Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/795

the sacrifice intervened as a third object between the sinful man and the holy God, it was not the blood of the animal in itself which actually took the place of the man, nor was it the shedding of the blood in itself which was able to make expiation for the sinful man, in such a sense that the slaying of the animal had a judicial and penal character and the offering of sacrifice was an act of judgment instead of an ordinance of grace, as the juridical theory maintains. It was simply the blood as the vehicle of the soul, when sprinkled or poured out upon the altar, that is to say, it was the surrender of an innocent life to death, and through death to God, that was the medium of expiation. Even in the sacrifice of Christ it was not by the shedding of blood, or simply by the act of dying, that His death effected reconciliation, but by the surrender of His life to death, in which He not only shed His blood for us, but His body also was broken for us, to redeem us from sin and reconcile us to God. And even the suffering and death of Christ effect our reconciliation not simply by themselves, but as the completion of His sinless, holy life, in which, through doing and suffering, He was obedient even to the death of the cross, and through that obedience fulfilled the law as the holy will of God for us, and bore and suffered the punishment of our transgression. Through His obedientia activa et passiva in life and death Christ rendered to the holy justice of God that satisfactio et poena vicaria, by virtue of which we receive forgiveness of sin, righteousness before God, reconciliation, grace, salvation, and eternal life. But these blessings of grace and salvation, which we owe to the sacrificial death of Christ, do not really become ours through the simple fact that Christ has procured them for man. We have still to appropriate them in faith, by dying spiritually with Christ, and rising with Him to a new life in God. This was also the case with the sacrifices of the Old Testament. They too only answered their end, when the Israelites, relying upon the word and promise of God, grasped and employed by faith the means of grace afforded them in the animal sacrifices; i.e., when in these sacrifices they offered themselves, or their personal life, as a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. The symbolical meaning of the sacrifices, which is involved in this, is not excluded or destroyed by the idea of representation, or representative mediation between sinful man and the holy