In the burnt-offering we have seen how we are accepted in Christ. The hand was laid upon the head of the burnt-offering, wholly, offered up to the Lord, a sweet savor. In the meat-offering, how we receive from His fullness, Jesus, the bread from heaven. In the peace- offering, how we have communion with the Father and the Son. Wondrous provisions, for a redeemed people! But if a priest, or a ruler, or one of the redeemed people, should sin, is there a provision for that? Now, whether we look at Israel as redeemed from Egypt, or those for whom these types were written, there was and is this most serious question: we have, indeed, redemption through His blood, but in how many things we fail. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Now the unspeakable riches of the grace of God, not only reveal to us His provision for His people as to their sins and trespasses against Him, and also against one another; but the sin-offerings in all their varied aspects show out in type the one sacrifice for sin as the BASIS of all relationship with God.
No doubt the blood of the paschal Lamb, redemption, is that basis; but in Leviticus the various aspects of atonement are brought out, as meeting the claims of God, and our need. It must not be overlooked that these offerings were not for willful, presumptuous sins. Let not the desperately wicked heart of man presume that, since God has made an infinite provision for the sins of His people, therefore he may go on in a course of willful sin. Such an one will find at last, to his eternal cost, that the devil has deceived him.
In these short notes, we can only dwell on the leading principles of this deeply interesting subject. It is found as a matter of experience that sin is more terrible, in proportion as we know our relationship to God: “If the priest that is anointed do sin.” Do we know that He “hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father” (Rev. 1:5), “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9)? That we are anointed, intelligent worshippers, in spirit and in truth? Well, the provision in such a case is first brought before us. “Then let him bring for his sin which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin-offering... unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord: and shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head, and kill the bullock before the Lord.” There is thus the identification. He shall lay his hand on the bullock’s head. Sin is thus imputed or transferred to the victim unblemished in itself. What a picture of the holy, blameless One! “For He hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). At this point let us well understand the difference between the laying on of hands of the burnt-offering, and the sin-offering. In the burnt-offering, we are identified with Christ; in the sweet savor, acceptance of Christ: in the sin, or trespass-offering, Christ became identified with us in all the loathsomeness of sin. In the actual approach of man to God, it is always the sin-offering first, and then the burnt-offering. In the unfolding of the riches of His grace, it is, as we have seen, the burnt-offering first. This was the eternal purpose of God, to bring us into favor in the Beloved.
But if such an one, who has been brought into favor in Him, should sin or trespass against God or man, and this comes to his mind in the light, he is sorely distressed. He knows he has redemption, he knows his relationship — a child of God: this only the more distresses him. The inmost desire of his heart is to be upright, and this only makes his sorrow the more bitter and unendurable. What then is the remedy for such an one? Not certainly another sacrifice, “for there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” We must not here forget that the one sacrifice of Christ has more than taken the place of all these sacrifices; and that one sacrifice once offered was for ALL our sins. He once “bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” By faith we are identified with Him, like the priest that laid his hand on the victim’s head. As that bullock was delivered, bearing the priest’s sin before the Lord, so has Jesus been delivered before Jehovah, bearing our sins and made sin for us. That bullock must be killed, accounted as sin. Jesus, bearing our sins, must die, must suffer. Expiation must be made. The blood of the bullock was sprinkled before the Lord, and some of the blood was put upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense. Thus Jesus, by His blood once shed, and He entering as man for us, entered by, or with, His own blood. Thus worship and communion can be, and are, restored to us.
And though made sin, yet the fat and inwards of the bullock were to be offered on the altar of burnt-offering, wholly a sweet savor to God. The same Jesus who was made sin, and took the loathsome place of the cross, was the same Jesus offered up a sweet savor to God, as the burnt-offering. Never was the obedience of Christ more perfect, or more precious to God, than in becoming sin for us. What was the inward thought of His tender heart? That the Father might be glorified in our eternal salvation. Could anything be more precious to God who so loved?
Have I sinned, then, as a child of God, a worshipping priest? This sin gives me a deeper sense of my old sinful nature — I am overwhelmed with shame and sorrow.
What do I learn in these types? That God has met me just there; provided for me just there, in the fullest discovery of my utter vileness, as to the flesh. How? By the Holy One being made sin for me, and in taking my every sin and making them all, as it were, His own. And after “He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10).
Is not this remedy as real, this deliverance as great, as if He were to come down from heaven again, and endure the wrath due to that very sin we mourn over? Has He not done this once forever? How blessed, then, to learn these lessons by the way. Needful lessons. They are the provision of God for a redeemed sinner.
