Jesus said: “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about Me has its fulfillment” (Luke 22:37).
This is Jesus’ final passion prediction before He would be handed over by Judas Iscariot to the Jewish authorities. This is also a direct quote from Isaiah 53:12, which describes the necessity of the death of Jesus. So why did Jesus have to die? Couldn’t there have been another way?
Before man’s Fall into sin, God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. Adam personally named each creature he met. He was naked and unashamed. But when Adam and Eve fell into sin as they ate of the forbidden fruit, they noticed their nakedness. They were ashamed. So, God in His love clothed them with garments of skins. These skins were to remind Adam and Eve of the result of sin, which is death.
As time went on, the offerings of animals to God became the way of cleansing man of their sins. We see this in Genesis 4 as Abel offered the firstborn of his flock to God. But the sacrificial system did not officially become doctrine until God rescued His chosen people from slavery in Egypt. It was through a complex sacrificial system that an animal’s life was offered as atonement before God through the blood. The Lord said to Moses, “The life of the flesh is the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls” (Leviticus 17:11).
So, what is atonement? Atonement is when an innocent life is offered as a substitute for a guilty life. Atonement brings cleansing. Atonement brings redemption.
Our God is just. He is perfect. He demands perfection. So, in perfect justice, atonement for sin demands a blood covering. The animal’s blood was a substitute for the life of the person – as a blood covering for the people’s sins.
With His words to His disciples, Jesus is saying that He must be the blood covering for the whole world’s sins.
Those animal sacrifices all foreshadowed the sacrifice of the perfect High Priest, Jesus Christ, who would not offer the blood of animals, but His own precious blood and carry it into the heavenly Most Holy Place as a blood covering for our sin.
All those Old Testament sacrifices pointed to the one all-sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God and the perfect High Priest. As fully God and fully man with His ordinary human frame, Jesus lived a perfect life under the Law and then died the death that we all deserve, because of our sins. Through the shedding of His own blood, He would offer His life as the Great Exchange for the life of the world.
You see, Jesus became man so that He could take our sin, our guilt, and our punishment. In return, He gives us His righteousness, His perfection. It could only be this way. Sins must be atoned for. Blood must be spilled from the perfect Lamb.
Through Christ’s death on a cross as He hung between two transgressors, God puts the righteousness of Christ upon us. There, God reconciled the world to Himself. “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In this Great Exchange, our filthy rags of guilt and shame, iniquity and transgression, our bondage to death and the devil is all taken off us and put on Christ. And Jesus gives us His righteousness, His perfection, His life. He gives us everything!
So just as the high priest took the animal’s blood into God’s presence in the Most Holy Place and brought the most holy blood out to cleanse the altar, Jesus offered His own blood, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and entered into the heavenly sanctuary with His blood and flesh. Now, in Holy Baptism, Jesus sprinkles us with His most holy blood. He sprinkles us on the outside to cleanse us and to pardon our sin, to set us apart as His Holy people to serve God in our holy callings. Then in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus sprinkles us internally to set us apart to serve in the heavenly sanctuary with the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven, praising God for our Blood Covering.
It had to be this way. There was no other way. Jesus had to die a shameful death between two criminals. He had to identify Himself with sinful humanity, place Himself in solidarity with sinners, and die on behalf of all, so that He would make atonement for all people. So, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1). Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment