described in our text, the transfer is made while the victim is alive;
upon our acceptance of God's sin-offering that the guilt, which had made us unclean in his sight, passes over to the appointed Substitute, and leaves us clean. What he asks of us is simply our sin, our guilt; no more. He is appointed to receive and bear it. He beseeches us to transfer it to him, and to allow him to bear it all. And why should there be unwillingness to allow of such a transfer? Why should the relinquishment of condemnation be so slowly, so reluctantly consented to?
3. There is the death of the victim.—According to the process described in our text, the transfer is made while the victim is alive; and then, he having been loaded with our transgressions, is led out to be slain. For as death was the due of our sin, so must it be the due of him to whom it is transferred. On whomsoever the guilt is found, on him must the penalty lie; and from him must that penalty be exacted to the uttermost. The soul that sinneth, it must die. Death, nothing less than death, must be inflicted wherever guilt is found; for law must take its course, and righteousness must have its satisfaction. The only thing that can remove guilt from us for ever, is the death of him to whom it is transferred. In no other place can guilt be hidden, so as never to re-appear against us, but the grave. Death pays the debt and exhausts the penalty; nothing short of death. Without that shedding of blood, which is the means of death, and the evidence of its having taken place, is no remission.
4. There is the transfer of this death to the sinner by putting the blood upon him.—The sinner's death is first of all transferred to the Surety, who dies as the sinner's substitute. Then the Surety's death is transferred back again to the sinner, and placed to his account as if it had been his own. In confession, we transfer our death to the Surety. In believing, we transfer his death to ourselves, so that, in the sight of God, it comes to be reckoned truly ours. This transference of the Surety's death to us, is that which is set before us by the putting the blood upon us. For blood means death,—or life taken away; and the putting of blood upon us is the intimation the death has passed upon us,—and that death, none other than the death of the Surety. The