The bloody sacrifice

Preface

The present treatise is not a learned discussion of the great subject of atonement; it is simply a scripture interpretation. No attempt is in it made to formulate logical propositions, or to consult human reason; but simply to collate the unquestioned and unquestionable teachings of the word of God for the benefit of seekers after truth. The subject is of the highest importance, and at present demands persistent indoctrination, as the tendency is lamentably verging towards an oversight or ignoring of the expiatory character of his death. A denial of the sacrificial view of his decease is fatal to the system of Christianity itself, as it withdraws the great motive force which should actuate, and does constrain the believing soul to loving consecration and untiring service.. Were the doctrine of vicarious atonement eliminated from the creed of the church, nothing would be left but a beautiful system of morality, destitute of power to enforce itself and

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therefore wholly impracticable. Deprived of this spiritual force Christianity would have little more influence over the life, than any other system of approved philosophy. This doctrine of vicarious atonement is the corner stone and foundation of the whole system of Christianity, and may well be termed "articulus stantis vel cad en tis ecclesiae," as Luther described faith in a crucified Savior to be. No contribution is of more intrinsic value than one which throws a real light upon the inspired word, and settles its undoubted meaning. If this result has been attained in any degree in these pages, it will be a sufficient reward for all the labor expended upon them. A word is required respecting the desultory character of the work : it is a supplement to a volume issued in 1891; and this accounts for its desultoriness, and no further excuse is needed. The volume referred to is entitled, "Sketches from the Life of Jesus, Historical and Doctrinal."

Table Of Contents

Page.

The Bloody Sacrifice, its Origin and Early

History 1

CHAPTER I. The Bloody Sacrifice, Its Origin and Early History

The first act of religuous worship reported in the word of God, not the first actually, for worship had been definitely instituted long before, is the offering of Cain and Abel. The occasion was probably the day when each became the head of a separate household; the father always assuming the duty of officiating in his own house. The place of sacrifice was the spot where "the presence of the Lord" was; at the eastward of Eden, before the flaming sword waving without hand between the cherubim and representing the divinity, whose infinite attributes are concentrated in the fiery justice, which cuts off all approach of sinners to communion w T ith the Holy Jehovah. The offering of the two brothers may not have been simultaneous, time probably intervening.

Cain brought the offering which Adam in his state of innocence had been accustomed to bring, signifying an entire dependence upon God for the fruits of the soil, and acknowledging a responsive gratitude to the great giver. This had often been accepted as the proper worship of the Most High, corresponding to the wave offering of the Jews, required before men were at liberty to use the fruits of the soil, God signifying in some way not revealed to us his acceptance of the offering, not by fire probably. The Lord, had no respect to the offering, however beautifully arranged, and made no manifestation of approval, which seems to have been a sore disappointment to Cain.

Abel on the other hand, when it became his duty to officiate as head of a new household, conformed to the institution established later. God demanded the sacrifice of a life. Among the animals to which man was most attached was the lamb, peculiarly fitted for the ceremony, created for it, and especially designated probably. Abel brought from the firstlings of the flock the choicest, the perfect one. That it was brought as a sin-offering we are assured by God himself in Gen. iv:7: "If thou doest not well sin lieth at the door," which according to the rules of Hebrew grammar should have been translated, the animal for a sin-offering lieth at the door. The word "chattauth," when it means sin or sin-offering, is always of the feminine gender.

The word "chattauth" occurs two hundred and ninety-three times in the Hebrew scriptures ; but in this single instance only as a masculine nown, and must denote the animal for a sin-offering, necessarily a male; indeed, the genius of the Hebrew language requires that "chattauth" wherever it has the signification of sin or a sin-offering should be of the feminine gender. It can be of the masculine gender only when it stands for one of that sex; the only conceivable reason for this extraordinary change of gender being that it designates a male animal.

; 'Kobets" also is never used to express the crouching of a beast in order to spring; but its lying down for repose. A wholly different word expresses the act of crouching.

