THE
ATONEMENT
CHAPTER X.
The Sin-Offering. (Lev. iv.-v. 13.)
WE now come to a class of offerings distinguished broadly
from those classed as "sweet-savour," by the fact of their being in no wise
voluntary, but the specific requirement for actual sin. The burnt offering and
peace offering both clearly recognized, of course, the condition of men as
sinners. Apart from this, they had indeed no meaning. But in no case are these
offered for specific acts of sin. In their case we find, "If any man of you
bring an offering unto the Lord," in those now before us, "If a soul shall sin,
he shall bring his offering."
The sin and trespass offerings both speak
of the judgment of sin, that judgment which is indeed no sweet savour to God,
but His "strange work" - not the delight of His love, but the necessity of His
holiness. The sin offering deals with sin in view of the divine nature; the
trespass offering, in view of the divine government. The words "sin" and
"trespass" well convey this difference, the thought of restitution having a
prominent place in the trespass offering, as the sin offering alone exhibits
that necessary separation of God from sin which is at once the necessity of His
nature, and its most awful punishment.
Yet it is striking that this,
the most essential and characteristic feature, is only in fact found here in
the sin offering for the priest and for the congregation of Israel. In these
cases alone do we read of the victim being burned without the camp, not upon
the altar, the consecrated place, but in the outside place of the leper and
unclean. It is to this the apostle refers in the last chapter of Hebrews, where
he points out the absolute necessity of the Lords taking such a place as
is typified here in order to any true atonement: "For the bodies of those
beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are
burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the
people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." It is a striking thing
indeed that, of all the various sacrifices offered by the law, no blood but
that of a sacrifice such as this should have power to penetrate into the
sanctuary at all. The burnt offering spoke of that which to God was precious
beyond all else, but the blood was simply sprinkled round about upon the altar:
the peace offering spoke, according to its name, of peace made with God, and
communion established between God and man, but here also the blood was only
sprinkled on the altar round about; nay, there were various forms of the sin
offering itself where the effect was plainly stated to be to "make atonement
for his sin" who brought it, but where, the body of the beast not being burned
without the camp, the blood at the most anointed the horns of the altar of
burnt offering. Only in two cases, as I have already said, among the seven that
are specified here, is that done in which alone lies the essence of true
atonement.
This shows clearly in what manner we are to regard these
other forms, namely, as lower grades, or less complete views of what only in
its full completeness could satisfy God. In the lowest, indeed, they are
plainly said to be provisions for the poverty of the offerer: "if he be not
able to bring a lamb" - "if he be not able to bring two turtle doves." In the
case of the ruler, and in the first case of "one of the common people " - both,
of course, on the footing of the Israelite simply, - it is or should be clear
that they neither of them represent the place or the knowledge of the
Christian; yet they are most instructive to us as enabling us to see just what
is and what is not dependent upon clearness of knowledge upon a theme so
all-important as is this. However, it will be all no doubt plainer as we look
at the details of the type before us.
The first case, then, is that of
the "anointed priest" clearly the high priest, he who represents the whole
people before God, the well known figure of Christ Himself. Typically, this
seems a departure from the usual order, for the offerer in other cases seems
not to represent Christ, and this change must have a meaning. Naturally, we
think of the day of atonement, where Aaron and his sons are distinguished in
their offering from the people of Israel, and where we as Christians are
represented in Aarons house. In the offering of Leviticus iv, the high
priest stands alone; but the next offering, parallel in every particular to
this one, is for the "whole congregation of Israel" - those manifestly whom the
high priest represents: in the application must we not say, the Church? It is
evident. that this gives us two classes on essentially different footing, -
those for whom the sanctuary is opened, and those who while accepted are
outside worshippers.
But why, then, is Christ here first of all by
Himself, and the people apart, and not rather, as in the day of atonement, the
high priest and his house, or Christ and His people together? It seems to me to
bring out representation more clearly, but especially, as I think, makes way
for a comparison with the two next offerings, where the ruler and one of the
common people take the place of the priest and congregation, and the character
of the whole is lowered.
