blood upon him.—The sinner's death is first of all transferred to the
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
putting the blood upon us is the identifying of us with him,—his death with ours,—so that thus we die with Christ,—and we are buried with Christ; and all in order, as we shall see, that we may rise again with Christ. It is in this way that we become partakers of the baptism wherewith he was baptized; not by being plunged in blood; not by our being brought to the blood, but by the blood being brought to, or applied to us; by having blood put upon us, as in the case of Aaron and his sons,—to signify that thus we were dead,—dead with him who died for us,—dead in virtue of the transference of his death to us by the sprinkling of the blood upon our persons.
It was not Aaron that sprinkled the blood upon himself or his sons. That would have meant that he was putting himself to death with his own hand, as a self-murderer. He neither sprinkled the blood upon himself, nor did he plunge himself in the blood; that would have been the symbol of suicide, not of death by the hand of the law. It was Moses, representing God, that sprinkled the blood. Aaron but presented himself in the appointed place, put himself in the appointed position, and forthwith the symbol of death was administered to him. God, by the hand of Moses, sprinkled the blood upon him,—as an intimation that the death of the sacrifice had been transferred to him. It was by this baptism of blood, beside the altar where the sacrifice had died, that symbolised to Israel that which was not fully revealed till after years,—the sinner's death with Christ; and told him that the time was coming when he should be in reality baptized into his death, made partaker of his death, that so he might also be partaker of his burial and his resurrection. It is God that sprinkles the blood of Christ upon the sinner, and so transfers to him Messiah's surety-death upon the cross. And what God asks of every sinner here is, that coming to the great altar of sacrifice, even the cross of his Son, he would allow Him to transfer the Surety's death, with all its everlasting benefits of pardon, and salvation, and life, to him. O sinner, it is this that thy God this day asks of thee! Not to do anything, but to let him do the whole. Not to put thyself to death, either in symbol or in reality, but to allow him to reckon to thee the sinbearing death of his almighty Son. Wilt thou not consent to this,