02.35. THE TRESPASS OFFERING
THE TRESPASS OFFERING (Leviticus 5:1-19) THERE is a marked difference between the Sin Offering and the Trespass Offering. In the Sin Offering you have a sacrifice for the nature of sin. In the Trespass Offering you have a sacrifice for the sins of nature. Nor is the distinction without a difference. In the one case God is dealing with the root of sin. In the other He is dealing with the fruit of sin. The blood of Christ not only meets the root, “sin in the flesh,” it meets and provides for the fruit, the sins produced by the nature of sin in us.
After the believer has owned and accepted the Lord; after he is assured, not only that he has been forgiven and justified, but that he has received a new and spiritual nature, he awakes with a shock to discover the nature of sin still in him. In whatever way this consciousness comes to the believer it brings also the consciousness of defilement and the shutting out of close and intimate communion with God. The defilement must be removed and the consciousness of communion and fellowship restored. The provision for this and the manner thereof is set forth in the Trespass Offering. The manner of it is by confession; as it is written:
“And it shall be, when he (the Israelite) shall be guilty in one of these things, (mentioned in the preceding verses) that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing.” (Leviticus 5:5.) This tells us the sacrifice of Christ is available for the sins and trespasses of the believer by the way; that it is made available by confession on the believer’s part. This truth has already been largely dealt with, but it seems proper to restate it in analytical form.
1. The Christian can sin.
“If any man (any Christian) sin.” (1 John 2:1.) The supposition is based on the fact that he can sin. He can sin because the old nature is still in him. It is not taken away in the slightest degree in regeneration. It is still in him, the nature that is, “enmity with God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The new nature is holy, sinless, it cannot sin and is essentially against the old nature.
Thus the Christian has two natures; but while he has the two natures, he is not two persons; he is but one person and with one responsibility.
He can sin or he can resist sin.
He can live in the region of the flesh.
He can live in the realm of the spirit.
If the Christian who stumbles, sins and loses communion and fellowship with God would be restored, he must confess his sins unto God, and confess them as sins against the Lord. (1 John 1:9.) Unconfessed sin becomes a canker in the heart.
Confession brings it out, puts it into the light, makes its ugliness and horrible deformity to be plainly seen, inspires sorrow for the guilt of it, hatred of it and sincere desire to be quit of it.
Confession brings back the dominance of God in the soul. The prodigal never loved his home so much as when, after his wanderings, he returned to it.
Peace with God, joy in the Lord and rest of conscience never seem so rich and sweet as when, having lost them, they are found again. A precious jewel lost for many days and all hope of recovering it gone, never bas seemed so precious and worthwhile as when it is found again. The shepherd never thought so much of his sheep, his lost sheep, till he found it and brought it home again. The woman never so prized her lost piece of money till she discovered it, brought it out of the dark corner and fastened it among the other pieces on her forehead once more. The joy of restored communion, is a joy rich, deep and worth more than all gold and silver.
Restored communion brings increased spiritual power and desire to be used of the Lord. The Psalmist comprehended that He says:
“Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me by thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy way; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.” (Psalms 51:12-13.) 3. Our Lord Jesus Chris as the believer’s Great High Priest takes the confession and brings it before the Father.
He sets the confession before Him as from those who are His children, members of His family.
4. The Father is faithful and just.
Faithful to the covenant between Himself and the Son.
Just to the sacrifice offered once for all.
5. Because He is faithful and just to the Son, the Father, through the Son, will receive the confession, forgive, purge and fully cleanse the confessing one. In the light of the Trespass Offering we learn that the sin of an Israelite against a brother Israelite was counted of the Lord as a sin against Himself; as it is written:
“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the LORD, and lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour (a full list of possible sins is given in succeeding verses) .” (Leviticus 6:1-2.) In any of these things the Lord looks upon it as a sin against Himself. This is illustrated in the tremendous scene where Paul armed with authority from the Sanhedrim is on his way to Damascus to arrest and cast into prison all whom he should find among the Jews turning unto the Lord. The Lord meets him on the way, reveals Himself in the splendor of His glorified humanity and asks him this startling question:
“Why persecutest thou me? “ When Paul asks who it is speaking to him, he gets this answer:
“I am Jesus.”
If He had said nothing more than just those three words, they would in themselves have been the revelation of wonder and glory.
Apart from anything else they might teach, they do teach this (and I cannot afford to pass it by), they teach this, that the Son of God is in Heaven, that He is there as Jesus (and of course), absolutely as Jesus of Nazareth, “this same Jesus,” the Jesus who walked the ways of earth, was crucified on a Roman cross, dead, buried and risen again. Not a mere flimsy, shadowy, ghostly Jesus, a mere spirit but a real man, the real man Christ Jesus––there in His own very and actual human body. But listen to all He said to Paul:
“I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” In this amazing statement the Lord from Heaven identifies those on earth who believe in Him as one with Himself; so one, so a part of Him, that any blow against them He counts and feels as a blow against Himself.
It is the recognition of the great fact that the Church on earth is His spiritual Body. It is the recognition that each individual believer is a member of that body and therefore in intimate union with Himself. When one Christian sins against another Christian he is sinning against another member of the Body of Christ and therefore .in the nature of the case against the Lord Himself. When a Christian has an unkind or critical thought against another Christian, when he speaks a word that wounds a fellow Christian, his critical thought, his wounding word, strikes the Lord and strikes Him to the very heart. Nor does sin against a member of the Body of Christ stop with the wrong against the Lord personally ––it goes even more widely; for just as injury to one member of the body, even of our natural body, may affect other members of our body and make the whole body sick; so a Christian who sins against another Christian may so hurt the spiritual life of one Christian till the hurt spread and infect other Christians and the whole membership in that particular assembly of the Church become sick, spiritually weak and ineffective; wherefore it is written:
“Ye are the body of Christ and members in particular, And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27; 1 Corinthians 12:26.) The Christian then who sins against another Christian sins against the Lord indeed; in short, all sin, be it of whatever sort, great or small, is against the Lord, and requires free and full confession from the Christian who thus sins; he must confess if he would heal the hurt and stand in his true place before the Lord.