The literal application supposes the sin of
the high priest himself, and his place as such secured, his incense altar
anointed with the blood of the sin offering. As a type, it is Christ confessing
the sin of His people, and the place which through His offering He takes before
God, He takes for them, and they in Him. Thus for the people the blood in the
same way is sprinkled before the vail, and anoints the golden altar of
incense.
It is here only that we find, as already stated, the burning
of the victim without the camp, upon the ground also and not upon the altar. It
is thus Christ made sin for us - not seen in the perfection of His person as in
the burnt offering, but identified with those for whom He had undertaken. No
where but in this outside place could He reach the objects of His grace to
bring them up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay in which they
were hopelessly ingulfed, and in which alone His feet could find footing. How
important, then, to have a right apprehension of this essential feature of His
wondrous work! Yet there are those among evangelical Christians so called who
see no difference between the Lords sufferings in life and those in His
death - between Gethsemane with its bloody sweat and the blood of the cross!
They see not the contrast between a time of which He yet says, "I am not alone,
for My Father is with Me" and that of His cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me?" The three hours darkness while He hangs upon the tree is
almost universally misinterpreted as the sympathy of Nature with her Head and
Lord, whereas it is the manifest: expression of the withdrawal of Him who is
light, and finds, therefore, its true interpretation in that cry of forsaken
sorrow.
We come, then, here for the first time to the full and
undeniable type of wrath borne, and needed I to be borne in order to atonement.
The copher of the ark had hinted, as we have seen, at such necessity;
but it only hinted. Now, the truth was plainly set forth. Every sacrifice had
shown, what is announced as a principle a little later, that, as the apostle
says, "without shedding of blood is no remission." But here we see what blood
alone could meet the atonement of righteousness upon the sinner. Not death
merely, but death and after this the judgment, is mans doom. The full
reality of sacrifice, of which each separate sacrifice was but a fragment, must
meet both parts of this. The cross as death and as curse did this.
But
how beautiful to see even in the sin offering the type preserved of that inward
perfection which was necessarily and ever Gods delight and the basis of
all the acceptability of it. Only He could be "made sin for us" who Himself
"knew no sin." Accordingly the fat here, as in the case of the peace offering,
is put upon the altar, and in the case of one of the common people it is even
said to be for a sweet savour. While this is not said with regard to the first
two cases, the word used for the burning on the altar is the ordinary one for
that, different from that employed for the burning of the victim on the ground
outside the camp.
Wrath endured, the due of sin in its full measure
reached, God can open the sanctuary, and give a place in His presence where in
the complete security of the seven-times-sprinkled blood we can stand in
unquestioned nearness, and the heart pour itself out in praise, the blood
anointing the incense altar. For us the vail is rent, as we know, but as we do
not find in the type before us: we have boldness to enter into the holiest
itself.
Thus far the divine thought, the perfection of the offering. In
the next two cases the whole character of it is lowered. We have now the ruler
and one of the common people taking the place of the high-priest and
congregation in the former two; the burning outside the camp is no longer
found; and the blood of course does not enter the sanctuary at all, but is
first put upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and then poured out at
the bottom of the altar.
All this speaks evidently of a lower grade.
Whatever may be the difference of the offerer, and although this might account
for the blood not being brought into the holy place, the apostles words
link these rather with the body of the victim not being burned without the
camp; and of the absence of this who can find a reason thus? For the least as
for the greatest atonement must be the same. It is clear, therefore, that we
have in this only the sign of the commencement of a descending scale of
offerings, in which we find the poverty and confusion of mans thoughts
allowed to have their place, in order that on the one hand we may realize the
consequence of falling short in the apprehension of divine grace, while on the
other we learn that that grace will still manifest itself as such, and that
Gods actual acceptance of us is not measured, after all, by our
apprehension of it, but by His own estimate of the value of the work of His
beloved Son.
