The Guilt Offering (Continued)
The death of Jesus encompassed both elements of the ‘guilt offering’. He did not just take the penalty for our sins but also compensated those parties who had suffered loss because of transgression. First, the claims of the Father - Christ as the last Adam and our new federal head, acknowledged, honored and offered complete and perfect obedience to the will of His Father. And since He was of infinite worth and His obedience included the ultimate sacrifice, that is, He laid down His life in accordance with the pre-determined plan of God - in this way He compensated God for the rebellion and disobedience of Adam and his posterity. In fact, the value of the sacrifice of Christ means that Jesus restored more than Adam lost. Jesus, dying on Calvary, is a trespass offering that secured forgiveness for sins and provided compensation to God for all the honor, obedience and worship that had been withheld from Him by a fallen humanity. A righteous God demanded compensation and Jesus paid it!
This also applies to those who claim the value of the death of Christ for themselves. For them, the life received through the sacrifice of the Savior is greater, better, and more suitable to their eternal nature, than ever Adam possessed. The best way of comparing the value of these two offerings, and the light they shed on the death of the Savior, is to consider the first two sections of the book of Romans.
In the first chapters Paul deals with our many sins. He catalogues a number of them. “sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; ... whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful” (Rom. 1:29-31). And like the good theologian he is, he summarizes the situation with quotes from the T’nach. He wrote, “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:10-18; cf. Ps.14.1-3; Ps.53.1-3; Ps.5.9; Ps.14.3; Ps.10.7; Isa.59.7,8; Ps.36.1). To capture the thrust of all this sinfulness in one sentence would be a great accomplishment and this he does with the words, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
The essence of the ‘guilt offering’ is that our many sinful actions can be forgiven, whether they be sins of word, sins of thought, sins of deed, secret sins, open sins, sins against man or sins against God. And in Paul’s Christology, the first requirement placed on penitent sinners is to come to the cross for forgiveness of sins. We may not understand it fully at the time, but we receive forgiveness because Christ is our trespass offering. The trespass offering required a blood sacrifice and Paul declares that we have forgiveness only if we have faith in the blood sacrifice of Jesus (Rom.3.25), a thought repeated by the Apostle John also (1 John 1.7). A hymn poem captures this thought:
See here an endless ocean flows, of never failing grace.
Behold a dying Savior’s veins, the sacred flood increase.
It rises high and drowns the hills, has neither shore nor bound.
Now if we search to find our sins, our sins can ne’er be found.
Whereas, in the trespass offering, it was the sins that we committed that were central; that is the sins, transgressions and iniquities we had performed; in the sin offering the searchlight of God is on the on the individual, on the one that committed the unlawful and wicked deeds. The truth of the sin offering is that not simply that am I a sinner because I sin, but rather I sin because I am a sinner. In other words, I find inside me a wickedness that I inherited from my natural parents. I am a child of Adam and have a fallen nature.
Similarly, in Romans—while the first four chapters present the blood of Christ as the answer to the problem of our sins, Paul goes on to describe the continuing problem that arises out of our fallen nature. That there is a battle raging within us between (i) the desire to please God in our lives with good deeds and godly actions, and (ii) the desire to follow the lusts of the flesh. Our conduct in Scripture is often described as our walk. We want to walk in the Spirit, but too often we walk in the flesh. Paul’s own testimony describes the inner conflict. “... the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Rom. 7:19). No wonder he calls himself a wretched man (v.24).
But the answer is Christ, our sin offering. Not only did He die to deliver us from the penalty due to us because of the sins we committed but His death also provides the power to live the new life. In the trespass offering, the truth could be summed up in the word ‘substitution’ - Jesus died instead of us. However, in the sin offering ‘identification’ would be a more appropriate word - we died with Jesus. Paul explains that when Jesus was executed, the problem of our old nature, our Adamic nature, was also in view. The sacrifice of the Lord not only dealt with what we do but also who we are. He wrote: “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Rom. 6:6). Those that tap into the full benefit of Calvary recognize that they need not be dominated by the old Adamic nature, because they have a new nature; they have the life of God now, and they are new creations in Christ. As Christ identified Himself with us by becoming man and living the life we live (without sin, of course), so we must identify ourselves fully with Him and seek to live the life He lived. It is called ‘walking in the Spirit’. Paul puts it this way: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-2).
Ultimately, Paul was able to testify: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This identification with Christ is the equivalent of recognizing Him as our new federal head in place of Adam. We must be fully committed to Him and swear allegiance to His cause.
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