What is Sacrifice

Since I was young, one of the most confusing things I ever heard in church and from the ancient manuscripts we studied was the practice of sacrifice: how these ancient peoples would put to death a bird or some cattle as penance for their own sins, and the death of these animals would somehow “cover” them for a year, like some kind of divine health insurance.

Today, I have a slightly better understanding of how all of that is supposed to work, but what I really want to talk about is the concept of sacrifice in our own lives. Its expression has certainly changed a bit since the days of knives and altars, but I’ve begun to understand the logic behind this sort of sacrifice, and what it ought to look like today.

Generally, if we have a bad habit in our lives, what ancient manuscripts might call a “sin,” we know it needs fixing, but we tend to get a little iffy on how much fixing it needs. We ask ourselves how much of it is really over the line, how we might be able to channel or contain it, or we rationalize it as “just how we are.” And please understand that I’m speaking out of my own experience, not pointing a finger at anyone else in particular. The trouble is that these half-measures still keep us tied to that old lodestone. It still sits heavily on our thoughts and keeps drawing our attention back.

Freedom, in situations like this, usually means cutting away the rotten branch entirely—and this is where the concept of sacrifice starts to make sense to me. It is not a matter of paying a spiritual fine, as I used to think of it. It is just that growth rarely happens without pain and sacrifice. The old must be torn down to make way for the new.

I want to expand this a little further today, because I think it is enormously illuminating to apply the same thought to forgiveness. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the problem with forgiveness is not that people think it too high and difficult a virtue, it is that they find it detestable. This from the perspective of one severely wronged, not merely in the abstract. It’s easy to understand why this is the case. It places a heavy burden on the party who is already wronged, and even seems to imply a debt toward the transgressor!

But a debt is probably not the best way to think of it. I do not think that forgiveness is ever owed, exactly. It’s just that it is what’s best—for all of us, not only the one receiving it. Sometimes the opportunity for a hard sacrifice comes from yourself, and sometimes it’s provided by someone else’s mistake. What’s important is learning to recognize it as an opportunity to ease burdens, and to return to love.

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Dr. Alex Loyd