“And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house. And he shall take the two goats, and present them before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for Jehovah, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which Jehovah's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before Jehovah, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness” (Lev. 16:5-105And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering. 6And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house. 7And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. 8And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. 9And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. 10But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:5‑10)).
If we leave for the moment the bullock, the distinction between the two goats claims our consideration. Every one can see on the face of scripture that there is a marked difference between them. It is vain to suppose that God did not intend a definite truth to be taught by each. Notice that they were decided by lot—the disposal in the hand of Jehovah exclusively. This was quite exceptional in the sacrifices. In those of sweet savor the choice of the victim, under expressed conditions, was left to the offerer. For sin or trespass there was no latitude whatever; a positive command was laid down that such or such an animal should be offered in given circumstances. In other cases there is a gracious consideration of the poor in the offering. Poverty is taken into account on the one hand, and ample means, with a large heart, had their full opportunity on the other side. But in this case the choice was specially decided by Jehovah.
Two goats, no other animals, were to be brought by the children of Israel. Even the high priest himself was not allowed to choose which of them should be Jehovah's lot, and which the people's. This was left absolutely with Jehovah. The reason may be that in all the ritual of Israel no offering has a character so Godward as those presented on the great Day of Atonement. It was His dealing with sin; and He accordingly moves in the matter—Jehovah alone. The high priest himself is the only man permitted to appear. On other days he had the sons of his house; the subordinate priests take their suited part. On this day he acted, and he only. The bearing of these things on our Lord Jesus is manifest. Accordingly the high priest appears, not clad in his official robes, but in a garb that spoke of unsullied righteousness, the holy garments. This was not the dress even of the ordinary priest: a priest was marked by wearing an ephod; the high priest distinguished by a rich attire, wherein ornaments of gold, silver, and jewels had their place. But only the holy “linen garments” were worn for this peculiar duty, the high priest having an altogether exceptional function.
Aaron was the high priest, but here seen in a quite exceptional position—a high priest not in what was intercessional, but in a representative function for sin bearing. He identified himself thus for Israel, and not for the people only but for his sons as well as himself. it is clear therefore that the place altogether differs from his regular one in the sanctuary of God. Intercession in no way fulfilled the type of this great day, but rather laying a righteous basis for it.
It was not as a martyr, nor identification in sympathy, to which some would lower the atonement; neither was it any question only of moral government, nor a pure display of love or of absolute pardon. All these features, perhaps, may in a just measure and true light be found in the death of our Lord Jesus. He was indeed the holiest of martyrs, and beyond all comparison, in His death. And therein did He make good God's moral government as it never was nor could be save in His own person, and under God's own hand. His obedience in love was absolutely perfect. Yet had He been tempted as none other was. No temptation common to man had He been spared; but it is never said that the Lord was not tempted far beyond all. Suppose you that any man was tempted as the Lord during the forty days?
The last three temptations of our Lord may be known in measure and spirit by not a few of His followers, as they present the only details of it given us. But what do we know of the forty days? Why are there no particulars? Because none will ever be put in such a position again. A man may, on the one hand, imitate it in part as an impostor, and we may have heard of the like; on the other, we read of Moses sustained as long on high, and of Elijah going as long on earth in the strength of divinely supplied food. How different were these from His, Who alone resisted the enemy in the wilderness, with no companion except the wild beasts, till angels came to minister at the close! The Holy One of God triumphantly resisted, but, in resisting, suffered to the uttermost.
Is it so with what men call “temptation?” How sadly we know that we have too often yielded instead of resisting, and that we gratify ourselves because we do not suffer! We “enter into temptation,” as Peter did, instead of watching and praying, as we ought. Our Lord “suffered being tempted.” He kept the evil outside; yet the spiritual sensibilities of His holy nature were wrung by the temptation which Satan presented. But there was nothing within that answered to the temptation without; and Satan, finding nothing in Him, was thus completely foiled. Was this in vain? It was part of the necessary fitting of our blessed Lord to be the sympathizing High Priest. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Before He became man on earth, He knew what it was to command. When glorified in heaven, He was still man able more tenderly and more powerfully to sympathize with the tried and tempted saints than if He had not been tried here below. For we are not to suppose that the love is less because He is risen from the dead. We are indeed assured that He ever lives to intercede for them. His sympathy is ever flowing freely and fully from above. Such is the way in which the Holy Spirit presents it in the Epistle to the Hebrews and elsewhere.
But on the Day of Atonement there was no question of sympathy with the sanctified, but graciously representing men to bear sin's judgment at God's hand. What is wanted for sin is not sympathy, but suffering. Not if a Christian should sin, that he is without a blessed resource; for we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins. In this lay the answer to the deepest of all need. Sin had put shame on God, and done violence to His will, nature, and majesty. God, therefore, must be vindicated in every respect about sin. He had been glorified as Father in the life here below of His Son, our Lord Jesus; there He found the only Man that perfectly and always met, not His every requirement only but His mind and affection, in an obedience and dependence that never quailed under sorrow and suffering. But a new question arose: would the Holy One of God stoop to be made sin? Would He bow His head under that intolerable burden? Would He, for God's glory, bear sin in all its enormity, and hatefulness, in its dread unutterable consequences to Himself? Would He give Himself up at all cost to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself?
