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The Tabernacle
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The Tabernacle make intercession" for us (Heb. 7:25) ! Our suffering Saviour is our living Priest! The penalty of our sin is paid, for His atoning blood avails for all the endless ages! In the Hebrew text the same word is used for "sin" and "sin-offering." Thus the two were identified; and in this startling fact we realize, in some measure, the love of Christ, in that He was willing to "become sin" for us, though He Himself was absolutely, eternally "without sin." He suffered, "the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (I Peter 3: 18). "Being made a curse for us," He removed the curse of sin by paying the penalty Himself (Gal. 3: 13). When He made His "soul an offering for sin," He "condemned sin in the flesh," and provided a ransom for the sinner's soul (Isaiah 53: 10; Rom. 8: 3). "Despised and rejected of men," our Saviour suffered for all our guilt, for all our sinful nature which we inherited from Adam, for all the iniquity of our wicked hearts! He died for us! He was our Sin-Offering! He lives for us! He is our interceding Priest! That is why Paul could say to the Jews of old, "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the for- giveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justi- fied from all things, from which ye could not be justi- fied by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38, 39). That is why our redeemed hearts can sing, in the words of the old hymn: "Not all the blood of beasts, On Jewish altars slain, Could give the guilty conscience peace, Or wash away one stain;
B1tt Christ, the heavenly Lamb, Takes all our sins away- A Sacrifice of nobler name And richer blood than they!" The Trespass Offering
For the Scripture which tells of the trespass offering we turn to Lev. 5:1-6:7; 7:1-7. It is not easy to dis- tinguish the sin offering from the trespass offering; for both represent Christ, the Substitute for the guilty sinner. The bodies of the offerings for both were burned without the camp of Israel, for the reason that we have already seen. Both were to atone for sins committed wittingly or through ignorance. In the Lord Jesus Christ both the sin offering and the trespass offering found their complete and perfect fulfillment, in that He was the sinner's perfect Substitute on the cross. While it is difficult to distinguish the sin offering from the trespass offering, since they "necessarily overlap"; yet in the former the penalty of sin was prominent; in the latter, atonement was made for the consequences of sin. Christ, our Sin-Offering, bore the guilt of our sinful nature; Christ, our Trespass-Offering, made full and com- plete restitution to God and man for our acts of trespass against His holy law, both in our relationship to God and in our responsibility to our fellowmen. "Trespass" means the transgression of the rights of others. And the trespass offering and its ceremony required full reparation for every wrong act toward God and man. As someone has said, the sin offering dealt with "the nature of sin"; the trespass offering, with the "sins of nature"; the sin offer- ing, with "the root of sin"; the trespass offering, with "the fruit of sin" in the life.
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