Ex. 30:11-1611And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 12When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. 13This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. 14Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord. 15The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. 16And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. (Exodus 30:11‑16).
THE simpler our apprehension of “atonement” as in the scriptures, the happier. It implies a change of condition toward God. Instead of being at a distance from Him, we are brought nigh; instead of being in a state of enmity, we are at peace with Him. Such is our standing. Whatever experience we may have of it, our standing is that of peace with God, when we have received the reconciliation which has been accomplished by the blood of the Cross.
But this reconciliation, this rectifying our relation to God, rests on the fact that God finds His satisfaction in what Christ has done on the cross for us. My peace with God depends on faith in His satisfaction in Christ. If God did not rest in Him and His work for me, how could I rest in God? If God's demand in righteousness against me had not been answered, I could have had no warrant for talking of reconciliation, or taking my place in peace before God. I was God's debtor—debtor to die under the penalty He had righteously put upon sin. Christ acted as my Surety with Him, for He undertook my cause as a sinner. If God had not been quite satisfied as to my responsibilities, I should still be at a distance from Him, and He would still have a question with me, a demand upon me and against me.
Therefore I ask, has God been satisfied with what Christ has done for me? He answers that He has; and He has let me know this by the most wondrous, glorious, magnificent testimonies that can be conceived, He has published His satisfaction in the cross of Christ, in Christ as the purger of sins, by the mouth of the most unimpeachable witnesses that were ever heard in a court where justice or righteousness presided to try a matter. He tells me that all His demands against me as a sinner are fully and righteously discharged. The rent veil declares it, the empty sepulcher declares it, the ascension of Christ declares it, the presence of the Holy Ghost (gift as He is, and fruit of the glorification of our Surety) declares it. Were ever such august testimonies delivered on the debating of a cause? Were witnesses of higher dignity or of such unchallengeable credit ever brought forward to give in their depositions? Were depositions ever rendered in such convincing style?
The sequel is well weighed. Peace with God is ours, settled by God Himself. For we plead the cross of Christ as a very title to peace, God having declared that He and all His demands against us are satisfied in and by that cross. God rests in Christ, and so do we. My experience may be cold and feeble, and is so surely; it may be blotted by doubts and fears and other affections of which I ought to be ashamed. But my standing is sure and strong—just as the throne of God itself. The Purger of sins has been raised from the death by which He answered for sins, and has been taken up to that throne as such a Purger; and if He can be moved, so must the throne where He sits. If He be disallowed there, the word and call and voice of God that summoned Him there must be gainsaid and disallowed also. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God,” is to be read as setting out our standing on that stable basis. By faith in the death and resurrection of the Lamb of God we are justified and have acceptance with Him, standing in divine righteousness, on what God owed to His work. This is our standing before Him, our relationship to Him. Our experience may not measure it, but such it is; though surely our experience should be true to our standing.
But let me look a little particularly at Ex. 30. The ordinance of the atonement-money tells us that God appropriates His elect to Himself, only as a ransomed people. And surely we know this to be so. If we be not ransomed, we are not His. If we be not in the value of the blood of Christ, we are not numbered to Him as belonging to Him. The act of numbering is the symbol of appropriation.
Before the institution of the ordinance, this had been a recognized truth. It was the first-born whether of man or beast that was His in the land of Egypt, though it was the first-born who had been ransomed (Ex. 12; 13). And afterward in the day of the New Testament we learn the same. And surely again I may say that we know it is so. Only we have it here, among a thousand others, in the mouth of these three witnesses: by the testimony of the Passover, by that of the atonement money, and by the word of the Lord Jesus.
