Pre-Sinaitic Sacrifices (Part 3)

Our conclusion, therefore, respecting the ante-Mosaic sacrifices, is, that they were the medium of intercourse with God adapted to the expression of the religious feelings of the offerer. Hence they were chiefly eucharistic, but not entirely destitute of the expiatory element. This conclusion is confirmed by an examination of the occasions on which the patriarchs built their altars and offered their victims. If any feeling was predominant in the bosom of Noah when, beside the vacant ark, he reared his altar and laid thereon oblations “of every clean beast,” (Genesis 8:20,) it was one of gratitude to that mercy which had made his family the sole survivors of a drowned world. In the smoke of that great sacrifice curling up toward heaven, Ararat witnessed a thank offering rather than a sin offering, though the heart of the offerer may not have been destitute of a sense of unworthiness and sinfulness. For it is reasonable to suppose that Noah intended the effect which his sacrifice actually produced in the mind of God. That effect was clearly piacular. “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” Genesis 8:21. Abraham offered his first victim, as we interpret the altar-building, (Genesis 12:7; 13:18, 25,) not when some unusual sense of sinfulness was felt, but when he had received for his seed the promise of Canaan. But when he is twice convicted of prevarication — first to Pharaoh and then to Abimelech — through the faltering of his faith in the protecting power of Providence, we search in vain for the sacrifices offered in atonement for these sins. The same is true of Isaac’s similar offence against the truth. Genesis 26:7-11. In that critical hour in Jacob’s history when he retired alone by the Jabbok, the very fact that he was destined on the morrow to meet his injured brother must have brought vividly to his memory that act of fraud by which he had so deeply wronged him. Yet no altar was built, no victims from his numerous flocks were selected to expiate his sin. Not till the hairy Esau had returned to the shaggy fastnesses of Mount Seir did Jacob build an altar to the El-Elohe-Israel. Genesis 33:20.

The argument of Richard Watson, (Institutes, vol. ii, p. 171,) from the ante-Mosaic distinction of clean and unclean animals, does not demonstrate the expiatory character of the early sacrifices. The argument derived from the prohibition of eating blood because it is the life of the animal, (Genesis 9:4,) together with Job’s reference in his burnt offering to the sin of his children, (Job 1:5,) renders it probable, but by no means conclusive, that the patriarchs distinctly apprehended the necessity of a vicarious atonement for sin. But we cannot, on the ground of these inferences, announce it as a positive truth; nor can we, with Keil, assert that “we never meet with any allusion to expiation in the pre-Mosaic sacrifices of the Old Testament:” for while there is no undisputed instance of forgiveness through sacrifice, there may be an allusion to expiation in the circumstances just cited.

— Commentary on Leviticus.

Pre-Sinaitic Sacrifices (Part 2)

If the patriarchal sacrifices were instituted by the Creator, it is reasonable to suppose that they were not positive and arbitrary requirements, with no hint of the reasons on which they were grounded — man’s dependence on omnipotent power and his exposure to offended justice. This revealed reason would involve the element of propitiation. But if sacrifices were the natural outgrowth of man’s religious nature — the expression of his deepest spiritual necessities — they must have had some reference to sin, the saddest fact in his consciousness. In either case, whether they were ordained of God or were spontaneous with man, the notion of expiation would not have been entirely absent.

At the same time it is reasonable to suppose that this idea was not distinct and prominent in the minds of the patriarchs, because the holiness of God had not yet been emphatically disclosed — that bright background on which the grim deformities of sin are portrayed. To the patriarchs God always turned the benignant and merciful side of his nature. He talks with Abraham as a friend, putting him quite at ease in his presence, and his wife laughs with incredulity while hearing the words of promise from the Lord’s lips. There is no inspiration of painful awe, no putting off the sandals to stand upon ground sanctified by the tread of the most holy Jehovah. From Adam to Moses there is no specific revelation of the holiness of the Supreme One. We look in vain in the book of Genesis, the record of patriarchal life, for the words holy and holiness as descriptive of the Divine character.

The hour for the revelation of this attribute did not arrive till the exiled Moses, at Horeb, turned aside from his flock to “see this great sight,” the bush burning yet not consumed. Exodus 3:3. The footsteps of the inquisitive Hebrew shepherd are suddenly arrested by the awful words, “Draw not nigh hither!” A new aspect of Jehovah’s nature is from this hour to be unfolded with ever-increasing splendour: “I am holy.” Sin having now, for the first time since the fall, its proper measure, becomes, by contrast, “exceeding sinful,” and needs to be purged from the conscience by blood distinctly expiatory.

We arrive at the same conclusion when we trace the history of man through the period in which he had only that internal sense of right and wrong called the unwritten law; which, indeed, constitutes him a subject of God’s moral government, and renders him amenable to the penalties of violated law, but is without that vivid apprehension of guilt which overwhelms his soul when that law, still legible within, takes on the form of an objective code written in stone by the finger of God amid the quakings of burning Horeb. Now, as never before, he regards himself as a sinner. “The law entered, that the offence might abound.” Romans 5:20. Now he needs relief from conscious guilt by a method of expiation bearing the unmistakable signature of his offended God. His forgiveness must be as authentically announced as his guilt has been glaringly demonstrated. Hence the provision for the typical purgation of the conscience is the logical sequence of the decalogue. Sinai has rendered the institution of the sin offering a necessity for the peace and salvation of the penitent sinner. 

— Commentary on Leviticus.

The Sin of the World

QUESTION: What is the sin of the world in John 1:29, which the Lamb of God taketh away?

ANSWER: The singular, sin, in contrast with the plural, sins, in I John 3 5, is important. The condemnation of the race for "the sin" of Adam, its federal head, is unconditionally removed, though the hereditary leaning towards sin remains. The expiation of the Lamb conditionally removes "sins" in the plural by forgiveness and sanctification.

— Steele's Answers p. 268.