Great Themes of the Bible
to affect them with delight and joy, because it was "a day to afflict their souls"'.
5. THE PERPETUITY OF THIS INSTITUTION "Tt shall be a statute for ever" (Lev. xvi. 29, 34). It must not be intermitted any year, nor ever let fall, till that constitution should be dissolved and the type should be superseded by the antetype. As long as we are continually sinning, we must be continually repenting and receiving the atonement. The annual repetition of the sacrifices showed that there was in them only a faint and feeble effort towards making atonement; it could be done effectually only by "'offering up of the body of Christ once for all'', and that once was sufficient; that sacrifice needed not to be repeated.
Let us therefore see what there was of the Gospel in all this. Here is typified the two great Gospel privileges of the "remission of sin'' and ''access to God'', both of which we owe to the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us look, first, at "'expiation of guilt"', which Christ made for us. He is Himself both the maker and the matter of the atonement, for He is: (a) The Priest—the High Priest that "'makes reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Heb. ii. 17); He and none but He is par negotio—''fit for the work'', and worthy of the honour. He is appointed by the Father to do it, who sanctified Him, and sent Him into the world for this purpose, that God might in Him "reconcile the world to himself'. He undertook it, and for our sakes sanctified Himself, and set Himself apart for it (John xvii. 19). The high priest's frequent bathing himself on this day and performing the service of it in fine linen, clean and white, signified the holiness of the Lord Jesus, His perfect purity from all sin, and His being beautified and adorned with all grace. No man was to be with the high priest when he made atonement, for our Lord Jesus was to tread "the winepress alone'', and of the people there must be "none with him"? (Isa. Ixiii. 3). Therefore when He entered upon His sufferings ''all his disciples forsook him and fled". For if any of them had been taken and put to death with Him it would have looked as if they had assisted in making the atonement; none but thieves, concerning whom there could be no such suspicion, must suffer with Him. Just as the atonement made
Atonement 2A by the high priest was "for the holy sanctuary, for the tabernacle, for the altar, for the priests, and for the people (Lev. xvi. 33), so Christ's satisfaction is that which atones for the sins both of ministers and people, the "'iniquities of our holy [and our unholy] things'. The title we have to the privilege or ordinances, our comfort in them, and benefit by them, is all owing to the atonement Christ made. But whereas the atonement which the high priest made pertained only to the congregation of Israel, Christ is "the propitiation not for our sins only" that are Jews, but "'for the sins of the whole [Gentile] world"'. In this Christ infinitely excelled Aaron. Aaron needed to offer sacrifice for his own sin first, which he was to make confession of on the head of his sin offering; but our Lord Jesus had no sin of His own to answer for. "Such a High Priest became us"' (Heb. vii. 26), and, therefore, when He was baptised in Jordan, whereas others stood in the water "'confessing their sins" (Matt. iii. 6), He went straightway out of the water (Matt. iii. 16), having no sins to confess.
(6) The Sacrifice. As He is the High Priest, so He is the sacrifice with which atonement is made; for He is, all in all, our reconciliation to God. Thus He was prefigured by the two goats, which both made an offering: the slain goat was a type of Christ dying for our sins; the scapegoat a type of Christ rising again for our justification. It was directed by lot, the disposal whereof was of the Lord, which goat should be slain; for Christ was "delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God"'.
(i) The atonement is said to be completed by "putting the sins of Israel upon the head of the goat''. They deserved to be abandoned and sent into a land of forgetfulness, but the punishment was here transferred to the goat that bore their sins. Even so God is said to have laid upon our Lord Jesus (the substance of all these shadows) ''the iniquity of us all' (Isa. liii. 6), and He is said to have borne our sins, even the punishment of them, "in his own body upon the tree"' (1 Pet. ii. 24). Thus was He made "'sin for us", that is, a sacrifice for sin (2 Cor. v. 21). He suffered and died not only for our good but in our stead, and was forsaken, and seemed forgotten for a time, that we might not be forsaken and forgotten for ever.
(ii) As a consequence of this, all the iniquities of Israel were carried into a land of forgetfulness. Thus Christ, the Lamb of