This change of version suggested, (the animal for sacrifice is lying at the door) if allowed, as it must be, teaches that this bloody ceremony is in no sense of man's devising, and asserts the very contrary. If God counselled Cain to offer a lamb as Abel had done, it follows that HE had instituted the ordinance. The time when this ceremony had been established as accompanying all acceptable worship of the just and holy Jehovah, had probably been the time of the promise of a deliverer from the ruin wrought by the fall. The seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, should achieve his victory at the sacrifice of his own mortal life.

The various steps to be taken in order to an acceptable offering were detailed at that time, the selection of a perfect animal, the imposition of hands while sin was being confessed, the slaughter of the animal, the catching of its blood, the casting of its flesh into the sacred fire, and the offering of its blood.

Abel then laying his hand upon the head of his lamb confessed in words equivalent: "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me," "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one." "The heart," the seat of character, "is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" "Can the leopard change his spots?" so have I been unable to do the right I would; the evil that I would not I have done continually. "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" "But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared." "Without faith it is impossible to please thee," "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."

Confessing that the firey sword might justly destroy his life already forfeited, and praying that God would accept instead the life he was offering, he smote and killed the unresisting lamb, carefully catching its gushing blood. The skin was soon stripped from its lifeless body, which was laid upon the wood of the altar, on which he also poured the blood. This offering of the flesh and blood of the lamb God immediately accepted. Fire came out from before the Lord, by which may be understood that a flash of lightning from the seat of the divine presence, perhaps from the flaming sword, an arrow from the quiver of the Almighty, struck; not the kneeling penitent, but the substituted victim, on whose head sin had been laid, and kindled the wood consuming the sacrifice.

1 This lightning represented the instantaneous, summary and condign vengeance of Almighty God, which he will visit upon transgressors. The fierceness of his wrath against sin is represented by the fiercest passion of the human soul, revenge. The flame was not kindled on every altar by fire from heaven, but this fire was not suffered to go out; and no other could be used in the solemnities of the altar. Strange fire cost the daring innovators their lives. It was as though every lamb, ever laid upon the altars during the ages of patriarchal and priestly service, had been consumed by lightning darted from the skies at every single sacrifice.

By this ordinance "was revealed from heaven the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." This heaven-kindled flame, the fire of God, afterwards became the unquenchable fire of the Jewish altar. Its kindling is related in Lev. ix:24, and again at the dedication of Solomon's temple. It burned at each lighting for centuries unextinguished, an emblem of eternal burnings.

That this bloody sacrifice was required to be made frequently, perhaps weekly, perhaps daily, appears from the coats of skies supplied to Adam and Eve for clothing, animals not being slaughtered for food until after the delude. These must have been the skins of beasts used for sacrifice, and their use by our first parents indicates the approach of the first winter in their experience.

Repentance, confession and faith were the condition of pardon then, and have continued to be the condition ever since. Abel did not know how God could consistently forgive sin; but he believed, as Paul asserts (Heb. 11:4), that God himself would in the future make a bloody offering of virtue sufficient to attone for the sins of the world. This ceremony of bloody sacrifice has accompanied all acceptable worship ever since, with variations and amplifications in the passover and day of atonement ceremonies of the Jews. "Without shedding of blood" without the offering of a life 'is no remission" is the unqualified testimony of all the rites imposed upon patriachs and Jews.

The doctrines of the imputation of sin and vicarious suffering by substitution of a victim, are as old as the promise of a Savior. In this ceremony lay concealed all the secrets of the divine administration, and every particular enjoined by heaven's authority has afforded light, edification and instruction to some of the greatest minds that ever lived, and should not be overlooked and slighted by the church of to-day.

It was plain to the feeblest understanding that the life of a dumb animal was no adequate substitute for a human life, and that the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin; and therefore that the offered victim was but a representative of a higher and nobler sacrifice. It was thus a matter of easy inference that the bloody offering represented the process by which the mighty deliverer predicted should conquer the great enemy of the race, release his captives and undo the ruin of the fall.

