While the burnt offering gives us that aspect of the work of Christ which was a “sweet savor unto God,” that is, His perfect obedience unto death, the sin-offering, given in Leviticus 4:1 through 5:13, is altogether different. Instead of a sweet savor on the altar, the body of the victim was carried outside the camp, and there consumed in judgment fire.
“Outside the camp” was the place of the defiled, the place of the condemned, the place of the execution of those on whom judgment without mercy was pronounced. This, then, is the aspect of the work of Christ typified by the sin offering. He was the forsaken One, on whom our sins were laid, and who was made sin for us.
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” This cry, uttered by the Lord Jesus on the cross, was the expression of His heart while He was bearing the judgment of sin. Never at any other time had He been forsaken. His whole life, from the time He lay on His mother’s breast till He hung on the cross, had been one of uninterrupted communion with God. But so really did Christ stand in the sinner’s place, so really was He made to be sin for us, that as the sinner’s Substitute, having our sins laid upon Him, God forsook Him–turned away His face from Him, and left Him alone in utter darkness, the mighty Bearer of sin.
The sin offering was regarded as a personification of sin. It was treated as sin, cursed as sin, judged as sin, carried outside the camp as sin, and there consumed as sin in judgment fire. Each lamb that was slain, each sin offering that was presented and accepted, pointed to the one Offering continually before the eye and heart of God–the One on whom God caused to meet the sins of Adam, and of Abel, and of all believers from then till now, including yours and mine.
While the whole bullock was to be carried outside the camp and there consumed, the fat and the kidneys were to be burnt on the altar, there to ascend to Jehovah along with the fat of the burnt offering and the peace offering. Surely this tells us that He who was made sin for us was even at that very same moment the perfect One, the infinitely acceptable One, who was always His Father’s joy, though in judgment forsaken and made a curse.
We read that the person bringing the offering “shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head.” If you read down these chapters and mark each place which mentions “laying on of hands,” you will see that it is almost the keynote of the chapter, a most important and deeply significant act.
I believe it means identification. It means that by that action the animal becomes identified with the person whose hand is laid upon it. The laying on of the hand was as much as to say, “The sin that I committed is put upon its head. It stands there for me, my substitute, taking my place. It is there to die for my sin, to die the death I deserved to die, and to be consumed in the fire of judgment that I deserved to suffer.”
And what have you and I done with the heavy burden of our sins? We simply cast ourselves upon Christ. Faith, so to speak, lays its hand upon that blessed head. It is faith that identifies us with the One that died. God knew my sins; He laid them all upon Jesus, and called for the sword of justice to awake against Him. Thus, when He died, He died as the sin offering for me, and for all who by faith accept Him and rest on Him as their Substitute.
The next step, after the laying on of hands, was, “He shall kill the bullock before the Lord.” The sinning one dare not kill it by proxy. He must kill the offering himself. Whether it be the priest who brings the bullock for his sin, or the common Israelite who brings the kid, each must kill it for himself.
Could any method of teaching have brought home to the heart and conscience more forcibly what sin is, than the taking of the knife into one’s own hand and plunging it into the throat of the animal, and seeing the life’s blood gush out? He looks at its sufferings, he hears its dying groan, and he says, “This is all for me.”
Let me ask, Have you gone thus to Calvary? Is it a habitual thing with you to make your way to Calvary’s cross, to go back in memory to that hour when Jesus suffered there for sin, when He bore the wrath, the curse for us? God would teach us by this figure so that each one looks on the death of Christ as caused by our own individual sin, as though He had suffered at our own hand, slain by ourselves.
Obviously after such a visit it would be foolhardy to suggest that some darling sin “doesn’t hurt anyone.” See Him dying for that sin.
I think this is a solemn aspect of the Lord’s Supper. As we gather together around the table, the Lord has set before us the symbol of bread and wine. As handed round, each one breaks that bread for himself and eats it. It is not broken for us and handed round to us by a priest. That is a gross perversion of the divine order. No, it is “the bread which we break.” Each one with his own hand breaks it, as each one individually and for himself alone partakes of it.
If five Israelites happened to come at the same time to the door of the tabernacle with their sin offerings, each one would have his own offering, each one would confess his own sin, and each one must kill the sacrifice that was for himself. This and nothing less, I believe, is the thought in the “breaking of bread.” It is each one realizing in his own soul the part he had in the breaking of that body and the shedding of that blood.
Thus, every life taken and poured out as a sin offering at the altar of Jehovah was but a shadow pointing forward to that holy One whose soul was poured out unto death on Calvary, and who was the great Sin Offering which alone could cleanse from sin.