When Saul sacrificed to the Lord in the absence of Samuel, the Philistines were steadily gathering their forces against him, and Israel, shrinking from the unequal conflict, was deserting. Saul felt that despite the promised coming of Samuel he must have the favour of the Lord in this crisis, and he sought it by burnt offering and peace offering.
The circumstances, and his reactions, indicate that his purpose was to placate a God who was neglecting him, and to secure his favour. ln this he followed the pattern of the Gentile sacrifices, whereas the sacrifices of the Levitical order were designed to be an atonement, or covering. The repeated emphasis throughout Leviticus is upon atonement ; and atonement is associated with reconciliation in New Testament usage. So that if Saul had been reconciled in his mind to God his sacrifice would have waited upon God’s commandment. The sacrifices under the Law were designed to bring the offender to repentance ; but in the course of time, and by repetition, they came to be regarded as a penalty for transgression and were regularly presented as a substitute for obedience.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam had thought that by disobedience he could gain the wisdom of experience, and being equal in this respect with God he supposed he would be a force to be reckoned with. But he counted without the weight of conscience, and being ashamed to face his Creator he hid himself and made a makeshift covering for his physical nakedness. But it was his conscience that required the covering, so God made an atonement to reconcile him to the divine law.
In this record it is necessary to observe that God made the covering, and closed the breach, yet without healing it.
By way of contrast, it is to be noted that under the Levitical system the sinner made the offering for his atonement and had to present it with true repentance for his transgression.
The atonement was designed to be the consequence of reconciliation and obedience to law. But national habits and the convenience of false theology combined together to attribute to the sacrifice a substitutionary quality, without repentance. God was presumed to be placated, the offering took the place of obedience.
Paul attributes this false view to “the weakness of the flesh” ; it was the reason why the “blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin.” A drastic change of heart was required which would “purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
The Spirit says concerning Jesus, “Sacrifice and offering, and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldst not, neither hadst pleasure therein ; which were offered by the law ; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will„ O God . . . By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ . . . . for by the one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” The “body prepared” was given by God, with the submission of Jesus, a combination which has made the grace of God effective in the reclamation of sinners. The covering must be supplied by God.
Christendom’s theology of the sacrifice of Christ, strangely enough, has followed the pattern of Pagan and Jewish error, and the principles of appeasement and substitution are made to take the place of reconciliation and obedience, so that the whole point about Paul’s teaching of the reconciliation-by-grace value of baptism has been lost sight of. Men have little interest in repentance and newness of life, but prefer to follow instead their own defaulting ways, apparently in an attempt to taste again the refreshing quality of the “abounding grace” provided through Christ’s sacrifice of himself. They regard Jesus as having rendered obedience and suffered death instead of them.
There is much puzzlement over Christ’s dying for sinners and, even among those who have outgrown the shallow outlook of Christendom, there has been much misunderstanding arising out of an attempt to view the sinner-provided atonement of the Levitical order simply as a type of the God- provided atonement of the new covenant in Christ Jesus. It is true that there are similarities, but the contrasts are far greater, as is evidenced by a reading of Hebrews. Those things were a figure for the time then present, and could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience.
The subject is a wide one and leads far into the fields of speculative theology, and there seems to be no way of simplifying it in a comprehensive ,satisfying way. But it has to be realised that the essential point about Jesus’ dying for sinners is not contained in any substitution theory. Rather the essence of the whole matter lies in the fact that, in submitting to crucifixion as part of the fulfilment of the righteous will of God, he “died unto sin” in order that he might “live unto God.” The paradox is that by dying he overcame both death and sin, and lives for evermore.
In this he achieved what no other man has been able to do, but even so, this is not substitution so much as leadership. The point is not that he died, but that he died to sin, in order to show the sinner what to do, with conscience awakened, reconciled to God, and the margin between the ideal of obedience and his imperfect submission covered by the grace of God which imputes no-sin to him on Christ’s account. In the process, the “old man” must be buried with Christ in baptism and he must die to sin by and regenertion.The whole essence of the atonement lies in God’s grace rather than in Christ’s substitution, and the grace is for the “called, sanctified, and glorified”, not by their own efforts but according to the foreknowledge and election of God.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One