The memory of this expected deliverer is perpetuated in all the mythologies of the ancient world; a divine character is assigned to him, while he is yet human, showing the ancient interpretation put upon the words of promise. Indeed the words of Eve when Cain was born may be translated: "I have gotten the man, the Jehovah,'' and are just as correctly translated thus as: "I have gotten a man from the Lord," the word "from" not being found in the original.

If the word "chattauth" is thus understood, all the great facts of the gospel, all that was essential to be known in order to salvation, were in the possession of the progenitors of the race as fully as in ours, the divinity of the Redeemer, his conquest of satan, and his taking away the sins of the world by becoming the victim of a bloody sacrifice, and the possibility of salvation by faith in him, proved to be genuine and hearty by full confession of sin, and true repentance for it.

Our first parents knew much more perhaps than is contained in the recorded history. Their knowledge of the evil of sin, and its dire results in this world as well as in the future, were much more affecting than that furnished by our experience; and their understanding of the possibility of pardon and deliverance was as inspiring, though they knew less of the manner in which the deliverance was to be secured.

The heathen world retained the tradition of a mighty deliverer better preserved than the character of the work by which he would secure deliverance.

While bloody sacrifices prevailed among all the nations of antiquity, the significance of the rite was almost entirely lost; they only supposed heaven propitiated by it; and on extraordinary occasions made human sacrifices under the impression that the more costly the offering, the greater its virtue in placating their gods. They lost the memory of the attendant religious exercises the confession of sin, the imposition of hands, the substitution of the victim in the place of the penitent transgressor; in short they dropped out of their program all that related to a sense of guilt and ill desert.

Only such as were spiritually enlightened on these themes so uncongenial to the natural man could profit by the service, or understandingly preserve and perpetuate it. To nothing is man more averse than to a conviction of sinfulness in the scripture sense, and it is not wonderful that the meaning of the sacrifice was lost: while the expectation of the Savior was counted the heirloom of the race, a hope not to be abandoned, to which the world cling with an increasing tenacity, as the accumulated miseries and strifes and injustice of human history aggravated the despair of the suffering masses; no farther discovery on this most important of all subjects was vouchsafed until the time of Abraham.

The command of God to the patriarch to offer up his only and beloved son as a sacrifice is a confirmation of the opinion that the ceremony of sacrifice is a divine institution, or a direct assertion of the fact. The object of this strange requirement was to elucidate the full meaning of the bloody offering. Who can be expected to explain and define the significance of the ordinance except its author? Who else has the right to interpose a word? This additional light was granted in answer to fervent and persistent prayer, as the Savior said to the Jews: "Your father Abraham desired to see my day/' The command was given in such manner as to leave no uncertainty as to its giver, or as to its meaning.

Instead of questioning whether a righteous God could command an act in itself sinful, or allowing doubts to trouble him, and without hesitation he set about obeying. He evidently felt misgivings as to whether Isaac would submit to the trying ordeal; for he gave him no intimation of the object of the journey, not even when the designated mountain was reached ; but deferred the communication to the last moment, which probably was the wise course. It is pathetic to hear the lad's inquiry as laden with the wood he toiled up the Golgotha, which another Isaac in an after age would climb, laden with a cross; "my father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb?" and to hear the father reply, with breaking heart, "the Lord will provide."

When informed at length of the divine requirement, aud no time was left for hesitation, he consented, feeling the Lord's will be done; and thus showed that a degree of the Father's faith w^as in the heart of the boy, that he should so readily yield his life to the will of heaven. Their hearts beat in unison in this the supreme moment of their two lives.

Then followed the binding of the victim, and laying of the wood upon the altar, the solemn prayer of confession and consecration which always attended a sacrifice, made with souls convulsed, the fervent amen was spoken, and the arm was uplifted knife in hand; and in another instant the lifeblood would have spurted from the fatal gash, had not Abraham's arm been arrested by a voice from heaven. His firm intention was to slay his son; so that the Scripture says that he actually "offered up his only son."

