing your particular sin. You state that you have sinned and rebelled against God but also state you are repenting and this animal is your atonement for that sin. This may be an intentional sin or an unintentional sin. Both types of sin required the same sacrifice.

The ram is split open and the priest offers the fat of the inward parts upon the Altar. The priest then sprinkles the blood back and forth on the Altar.  The remainder of the blood is poured out at the base of the Altar.  You must also make restitution for any harm you may have done to another by reimbursing in full and adding twenty percent to the value of his loss.  This brings about reconciliation between the you and the one you harmed.

Note the words restitution and reconciliation.  Restitution means an act of restoring.  Reconciliation means to restore to harmony, to settle or to resolve. When Jesus became the guilt or trespass offering, He did this to restore our fellowship-our harmony with the Holy God.

We are by our very nature sinful.  It all started in the garden with Adam and Eve.  Because of sin we can not come before a Holy God on our own.  God is a Holy God and can not tolerate sin.  God instructed Moses to set up a system of sacrifices to express the sinful nature of man and begin the process of showing His people the way of making restitution with Himself.  This system pointed the way and was fulfilled in Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.