But this testimony not only tells us that we are there to find ourselves in relationship with God by being ransomed—people who make mention before Him of Christ's blood, and of that only, bringing with them into His presence the atonement-money and that only; but it tells us that He has fixed and settled what the ransom or atonement-money shall be. This is full of consolation when we think of it. We learn all about the way of coming to God from Himself. We have not to reason about it, but to accept His account of the matter in all its characters. Every Israelite had to present himself to God with his half-shekel, which was called “the atonement-money.” Whether he was rich or poor made no difference. He had not to measure his offering himself: Jehovah had prescribed and settled what it was to be. And each and all appeared in virtue of one and the same ransom. We gather these conclusions in all clearness and decision and simplicity. It is the divine good-pleasure, and the sure revelation of God, that He have His people with Him and before Him only as a favored people. The price and quality and measure of the ransom were settled by Himself, so that they have not to object or to question, be they who they may. And it is in this way all His people are not only then reconciled and brought home to Him, but linked in one and the same salvation, and animated by one and the same spring of triumph and exultation.
The conscience of a sinner, instructed by scripture, may therefore indulge itself in these thoughts and assurances. The true half-shekel, the real atonement-money (that is, the blood of the Lamb), is the consideration, the full adequate settled consideration, on which the covenant of peace rests. It is a righteous ransom: God is just while He justifies the sinners who trust in it. The Lord Himself says of it, “This is the blood of the new covenant in my blood.” It is called “the blood of the everlasting covenant;” and it is preached to us that by the virtue of it God, as “the God of peace,” has “brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep,” a Savior-Shepherd for those that believe (Heb. 13:2020Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, (Hebrews 13:20)).
And I might add to this, and to what I have already said, that the adequacy of this mystic half-shekel, this precious blood of atonement, is finely set forth in contrast with the insufficiency of all other sacrifices in Heb. 10:1-181For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. 3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. 4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. 5Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: 6In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. 7Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. 8Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; 9Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. 10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 15Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, 16This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; 17And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. 18Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. (Hebrews 10:1‑18). The insufficiency of all the Levitical offerings is there concluded from the testimony which they bear themselves. Out of their own mouth they are judged; and no judgment can be of a higher quality than that. Take the fact that he who made these offerings, the priest in the Levitical sanctuary, only stood before God, having to go out again from the divine presence in order to repeat the same sacrifice in the appointed time. The fact that such repetition was made year by year thus kept sins, not the remission of them, in remembrance. How solemn the recognition of insufficiency in these sacrifice-offerings by Christ Himself, when according to the volume of the book He comes to present Himself as ready in the cause of sinners to do God's will by His own death! For indeed it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.
In contrast with this, we have the adequacy of the blood of Christ strikingly testified and concluded, in the fact that He is seated in the heavenly sanctuary, as having satisfied God by the sacrifice He has offered, and accordingly was greeted and welcomed and made to take His place forever before God al the Purger of sins. The fact is also that He is now occupied with thoughts and expectations of His coming kingdom, needing no more to think about sin and the atonement for it, as He did in the volume of the book or in the day of settling the terms of the everlasting covenant. And the further fact is that the Holy Ghost, in the new covenant which is sealed by the blood of Christ, tells of remission of sins, not as did the Levitical priests over the sacrifices they offered of their remembrance.
This is all encouraging and assuring. But I note another thing. The adequacy of the true half-shekel, the true atonement-money, is not to be rested simply on the fact of its being appointed by God, but on its own nature. It is appointed by God because of its efficacy, because of its intrinsic adequacy. It is a half-shekel “of the sanctuary,” having been weighed in the balances of the holy of holies, and found of full value before the throne of God. We are not to say, the blood of the Lamb is the appointed way, as though God might have chosen or taken some other. We are rather to say, it is the only way; for in that sacrifice, but in that only, God is just and the justifier of the believer. It is the price, the only price, which satisfies the balances of the sanctuary, and which gives the sinner an answer to the throne of righteousness. Blessed truth l it does all this; so that the apostle loses himself in admiration, as he gazes at this great sight and meditates on the sacrifice which had the virtue of “spotlessness” and of the “eternal Spirit” in it. We see him treating with some scorn and indignity the thought of the blood of bulls and goats, saying, “It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” But with fervency of spirit, as one that was losing himself in wonder, love, and praise, looking at the cross of Christ, he says, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14; 10:414How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14)
4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4)).
J. G. B. (corrected).