VAYIKRA

And [He] called

11 For 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.

The sin-covering efficacy of the Yahweh-Name depended upon the person bearing it being a flesh and blood Messiah; for "without the shedding of blood there is no remission." The Spirit plainly testifies this in the prophets and apostles...

The reason given for blood being thus used is "because the soul of the flesh is in the very blood." The soul, nephesh, or life is in the blood. The blood contains or covers it, as it were; and as it is a question of life or death -- life forfeited for sin, the wages of which is death -- that is appointed to cover sin which covers life, namely, the blood.

In this sense, "the life, or soul, of all flesh is the blood thereof;" because the vitality of all animals is in the blood. Hence, a bloodless man could not, upon the principles of the divine law, be a covering for sin. He must have real blood in his veins containing life, as in redeeming flesh and blood nature from death, he had to give the same sort of life for the life to be redeemed.

Now the blood of Jesus was more precious than the life-blood of any other man. If it had not been so, it would have been inadequate to the purchase of life for the world. The Spirit testifies in David, that there is no man rich enough to redeem his brother, nor to give God a ransom for his soul that it should live forever, and not see corruption; "for," he says, "the redemption of their soul will be costly, and it ceaseth to the Olahm" (Psal. xlix. 6-9).

If the wealthiest be impotent for the redemption of one soul, how precious must the blood of the Yahweh-Name be, seeing that it can ransom "a great multitude which no man can number!" (Apoc. vii. 9). The blood of Jesus was the only blood of all the generations of Adam, that had not been generated by the lust of the flesh; and which had not energized a man to the commission of sin. Jesus was an unblemished man, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; for "he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners."

This precious "blood of sprinkling, which speaks better things than the blood of Abel," the sanctifying blood of the covenant shed for the remission of the sins of many (Heb. xii. 24: x. 29,22; Matt. xxvi. 28) is the principle which makes the Yahweh-Name sin cleansing, or a covering for the hiding of sin, so that the believer upon whom the name is invoked, may have "no more conscience of sins," or, as Peter expresses it, may have "the answer of a good conscience toward God" (1 Pet. iii. 21).

Eureka

MAN IN LIFE AND IN DEATH

Now the groundling, or ground soul, is styled a nephesh in Hebrew, because it is a thing that lives by breathing. It is a piece of mechanism which cannot work if the breathing be stopped. Put a permanent stop to respiration, and the blood itself becomes destructive of life in extinguishing the action of the nervous system.

As the vitality, therefore, of the blood depends upon respiration, nephesh is used to signify life. Thus, in Lev. 17:2, the Spirit saith, "the nephesh or life, of the flesh is in the blood itself;" and in verse 14, "the nephesh, or life, of all flesh is in the blood thereof;" and because the nephesh is in the blood, therefore in Gen. 9:4, the blood itself is styled the nephesh of the flesh.

The breath, or nishmah, becomes life to the groundling by chemical action in the pulmonary air-cells. The groundling is not continued in life by a solitary principle, called "the vital principle" by physiologists; and the "immortal soul" by the heathen "divines" of the apostasy. It is by a combination of principles, as the result of their action and reaction upon each other in and through the air-cells.

The nishmah of Moses answers to the oxygen and nitrogen, which in combination we term atmospheric air, and his ruach, to what we call electricity, which, as a whole, the air and the electricity, he styles nishmath ruach khaiyim, or "air of spirit of lives."

The reader will therefore bear in mind that the life of the groundling is not oxygen alone, nor nitrogen alone, nor electricity alone, nor blood alone, nor the mere act of breathing alone; but a union of oxygen of the air with carbon and hydrogen of the blood, set free by elective affinity, and in their combination setting at liberty electrical currents, which course along the nerves in all the closed circuits of the body; and thereby setting into motion all its organs, which process, in the aggregate, we call life.

A corporeal development of such life as this, constitutes the physical, the natural, or animal. The development is according to certain laws to which the Creator has subjected the body; and which, in scientific language, are styled "the physical laws," and "the laws of nature," or "the natural laws;" but in the language of the Spirit, "the law of sin and death," or "the law in the members."

