One of the biggest mistakes in Christian theology is the idea that the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments, most of the Prophets, and anything written therein has anything to do with the afterlife. Even a cursory reading of the text of the Torah will demonstrate that this is a document concerned exclusively with earthly things in the here and now, and not heavenly ones in the hereafter.
The Torah, or the Law, was the Kingdom of Israel's founding document and penal code. Deuteronomy in particular follows the same pattern as what was called a "suzerainty treaty," a contract between a ruler and the people that ruler has subjected. But the whole of the five books of the Torah could be seen as following this pattern, culminating in Deuteronomy. There is a history of the ruler's interactions with the subject people, a list of expectations, a list of rewards for keeping the contract, and a list of punishments for breaking it. In addition, as I said, it also functions as a penal code not terribly different in design from the penal codes by which crimes and punishments are determined in the various U.S. states and territories.
Within this penal code, there are rules and laws which deal with both intentional crimes and unintentional crimes. For intentional crimes, there are strict rules of jurisprudence which must be followed, and strict punishments for the person found guilty. For unintentional crimes, a person would be able to offer a sacrifice for forgiveness, or be able to flee to a sanctuary city in the case of murder, though he would never be able to set foot outside of it again. This understanding of a division between intentional or unintentional crimes operated on both the individual level and the national level. Crimes committed by the nation as a whole, represented by its leadership or by the actions of the majority of its citizens, were also dealt with as either unintentional, forgiven by offering a blood sacrifice, or intentional and triggering the list of punishments such as famine, drought, foreign invasion and so forth as Israel would be reminded Who their King, by the contract they signed with blood, actually was. It is correctly observed that the Torah was not dissimilar in function to other Middle Eastern codes of law during the second and third millennia BCE, the major difference being the Ruler laying it down and with whom Israel was contracted.
For these reasons, there is no justifiable basis, Scripturally speaking, to assume or teach that God would require a blood sacrifice for heavenly forgiveness based on the Torah. Heavenly things and the afterlife were never the Torah's domain. When God sent plagues and judgments upon Israel, it was always in keeping with the contract they themselves signed and broke, and it was always for earthly reasons, not heavenly ones. When He speaks in the Prophets of the Old Testament and judges against Israel, it is always in the context of the very earthly treaty which was contracted. Paradise or torment in the afterlife was never, never in view.
These spiritualized interpretations of the Torah did not begin to come about until much later, well after the Babylonian exile when Israel's constant violations of the Torah came to a point where it was the last straw, and God did exactly what He said He would do as a result, no more and no less. It was really only after the Babylonian exile that the Torah became more spiritualized as Israel no longer really governed themselves under the contract of the Torah ever again. Yes, there was the Maccabean revolt and the Hasmonean dynasty, but it was never the same as the true Kingdom period, and the rulers during this time were usurpers and pretenders, not of the true line of Israel's Davidic kings. Even the State of Israel's government today has no real connection with the Kingdom, or the contract under which it had once been governed. Like the period after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in 70 CE, the rabbis and teachers of Israel had to find a way to make the Torah continue to be meaningful and relevant without being able to actually carry it out literally, as it was meant to be. Once the Kingdom of Israel collapsed, there was really very little legitimate use for the Mosaic Law except as providing a general idea of the kind of behavior God wanted in the first place, but the rewards and punishments promised applied exclusively to the nation and its institutions that had signed it, which now no longer existed except as a memory.
And thus what was meant to be a literal, earthly penal code and constitution was mistakenly applied to the afterlife and to heavenly things. And this mistaken understanding eventually carried over into Christian thinking as well, either intentionally by Pharisee infiltrators as Paul described, or unintentionally by well meaning Christian theologians and scholars. This was the reason why Paul wrote so much about the proper use and place of the Torah. He was explicit in his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians that the Mosaic Law was exclusively earthly in nature, and could only punish wrong behavior, but had no ability because of the weakness of our malfunctioning flesh to actually produce right behavior because it was never designed for that to begin with.
And so, when we talk about the forgiveness of "sins" in the context of the Torah, we're talking about the unintentional crimes committed under this ancient penal code which only originally applied to the nation of people who had signed it, only dealt with very earthly penalties and jurisprudence, and is no longer enforced because the Kingdom of Israel no longer exists as a political entity but only as an idea in the minds of many. As the Scripture says, where there is no Torah, there is no transgression.
So then, why would God be primarily concerned then with providing a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins for the whole world, past, present, and future if the Torah itself doesn't actually apply to the whole world, past, present, and future? Even in the Prophets during the Kingdom period and after, He's far more concerned with the actual harmful behaviors of the people than He is about being placated with blood, as He tells them repeatedly that He doesn't want their constant sacrifices, and their rituals, sacrifices, and festivals make Him sick to His stomach with their hypocrisy. Wouldn't He be more concerned with providing a way to produce genuine right behaviors? And this is the thrust of the New Contract which He promised in the Prophet Jeremiah, where He says explicitly, "I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jeremiah 31:33, NKJV), and then almost as an afterthought after explaining it a little further He adds, "I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" (v. 34). The most important thing about the New Contract is the production of right behavior, and the least important, almost an afterthought is the forgiveness of wrong, something which is easy for Him to do, and which He promises in the Prophet Ezekiel if someone leaves off the wrong behavior and engages with the right. As Jesus said, "Which is easier? To tell a man, 'your sins are forgiven,' or to make him walk (being previously lame)?" The more pressing matter, and what even we consider to be miraculous, is making the lame man walk.
And this is the whole point of the New Contract, and the Salvation which comes through putting one's trust into Jesus Christ, that is, the miracle of producing right behaviors instead of malfunctioning ones. Of course God forgives, and tosses the wrongdoing away like it never happened, because His whole goal and focus is our submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ so that we would be producing the right behaviors, because it is He who does them within and through us. And this is why the New Contract has absolutely nothing to do with the Mosaic Contract, the Torah, except that it was offered to those who had previously signed that contract first, and when they rejected it, it was offered to anyone and everyone who would be willing to accept it, no matter who they were. And this is why no one operating within and under the New Contract is subject to the Torah in any way, shape or form. Forgiveness for past transgressions is assumed, because if you're submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, then you've clearly turned away from the wrong behaviors produced by your malfunctioning flesh.
Jesus Christ's death, burial, and resurrection was always about uniting us with Him, collecting and joining every descendant of Adam with His life, death, and resurrection so that our own malfunctioning flesh would be rendered inert, and His life would then be lived through us as we submitted to and cooperated with His Spirit instead of our malfunctioning flesh. The Father didn't need a blood sacrifice to forgive us. We needed to be joined as one with Him through Jesus Christ in order to produce right behaviors.
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