The Bible and Forecasts of Atonement
Russia is a great empire. The heart of Russia is Moscow; the heart of Moscow is the Kremlin; and the heart of the Kremlin is the Treasury, where vacant thrones and crowns, set upon pedestals, represent the conquered provinces of Russia.
The heart of the Bible is Messianic Prophecy; the heart of Messianic Prophecy is the Person of Jesus Christ, and the heart of the Revelation of His Person is Redemption by blood. Hence the importance of carefully tracing the testimony of the Word of God concerning His atoning work.
Among the important words, already referred to, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, are three — “body,” “shadow,” and “outline” or “image.” “Body” represents the substantial reality or verity of which the “outline” or “image” is a delineation, just as a profile or drawing without colour represents a human being. “Shadow” is an outline cast on the ground or elsewhere by the light shining upon the body itself. We read of the “example
and shadow of heavenly things;” of a “shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ;” of the “image of those things;” etc.*
The “body” was yet in the distant future, veiled from human sight. In the Old Testament is the profile drawing in outline, without colour, and yet so complete that, when compared with the actual portrait, hung on the walls of the New Testament, filled in with colour, the profile or outline, however ancient, and the fuller image, however recent, are identical — one being but the filling out of the other.
The conception of a “shadow” is suggestive. If any erect object stands where the setting sun shines on it a shadow is produced, at times so lengthened as to reach far toward the opposite horizon. A great Personality fills the New Testament — Jesus Christ the Crucified One — but the lengthened shadow of the crucified Christ extends backward and touches the remotest horizon of history. Thus one long “shadow of things to come,” cast backward by the sunlight of God, covers the Old Testament records and periods, and to look at these correspondent facts compels the double conviction of the divine origin of the Scriptures and the divine character of Jesus Christ.
“Atonement” is not a scriptural word, as com-
* Hebrews viii.’s; x:i. 145 monly used. The Shakespearean sentence, “He seeks to make at-one-ment between the Duke of Gloucester and his brother,” is often quoted as giving a definition of “atonement,” but it is misleading. The original word, used in the New Testament, means “reconciliation;”* and in the Old Testament it is, as near as may be, the equivalent of that which covers — “propitiation.” Perhaps the phrase most nearly expressing the sense of the word atonement, as used by orthodox believers, is redemption by blood; and it is to be hoped that the time is far distant when this will be abandoned in concession to the modern demand that the “blood” be eliminated from Christianity.
It is at the peril of our faith that we put on the blood the stigma of reproach. From the first pages of the Bible to the last, blood colours, with its crimson, the entire inspired record. Redemption by blood is the central factor in atonement, as set forth both in the New Testament and in the Old, the connection between which was long since sagaciously expressed by Augustine, that “the Old Testament is patent in the New, and the New is latent in the Old;” that the truths doctrinally and historically set forth in the New Testament, are found pictorially, typically and symbolically, in the
♦Romans v:ii* KardWoyrj.
146
Old Testament; that while the New unfolds the Old, at the same time the Old enfolds the New.
One example of this may suffice. Of all the epistles of the New Testament, the Epistle to the Romans is conceded to be the fullest and clearest in setting forth the essentials of the doctrine of redemption. The others which follow presuppose this epistle, though it was not the first written; and the providence of God so guided even the compilation of the canon of the New Testament as that the epistles should there be found in the order, not of composition, but of truth as it needed to be progressively taught.
In the Epistle to the Romans, the first eight chapters set forth several leading and distinct truths with regard to redemption.
That which is foremost, as lying at the bottom of the whole scheme of salvation, is that Redemption begins in deliverance from the wrath of God — His holy retributive judgment upon sin. (i:18-ii:16.) We are further taught:
(2.) That Redemption provides for the expiation of the guilt which invokes and challenges the wrath, (ill :9-24)
(3.) That Redemption puts away the sin, removes it from between the sinner and God as something that is cancelled and obliterated. (iii:25-iv:8)
147 (4.) That Redemption cancels a debt to the law, justice and government of God, and makes it as though it had never existed, so that we have pacific relations with a holy God. (iv:8-25.)
