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Posts Tagged ‘atonement’

The Resurrection – Part 2 (Exodus and Leviticus)

Posted in Blood, Easter, tagged , , , , , , , on March 21, 2024|

Temple slaughter_area_2In Exodus, God gives Israel the Torah (instructions). Many have translated this “law,” but Torah is much more than law. It is the hedges God has given His people for the abundant life, the God-pleasing life.  The Torah was a gift to man, to help him to realize his total inability to meet God’s standard and his obvious and ongoing need for a Savior  . . . who bleeds.  According to Paul, the “law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”  Galatians 3:24

The atonement provided for under the law was only intended as a temporary fix, to cover the sin in order that the worshiper might approach and fellowship with God. It was never intended to take sin away.

In Leviticus, an often overlooked book of the Bible, God lays out a means by which man may atone for sin in order to be able to have restored relationship with God.  He sets up the place for fellowship (Mercy Seat) – where He will meet with man – through His representative (the High Priest).  He carefully details every piece of wood, precious stone, curtain, garment, utensil of the worship.

The starting point of the worship of God was the bronze altar where the sacrifices were made.  It was a bloody place.  At the time of the feasts, the valley behind the temple would have been flowing with blood from the many sacrifices being offered.  Shed blood was a central part of the worship and approach to God.  No one entered the presence of God without a blood covering, a sacrifice to atone for sin.

God told His people in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”

All this was looking forward to the cross, the shed blood of the Lamb of God, the blood that would atone for the sin of the whole world.

Check out our next blog for more about The Resurrection.

It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page. 

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Resurrection Sunday – Vocabulary (Part 1)

Posted in atonement, Resurrection Sunday, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 22, 2016|

For this Christian (and I hope it is the same for others), words and the proper use and understanding of terms is key to the discussion of issues of faith, belief and the Bible. With that in mind, before I begin my series of studies in preparation and leading up to Resurrection Sunday, I want to look at some of the vocabulary that is central to the events and their implications for believers and non-believers.

For this post, I want to start with the word ATONEMENT.

I will share some of the insights I have in tomorrow’s post, but in preparation for that, here is your assignment:

  1. What is the dictionary definition of atonement? Consider looking in a traditional dictionary as well as a Bible dictionary. You might also consider an online resource like http://www.dictionary.com.
  2. Consider Leviticus 17:11. What does it add to your understanding?

nothing but the blood

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Resurrection Sunday – Atonement

Posted in atonement, Resurrection Sunday, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 22, 2016|

As promised, here’s some of what I found and thought on the issue of atonement:

Paul E. Little in Know What You Believe says “atonement means, “at-one-ment”–that is to say, a bringing together of those who are estranged.” He concedes that in the Old Testament, atonement referred more to a covering. The covering for sin provided under the sacrificial system would suffice until the death of Christ. In the New Testament, Little says that atonement encompasses several ideas, namely reconciliation (as mentioned in Romans 5:10), and appeasement or propitiation–“the removal of wrath by the offering of a gift.” (See Romans 3:25).

According to Grudem in his Systematic Theology, two aspects of the character of God are at work in the atonement: His love and His justice. The love we see explained in John 3:16 and the justice we find in verses such as Romans 3:25. Grudem says, “the love and the justice of God were the ultimate cause of the atonement. . . . without the love of God, he would never have taken any steps to redeem us, yet without the justice of God, the specific requirement that Christ should earn our salvation by dying for our sins would not have been met. Both the love and the justice of God were equally important.”

For me, atonement brings to mind imagery of the Old Testament, blood filling the Kidron Valley at Passover and other high holidays as it flowed from the Temple, from the sacrifices killed one after the other on the bronze altar in the court yard–the blood flowed out of the animal and met the sin of the offeror. God had established the blood as a means to cover the offeror’s sin. It was His law.

So it was with Jesus, with His blood on the cross. His blood met my sin–it satisfied the debt my sin represented in the economy of God. It was a permanent solution to my sin problem.

 

Perhaps a hymn by William Cowper can best express the idea:

There is a fountain filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains

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