Here’s a sacrifice which, in picture, was to be offered only once, but whose benefits are timeless.
So what do you know about the red heifer? I know this much: if you’re going to know anything about it, you must learn it from Numbers 19! That’s the only chapter in the Bible where it’s discussed. It isn’t with the other offerings in Leviticus, perhaps because it explains how Christian pilgrims can deal with sin on the journey to their new Home. J.J. Stubbs puts it beautifully: “The law of the red heifer shows how the believer can be saved from two extremes: presumption, which says sin does not matter, and despair, which says it cannot be cleansed.” This offering wasn’t a picture of God’s answer to the enslaving power of sin, like the Passover lamb, nor of the death-deserving penalty of sin, like the Levitical sin offering. It was to deal with the pollution of sin in the life of the believer. Chapter 19 begins with this command, “Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come” (v 2). A heifer is a young female cow that has not borne a calf. Notice four things about this one. It was to be all red. The Hebrew word for red is adom, from adam, the name of our first parent, and of the whole human race. Christ, our red heifer offering, was perfectly human. But He was also perfectly whole, having no blemish, meaning the offering must be complete, not missing any parts. “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him” (Col 2:9-10). Nor could it have a defect, the word used for a moral blot; and our Savior is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb 7:26), perfectly sinless. Finally, it must not have borne a yoke, being perfectly submissive. There’s much more, but we’ll see that in our next lesson.