(5.) That Redemption involves a reconciliation or a restoration between the alienated sinner and God, so that he becomes a member of the divine family. (v:i-2i.)
(6.) That there is emancipation from the power of sin, as there has been deliverance from its penalty. “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (vii:i-viii:2).
(7.) The grand climax of the eighth chapter reveals the supreme truth of Redemption, that all this depends upon a personal relation with the Redeemer — the Lord Jesus Christ. Redemption does not come through a truth taught, nor even through blood shed, apart from vital union with the Person of the Redeemer. He is Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life. Not by any teaching, nor even by any sacrifice, alone, but by identification with Him, are we saved, (viii •.2^-^^).
It is with the surprise and delight of a new discovery that the student of scripture finds all these same truths set forth, illustratively and pictorially,
in the first three books of the Old Testament, and
148 in about the same order as that in which they are unfolded in the Epistle to the Romans. They are found in the Old Testament, not explicitly, but presented as object lessons, or in pictorial representations, in three great feasts or festivals appointed for the Jews. The whole ritual of Judaism is important as a typical forecast of New Testament doctrinal teaching and fully interpreted only thereby; but, for the sake of brevity, we take simply three of these feasts or festivals, all of them connected with the tenth day of the seventh month: the festival of the Passover; the festival of the great Day of Atonement, or Propitiation, and the festival, occurring once in fifty years, known as the Jubilee, which began on the evening of the great Day of Atonement, a fact which itself is typical, for only when the Atonement was completed could the Jubilee year begin.
In the Passover, the main conception is, obviously, “Deliverance from judgment, or wrath —” the leading thought of the Epistle to the Romans: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” That is where, as Paul shows, redemption must begin, and in the Feast of the Passover, which began
the sacred circle of festivals, such deliverance from wrath is plainly emphasized as the first necessity. When Jehovah and the Destroying Angel passed over every Jewish house, it was because of the blood, sprinkled on the side posts and the upper doorposts, — those who passed out and in being thus surrounded by the blood — and God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and will not suffer the Destroyer to smite you.” The one thought is deliverance from judgment.
The second of these festivals was the great Day of Atonement or Propitiation. Commentators have found here a battleground over the question what is meant by the goat, “Azazel.’’ The simplest sense is ordinarily the safest for, when a dozen theories of biblical interpretation are suggested, that which is most literal, lies most on the surface, is most conformed to common sense and which needs the least philosophy to master it, is usually the true one. God did not make His book for scholars or sages, but for common folks.
The ceremonies on the Day of Atonement were, as near as possible, twin ceremonies; two kids of goats of the same age and size, being chosen, and, as Jewish writers say, the goat, Azazel, distinguished from the other only by a scarlet ribbon or piece of cloth tied to it. One of the two was slain, and the blood poured out; on the other the hands of
150 the High Priest Aaron were heavily laid, as though to transfer to him a heavy load of guilt, while the High Priest confessed over his head, in words still recorded by Jewish writers, his own sins and the sins of the people. Then that goat was led away by the hand of some fit man into a “lone place,” out of sight of the people, whence he would not find his way back to the camp. Azazel means “removal,” “putting away at a distance,” and here is a twin conception: First, of guilt expiated, — and, again, of sin borne away — removed from before the face of God.*
“Removal” is more than expiation. Expiation covers guilt; removal has to do with fellowship; when sin is expiated, as to its guilt, it is practically blotted out as to its record and remembrance; it is put behind God’s back; “cast into the depths of the sea;” borne away into the lone place, never to find its way back and bring guilt to remembrance. Disciples often dredge up from the depths of this merciful oblivion the sins that God has buried there, out of sight, not content to let forgiven sin lie, as it ought to lie, in the hidden forgetfulness of His love and grace. And again, those whom He forgives too often say: “I can forgive, but I cannot forget.” What if God for-
* “The Lord also hath put away thy sin” — II Samuel xii: 13.
