The Great Commission. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. IV

by Charles Henry Mackintosh

All, therefore, having been found pure, and fit for God's altar, it becomes the happy place of Aaron's sons to send up before God the sweet savor of this most acceptable offering, as we read: "And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire. And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar. But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord" (vers. 7-9). The fat of the offering was God's peculiar part; no one could with impunity touch that; yea, the punishment for so doing was the same as for eating blood; i.e., it was as wrong and as daringly presumptuous for a man to intrude upon God's portion of the offering as it was for him to assume life in his own right, which latter was an open denial of the state of death and ruin in which he was by reason of sin. God, then, I say, claimed the fat. He alone could feed upon the inward excellency and peerless perfections of Jesus, just as in the case of the unmeasured ointment in Exodus xxx., where we see, as well as in the above cited passage, that the infinite mind of God could alone appreciate the infinite value of Christ. But we find the head burnt in connection with the fat, showing us, I suppose, that both the hidden energies of the Lord Jesus and the seat of His understanding were equally suited to be a sweet savor unto God. Lastly, the inwards and legs were washed and burned upon the altar, showing us that the secret thoughts, purposes and counsels of the Lord Jesus, as well as the outward development of these in His walk, were perfectly pure and fit for the altar: and, in connection with this last point, one cannot help dwelling with comfort upon the marvelous contrast between the Lord Jesus and His poor people. How often may our outward walk, typified by "the legs," appear quite right in the eye of man, when, at the same time, perhaps, in the eye of God, our "inwards" may be full of gross impurity. But it is well for us that such was not the case with our great Head: in Him all was alike, for all was pure. May our hearts, dear Christian reader, enter more and more fully, under the teaching of the Spirit, into the intrinsic excellency of the Lord Jesus; and may we be enabled daily, standing at the altar before God, to send up in His presence the savor of all this!

As to the meat offering, we need not enter minutely into it. It was composed, as we know, of that which sprang from the earth, and such as aptly shadowed out "the Man Christ Jesus," the frankincense thereon marking the entire devotedness of all the actings of Christ's human nature to God His Father. Nothing was done by Him to meet man's eye, or man's approbation; nothing was done to produce mere effect; no, all was directly before God. Whether we trace the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, while, for thirty years, He was subject to His parents at home; or while, for three years, He was engaged in public ministry amongst the Jews—all was alike: all showed forth the pure frankincense that marked Him, in all things, as God's peculiar and devoted servant. We may observe further that this meat offering was baked with oil, and anointed with oil; thus showing forth, I suppose, the incarnate Son of God, who was first "conceived of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i. 20), and then "anointed with the Holy Ghost" (Matt. iii. 16; Acts x. 38).

We now come to speak of the sin offering, and may the Lord graciously refresh our spirits while dwelling for a little on the blessed principles unfolded therein. The sin offering is brought before us in Leviticus iv., from whence we may select one case for our present purpose. "If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people, then let him bring for his sin which he hath sinned a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head and kill the bullock before the Lord" (vers. 3, 4).

The reader will, no doubt, observe a marked difference between the above passage and that in which the burnt offering was referred to; and the difference so far mainly consists in this, that in the last cited passage the words "voluntary will" are not found, and this was quite to be looked for. In the burnt offering we were enabled to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ offering Himself voluntarily before God, in which aspect of His blessed work He could say, "No man taketh it (My life) from Me, I lay it down of Myself." In other words, He offered Himself "of His own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord." But in the sin offering it is quite different: "He shall be brought" and "He shall be killed;" i.e., instead of coming, He shall be brought; and instead of laying down His life of Himself, His life shall be taken from Him. These, I say, are important distinctions, and such as arise from the very nature of the two offerings. In the burnt offering the Lord Jesus is seen offering Himself in all the unblemished perfectness which belonged to Him; and in this His soul had great delight, because He was presenting that before God which was so acceptable to Him. But in the sin offering the Lord Jesus is seen standing in connection with that which His pure and spotless soul must have deeply abhorred and keenly resented—abhorred and resented, indeed, in a way of which we cannot form the faintest idea. He is seen, in a word, as standing in connection with sin: yea, more, as "made sin" (2 Cor. v. 21). Thus it was that the prophet, through the Spirit, viewed Him when he said, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. liii. 5, 6).

