Leviticus 17:11, "The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."
I. THE NATURAL BASIS OF ATONEMENT.
1. The preciousness of life. The blood is the seat of life.
2. The exchange of the altar, blood for life, a lower for a higher, requires a supplementary value, which is represented by the altar itself.
3. The law proclaimed at the first against the shedding of blood taken up into the higher law of redemption; righteousness becoming at the altar of God the refuge of man.
II. ATONEMENT FOR THE SOUL PROVIDED BY DIVINE LOVE. "I have given it you to make an atonement."
1. All atonement must proceed from Divine love, otherwise it will be heathenish as effecting a change in God. Christ is set forth a propitiation.
2. Atonement is made, i.e; by being offered, the blood shed at the tabernacle door, offered upon the altar. Thus the sacrifice is a revelation and consecration of the bond of union in the covenant relation between God and man.
3. The blood, while representing the life, also represents the obedience active and passive of Christ, which was both a rendering up to God of a perfect humanity, and an exaltation of the Law in the sufferings and death of Calvary; the old man crucified, the new man glorified.
4. All human merit is excluded: "I have given it you." No amount of sacrifice would be of any avail except it be according to the will of God. We give back to him of his own. Hence the difference between the Jewish sacrifices and those of pagan nations, and between the morality which is founded on the sacrifice of Christ, and that which proceeds from mere self-will or an unjustifiable and false exaltation of human nature as it is. He that is not clean as God makes him clean shall "bear his iniquity." Necessity of insisting on this doctrine of atonement in the present day. Falsehood as to humanity, in the way of all true progress. Those who boast are not those who make sacrifices to elevate man. "Survival of the fittest" a cruel remedy for the world's miseries. Christ's doctrine is elevation of the lowest. Atonement for your souls is the beginning of all true life.?봕.