151 gave and did not forget? Then, when a praying believer draws near to the throne of grace, even forgiven sin would keep coming up before God and before the suppliant to taint communion and hinder mutual approach. It is perilous to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” while such is the fashion of our forgiveness. If that Lord’s prayer teaches anything, it is that we are to adopt, in dealing with men, the principle that we would have God adopt in dealing with us, which He enjoins on us as our law of dealing with others.
These twin ceremonies therefore set forth this double conception: That the guilt of sin is expiated in the blood of the slain Lamb but, as the dead victim cannot at the same time represent a living presence and a living power, sins are also borne away representatively by the goat, Azazel. We have thus the dying Christ and the living Christ both typified. He Who bore our sins up to the cross to atone for their guilt, also bore them out of sight, to sink them into the depths of the sea of oblivion, so that even the remembrance of them is no more before God. He therefore says: “Their sins and their iniqmties will I remember no more.’’
That is a significant phrase with similar meaning — ‘’Blotted out.” When the Jewish scribes wrote on wax tablets with the “stylus” (from which our English word “style”), to obliterate the record, it was needful only to turn the stylus round, and with the flat end press back the wax into the cavities, and it was as though there never had been a record. Sin forgiven and forsaken is with God as though it had never been; He puts it away. Hence that strong language used by Paul: “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us and contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailingit to His cross.” (Colossians ii: 14.) There are two ways of dealing with a debt: to pay it, and to destroy the record of it. The Lord Jesus Christ nailed sin to the cross — that cancelled it as a debt; and he blotted it out — that annihilated it as a record.
In the third Festival, three things took place when the trump of Jubilee sounded:
(i.) All debts were cancelled.*
(2.) All alien estates were restored to their owners.
(3.) Every one involved in servitude, for any cause, was emancipated.
These correspond to the other truths taught in
* It is said that a document, showing debt, was in two parts, and that the creditor brought his portion and nailed it to the doorpost of the debtor’s house, and that the debtor brought out his portion and nailed that also beside it to show that the two belonged together, and the debt was cancelled. Compare “Indenture.”
the Epistle to the Romans: cancellation of the debt to the law and justice; restoration to God’s favour; emancipation from the power as well as penalty of sin.
In the 25th chapter of Leviticus we have a description of the ceremonies and laws of the Jubilee year, and there is a special provision as to the “kinsman,” from the 25th to the 30th verses. It is what is known as the “law of the kinsman” (Heb. goel). There are two conditions: first, that the man who undertakes redemption, shall be a kinsman — that is, have kin with the family needing redemption; secondly, he must belong to some other branch of the family, otherwise he would be involved in its calamities, and be unable to act in the capacity of a redeemer.
These provisions are historically illustrated in the book of Ruth. Naomi had lost her husband and her two sons in the forbidden land of Moab, and her estate in the Land of Promise appears to have been in a condition of bankruptcy. We read in Ruth, second chapter, first verse, that “Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a mighty man of wealth of the family of Elimelech, and his name was Boaz.” The name Boaz means, “in him is ability.” Boaz, being a kinsman, had the right to redeem, but being of a higher branch of the family, and having wealth, he had also the power to
redeem. Thus, what is a precept in Levitical law,
finds an historical example in the interposition of
Boaz in behalf of Ruth, who was the widow
of Mahlon. This narrative, which superficial
readers think is only a love story, is susceptible of
a deeper interpretation. It is the one and only
book of the Old Testament that plainly suggests
the necessity that our Redeemer should have a
double nature, as the God-Man, in order to fulfil
the conditions upon which only, man’s redemption
can be accomplished. Thirty times in that short
book the word “kinsman” is found, or “redeemer,”
“near kinsman,” “next of kin,” “kindred” — like
words, all having reference to like things. Ruth
was a stranger, a Moabitess, who came into the
Land of Promise as the widow of an Israelite who
had gone into the forbidden land of Moab, and
died there. She came as a servant rather than a
mistress; a bankrupt through debt on her estate;
an alien, not belonging properly to the tribes of
Israel. Boaz takes compassion upon her, cancels
the debt, brings her out of an alienated condition
into the true ancestral line of the Messiah, and not
only restores to her Mahlon ’s lost estate, but
emancipates her from a servile condition, and
makes her his own wife. That which constituted
15s any man a redeemer in Israel, and gave the right to redeem, as laid down in the Levitical code, is thus historically illustrated in this narrative.