The judgment of sin entails abandonment on God's part. Would Jesus drink that cup? He that would suffer for sins could only undertake it: how truly in Him was no sin! A man tainted with the least sin must suffer for his own evil. It was therefore a condition indispensable for atonement that the victim should be without spot or blemish. Where was the man who could suffer for sins without question of his own? Man had been challenged to convince Jesus of sin. God had borne witness of complacency in Him. Jesus alone could suffer atoningly; and this is what He did, and what the high priest's action represented on that day. Doubtless any one type is quite insufficient to set forth our Lord. He was both the high priest who offered, and the victim that was offered. Scripture plainly sets forth both in Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews incontrovertibly testifies the truth in full. One might almost equally refer to the witness borne by 1 John (2:2; 4:10): And He is the propitiation (ἱλασμὸς) for our sins. There we have the very word which describes the relation of our Lord to the Day of Atonement as the victim. More than this, Rom. 3 declares that God set Him forth as “the propitiatory,” or mercy seat (ἱλαστήριον). No wonder, though this be not all, scripture says that “Christ is all.” Accordingly the goat on which Jehovah's lot fell was beyond question to meet the exigencies of His character. For this reason the blood was brought, not before man who needed its atoning virtue, but to God where He is. The same truth appears substantially on the Paschal night. When the first Passover was instituted, the blood was put, not within the door but without: that precious blood was not for man to look on, in order to extract comfort from his sight of it. Rich comfort he was entitled to draw from it, but not by his looking. The blood was expressly and only outside; the Israelitish family was to be as expressly within. “When I see the blood, I will pass over,” said Jehovah. Israel could eat the flesh in security, but not without bitter herbs. So the true, deep, and all-important aspect of propitiation is ever that the blood is offered to God. No doubt it is for man; but the essential truth is, that it was put before God. Faith therefore rests on His estimate of the blood, not on one's own.
This is so true that, when the high priest deals with the goat for Jehovah's lot, we have in this the foundation of all for Israel, not a word said of laying his hands on its head, or of confessing Israel's sins. It is not affirmed that he did not, though the Jews say that he did; but we need not mind Jewish tradition more than what men say today. In scripture we have our lesson, and thus from God whom we thank for it, if indeed we know the value and safety of relying on what He says. Woe be to the man who attempts to speak for God without His word! The silence of God is to be respected in the next place to His utterance. What He deigns to utter, of course, has its own supreme place; but reverent faith abstains from filling up the blank that God leaves. We may be assured that He perfectly knew and provided for all the wants of those for whom He meant His revelation.
The offerer laid his hand on a burnt-offering if he brought one: it was his privilege; but here silence reigns about it. Why? Is it inexplicable? In no way. The hand was laid on for identification. In an ordinary sin-offering it was the transfer of the confessed sin to the victim; in the burnt-offering, of the accepted offering to the offerer. Here Jehovah's glory is alone in view. His outraged majesty had to be vindicated, His moral nature satisfied. The clearance of the sinful people was carried out to the full on the same day; but it was on Azazel, the second goat. The first goat is stamped throughout and indelibly with the truth, that not man, not Israel, but God's glory is primarily in question; it must be first, and fully must this be maintained.
For atonement God must be glorified; there is nothing sure, stable, or righteous without this. Scripture forbids the creature's necessity to precede God's moral glory. There was the most comprehensive and thorough confession over the second goat, but not a word of the sort as to the first. Confession is proper and necessary where man's sins are in full view. It is due to God in order to give righteous comfort to man; it is the just expression of self-judgment before God, that he may be forgiven. But there is and must be a far deeper claim—that God's holiness and honor be secured first and foremost in atonement. There is no adequate basis without meeting His glory and character; how and where was this effected? In an offering for sin that speaks to Him of Christ, without reserve devoted to His glory in sacrificial death, giving Himself up absolutely to bear all the consequences of sin in divine unsparing judgment.
Man, though the object of compassion to the uttermost, here disappears. Christ, the sufferer judicially, is alone before God. Alas! man likes not to be left out. The first man is all-important in his own eyes, and even becomes all the more sensitive when he is awakened to his need of forgiveness. He is slow to understand that everything should not be about himself. He needs pardon urgently and profoundly: why should he not have the answer to his own grievous wants in the first goat? God has judged otherwise, and He is wise and holy. God has laid down what is due to His own glory in atonement as the first of all rights, in the clearest and most convincing way, except to the infatuated persons who imagine that they can understand the things of God better than God Himself, and so are as ready to take from scripture as to add to it. Even from the shadow, not the very image, God has excluded human vanity and pride. He has here attested to those who tremble at His word that, while the fullness of His blessing is meant for man, this cannot be but through what the first goat tells us, and not the second alone. Both must be heeded, and in God's order. There is no other way of blessing: the soul receives this by faith, that God has been glorified in Christ's death. In order that it should be so, man bows down, and God deals with the victim his representative brings. Aaron here was just a type; but the anti-type was really the Son of man.
How strikingly this was shown in that the only occasion in which scripture represents our Lord Jesus saying “My God,” was on the cross! When He was here below, He regularly said “Father.” He never thought, He never felt, He never spoke, He never acted, except in the perfect communion of the Son with the Father. No wonder the Father was glorified in the Son. But now a total change ensues, and the Lord prepares us for this, conveyed in His words, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and” —the Father? No!— “God is glorified in Him.” That this is not casual appears beyond dispute from the words that follow. “If God” not the Father as such but God— “be glorified in Him, God shall glorify Him in Himself, and shall glorify Him straightway.” It was a question of His being made sin, and God as God is judge of sin, rather than the Father as such. We all know that the theologians talk about our “reconciled Father” (and I allow they mean the truth of atonement, where all my heart is with them); but no man can justify such language from scripture. God needs atonement. Sin is hateful and intolerable to His nature. If it is expiated, it can only be through a divine and unsparing judgment of an adequate victim.