Atonement

Jesus Christ the High Priest, and he only, works the atonement. There are other priests; for “he hath made us priests and kings unto God.” Every Christian is a priest to offer sacrifice of prayer and praise unto God; but none save the High Priest must offer atonement.

The vail of the temple is rent by the atonement of Christ, and access to the throne is now ours. Precious throne of grace! I never should have had any right to come there if it had not been for the day of atonement: I never should have been able to come there if the throne had not been sprinkled with the blood.

By the death of Christ there was full, free, perfect remission for all those whose sins are laid upon his head.

Atonement and jubilee ought to go together. Have you ever had a jubilee, my friends, in your hearts? If you have not, I can tell you it is because you have not had a day of atonement.

God’s great day of atonement was appointed and predestinated by himself. Christ’s expiation occurred but once, and then not by any chance; God had settled it from before the foundation of the world; and at that hour when God had predestinated, on that very day that God had decreed, that Christ should die, was he led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers he was dumb.

We have a spotless High Priest; we have one who needed no washing, for he had no filth to wash away; we have one who needed no atonement for himself, for he for ever might have sat down at the right hand of God, and ne’er have come on earth at all. He was pure and spotless; he needed no incense to wave before the mercy seat to hide the angry face of justice.

Those drops of atoning blood have put fair colours upon all creation, even as the sunrise paints the earth, which else had been one huge blot of darkness.

When we consider the atonement, we should rest, and “do no work at all.” Best from your works, as God did from his on the great Sabbath of the world; rest from your own righteousness; rest from your toilsome duties; rest in him.

The bath of his blood is your only washing; the stream of water from his side is your perfect purification. None but Jesus, none but Jesus, has wrought out the work of our salvation.

As the blood of the goat made the atonement typically, so, Christian, thy Saviour dying for thee made the great atonement for thy sins, and thou mayest go free.

O my soul, adore thy Jesus, who, when he made atonement, humbled himself, and wrapped around him a garb of thy inferior clay. Adore him, for on that day it was the simple clean linen of his own body, of his own humanity, in which fie made atonement for your sins.

O child of God, thy Saviour’s blood has made atonement within the vail; he has taken it there himself; his own merits and his own agonies are now within the vail of glory, sprinkled now before the throne. glorious sacrifice, as well as High Priest, we would adore thee, for by thy one offering thou hast made atonement for ever.