How plainly this book is intended to teach the doctrine concerning Redemption, will be seen by examining chapter four, verses 4-10. Here the word “redemption” occurs five times in a single verse, nine times in three verses, and in the tenth verse, Boaz declares that in redeeming the property he also purchases the widow of Mahlon to be his own wife. Nothing can explain the extreme minuteness of detail here except a typical design on the part of the inspiring Spirit; and, when we turn to the New Testament, the typical meaning is made entirely clear. We find there is presented, as in the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the double nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, which will receive further consideration in a subsequent chapter. We may now anticipate far enough to say that our Lord Jesus Christ had to become one with man in order to have the right to redeem. He is, therefore, our fellowman; but if He had been involved in man’s fall, and identified with man’s sin, He could not have acted as Redeemer. No sinner can redeem himself, much less can he redeem his brother.* He is, therefore,
* None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him. — Psa. xlix: 7.
as the God-man, our Boaz: by that kinship and strength or abiHty, He is “able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him.”
The correspondence between this truth as doctrinally set forth in the New Testament, and pictorially, typically, and historically in the Old, is so close, that we cannot avoid the conviction of a divine design. Here is a new example of the facto that, while the “body” of truth is found in the New Testament, the lengthened “shadow” and “example” of it are found in the Old. Here is an exact outline in the book of Ruth of what is afterward filled in, in the Person and work of the God-man, our Redeemer. Thus, all the leading truths, and essentially in the order of the Epistle to theRomans, are forecast in the three great Festivals of the Jews.
The Passover: Deliverance from wrath by the shedding of blood.
The Day of Atonement, in the expiation of guilt, and putting away of the remembrance of sin.
The Year of Jubilee: Cancellation of debt and deliverance from bankruptcy; Restoration of an alien to the family rights; and emancipation from servitude.
All these are inseparable from the person of the redeemer, whose kinship with the party to be redeemed gives the right to redeem, and whose
J57 exemption from such party’s calamities, gives the power. Moreover, the redemption, as in the case of Ruth, involves not only the purchase of the inheritance, but the purchase of the original owner. So Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, redeems man by taking him into sacred union with Himself. Whom He saves from their lost estate. He weds as His chosen Bride. And so, Paul, writing of the “great mystery concerning Christ and the Church,” represents what He, as Husband, does for the Church: “He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; He sanctified and cleansed it; He nourishes and cherishes it, and He presents it to Himself.*
Another typical forecast must be referred to before we leave this subject. Five sacrifices or offerings are described and enjoined in the first three chapters of Leviticus, and these are divisible into two classes; First, ill savour offerings; and, second, those of sweet savour: the former were supposed, when burnt, to go downward as something under a curse; the others, to go upward as a sweet savour in the nostrils of God. What the philosophy of all this is, probably an Archangel cannot fully unfold; this is another theme that will bear study for all eternity. But some truth seems
* Ephesians v: 25-33.
to be plainly taught. The word “burnt” is different in the two cases. In one it means “to turn to ashes,” and in the other, “to ascend as in flames.” This suggests the idea that when a life is forfeited by sin and an innocent victim is laid on the altar in place of the sinner, Justice — like a descending fire — consumes the offering and turns it to ashes; and then the ransomed life, moved by gratitude and adoration by what has been done on its behalf, is voluntarily laid before God, and, by a fire which is not a consuming but a refining fire, aflame with worship, gratitude, affection, that life is swept upward to God as something acceptable in Jesus Christ. Here are suggested, — a descending fire, an ascending flame — something accursed through sin, something approved through redemption.
If we look beyond the first eight chapters of Romans, the second part contains truth complementary to the first. In the first part, the dominant idea is the sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty; in the second, the dominant note is the sacrifice of the ransomed soul to the service of the Ransomer: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable (spiritual) service.”