God was virtually saying by this requirement, when the great transaction typified takes place, the victim will be no bleeding bird or bleeding beast; but as you have with agony untold bound and laid upon the altar the clearest object you possess; so God will give to agonies and death the one dearest to him in all the universe.

Impelled by a love that cannot be told in words of earth, God will lay upon the altar of justice the son, the darling of his delight. Men will be redeemed by the supreraest effort, even agonies of the Godhead, not of the son only, the Father must have participated. The throne of heaven will feel the shock.

Abraham and the world were taught by this experience two things, first that the victim on that great day will be one that God alone can furnish, and next that God himself will be the priest. The name of this mountain shall be henceforth called Jehovah-jireh; that men may ever be reminded that God will furnish the lamb for the sacrifice; and of the mighty effort of the mightier love that atones for human guilt. This was an advance in the knowledge of God, as well as of the redeeming work; inasmuch as it conveyed the truth, that while God is one, there is a distinction of persons in the Godhead, and that the Redeemer to be will be God's only and his equal son.

The patriarch plainly saw the day of Christ and rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Was God at such outlay to illustrate and explain an ordinance of man's invention?

When the soul of a pardoned sinner is filled with a sense oi the boundless mercy of Christ, and engrossed with the revelation of the extent of a Savior's forgiveness, that God, great in all his works, is greater in his forgiveness of sin, he is apt to look upon Jesus as the fountain of everlasting love; while the Father seems the embodiment of the stern and fearful attributes of immutable justice and truth. He seems invested with the clouds and terrors of Sinair, and his office to be to uphold and enforce the fiery law. This is not an attractive view,, and how unjust! This representation to Abraham places the whole thing in another light. The patriarch was made by a fearful experience to realize the struggle it cost to surrender to suffering and death an only and beloved son, and by this to judge of the strength of the love to men which led the Holy One to give his only begotten and beloved son for man's redemption. He not only gave his son he offered him up, which Abraham understood to be infinitely more grievous and severe. The Father deserves the love and trust and ineffable gratitude of men equally with the son, to say the least.

The distinction of persons in the Godhead was more clearly revealed as time progressed. An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in human form in a burning bush on Mount Horeb, and announced himself as the 4i I am that I am;" proposing to him a mission to Egypt to deliver the Israelites from their cruel bondage. The bush, not a large and spreading tree, but a clump of clustering shrubs, represented Israel whom the fire of oppression could not destroy because God was with them. Two miracles of menace were required to overcome the reluctance of the disappointed, broken-spirited old man, whose life, grand in its beginning, had been a total failure. This word (broken-spirited) is the radical and primary meaning of the word translated (meek) in numbers xii:3.

The first miracle taught the lesson that duty performed was a staff to support, but neglected it becomes a venomous serpent to pursue. The second lesson taught him was that his whole person was liable to be branded with the odious and incurable disease of leprosy, if he persisted in declining the call of God.

If he obeyed the summons God would help him; and if the strength of nature failed, divine strength should sustain him; "his eye should not wax dim, nor his natural force be abated" for forty years of additional service of the most wearing description; and in performing it, he should be blessed with closer approach to God and higher experiences of celestial bliss than any of the race of mortals. This was not all promised to him on Mount Horeb, but granted as occasion demanded.

This angel was the same who had appeared to Abraham at Mamre, and to Jacob at Peniel. Moses afterward talked with him face to face in the pillar of cloud. He showed himself to Joshua and to the whole congregation at Boehim. He in person appointed the judges as is related in the cases of Gideon and Samson, and directed the administration of the government, until the rejection of the theocracy for a worldly monarchy, which terminated his personal appearings. He showed himself but once afterwards, and that was in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace after the fall of the monarchy.

