Leviticus 1:2 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, If any man of you bring an offering to the LORD… The commencing chapters of Leviticus present to us five different aspects of the sacrificial service of Christ, varied according to the variety of those needs in us which the grace of the One Sacrifice is designed to meet. The want of that full and unreserved devotedness which is due on our part to God, and claimed by Him, but which is by us never rendered, is met by that abounding grace which has appointed another, perfect in devotedness and self-renunciation, to be a burnt-offering in our room. The manifold deficiences in our personal characters — the presence in them of so much that should be absent, and the absence of so much that should be present, is met by the presentation of Him for us, the perfectness of whose character is here typified by the excellency of the meat-offering. The condition of our nature which is enmity against God, because sin, essential sin, dwells in it, is met by the efficacy of the peace sacrifice, whereby, notwithstanding the enmity of our nature, peace with the Holy One becomes our portion. Sin, even when committed in such intensity of blindness, as that we understand not the heinousness of that which we are doing, and perhaps mistake it for good — such sin is met by the sin-offering; or if it be committed knowingly, not under the blindness of ignorance, but in the wilfulness of a heart that consciously refuses to be restrained, it is met by the grace of the trespass-offering. Such are the aspects under which the perfectness of the One Sacrifice is presented to us in the commencing chapters of Leviticus. The aspects are various, but the sacrifice is one; just as the colours of the rainbow may, for instruction sake, be presented to us separately, but the rainbow which they unitedly constitute is one. After we have learned in distinctness, we combine in unity. Nor is there any division of the perfectness of the One Sacrifice in its application to them that believe. From the first moment we believe, the perfectness of Christ's sacrifice is in all its totality ours. We may not, perhaps, either appreciate or understand all that is typified by these various offerings, yet the united value of them all is reckoned to us by God. (B. W. Newton.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. |
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