Here is another double truth taught: a life must be given for a life in order to redemption and salvation, — the life of the innocent for the guilty; but second, the life of the ransomed must be given to the Ransomer, in order to sanctification and service. These double truths, forecast in the Old Testament, are plainly taught in the New.
Sublimely simple all this is, — and as a matter of fact, a little child can understand this great primary fact and truth of the Word of God, redemption by blood.
The greatest proof, perhaps, that Christianity is from God, is the long historic argument of experiment. Ever since the day when Abel laid his lamb on the altar, and saw, somehow, the coming Seed of the woman, as his Atoning Saviour, down to this very day, the one thing that has proved the salvation of men has been faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. No man can show, in all infidel theories, in all agnostic negations, in all sceptical notions, in all refining away of the Doctrine of Atonement, anything that can bring to believers what this doctrine has brought to them for the last two thousand years, and those who trust in Christ may well refuse to turn aside to consider the abandonment of this confidence until something better is oifered in its place.
Primary truths, like these, are the heart of the
16o whole Word of God, and the rock basis of the history of the Church of God. The argument from experiment is indubitable and unanswerable. The world can furnish nothing else that saves, nothing that sanctifies, nothing that removes the sense of guilt and alienation from God, nothing that brings into communion with the unseen world and the unseen God, and keeps the soul, even in the dying hour, confident, and enables one to say triumphantly
“In my hand no price I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.”
It is worth while to have something to cling to
and rest upon in a dying hour, instead of making
a leap in the dark.
Many of the great men of Britain have been
eminent also as men of God. Bishop Butler, who
was called the Melchisedec of the “English Church,”
—because he had no predecessor and no successor —
fell into great depression in his dying moments,
and he said: “Chaplain, where shall I find hope?
Where shall I find a solid resting place for my poor
feet?” “My Lord Bishop, Jesus died for you,” he
answered. ’ ‘How shall I know that He died for me?
How shall I get hold of it for myself?” And the
Chaplain answered: “Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” “That is just what I wanted,” said the dying Bishop.
Archbishop Benson used to say that the primary truths are proofs of the divine character of the Bible, because “a little child can comprehend primary truths, and many people cannot get hold of anything beyond them; while the greatest must come back from all their excursions into philosophy and science to rest at last upon them.” “Jesus died for me,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon declared to be the four words he had lived by, and was going to die by.
When they asked the dying Faraday: “What are your speculations?” he replied that he was not pillowing his head upon any “speculations.” “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him, against that day.”
The late Lord Bishop of Durham, one of the grandest men ever in the English Church, having at the last a comparatively long and painless illness, some thought he must be meditating some new work of scholarship, and ventured to ask. “No,’* he said, “I am coming back from all my studies to remember that Jesus died for me. I take two or three great primary truths and dwell on them.”
So much for the testimonies of the great. Let us come down now to the lowest level.
In Southampton, some years ago, there was an adulterer, a blasphemer, a profane swearer, the terror of the whole district. He ventured into a tent one night, on the last day of a mission, and heard a sermon on “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.” He said: “If there is any salvation for such a wretch as I am, I want it.” And he stayed and talked with the preacher afterward, and immediately gave himself to God, and began a new life. He let alone his drink and tobacco, and all his vile habits, and was the admiration of the district where he had been the terror before. One night he was knocked down by a passing train and both his legs were cut off at the thigh. When the surgeon told him, “I am sorry to say it, but, my dear fellow, you have not more than fifteen minutes to live,” he began to sing:
“Hallelujah, ’tis done, I believe on the Son, I’m saved by the blood of the Crucified One.”
The Gospel that can save such a man as that, and make him happy in view of death, fifteen minutes later, is a great deal better than anything that agnosticism, skepticism, or infidelity can bring him.
Yes, it is the Gospel for the little ones of earth. The poor Scotch lad, half-imbecile, who wanted to come to the Lord’s Table, but was thought by the minister of the kirk to have really not enough intelligence to discern the Lord’s body, as he turned away, was heard, as he went out of the door, to say with sobs in his simple fashion:
“Three in One, and One in Three,
And the Middle One, He died for me.”