He was the angel whom God sent in the pillar of cloud to lead the congregation to the land of Canaan. God said "my name is in him." Before him the sea had opened and swallowed their oppressors; and his anger excluded the unbelieving generation from the promised land. He is called

"the angel of the Lord;" Isaiah 63:10 calls him "the angel of the presence;" Malachi 3:1 calls him "the angel of the covenant." This august being is the great actor in the books of Moses, of Joshua, and of the Judges. In Proverbs 8th it is said, "His delights were with the children of men," he even loved "the habitable parts of the earth" where they would after dwell. He seemed to love to assume the human form on occasions which justified his personal presence. He was thus continually remind ing the world of the great expected deliverer from the ruin of the fall, who though divine, should be in fashion as a man, and as the seed of the woman should crush the serpent's head.

Prophecy had no other subject than him, inspiration sang only of him. He was for the most part very fully described as the rejected one, the despised one, the abhorred one, the suffering one, "the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief," Three divine persons are spoken of in the early books, Jehovah God of hosts, the Angel Jehovah, and the Spirit Jehovah. The thought that this glorious angel Jehovah should become the sufferer in the place of sinful men, and submit to penal suffering for sinners, was too overwhelming to be entertained for a moment even by those most spiritually enlightened. Nor man nor angel durst in thought connect him with suffering or with sin. In this dilemma the fiction of two Messiahs, one suffering the other reigning, suggested itself, and found favor and acceptance. It was an attempt to evade the connection of a divine person with the consequences of human guilt.

That men should be redeemed by the blood of Christ seems too wonderful to be believed, too good to be true, and yet too true to be rejected; and yet salvation is conditioned upon believing it with the heart.

The Mosaic institutions are confessedly of divine authority, and in them the sin-offering holds a place, a large place, a principal place, occasions for the ceremony being multiplied exceedingly. The fire on the Jewish altar never went out, and the blood never had time thoroughly to dry. The sin-offering of Eden was the groundwork of the whole system. The same truths, the substitution of a victim in the place of the sinner, and the imputation of sin were continually taught. .

A step in advance was made in the institution of the passover. In Egypt on a memorable night every first-born of man and beast was doomed. In the Israelitish houses a lamb died in the place of the first born, and its blood on the besprinkled door secured not only immunity from the impending plague, but an endless succession of deliverances in the future, thus exhibiting the imputation of the merits of the blood, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

So the ceremonies of the day of atonement were a fuller representation of the same truths, more extensive, more complicated, but a divinely authorized expansion of the simple ceremony of the sin-offering.

The three ordinances are teaching — the first, the imputation of sin to a substitute for the sinner, another showing the imputation of the merits of the substitute to the sinful o'fferer. and the third describing that the victim after dying lives again to intercede. All rest on the same authority, and are divine institutions.

Further confirmation of its divine institution is derived from the fact that it stood for forty centuries unchanged as an object lesson to the world. It was the only acceptable worship of God from the offering of Abel down the whole course of time. It held the place of prominence in the Mosaic economy for fifteen hundred years. How terribly was the Mosaic system sustained and defended! Fifty thousand died for looking into the ark at the two tables of stone; one was struck dead in his tracks for touching it with good intent. In all the changes in worship made by David and Solomon incident to the building of the temple, not the least change in this sacrificial ceremony was attempted.

It retained its prescribed form from the time of Abel. It was the germ and the kernel of the whole system of worship. It contains an epitome of the conditions of salvation displayed to the eye. It shadowed forth typically the dire, immediate and dreadful judgments of God against sin and sinners.

The. fire from heaven was an emblem of the wrath of God ; his lightnings kindled the flame upon the altar which was unquenchable, consuming, burning for centuries, and representing his eternal justice, and the retributions of the future. The vehemence of his hatred of evil-doing, "the fierceness of his anger" was thus daily exhibited. He "will by no means clear the guilty," or he will allow no crime to go unavenged. His disapproval has in it an energy and persistence great as the uncreated nature can feel. The lightnings teach this first and chiefly. Sin had been laid on the head of the innocent victim, and it drew the fire of heaven immediately, an eternal fire. With such vengeance will God visit sin.

