THE fall of our first
parents incurred the penalty of death, upon the principle that "the wages
of sin is death." God in his goodness extended mercy, yet there must be a
vindication, as it were, of His own justice before He could grant the world’s
redemption. Sin had caused all the trouble. God cannot look upon sin with the
least degree of allowance. His justice requires the death of the sinner, while
His mercy provides means of remission of sin and purification of the sinner in
a way to spare the sinner and yet not defeat justice. Only Divine wisdom can
blend together mercy and justice. If the penalty on our first parents had been
inflicted without any merciful provision, all would have forever been lost, but
redemption from under the penalty of the law by sacrifice was arranged for, and
in it we have Christ "as a lamb slain from the foundation of the
world" (Rev. 13: 8), and it was shown in the beginning that through Him
redemption would take place of what had been lost by Adam the first. God
therefore, predicated His covenant with man upon the sacrifice for sin, by
which alone man's restoration to favor could be effected. In the very nature of
the case, then, a covenant provided by God for fallen man demands a sacrifice
which will admit of reconciliation and atonement between God who is pure and
man who is sinful, and this must take place before the covenants of promise
could be realized. Hence the Apostle Paul shows that all that pertained to the
covenant depended on Christ as the covenant sacrifice. In the Authorized
Version we have a very unhappy translation of Heb. 9: 16-18; but the Diaglott
and other translations remove the difficulty. The Emphatic Diaglott renders the
passage as follows: "For where a covenant exists, the death of that which
has ratified it is necessary to be produced; because a covenant is firm over
dead victims, since it is never valid when that which ratifies it is alive.
Hence not even the first has been instituted without blood" (Heb.
The Hebrew word for
covenant (berith) means to purify or cleanse. It implies a purification or a purifier, because in all God's covenants
with man, sin and sinfulness exist on man's side. Since covenants are intended
to bring man into reconciliation with God and fit him for the everlasting
inheritance promised, and since this cannot be done without purification
through sacrifice, berith is used not only for the covenant itself, but
for the sacrifice which confirms the covenant. When Moses said, "Behold, the
blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you" (Ex. 24: 8),
he meant the blood of the victim slain as a covenant sacrifice. The prophet Isaiah
says, "Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time
have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will
preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish
the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages" (chap. 49: 8). This
is a prophecy of Christ, and to give Him for a covenant was to give Him as a
sacrifice, or a covenant sacrifice. By the words, "By the blood of the
covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no
water" (Zech.
It will be remembered
that when Abraham was commanded to offer sacrifices he was to divide some of
the victims in the midst. This manner of making a covenant is referred to by
the prophet Jeremiah thus, "And I will give the men that have transgressed
my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant, which they had
made before me, when they cut the calf in twain and passed between the parts
thereof" (Jer. 34:18). The ancient custom among the Persians, and
other nations, no doubt, had their origin in God's manner of allowing man to
enter into covenant relation with him. The custom was, as indicated by
Jeremiah, to divide the victim and the covenanting parties "passed between
the parts." In this way, in covenants between God and men, man, who is a
sinner and under justice without mercy, deserves death, may be said to have
passed into the death of the victim, or to have died sacrificially or representatively,
admitting of atonement.
Now Christ being
"a minister of the circumcision * * * to confirm the promises made unto
the fathers" (Rom. 15: 8), must provide a victim or covenant sacrifice; to
have offered an animal would have been no better than had been offered in
shadow or type arrangements of the past. The time had come when the substance
the real offering must be made. Who would be the victim? "Wherefore, when
he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not,
but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for
sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the
book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. Above when be said, Sacrifice
and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not,
neither hadst pleasure therein, which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo,
I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish
the second, by which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. 10:5-10).
