Mark Jones – In His Dust

The most famous symbol in all of history is the cross. The cross represents  symbolizes the believer’s connection with the death of Jesus. What’s amazing about this is, back in the days of Jesus, the cross wasn’t a ‘pretty little symbol’, but a shameful, excruciating (which literally means “from the cross”), horiffic mode of death. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus called crucifixion “the most wretched of deaths”. Cicero – an ancient Roman philosopher – asked decent Roman citizens not even to speak of the cross because it was such a disgraceful subject.

Paul talks about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the most important event in all history, and the verification of the truthfulness of all Scripture. (That’s right… the Old Testament is all about Jesus too!). He then talks about this being the ‘good news’ – that Jesus died because of our sins. It was our sins, but his death.

From pretty much the beginning of Scripture (Genisis 2:17) to the end (Revelations 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. In other words, if we sin – we should die. But it was Jesus, the son of God, sinless, who died in our place for our sins – He took the penalty for our sin.

This means that Jesus’ death was substitutionary.

In good old Leviticus (one of my favourite books), we read about the day of atonement – which was the most important day of the year – the day in which the ’sin problem’ between humanity and God was ‘dealt’ with. On the day of atonement, two goats without defect (perfect little hooves shining) were selected to represent sinless perfection.

The first goat was a sin offering. The first goat got slaughtered (sorry vegans!), which acted as a substitute for the sinners who, according to what we see all throughout scripture, deserved to die. The head priest (who had the joy of slaughtering goat number 1) then sprinkled some of it’s blood on the seat ontop of the Ark of the Covenant inside the most holy place. The goat was no longer innocent when it took the guilt of the people’s sin, and it was a sin offering for the people (Lev 16:15). The goat’s blood represented life given as payment for sin. The dwelling place of God was thus cleansed, and God’s just and holy wrath was satisfied.

The high priest, acting as a mediator between the sinfil people and God would take the second goat (drum role please for goat number 2), lay his hands on it and confess the sins of the people. Goat number 2 (called the scapegoat) would then be sent away to run free in the wild (no doubt to be eaten by a lion or something) away from the sinners, symbolically taking their sin with it.

This is like one giant foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, our High Priest who mediates between us and God, the sinless substitute who died in our place for our sins, and the scapegoat who cleanses us of our sin to be remembered by God no more.

You have to understand the function of the two goats in order to appreciate the atonement.

“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.” – John Stott

Substitutionary Atonement is Jesus taking our place on the cross, cleansing us from our sin, and restoring the relationship between God and man.