Now I believe that by looking at the two offerings in connection we get a very deep and wondrous view of sin's dark and dreadful enormity in the sight of God: for sin in this point of view appears sinful just according to the measure of Christ's perfectness in God's account. If in the burnt offering we were enabled to see that such was the beauty and excellency of Christ that His whole man could go up before God as a sweet savor, and that God could "find nothing in Him" but perfection, as a necessary consequence then we must see in the sin offering the blackness and heinousness of sin, which could oblige God to hide His face from "His elect, in whom His soul delighted."

This brings us to the next point connected with the sin offering, viz., "He shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head" (ver. 4). Here we have at once the secret of the deep and profound mystery of the three hours' darkness.

It was before observed that God had to hide His face from the Lord Jesus on the cross, but how are we to account for such a mysterious circumstance? Simply by the words, "he (the sinner) shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head." If, in contemplating the burnt offering, we were struck by the fact that all the perfectness of the offering was communicated to the "fierce and cruel" Levi, so here we are called upon to adore the grace that devised the wondrous plan whereby that could be effected, which was by imputing to the offering all the sin and defilement of Levi, and dealing with the sin of Levi in the person of the sin offering, in order that Levi himself might be dealt with in the person of the burnt offering.

And all this, be it observed, is conveyed to us in the action of "the laying on of hands." This action was performed in both cases; i.e., Levi laid his hands on the head of the burnt-offering, and Levi laid his hands on the head of the sin offering. As to the act, it was the same in each case; but oh, how different the results! they were, in a word, as different as life and death, heaven and hell, sin and holiness. In fact, we cannot conceive a wider contrast than that which is observable in the results of this action, to all appearance the same in each case. We may, perhaps, be able to form some idea of it by considering that the act of imposition of hands was at once the imputation of sin to one "who knew no sin," but was "holy, harmless, undefiled," and whose very nature abhorred all sin. And, on the other hand, it was the imputation of perfect righteousness to one who was by nature "a cruel, fierce, and self-willed murderer."[9] Furthermore, the act of imposition of hands obliged the One who from before all worlds dwelt in the bosom of the Father to travel far away into the cold and barren regions of death and darkness, where the genial and life-giving rays of His Father's countenance, which He alone could truly appreciate, had never penetrated; and standing upon the confines of which, He cried out, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!" and again, when these gloomy regions, with their ten thousand unutterable horrors, burst upon His spotless soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" And, on the other hand, it enabled the one who dwelt in "the habitations of cruelty," into whose "assembly" God could not come, to stand in the very blaze of the light of God's throne. These considerations, I say, may perhaps assist our conceptions in some measure upon this astounding truth. Now, the apostle states the same truth in the didactic language of the New Testament when he says, "He (God) hath made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21). That is, He hath made the One whose perfectness is seen in the burnt offering to be judged as sin, and treated as such in the sin offering, in order that we, who deserved the treatment of the sin offering, might be treated as accepted in the burnt offering.

I would also observe here that there is much force and value in the word "made:" it shows out most fully that righteousness was just as foreign to the nature of man as sin was to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own, or, in other words, he knew no righteousness, and therefore he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and therefore had to be "made sin" in order that we might be made righteousness, even "the righteousness of God in Him." But further, we learn from the passage to which we are referring that the Lord Jesus having been "made sin for us," is not more real, not more true, not more palpable, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him."

If there be any truth or reality in the record concerning the cross and passion of the Lord Jesus, then, it is plain that the moment a soul acts faith upon Christ in His death and resurrection, that moment he is accepted in all the acceptableness of Christ. His consciousness of this is, of course, quite another question: a truth and the realization of a truth are quite distinct.