The Sin Offering

The next thing is the offerings through which the priests were consecrated, without which they could not go into God’s presence to serve Him. The sin offering came first (Ex. 29:10-14). Christ as the sin-bearer is brought before us in this offering. Aaron and his sons were to lay their hands upon the head of the bullock which had been provided for this purpose. In this act their sins were, in type, transferred to the animal. The victim, thus identified, or laden with their sins, must be slain before the Lord: “The wages of sin is death.” The stroke of justice thus fell upon the appointed victim, and the guilty were allowed to go free. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). In what was done to the sin offering we get a glimpse of the exceeding hatefulness of sin to God. In its fullness it is told out in what was done to His beloved Son on the cross. Aaron and his sons who stood and watched in that solemn moment when the victim was bound, their sins confessed on its head, and then the victim slain, must have entered in some measure into God’s hatred of sin. “The life... is in the blood” and “without shedding of blood is no remission.” A portion of the blood of the victim was put upon the horns of the altar; the rest was poured out at the bottom of the altar. It is through the yielded life that reconciliation is brought about; the blood was shed. Sinners are “justified by His blood,” and “reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Rom. 5:9-10).
We have already considered, in connection with the brazen altar, the burning of the fat, God’s portion, on the altar, and the burning of the body of the victim outside the camp. This is a type of the Lord Jesus bearing the wrath of God on account of sin, consumed like the victim outside the camp; and yet in that death there was that which was a sweet odor to God.
On Mount Sinai, the sight of God’s glory was like devouring fire (Exod. 24:17). “The Lord thy God is a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24). When Aaron began his service in the tabernacle, fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering (Lev. 9:24), and thus showed His acceptance of it. The fire brought out only a sweet savor, and God’s righteous testing of Christ on the cross, brought out a sweet savor to God. Although forsaken of God, He could say, “But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3). God shall judge and punish the wicked with unquenchable fire. The eternal punishment is described as “the lake of fire.”
In that fearful hour of sorrow, when the fire of God’s judgment fell upon the sinless One “made sin” for us, all nature was convulsed. Fire is a symbol of God’s searching righteous judgment, whether in the acceptance of what was good, or the condemnation of evil. The rending rocks, the quaking earth, the darkness which added its gloom to the awful scene, all served to emphasize His entire abandonment. Of sympathy there was none; human friends had fled; God had forsaken Him. That hour of horror is an hour that stands alone in the annals of eternity. The issue, which will stand for eternity, is — God glorified, and man saved.
Precious truth for the one who can say, The judgment that I deserved has been borne fully by Jesus in those three hours of darkness. O to be able to say, All this for me! Three is a number which indicates full, or complete, testimony. In the three hours of darkness, testimony was borne to the fact that the judgment of God against sin was exhausted by the One who suffered under it. Three days under the power of death gives complete testimony as to His death. The days were not complete, but, according to Jewish reckoning, they were counted as three days. Not waiting until the hours of the third day had expired, would speak of the fullness of grace in the heart of Him who would announce to His sorrowing ones, the bringing in of full blessing to man.