The goat here still speaks of substitution, of Christ in
the sinners place, for the Lords own use of it, as contrasted with
the sheep in the picture in Matthew xxv, assures us fully of this. But while
seen as a substitute thus, what substitution implies and necessitates is not
seen. The sin is none the less forgiven, but the offerer remains an outside
worshipper merely. Christ is for him a "ruler" in the heavens, not a
representative proper, as the priest is. He remains, as people say, "at the
foot of the cross" does not see that through the work of the cross Christ has
entered heaven, and taken a place before God in which he as a believer stands.
This is, alas, where the mass of so-called evangelical systems leave their
adherents, the Jewish place, clearly, for the standing of one of the common
people of Israelis not even a type of ourselves. We are, as the apostle tells
us, "a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices,
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." We are therefore brought nigh, and belong
to the sanctuary as did Aarons house - with the unspeakable difference
here also of the vail being rent: "Therefore," says another apostle, "having
boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living
way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His
flesh; and having an High Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a
true heart, in full assurance of Faith."
For the goat a lamb might be
offered, and here we see again how a type higher in itself may give from its
connection a lower because a less congruous thought. The latter speaks, as we
know, of the personal perfection of Christ, but here it displaces the goat, so
that the thought of real substitution is fading away: the ritual of the
offering is otherwise the same.
In the next cases, however, the ritual
itself is changed; for now we find first the trespass offering (which is
nearest to the sin offering), and then the burnt, and finally even the meat
offering introduced. The inability of the offerer is now, moreover, more
distinctly recognized. It is plain, therefore, that the mention of the trespass
offering in this place does not imply, as some have imagined, that there is no
essential difference between it and the sin offering, or else it would prove
the same for the others mentioned. There is a very marked and unmistakable
difference. It is distinctly "his trespass offering for his sin which he hath
sinned . . . for a sin offering." Even as a trespass offering it has not its
full character: it is a "lamb, or a kid of the goats," not a ram. I do not
doubt that here we have the case of those who look at atonement as a mere
provision of divine government instead of a necessity of the divine nature. It
is one truth substituted for another, the less deep for the deeper; but of all
this we shall have a more fitting place to speak.
The substitution of
the burnt offering, or its introduction rather into the ritual of the sin
offering, is remarkable, as it is distinctly a provision for poverty: "if his
hand cannot reach to the sufficiency of a lamb" and, moreover, the sin is
called a "trespass" while here, again, the two turtle-doves or two young
pigeons speak of what is highest in itself, lowest because of its incongruity,
in fact the lowest type of the burnt offering, as we have seen; for a sin
offering most incongruous of all.
Lastly, if he be not able to attain
to this, even a meat offering of fine flour is permitted, and here, although no
blood at all is shed, it is distinctly offered and accepted as a sin offering,
and his sin is forgiven him just as before. How clearly and beautifully does
the grace of God shine out in all this! If it be Christ trusted in in view of
sin, God knows the nature and sufficiency of His blessed work, and reckons the
value of that work to the offerer, unknown though to him it be. It is a point
which if seen aright will deliver us from much narrowness, and comfort us with
the largeness of the grace of God.
It is evident to me that sin in the
nature as much as in the act is dealt with in the sin offering. We must not be
misled as to this by the consideration that it is only for actual sins that it
is offered. The fruit manifests the tree, and it is in this sacrifice alone
that we find the judgment of God taking effect upon the whole victim. The burnt
offering, although wholly burnt, does not in this give the type of wrath or
condemnation, as we have seen, but the very opposite. The very word for the
burning is different; it is sweet savour and nothing else. Here, on the
contrary, judgment has its full course. This complete judgment of nature and
practice alike is absolutely necessary, in order that the blood of propitiation
may be able to enter the sanctuary.
Go To Chapter
Eleven
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