Forbidden to Offer Sacrifices

In thinking about free-will offerings in the Bible, one is struck by the fact that there are sacrifices to God that we as believers are not permitted to offer.

This flows from the observation that there were sacrifices that the Lord Jesus was not permitted to make. He was not allowed to make sin offerings or trespass offerings for Himself, because He is completely without sin. His enemies couldn't name a single sin Christ ever committed!

Only sinners can offer sin offerings according to the law.

Thus, the only offerings Christ could make were free-will offerings.

And yet, Christ did make a sin offering, not for Himself, but for His people!

Christ died for our sins. He said He came into this world to be a ransom for many.

So He made Himself a sin offering for His people, while throughout His life, He was not permitted to make a sin offering for Himself.

Thus, Christ's sacrifice was, at the same time, an offering for the sin of His people, and a voluntary free-will offering.

No sinner could ever make a free-will offering for his own sin, because the law commanded a sin offering.

But when Christ took our sins upon Himself, God's law demanded an offering for that sin, and yet, for Christ, it was a free-will offering at the same time.

Christ had the power to lay down His life, a power given to Him by His Father, and no man could take it from Him.

In the Lord Jesus, for one time, for all eternity, there is conjoined the mandatory sin offering for the sin of His people, and the free-will gift of an offering for sin, that our Lord Jesus made!

By this, Jesus has forever barred us from making a sin offering for ourselves!