This is a question I read on a facebook forum: “Just throwing it out there in Exodus 32:30-35 Moses offers himself to cover the sins of his people, yet god pretty much says each man dies for his own sin and in Deuteronomy 24:16 states this quite clear, so God sends man a law and then flips the script and does the complete opposite? bit confusing don’t you think? Also in Deuteronomy 12:30-31 human sacrifice is considered an abomination, so why would God come in human form as Jesus the Son or God the Son (gets very confusing) and break his very law or be the product of the abomination? Or if he came as God in flesh
God almighty can be killed? Many will possibly ask we need Jesus because ‘Jesus is the only way to God’ but then what of Genesis 4:7 is he really needed or is he a product of religion? I look foward to your views…”
The proper form of scripture study is called “exegesis” which means to study and figure out scripture as it is. What is God saying?
The contrasting improper form of scripture study has a name, too, and it’s eisogesis. This means, like your question, to ignore what’s there and to go at with skepticism and perhaps even animosity.
But, even still, your question deserves some answer, to try and untangle your question and give you the proper, scriptural answer.
First of all, we are to read scripture with faith, if we want any chance of understanding it.
Second, we need either to study scripture sufficiently in itself, or use commentaries to help speed up the process of our understanding what it there.
So, jumping over a lot of preliminary explanation which you probably need, because of your question, let’s say this. God is sovereign. That means, he makes all the decisions, he is the one who makes things happen. General rules about not sacrificing humans or specific rules about not taking Moses’ life in atonement for the sins of Israel, are examples of the sovereignty of God.
One of the themes in the Old Testament is that the Israelites are not to practice religion in the way that their pagan neighbors do. So, some examples of this are, first and foremost, not to worship idols or set up worship poles or mounds of stones, like they do. Now, I can’t tell you where human sacrifice was practiced outside of Israel, but the Israelites did lapse away and practice human sacrifice, which God was very displeased with. I can’t cite the verses in scripture where this happens but it does happen.
Another command from God is not to drink the blood of animals. So, much later, the Jews of Jesus’s day were astonished and scandalized when Jesus told them (John chapter 6) that they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
the easiest explanation of your question, is not that God was flip-flopping, but that God said this and that – and THAT is “that.” Does this make sense? It does, in faith, when you recognize and accept that the blood that God wanted them to drink was not the blood of sacrificed animals, but the body and blood of Jesus in the sacramental form that Jesus gave us.
It’s perfectly simple to “see” and understand, when you approach the subject with faith.
I hope you are enriched with the good news of Jesus Christ.