By typical sacrifices
covenant relationship between God and man was made possible as soon as man fell
and redemption became a necessity. Had no provision been made till the real
covenant sacrifice Christ was offered upon the cross, all who died from Adam to
Christ would have hopelessly gone down into death and the grave under the
sentence, "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." God's plan
had made all provision for what seems to us to be an emergency in the fall of
man. Christ had been provided in that plan as a sacrifice. It was not that God
made provision after the emergency arose, as if He must wait developments and
meet them as they came; for He says, "Remember the former things of old:
for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that
are not yet done saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my
pleasure" (Isa. 46: 9, 10).
Not only was Christ's
sacrificial offering prearranged for before sin actually made it a necessity,
but there was a "due time" when it should take place. "When we
were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly"
(Rom. 5:6). It was when "the fullness of the time was come, that
God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption" (Gal. 4: 4,
5). About four thousand years were to elapse from Adam's fall to this "due
time," and therefore a provisional arrangement must serve during that
period.
Human customs must
always fall short of fully illustrating God's wonderful and wise works, as the
finite cannot reach the heights of the infinite; but they may help to a deeper
understanding of things divine. There is a breach between two men on account of
one having incurred a debt to the other and is not able to pay it. They are
estranged from each other and something must be done to bring about
reconciliation. The debtor is promised by a friend that in one year from a
given date he will discharge the debt for him; and on the strength of this the
debtor offers the creditor his note, which is a legal covenant, promising to
pay the debt when the "due time" arrives. His offer is accepted and
the estrangement is removed and they are at one with each other under this
provisional arrangement. When the "due time" comes the note is
honored and the debt thereby discharged, and the atonement continues between
the two.
Now this in measure
illustrates the provisional sacrificial arrangement which God provided for
fallen man between the time of his becoming a sinner and the "due
time" when "Christ would die for the ungodly." Man was estranged
from God, having no right to approach Him, being under His just condemnation.
On the strength of a promise that Christ would meet all the requirements of
divine justice, man is permitted by sacrificial offerings to draw in advance,
as it were, and the efficacy of the blood of the atonement the covenant
sacrifice reaches back through the typical offerings and effects reconciliation
and atonement between God and men. Hence those who "died in faith"
died in a state of reconciliation, their realization of the promised blessings,
however, depending upon the fulfillment of the promise at the "due
time" that Christ would meet all the requirements of the case. Had it been
possible for Him to fail and, like the first Adam, prove unfaithful, all
provisional arrangements would have gone for nothing,
those who "died in faith" would have remained dead. "If Christ
be not raised your faith is vain * * * then they also which are fallen asleep
in Christ are perished" (I Cor.
Looking back over the
ages of the past and realizing what depended upon Him what a great
responsibility He must have felt resting upon Him, as he grew to manhood and
faced the mighty mission entrusted in His hands. Even at the youthful age of
twelve he exclaims, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business"; but when the last and terrible ordeal confronted Him He seemed
almost about to fall and fail, crying out, "Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me." Why could it not pass? Because thousands of
ancient worthies had by faith reached down to Him and put all their trust in
His faithfulness unto the death of the cross. They had gone into the cold
embrace of death and the dark chambers of the grave with the only hope that He
would go there with a power, the power of perfect obedience, to break the jaws
of death and the barriers of the grave and thus become Captain of salvation to
set the captives free. Realizing that all this depended upon His faithfulness
and courage in this dreadful hour, He braved the pain of an ignominious death
and exclaimed, "Not my will, but thine be done," and
"He drank the
dreadful cup of pain,
Then rose to life and joy again,"
and sent ringing back through the centuries of the past and down
through the ages to follow the triumphant words, "I am the resurrection
and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live." The covenants of promise are now confirmed and their realization in
due time made certain.
