But, as one advances in the divine life, he becomes conscious that those sins which he has committed are but branches from a root, streams from a fountain; and, moreover, that sin in his nature is that fountain—that root. This leads to far deeper exercise, which can only be met by a deeper insight into the work of the cross. In a word, the cross will need to be apprehended as that in which God Himself has "condemned sin in the flesh." (Rom. viii. 3.) My reader will observe, it does not say, "sins in the life," but the root from whence these have sprung, namely, "sin in the flesh." This is a truth of immense importance. Christ not merely "died for our sins, according to the Scriptures," but He was "made sin for us." (2 Cor. v. 21.) This is the doctrine of the sin-offering.
Now, it is when the heart and conscience are set at rest, through the knowledge of Christ's work, that we can feed upon Himself as the ground of our peace and joy in the presence of God. The trespass-offering and the sin-offering must be known ere the peace-offering, joy-offering, or thanksgiving-offering can be appreciated. Hence, therefore, the order in which the peace-offering stands corresponds with the order of our spiritual apprehension of Christ.
The same perfect order is observable in reference to the meat-offering. When the soul is led to taste the sweetness of spiritual communion with Christ—to feed upon Him, in peace and thankfulness, in the divine presence, it is drawn out in earnest desire to know more of the wondrous mysteries of His Person; and this desire is most blessedly met in the meat-offering, which is the type of Christ's perfect manhood.
Then, in the burnt-offering, we are conducted to a point beyond which it is impossible to go, and that is, the work of the cross, as accomplished under the immediate eye of God, and as the expression of the unswerving devotion of the heart of Christ. All these things will come before us, in beauteous detail, as we pass along; we are here only looking at the order of the offerings, which is truly marvelous, whichever way we travel, whether outward from God to us, or inward from us to God. In either case, we begin with the cross and end with the cross. If we begin with the burnt-offering, we see Christ, on the cross, doing the will of God—making atonement according to the measure of His perfect surrender of Himself to God. If we begin with the trespass-offering, we see Christ, on the cross, bearing our sins, and putting them away according to the perfection of His atoning sacrifice; while in each and all we behold the excellency, the beauty, and the perfection of His divine and adorable Person. Surely, all this is sufficient to awaken in our hearts the deepest interest in the study of those precious types which we shall now proceed to consider in detail. And may God the Holy Ghost, who penned the book of Leviticus, expound its contents in living power to our hearts, that so, when we have reached the close, we may have abundant cause to bless His name for many thrilling and soul-stirring views of the Person and work of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, now, henceforth, and for evermore. Amen.
In the burnt-offering, with which our book opens, we have a type of Christ "offering Himself without spot to God." Hence the position which the Holy Ghost assigns to it. If the Lord Jesus Christ came forth to accomplish the glorious work of atonement, His highest and most fondly cherished object in so doing was the glory of God. "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God," was the grand motto in every scene and circumstance of His life, and in none more markedly than in the work of the cross. Let the will of God be what it might, He came to do it. Blessed be God, we know what our portion is in the accomplishment of this "will;" for by it "we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." (Heb. x. 10.) Still, the primary aspect of Christ's work was Godward. It was an ineffable delight to Him to accomplish the will of God on this earth. No one had ever done this before. Some had, through grace, done "that which was right in the sight of the Lord;" but no one had ever perfectly, invariably, from first to last, without hesitation, and without divergence, done the will of God. But this was exactly what the Lord Jesus did. He was "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Phil. ii. 8.) "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." And as He walked from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross of Calvary, the intense devotion of His heart told itself forth in these accents,—"The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"
Now, in all this self-emptied devotedness to God there was truly a sweet savor. A perfect Man on the earth accomplishing the will of God, even in death, was an object of amazing interest to the mind of Heaven. Who could fathom the profound depths of that devoted heart which displayed itself, under the eye of God, on the cross? Surely, none but God; for in this, as in every thing else, it holds good that "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father," and no one can know aught about Him save as the Father reveals Him. The mind of man can, in some measure, grasp any subject of knowledge "under the sun,"—human science can be laid hold of by the human intellect; but no man knoweth the Son save as the Father reveals Him, by the power of the Holy Ghost, through the written Word. The Holy Ghost delights to reveal the Son—to take of the things of Jesus and show them unto us. These things we have, in all their fullness and beauty, in the Word. There can be no new revelation, inasmuch as the Spirit brought "all things" to the apostles' memory, and led them into "all truth." There can be nothing beyond "all truth;" and hence, all pretension to a new revelation and the development of new truth (meaning thereby truth not contained in the sacred canon of inspiration) is an effort on man's part to add to what God calls "all truth." No doubt the Spirit may unfold and apply, with new and extraordinary power, truth contained in the Word; but this is obviously a very different thing from our traveling outside the range of divine revelation for the purpose of finding principles, ideas, or dogmas which shall command the conscience. This latter can only be regarded in the light of impious presumption.
In the gospel narrative, we have Christ presented to us in the varied phases of His character, His Person, and His work. To those precious documents the people of God in all ages have rejoiced to betake themselves, and drink in their heavenly revelations of the object of their love and confidence—the One to whom they owed every thing, for time and eternity. But very few, comparatively, have ever been led to regard the rites and ceremonies of the Levitical economy as fraught with the most minute instruction in reference to the same commanding theme. The offerings of Leviticus, for example, have been too much regarded as so many antiquated records of Jewish customs, conveying no intelligible voice to our ears—no spiritual light to our understandings. However, it must be admitted that the apparently abstruse records of Leviticus, as well as the sublime strains of Isaiah, take their place amongst the "things which were written aforetime," and they are, therefore, "for our learning." True, we shall need to study those records, as indeed all Scripture, with a humble, self-emptied spirit; with reverent dependence upon the teaching of Him who graciously penned them for us; with sedulous attention to the general scope, bearing, and analogy of the entire body of divine revelation; with an effectual curb on the imagination, that it may not take unhallowed flights; but if thus, through grace, we enter upon the study of the types of Leviticus, we shall find in them a vein of the richest and finest ore.
We shall now proceed to examine the burnt-offering, which, as we have remarked, presents Christ offering Himself without spot to God.
"If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male, without blemish." The essential glory and dignity of Christ's Person form the basis of Christianity. He imparts that dignity and glory to every thing He does, and to every office He sustains. No office could possibly add glory to Him who is "God over all, blessed forever"—"God manifest in the flesh"—the glorious "Immanuel"—"God with us"—the Eternal Word—the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. What office could add to the dignity of such an One? In point of fact, we know that all His offices are connected with His humanity; and in assuming that humanity, He stooped from the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He thus stooped in order to glorify God perfectly in the very midst of a scene where all was hostile to Him. He came to be "eaten up" by a holy, unquenchable zeal for the glory of God, and the effectual carrying out of His eternal counsels.