Atonement is clearly the action of God and not of man throughout the Bible. The symbolic import of the sacrifices is so detailed that three different actions were necessary to display everything that God apparently intended us to understand about the way he was to deal with sin.
- The sacrificial death of the first goat showed clearly that the offense of sin requires the punishment of death ( Eze 18:4 ).
- The sending of the second goat into the wilderness with the sins laid on the top of its head emphasizes that sin will be removed from the person and the community "as far as the east is from the west" ( Psalm 103:12 ).
- The burning of the sacrifice so that it is consumed shows the power of God over sin, completely destroying it so that it can bother the supplicant no more.