Since the fall of our
first parents all mankind has been in what the Scriptures term a state of
alienation from God afar off; and the apostle, in speaking of those who have
been inducted into Christ, says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new"
(II Cor. 5: 17). This implies that before they became "new creatures"
in Christ they may be said to have been by nature old creatures in the old man
Adam, hopeless and helpless. Hence the Saviour tells Nicodemus, "Ye must
be born again." This new birth takes man out of the old creature state and
puts him in a new creature state, brings him from "afar off" and
makes him "nigh." In order that this might be accomplished, God provides
a means and in this we have sacrifices, but as we have seen, all center in the
one offering, Christ. "When they," as Jeremiah says, "cut the
calf in twain and passed between the parts" the death of the victim
represented the penalty of sin, a penalty which hangs over the whole human
race, for "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). When
they passed between the parts, they were considered as having passed into the
death, as it were, of the victim. Having died to sin, and put off the
alienation, they were now in a state of reconciliation, a reconciliation
admitted by a covenant relationship between them and God. They had passed into
the covenant sacrifice which had made for them an atonement,
and so at-one-ment took place. Now all this finds its fulfillment in Christ.
Christ's death has met Divine justice and blended it with Divine mercy, so that
in Christ God can be just and yet justify sinners. By nature, however, we are
not in Christ. A natural birth gives us nothing but alienation. "Marvel
not," says the Saviour, "that I say ye must be born again." Speaking of which the apostle says, using another figure of speech,
"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were
baptized into his death" (Rom. 6: 3). As much as to say, Christ the
victim or covenant sacrifice has been slain, and as in ancient covenants they
passed between the parts, and, as it were, into the death of the victim, so in
baptism we are baptized into, or pass into the death of the slain victim,
Christ, the covenant sacrifice, and are therefore new creatures in Christ Jesus
in the bond of the covenant, and are now the children of the covenant, brought
into such relationship to the covenants of promise as to be constituted
"heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ." The confirmation of
the covenants, which took place by the death of Christ, and made their
fulfillment a certainty, is now applied to us. We have made a covenant with
God, and that covenant is confirmed by the death of Christ; into whose death we
are baptized. We have entered therefore into "the only name given among
men whereby we must be saved," and we are now no more strangers and
foreigners to the covenants of promise, but fellow citizens with the saints,
and of the household of God, waiting the time of the realization of these
covenants, which will take place when all the ancient worthies, with us, shall
be made perfect together to rejoice in the blessings which shall fill the earth
as declared in the promise, "in thee and in thy seed shall all families of
the earth be blessed."
If this scriptural view
of covenant relation with God is understood it will correct the mistake which
many religious people make. It is generally supposed that we are children of
God by natural birth, and that repentance and return to God through Christ are
necessitated by our personal sins committed when we become old enough to refuse
the evil and choose the good. But we must remember that we are all born in a
lost state, according to this Scriptures, having been sold, as it were, to sin
and death by our first parents who entailed upon the whole Adamic family the
results of sin. They left us with a lost paradise, victims to the dread monster
death, hopeless and helpless. Hence the Apostle Paul says, "Wherefore as
by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned," or as the margin gives it,
"in whom all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). Then the apostle continues in
verse 18, omitting the parenthetic clause of verses 14-17, "Therefore as
by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation." Here we
have the cause and effect of the world's evils, which are ultimately to be
removed by the second Adam. From this lost, condemned state into which we came
by natural birth, we must sever our relation by being "born again."
It is by the new birth that we become the children of God, not by natural
birth. We are not born into covenant relationship with God by natural birth,
but when we are "born again," then we enter into that covenant
relation which makes us one with God, the children of the covenant; because we
are then in Him who is the covenant sacrifice and are reconciled to God in
Christ where alone reconciliation can take place from that alienation imposed
by Adam upon all the race. Thus "God was in Christ (not in Adam)
reconciling the world unto himself;" and baptism, or birth of water, puts
us in Christ and thereby in at-one-ment, "heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ." We are now on probation, and upon our walk in this favored,
exalted and responsible relation to God and to Christ depends our eternal
destiny. Realize this, dear reader, enter the bond of the everlasting covenant,
honor it to the end of your probationary career and the coronal wreath will
adorn your brow throughout the untold ages of indescribable glory and
happiness. God grant that our Judge may say to us, "Well done, good and
faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord."