We’ve seen that the endless stream of blood sacrifices in our Old Testament implies good and bad news. The bad news is the Awfulness of Sin and the good news is the Acceptability of Sacrifice. On the one hand, we deserve death, but on the other,
God offers a way towards reconciliation via sacrifices He accepts.
The third implication of this River of Blood is the Availability of Substitution. This may be the least understood but most important point in our discussion. How is it that even a God willing to accept a sacrifice can do so? The problem is twofold.
First, how is it that one creature can bear the payment for another’s sin? Second, how can an animal’s blood possibly be a sufficient sacrifice? Even if we are hopeful that God has ordered sacrifices, and accepts them, how do we get past the inequity of it on the one hand, and the injustice on the other?
Something doesn’t appear right to us for another to pay our debts. And we know instinctively that even a river of animal blood will not be sufficient to pay for human sins.
We find answers to this dilemma in the New Testament and in particular the book of Hebrews. In a beautiful essay or sermon, the author lays out how Jesus Himself is our Great High Priest, and at the same time, the Sacrifice offered. This Priest makes an offering of Himself.
The Old Covenant sacrifices were but shadows of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1), and could never truly take away sins (Hebrews 10:4). The sacrifice of Jesus, however, resolves the dilemma. He is the Perfect Man whose death can atone for the imperfect ones. He also is God’s Chosen One, whose death fully satisfies God’s justice and cleanses our conscience.
So the Old Testament river of blood is a grand object lesson of the perfect sacrifice to come. What the animal sacrifices merely hinted at and pointed to, Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled.
The oft-repeated sacrifices kept reminding us of our sin; the sacrifice of Jesus cleanses us once for all and puts sin behind us. The inferior nature of the sacrifices is not a problem since they only pointed to the possibility of atonement, but never were meant to achieve it.
In Jesus, the substitution works because He is a perfect person dying on behalf of the imperfect, the just for the unjust. God’s rightousness is vindicated because His love for sinners has not annulled His hatred of sin.
The Awfulness of Sin
The Acceptability of Sacrifice
The Availability of Substitution
Only the infinitely creative mind and infinitely loving heart of God could devise such salvation. Have you come to Jesus, God’s Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, including your own?
“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
1 John 2:2