First, in response to your question of OT sacrifice, I’m curious to know if this is the driver behind your view? Meaning, does the OT sacrificial system define your views of Christ’s sacrificial atonement? If so, then we are coming at this from 2 different directions and that will help us understand each other. If not, it will still be helpful to understand what’s going on in the OT. The OT sacrificial system, most (I hesitate to be dogmatic due mainly to my own lack of knowledge) all of it, from priests to animal sacrifices, is typology. By that I mean it is a very real requirement by God for the people of Israel, but it is also symbolic of what would take place in Christ. Because the OT sacrificial system is a type, there is a danger in trying to draw exact parallels between the OT and NT. [An example would be the 2 goats on the Day of Atonement from Leviticus 16, certainly there were not 2 Christ’s. Though I submit the two goats may represent two aspects of Christ’s own atonement, namely propitiation and expiation (there may be more implications here, but that for a separate post).]

What we need to do instead is use the NT to help us better understand the OT. Hebrews is an excellent book to start with because it draws heavily on the OT types and points to their NT counterpart in Christ. In Hebrews, what we see is that these OT sacrifices didn’t actually remove the sins of anyone, but they were instead pointing ahead to a greater sacrifice, namely Christ. (Hebrews 10:4) We can also see this in John the Baptist’s language from John 1:29 as he declares concerning Jesus, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Here in the Baptist’s language we may almost immediately think of the Passover lamb from Exodus, again which was a type of a coming sacrifice. It is interesting that you mention redemption and ransom, both of which are words used to describe other aspects of Christ’s atonement. Your example of paying money (Exodus 30:11-16) without death, doesn’t necessarily correspond to Christ, in the sense of actual money. However, the “currency” that Christ used to ransom His people was His own blood. (Rev. 5:9) Likewise, it is Christ’s blood that provided redemption for His people (Eph 1:7). So, basically, in order to understand Christ’s atonement we have to understand the progressive revelation of God in His Word and take that which has been revealed under the New Covenant, i.e. the New Testament, to help us understand how sacrifices worked under the Old Covenant, i.e. in the Old Testament.

Secondly, the basic idea of penal substitutionary atonement can be summed up by saying that Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of the world (1 Corinthians 5:21) and though He never sinned Himself, He took the punishment due to all sinners who place their faith in Him (Romans 3:24-25). He actually did avert or perhaps better stated absorb the punishment that was due to sinners, namely the wrath of God.

If you’d like a good resource on penal substitutionary atonement, I recommend Pierced For Our Transgressions by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach. Also, I’ve written several articles that address the subject which you should be able to find in the search box (see also articles on propitiation).

For the glory of His Name,
John