The flesh serves this law; for by it the flesh is what it is. The law of sin is the law of Sin's flesh, which works in it death and corruption unto a resolution into dust. It is for this reason styled "the law of sin and death;" and because this law reigns in the flesh, Paul styles the flesh "the body of this death;" from which there is no deliverance except by the Deity through Jesus Christ the Lord—Rom. 7.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Jan 1860

The pouring out of the blood was therefore the pouring out of the life--therefore the infliction of death: and therefore an illustration of what was due to sin, and an acknowledgment on the part of the offerer that it was so. But being the blood of an animal which had nothing to do with sin, it was only a typical illustration or declaration of God's righteousness in the case. It was not a condemnation of sin in its own flesh, but a mere shadow which God was pleased to establish in Israel's midst, in educational preparation for the actual condemnation which was to be carried out in His own Son, in whom,

"sent forth in the likeness of sinful flesh" for (as an offering for) sin, He "condemned sin in the flesh"

This sacrificial condemnation of sin in the eyes of all the world (for by record and report, all the world has seen Jesus on the cross), is otherwise said

"to declare the righteousness of God for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God" (Rom. 3:25).

These terms are as lucid as profound. They constitute an inspired definition of the object in the case. No view can be right that cannot be brought within the terms of that definition. It is, in fact, the final easement of all difficulty where the mind is able to rise to the Divine point of view involved in the statement. The crucifixion was a Divine declaration and enforcement of what is due to sin, and as it was God's righteous appointment that this should be due to sin, the infliction of it was a declaration of God's righteousness.

If we limit our view to the individual "man Christ Jesus", and look at him in the light of what is due to individual character as between man and man according to the "justice" of common parlance, we may have a difficulty in seeing how the righteousness of God was declared in the scourging and death of a righteous man. But this is not looking at the subject in the light in which it is prophetically and apostolically exhibited. It is not looking at it in the character that belongs to it.

Jesus did not come into the world as an individual, but as a representative, though an individual. In this sense, he came "not for himself", but for others, though he was included in the coming. And it was to carry out Divine objects towards all. As he said, "I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me".

He speaks of the work which the Father had given him to do. This work was to establish salvation by forgiveness, but forgiveness on conditions, and these conditions involved the declaration of the Father's righteousness in the public condemnation of sin in its own flesh in the person of a guiltless possessor of that flesh. Paul declares it was so, and controversy really ends with his words.

It only remains that we realize how completely the fact is in harmony with the statement. We cannot see this unless we recognize that Jesus was a wearer of Adam's condemned nature, and the bearer of the sins of the people--not that Christ might be punished for others, but that God's righteousness might be declared for others to recognize, that they might be forgiven.

The gospel provides an opportunity of close identification with what was done: "Buried with him by baptism into death"; "Crucified with Christ", In this posture, they receive the remission of sins "through the forbearance of God" (Rom. 3:25). This is the other great fact of the case--God's forbearance, His kindness, His readiness to pardon when His claims are conceded.

This excludes the popular view of vicarious suffering. If Christ paid our debts, there would be no forgiveness, but exaction, and thus would be blotted out the crowning glory of the apostolic proclamation. God is kind and will forgive, but God is great and will be exalted: and in the matter of life eternal, He has provided His own method both of exalting Himself and humbling us; and in the presence of it, there is nothing left for us but to bow in reverence--before the crucified but resurrected son of His love.

Law of Moses Ch 18.

15 And every soul that eateth that which died of itself, or that which was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even: then shall he be clean.

IN view of the detestation in which death was legally held by the entire institution of the law of Moses, it is not wonderful that the Israelites should have been forbidden to eat

"that which died of itself, or that which was torn with beasts",

or that the same imputation of uncleanness should arise in such a case, and the same necessity exist for purification. To eat that which had died of itself was contact with death in a more intimate form than by touching a dead body or entering a death-defiled tent.

It might be supposed that eating flesh-meat in any case would be the contraction of this defilement seeing that creatures must be dead before they can be eaten. It would have been so if the law of Moses had been merely a hygienic system like vegetarianism. or any other attempt to found human feeding on the natural effects of certain foods on the human system.

But the law of Moses was not a hygienic system, though all its principles were in harmony with the best hygienic principles: it was a system of spiritual significances adapted to serve the double purpose of physical well being and spiritual education. Therefore, while forbidding the eating of the flesh of animals that had died a natural death or been slain by other animals, it could consistently allow the eating of flesh properly killed: because although the physical state of the flesh might be the same in both cases, the allegorical bearings were not the same.

Flesh dying of itself would be diseased, and flesh rent for the sustenance of beasts of prey would be flesh dying in animal wantonness or in accident--neither of which could prefigure the sinless Lamb of God laying down his life in obedience to the commandment of the Father.

So far as physical considerations were concerned, the meat in question was fit enough to be eaten. Hence, the Israelites were at liberty to

"give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it: or sell it unto an alien" (Deut. 14:21).

As for themselves, they were "an holy people unto the Lord thy God", and therefore bound by all that was involved in the law given to them.

Law of Moses Ch 29