The sin offering signifies Christ as the offering for the sin of God’s people. In the Bible sin refers to the indwelling sin in our nature, whereas sins refers to the sinful deeds, the fruit of the indwelling sin. Our sin was dealt with by Christ as our sin offering (Lev. 4; Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 9:26), and our sins, our trespasses, were borne by Christ as our trespass offering (Lev. 5; Isa. 53:5a; 1 Cor. 15:3; 1 Pet. 2:24; Heb. 9:28). As the Lamb of God, Christ took away sin in its totality — the inward sin and the outward sins (Isa. 53:10; John 1:29). See note 1 Pet. 3:181 and note 1 John 1:76.
Through incarnation the Word, who is God, became flesh, in the likeness of the flesh of sin, i.e., the likeness of a fallen man (John 1:1, 14 and note John 1:142a, par. 1; Rom. 8:3 and note Rom. 8:33). Christ was crucified in the flesh and died in the flesh (1 Pet. 3:18b). Although Christ was a fallen man only in likeness, when He was on the cross, God counted that likeness as real. Since sin, the old man, Satan, the world, and the ruler of the world are all one with the flesh, when Christ died in the flesh, sin was condemned (Rom. 8:3), the old man was crucified (Rom. 6:6), Satan was destroyed (Heb. 2:14), the world was judged, and the ruler of the world was cast out (John 12:31). Hence, through Christ’s death in the flesh all negative things were dealt with. This is the efficacy of the sin offering.
The sequence of the five offerings in 1:1—6:7 is a picture of the sequence in 1 John 1. The burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering bring us into fellowship with God (1 John 1:3). Through our fellowship with God, who is light (1 John 1:5), we discover that we are sinful, that we have sin inwardly and sins outwardly. Hence, after our regeneration we still need to take Christ as our sin offering, as indicated in 1 John 1:8, and as our trespass offering, as indicated in 1 John 1:9. See note 1 John 1:73b.