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Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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The Purifying of The Heavenly


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Jesus Purged And Redeemed By The Blood Of His Own Sacrifice
Law of Moses, Chapter 18, pages 170-177

By Brother Robert Roberts

 

THE sacrificial blood was applied to everything - Aaron and his sons included (see Lev. 8:14-24). An atonement had to be made by the shedding and sprinkling of blood for and upon them all. (Lev. 16:33). As Paul remarks -

"Almost all things by the Law are purged with blood" (Heb. 9:22).

Now all these things were declared to be "patterns of the things in the heavens," which it is admitted on all hands converge on, and have their substance in, Christ. There must, therefore, be a sense in which Christ, the antitypical Aaron, the antitypical Altar, the antitypical Mercyseat - the antitypical everything - must not only have been sanctified by the action of the antitypical oil of the Holy Spirit, but purged by the antitypical blood of his own sacrifice.

The holy things, we know, in brief, are Christ. He must, therefore, have been the subject of a personal cleansing in the process by which he opened the way of sanctification for his people. If the typical holy things contracted defilement from connection with a sinful congregation, were not the antitypical (Christ) holy things in a similar state, through derivation on his mother's side from a sinful race? If not, how came they to need purging with his own better sacrifice?

There is first the express declaration that it was so (Heb. 9:23) -

"It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these (Mosaic sacrifices), but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these."

"By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12).

["For us" is an addition inconsistent with the middle voice of the verb employed, which imports a thing done by one to one's own self. - R.R.]

 

There was next the necessity that it should be so. The word "necessity," it will be perceived, occurs frequently in the course of Paul's argument. The necessity arises from the position in which men stood as regards the Law of Sin and Death, and the position in which the Lord stood as their Redeemer from this position. The position of men was that they were under condemnation to die because of sin, and that not their own sin, in the first instance, but ancestral sin at the beginning.

The forgiveness of personal offenses is the prominent feature of the apostolic proclamation, because personal offenses are the greater barrier. Nevertheless, men are mortal because of sin, quite independently of their own transgressions. Their redemption from THIS position is a work of mercy and forgiveness, yet a work to be effected in harmony with the righteousness of God, that He might be just while justifying those believing in the Redeemer. It is so declared (Rom. 3:26).

It was not to be done by setting aside the Law of Sin and Death, but by righteously nullifying it in one who should obtain THIS redemption in his own right, and who should be authorized to offer to other men a partnership in his right, subject to required conditions ...

We see Jesus born of a woman, and therefore a partaker of the identical nature condemned to death in Eden. We see him a member of imperfect human society, subject to toil and weakness, dishonor and sorrow, poverty and hatred, and all other evils that have resulted from the advent of sin upon earth. We see him down in the evil which he was sent to cure. Not outside of it, not untouched by it, but IN IT, to put it away -

"He was MADE PERFECT through suffering" (Heb. 2:10).

 

- but he was not perfect until he was through it. He was "saved from death" (v. 7), but not until he died. He "obtained redemption" (Heb. 9:12), but not until his own blood was shed.

The statement that he did these things "for us" has blinded many to the fact that he did them FOR HIMSELF first - without which he could not have done them for us, for it was by doing them for himself that he did them for us. He did them for us only as we may become part of him by taking part in his death, and putting on his Name and sharing his life afterwards.

He is, as it were, a new center of healthy life, in which we must become incorporate before we can be saved.

The antitype of the cleansing of the holy things WITH BLOOD is manifest when we look at Christ as he now is, and contrast him with what he was ... Some consider him immaculate in all senses, and in no need to offer for himself, but it is not "according to knowledge." It is not consistent with the Divine objects in God sending forth His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh."

Christ himself was included in the sacrificial work which he did "for us." "For himself that it might be for us" - for how otherwise could we have obtained redemption, if it had not first come into his possession, for us to become joint-heirs of?

 


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