As a worshipping priest, if I have the thought of sin, communion and worship are, and must be, interrupted; but the application of the water of the word restores both. Yes, He has made my sins His own. By a sacrifice, also for sin, He has condemned sin. And, oh! think what it cost Him! The very prospect made Him sweat as it were great drops of blood; for He had to become truly man to do this. See Him, though God over all, yet so truly man as to kneel down in prayer; “and, being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). The laughter, the mocking, the curses, the spitting, and smiting of men, could not quench His infinite love to us. He must, He did, glorify God in our full eternal redemption. See those ferocious soldiers nail Him to the tree! See Him lifted up, and in His agony derided and mocked by man! All this might have been, and He only a martyr: but now, forsaken of God, bearing sin, atoning for our sins well might the heavens turn to blackness and darkness. But it is finished, the veil is rent, and now He is risen, yea, ascended, and sitting at the right hand of the majesty on high.
Verse 13. “And if the whole congregation of Israel sin,” etc. Not only might the individual priest sin, but the whole congregation might sin. Just so, as we well know, not only may the individual Christian sin, and a worshipping priest, but a whole assembly may fail, and sin. Well, it is the same sacrifice, an offering for sin, that must be offered. When our hearts are overwhelmed with a sense, both of our own individual share, and of corporate failure, it is well to remember how God has provided for all this in the same one sacrifice. The hands of the elders must be laid on the head of the bullock, before the Lord. The blood must be shed and sprinkled before the Lord, and the fat burnt on the altar of burnt-offering. Do we not often forget what it cost the Lord for the failure of the church, though that be in ignorance? Are there not many things of which men boast, for which Jesus had to bleed and die? Perhaps nothing would be more astounding, if we understood this better — the sins of ignorance of the congregation. Compare the whole professing congregation now, with the church in the Word of God in the beginning. If we look at the perfect Servant, who surely is our example, we find the principle of His obedience was to do nothing for which He had not the word of His God and Father. It might even be good in itself, and needed. Bread was good, and He needed it; but would He turn the stones into bread without the Word of God?
Now, in the congregation of Christendom, is it not the exact reverse of this? If it only seems good for the church, and it seems as if the church needs it, there is scarcely a thought as to the will of God in His word. How many things there are practiced, that would be found to have no authority in the Word of God; and which cannot be of faith, and therefore must be of sin, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. No doubt much of this is sin of ignorance.
It may be hid from the eyes of many readers of these lines. But note, there was no excuse when the sin which they had committed became known to them (vs. 14). Is it a light matter, fellow Christians, that we should do these things and boast of them, for which Jesus had to suffer the atoning death of the cross? God grant that we may be more exercised by the Word of God. Whatever is practiced ecclesiastically that is not fit according to the Word of God, is sin. What a searching fact is this! And it is sin that needed the blood of expiation. Perhaps no person on earth, but the Son of God, would have refused who could do it — to turn the stones into bread, after fasting forty days, without the Word of God. We feel assured it would lead to much confession and humiliation, if all congregations would test what they are doing by the word. Have we the Lord’s command for this, and that? How much of Judaism, yea, heathenism, would have to be owned as sin. Is it not high time to awake?
Leviticus 4:22
“When a ruler hath sinned,” or when one of the people sin through ignorance, in any case, whether the sin or trespass be against the Lord or against the neighbor, there must be the sin-offering. Without shedding of blood there is no remission. We do not propose to examine at this time the various details of the sin and trespass offerings in these chapters, but to take up the great principle, the absolute requirement of atonement. It should be observed that in these cases of sin, and atonement, it is not propitiation, but actual substitution. Propitiation is the foundation of all relationship with a holy God. This was shown on the day of atonement. God must be glorified by the death of Christ, this is the very first thing. The blood of the expiatory goat was brought into the very presence of God, and sprinkled before, and on, the mercy-seat. And no hand was laid on the head of that victim. And the bodies of those beasts must be burnt outside the camp. The blood was sprinkled on the holy place, and the tabernacle. It was for the priests’ household, and all the congregation. It typified the blood of Jesus, as it is written, “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). In this sense He tasted death for everything (Heb. 2:9). He thus glorified God that His love could flow out in righteousness to the whole world. “God so loved.” God is love, and God is light, and an infinitely holy God could not dwell in the midst of a sinful people, and in a sin-defiled universe, and be indifferent to sin. His righteousness demanded propitiation; and the blood of propitiation must be shed and sprinkled first on the golden mercy-seat, and then sprinkled on that which typified the church; the people, and the universe, as seen in Leviticus 16.
And all this is a picture of Him “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood” (Rom. 3:25). All God’s dealings with this whole world have reference to that propitiation. It is what Christ was to God in His propitiatory death that establishes the righteousness of God in proclaiming forgiveness to all. “Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference” (Rom. 3:22-23). Now, as atonement, or propitiation, was made for all Israel, as well as for the house of the priest, so, “Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:12). Oh think! as the body of the beast whose blood was brought into the sanctuary was carried out without the camp and burnt, so Jesus was taken out of the city, away from the temple, to a place of a skull. There the holy One, without blemish, was made sin for us. There God was glorified, and His righteous claims met.
