Whatever Touches the Altar is "Holified"

 What is the actual mechanism of repentance (better: teshuvah - turning back/returning) and ultimate forgiveness and redemption?  When someone, say, confesses their sins, such as in the daily prayer service, what happens with that confession?

Tetzaveh tell us exactly what happens and makes a point that I never quite understood until now.

Yes, there are many types of sacrifices and each one will be tailored later on in terms of raw material, procedure, eaten v. not eaten, etc.  But because it starts with an atonement offering, I think it can be fairly stated that the primary purpose of the mizbeach is to achieve atonement for the Children of Israel.

Yesterday we learned the first part of the equation: each Child of Israel chips in for the sacrificial animals, the kohanim press their hands on the animal, transferring the sins of Israel into the animal, and then it is slaughtered and parts are burned - causing a pleasing odor.

But what happens in between?  Shemot 29:37 comes to tell us a critical intermediary step - that before the parts are burned, they first touch the altar and become holified - yikdash.  

The Torah is telling us quite clearly that, in fact, so-called "sins" are annihilated (slaughtered) but then transformed into something holy through their contact with another holy object.  This probably explains why, in objective terms, every instrument used in the Temple service had to be holy - because if a sacrifice touched an unholy object, even a slightly unholy one, it would not become transformed - and therefore the sin would not become forgiven.

But let's flesh this out: the sin is committed, through tzedakah, an animal is purchased and the holy man transfers the sin to the animal, the sin is eliminated through slaughter, and then the ("dead"?) sin touches the altar, where it is holified, and then burned.

If the action -- floating out there in an objective spiritual universe -- can bump into something holy, does that transform the "sinful" action in a holy one?  Is the true nature of sin, at the end of the day, holy?  

Something that comes to mind is one thought - and I can't remember from where or who said it - that every sin is really a mitzvah that was poorly-timed - i.e., performed too early or too late.

This one line may come to teach us a radical idea that I have been wrestling with for some time - that, no doubt, in our world, there are certainly acts which are pure/impure, good/bad, sin/commandments, hate/lovingkindess - that a real didactic interplay exists, and that we must choose one over the other and use all the strength within us to do so.  But perhaps in G-d's World, in the World to Come, because G-d is totally and completely good, and all of us and our actions are emanation of G-do, all acts either are or can become holy, even so-called sinful ones.

Does this absolve us of our deeds, thoughts, and choices in this world?  Of course not.

But it may shed some light on the Unity of H' - the Source of All, and of which all is holy.