As New Testament believers, we enjoy the Lord’s cleansing. However, if we simply read and understand the New Testament, we shall not have a clear, detailed picture of what is involved in this cleansing. For this we need the types in Leviticus 14. From the types we see that to cleanse us of our leprosy the Lord had to be incarnated, to become a human being. As typified by the cedar wood, His humanity was high and honorable. As typified by the hyssop, He was willing to be lowly in becoming in the likeness of men. On the one hand, His standard was high; on the other hand, His status was very low. Both were for the producing of the scarlet thread. Furthermore, the two birds typify Christ in two other aspects, with the slain bird signifying Christ in His crucifixion and the live bird signifying Christ in His resurrection. Without Christ in all these aspects, we could not be cleansed of our leprosy, of our sin.
I do not believe that the ancient Israelites understood the significance of the two birds, the cedar, the hyssop, the killing of one bird over an earthenware vessel filled with living water, binding together the live bird, the cedar, the hyssop, and the scarlet thread and dipping this bundle into the blood of the killed bird that this blood might be sprinkled seven times on the one who was to be cleansed. Although the Israelites saw these things and experienced them, they did not understand them. However, we today do understand these types. Now we can see that for our cleansing we need a Christ of many aspects, a Christ who has gone through a number of processes. The blood shed by Him has been sprinkled upon us, and this sprinkling connects us, the sinners, to Christ, the Redeemer.
Although the Lord has shown us much concerning these types, we hope that in the coming years He will show us even more.
The previous message covered only the first part of the procedure, or the process, of the cleansing of a leper. In this message we shall cover the second part of this process.
In the cleansing of the leper, Christ is revealed not only as the two birds, the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet thread but also as four kinds of offerings: the trespass offering, the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the meal offering.
The sin offering deals with our sinful nature, with sin as the nature of our fallen being. The nature of our fallen being is sin, and this sinful nature is the essence, the substance, the element, of Satan. Our sinful nature-the sin in our being-is satanic. We may even say that it is Satan himself. Sin, which is rebellion, is Satan. This sin has been injected into us, causing us to be constituted sinners (Rom. 5:19), that is, sinners in constitution. Human beings, therefore, are a constitution of sin. We need to see that our being is fully constituted with sin, with the enemy of God.
The sin offering deals with our nature of sin. Sin is our nature; it is even our very self. When Christ died on the cross, He did not only die for our sins but was also made sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ was crucified as sin. When He was crucified, sin also was crucified, and we were crucified as well. When Christ was crucified as sin, sin, Satan, and we ourselves were crucified with Him. This is the significance of the sin offering.
The trespass offering deals with our sins, which are the issues of the sin within us, the sin which is our nature, our being, our constitution. Sins, the different fruits of sin, are also called offenses, trespasses, and transgressions. Therefore, we need both the sin offering and the trespass offering. We need the sin offering to deal with sin, the source of our sins. We need the trespass offering to deal with all the issues of sin.
The sin offering and the trespass offering are actually of one category to deal with sin in total, including our sin and our sins. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). “Sin” here is a totality of sin which includes our sinful nature and our sinful deeds. Christ is the offering that deals with both sin and sins. In dealing with our sin, He is the sin offering. In dealing with our sins, He is the trespass offering. Because these offerings are both concerned with the same thing-dealing with the totality of sin-in chapters five and six of Leviticus they are sometimes applied interchangeably, with the trespass offering becoming the sin offering and the sin offering becoming the trespass offering.
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