But to return to our chapters (Lev. 4; 5). We do not here find that aspect of the atonement (i.e., propitiation), but substitution. In each case it is more like the people’s goat of substitution on the day of atonement. The hand is laid on the head of the substitute. It is the transfer of sin; and the victim is dealt with in the place and stead of the one, or those who have sinned. Every sin must be confessed and laid on the head of the sin-offering. All this evidently could not make the fallen sinner perfect, or give peace of conscience. There was not a moment in which the person, whatever position he occupied, from the priest to one of the people, might not have some sin of ignorance, which needed the death of a substitute.
We will now turn to a few scriptures to see the way of God in dealing with His people’s sins. Thus He speaks of His own people Israel, “Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity. Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:4, 18). He speaks again, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” What words are these for God to speak to a guilty nation, or to the reader, or writer, as once guilty sinners? (Isa. 43:25).
Or even yet more. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath done it; shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains,” etc. (Isa. 44:22-23). Note the joy of God in pardoning our sins, to be remembered against us no more. The Lord hath done it. But how? And how are we to know it, and share with God in this blessed certainty?
We pass on to another chapter (Isa. 53). Here is a despised person, rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Yes, a life of griefs and sorrows. A wonderful discovery is made, whether to the soul now, or Israel in days to come — that this Person was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. Here is an actual substitute, that is dealt with, in our stead, for our transgressions and our iniquities. Just as on the day of atonement the iniquities of Israel were laid on the head of the substitute: or when a priest, or ruler, or the congregation, sinned, the sin was transferred to the head of the victim, and atonement must be made in order that sin might be forgiven. So here a person takes the place of all those offerings. “And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “For the transgression of My people was He stricken.” “By His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.” “He bare the sin of many.” (Read Isa. 53:4-12). Thus this Person is the great Antitype of all the sacrifices of the law. Who is this, the sinner’s substitute; or rather, the substitute of His people, bearing their sins? In another place He says, “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” All this did He suffer from the hands of men.
His bitter cry when bearing sins, and enduring the wrath due to them, is heard in the Psalms. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
It is also said of Him: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Wonderful things are said of that Son in chapter 9:6, 7. And further, when God heard the confession of Daniel’s sins, and the sins of His people, He sent the angel Gabriel to announce the fact, that it should be the Messiah who should “make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan. 9:24). Note, this is a great advance in revealed truth. All the offerings find a fulfillment in a personal Substitute — the righteous Servant of Jehovah (Isa. 53). And that Person who shall make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness, is the Messiah. God will soon open the eyes of His ancient people the Jews to see this.
We have not yet had the name of this rejected and despised One, the sinner’s Substitute, and the Messiah, but as the time drew nigh, indeed was come, the due time announced by Daniel, this same Gabriel, angel of the Lord, was sent again to announce the birth and name of this long foretold One. He spake to Joseph, saying, “Joseph, thou Son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS [that is, Savior]: for He shall save His people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us” (Matt. 1:20-23; Luke 1:26-33). Thus have we learned that the Substitute of Isaiah 53 is the Messiah, and that He made reconciliation for iniquities. That Messiah’s name is JESUS. And that He who shall save His people from their sins, is God — Jesus, the Son of the Highest. Many glories await Him, but let us pursue our subject — Jesus, the bearer of His people’s sins.
If we have the testimony of Gabriel at His birth, we have also His own testimony at His death. He had come up to Jerusalem to be betrayed and crucified (Matt. 26:2). It was written in the volume of the book, “Lo I come to do Thy will.” And now the hour was come. “And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it: for this is My blood of the new testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:27-28). On that very night He was betrayed. At six the next morning He, the holy, holy One, was condemned. At nine He was crucified. At twelve darkness covered the earth until three. The awful cry was heard, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He was Jesus, He was wounded for our transgressions, Jesus was bruised for our iniquities.
Reader, can you say, He loved me, and gave Himself for me? Reconciliation was made for iniquity. Solemn words! He cried, “It is finished,” and bowed His blessed head, and gave up the ghost. The atonement was finished. His body was laid in the sepulcher, but not to remain there. God raised Him from the dead: proof, everlasting proof, that His one atoning sacrifice was accepted forever. He showed Himself to His disciples in full proof of His resurrection from the dead. Ever to be remembered were His first words to His redeemed little company, “Peace be unto you.” And He showed them His hands and His side. Earth had rejected Him; heaven was opened unto Him. There was no righteousness in this world which had rejected, and killed the only righteous one. The righteousness of God was exalted in receiving Him up above all heavens.
God the Father had given His only-begotten Son. He was with God, and was God in the beginning. The Son had accomplished the will of God in His one sacrifice for our sins. He was, “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4). And though this world had rejected, despised, yea, killed with the most shameful death, the holy One of God; yet all this was to accomplish the will of God. And God did not leave the world in its own darkness: but He sent the Holy Spirit to remain here to lead and guide believers into all truth. Let us then next look at the explanation the Holy Spirit gives of the effect of the atoning death of Christ, since He came down on the day of Pentecost. May He, the Spirit, guide us into all truth, to the glory of God.