6. In the Trespass Offering the offerer must make restoration for the sin committed and add the fifth part to the principal of that which he took away or in which he caused loss or wrong to another.
“He shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto.” (Leviticus 6:5.) There are three things connected with the Trespass Offering.
Expiation.
Restoration.
Addition.
All this finds its complete fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ.
He was the true Trespass Offering. In Him we get Expiation, Restoration and Addition. Expiation.
Never forget it! the death of our Lord Jesus Christ is expiatory. By His death He has expiated the nature as well as the fruit of that nature in the Believer. So completely has He expiated for us as believers that, not only has He taken away the penalty of our sin, but the very guilt and demerit of it in the sight of a holy God.
Restoration.
Because He has so fully expiated the guilt and demerit of sin and so established the righteousness and truth of God and so justified him in all His ways; because by that expiation He has proclaimed throughout the universe the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the glorious righteousness of the will of God; because by His death He has broken down every barrier and purchased all rights to the world, He will restore it as it was “in the beginning.”
He will give the world back to God as it was first created, freed from sin and stain and shame and sickness and pain and death and from every rebel will; as it is written:
“There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (that is—not all new things, but—all things new; that is, make them over again renew them). (Revelation 21:5.) Is it possible to imagine such an era on this earth? A period when a tear will never be seen on a human cheek, when a choking sob will no longer clutch at the throat; when men and women shall no longer stand at the bedside of one they love and watch the ebbing away of life and the coming in of that thing we call the shadow of death; when because of this black sinister thing tragedy waits at that bedside and thrusts its finger into and tears and twists the heart-strings of those who watch the beloved as they go out with the tide. Can you conceive of that moment when there shall be no more graves, no chiselled bits of stone to tell you that underneath in the dust there lie the fragments of what was once a man of strength, a woman of beauty, a child of promise; that coming hour when the veiled guest who sits uninvited in so many homes today and whose name is––sorrow––shall no longer cross the threshold; when in the night no more shall be heard the Mother crying for her Son who was, and is not, and the orphans making lamentation because they have been cut loose and sent adrift upon the troubled waters of a fatherless and motherless life; but above all the coming of that hour of hours when the strange, drear word “pain,” that word which in’ eludes everything there is of the fires of fever, the octopus tentacles or wolf-like teeth of the cancer, all there is of surgeon’s knife and the long days of languishing; when that word” pain,” which means not only agony of body, but deeper agony of the soul shall no longer be written, nor heard, nor remembered; that hour at last when human beings shall walk beneath skies that have no clouds, from whence shall come no more the windy storm and tempest, a world no longer shattered by earthquakes, scorched and melted by red-throated volcanoes, or drowned with tidal waves, a world burning in summer and frozen in winter, but a pleasant land where the flowers fade not and there is no thorn in the rose, a paradise regained where life flows on and on in ever unfolding degree of wonder, in knowledge and power; where peace and unbounded love abide beneath every roof tree; when all restraint of genius in man shall be released from the leash of the curse and rise to the level of Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, a world restored to God minus all that has hurt the vision, the conscience and the heart of God.
Addition. In the Trespass Offering the offerer was to give back the principal and then add the fifth part. Our Lord Jesus Christ as the True Trespass Offering and therefore the True Trespass Offerer will give to God the principal.
He will restore to Him all that he lost in the world through the sin of man. But He will do more than that.
He will not only restore the world as it was at first, but He will add the fifth part; that is to say, He will give Him the world again with––plus.
God shall get more through the redemption of the cross than He had in the world before man sinned, before the era of chaos and before Satan fell.
I repeat He will get the world back with plus. And this is the plus––not a world full of an Adam race, stumbling in sin and rebellion against God, rejecting Him in all his ways, marking the earth with iniquity at every step and filling the very air with the poison of it, but a race of redeemed, regenerated men, shining in the image of Him who redeemed them, sons of God like He is, glorifying the Father in the proclamation of His grace and enthroning Him in heart and life. This is the glorious addition which the cross brings to God the Father––the “many sons” He has sought; not only a world from which every trace of sin has been removed, but a race of sons of God testifying to the onlooking universe that the supreme glory of God is not to be found in the material creation filled as it is with the sign manual of His omnipotence, but in the matchless love that gave His Son to die for sinful men and the sovereign grace that has made sons of rebels and kings of slaves. This is the great plus, this is the immense addition, this is the divine fifth part, this is the “much more” of which an Apostle speaks, given by the Son, given in the great Trespass Offering of the cross.
O the marvel on marvels of that Cross. A Burnt Offering. A Sin Offering. A Peace Offering. A Trespass Offering.
Measureless devotion to the Father.
Complete and perfect atonement for man.
Reconciliation of a rebel world.
Provision for failures by the way.
Expiation.
Restoration.
Addition. And all this is the covenant and eternal purpose of God, finding its initial when He sent the universe upon its course; finding its emphasis and accent when He created this earth that it might become, finally, the arena for the revelation of infinite love and “amazing” grace.
Well may we cry out in the words of the Apostle:
“O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever.
Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36.) And well may we sing:
“In The Cross Of Christ I Glory.” And with the Apostle, add:
“God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”