Another truth taught by the ordinance was that sin, though in its nature unpardonable, yet can by God's special provision be forgiven; but not without shedding of blood, not the blood of the sinner, however. God's altar ran all the time with the blood of innocence, and often was perfectly deluged with blood. Sin was continually confessed before it, and blood ran continually down it. The great doctrine of substitutionary punishment was continually proclaimed by it.

Guilt can never be transferred to a substitute; but punishment due to us can be endured by another without violating the first principles of equity. The lamb of the altar represented the Lamb of God. The blood of the Jewish lamb atoned typically; the blood of Jesus atones really.

All that is necessary for the salvation of the soul can be learned from this ordinance. It is plain from the Old Testament scriptures that all the doctrines of the new dispensation are contained as strongly in the first book of the Bible as they are in the gospel documents. They were radically connected with this bloody rite as the trunk and branches of a tree are with its root.

Our earliest progenitors were as well informed of all that was necessary for their eternal salvation as we are, though they beheld the light through a veil, as it were. The strongest characters the world has seen were formed under such light as was gained from these emblems, of which the bloody sacrifice was the basis. A divine providence evidently guarded the ceremony, and prevented its modification in the slightest particular. The only modification being the substitution of the great brazen altar before the temple, no tool being used upon it, for the altar of the undressed rock; and that allowed by divine persuasion. This of itself is evidence of the divineinstitution of the ceremony.

CHAPTER II. Necessity of Atonement

Had men sinned in their own persons as did the angels which "kept not their first estate/' God would never have permitted the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation to fall upon their guilty ears. A ransom is provided for men, and the offer of pardon is made to men, because they sinned in Adam, and inherit a nature corrupted by the act of another. Angels, on the contrary acting each independently of others and on his own separate responsibility, and sinning with full understanding of the consequences in defiance of heaven, fell beyond the possibility of recovery.

The human race was constituted on an entirely different basis. It clusters around a single stem. Men are connected like the branches, twigs and leaves of a tree with a single trunk, and derive from a single root. Adam stood as the federal head and representative of the race that was in him. Therefore while angels were irretrievably lost by their sin, God found it possible to redeem men, and restore them to allegiance by providing a second federal head and representative to the race, through whom all that was lost in Adam might be regained.

Kedemption once determined on, an atonement became a first necessity, as the scriptures assert, Jno. iii:14: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up." Hundreds died; there was no escape from death for any: God, without removing the deadly reptiles, provided a remedy for the bitten. Sin is the viper that stings the soul to death. God provides a remedy in human form — he must be lifted up on a cross. There is a must be in the case. He heals only as lifted up on a cross. Jno. xn:32: "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." The drawing is conditioned upon the lifting up. Jno. xn:24: "Except a corn of wheat falling to the ground die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it briugeth forth much fruit." So the dying Savior will multiply fruit. Heb. n:10: "It behoved him to make the captain of our salvation perfect through suffering." Christ with all his love and power was not a perfect Savior until he had suffered. Acts xVn:3: "Paul reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that the Christ must needs have suffered and risen from the dead." The ancient scriptures, from the time of Abel in words and by types, declared that the coming Savior should die like the lamb of the sin- offering. This was the thing represented in every act of formal worship. Heb. vm:3: "It is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." The order of the priesthood existed only on account of the prior necessity of an offering. Jesus Christ is the only real priest in the universe, and he is appointed because an expiatory offering must be made. Heb. x:ll: "Where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of the testator." Christ can give effect to his testamentary provisions only by dying. Heb. x:22: "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission." The Jewish altar ran with blood often like a wine-press in the time of the vintage, and its fire was never out, proclaiming and foreshadowing the bloody sacrifice, which God would make. Reasons for this necessity, so variously expressed and implied, are not hard to find; they are drawn from the nature of the law of God, and from his character, as it is revealed in the Holy Scriptures.