How amazing it is that the Son of God came down from heaven to die, and to die under the hand of God in judgment on a malefactor’s cross. For eternity the saints of God will contemplate this wonderful mystery, and worship with adoring hearts the Father and the Son whose love has been so perfectly and fully revealed in the cross. The Old Testament abounds with foreshadowings and prophecies of Christ’s death, beginning with Adam falling into a deep sleep that he might have a bride for his heart, and with God providing, through death, coats of skin to hide the nakedness of Adam and his wife as guilty sinners.
Some of the great truths connected with the death of Christ such as redemption, propitiation, substitution, forgiveness of sins, justification, and reconciliation, and many others, are to be found among the types, shadows and prophecies of the Old Testament, but when the great truths connected with Christ’s death are seen in the clear light of the New Testament, the foreshadowings are seen to have been very dim. From among the multitude of aspects of Christ’s death let us consider three that are brought out clearly in the New Testament.
The Death of Christ Appropriated
When the Lord delivered His people Israel out of Egypt, they were sheltered by the blood of the Passover lamb, and within their houses upon which the blood was sprinkled, they were to eat the lamb, “roast with fire, and unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs” (Ex. 12:7–9). It was a picture for us of how the death of Christ was to be appropriated. The lamb roast with fire surely speaks eloquently to us of Christ having died for us under God’s judgment, and it is as sheltered with His blood that we feed upon, appropriate for ourselves, the love of God made known in death for His people.
In the sacrificial system, the communion, or peace offering was eaten by the priestly family, the offering priest, and the offerer after Jehovah had His portion. All the fat of the inwards, the two kidneys, and the caul above the liver were burnt on the altar of burnt offering to Jehovah (Lev.3:3–5), it was a sweet savour unto Him. The breast of the offering was for Aaron and his sons, the right shoulder went to the offering priest (Lev. 7:28–34), and the offerer had what remained for himself, his household and his friends. This surely tells us of the communion we have with God, and with each other as we feed upon the death of Christ. The priests also ate the ordinary sin and trespass offerings, telling of the privilege that belongs to those who are able to take the sins of others before God and confess them as if they were their own, as Daniel identified himself with the sins of Israel (Dan. 9:1–19).
Coming to the New Testament, we hear the Son of God say in John 6, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat (or shall have eaten) the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (verses 53–55). The only way of appropriating divine life is by feeding on the death of Christ. From the days of Noah man was forbidden to eat blood, and this prohibition was contained in the law, and continued by the Apostles (Gen.9:4; Lev. 3:17; Acts 15:20). The life is in the blood, and the life belongs to God, therefore when man was first given flesh to eat the blood was forbidden.
Christ has entered into death to make life, eternal life, available to men, and it is only by appropriating His death that we can have the life that Christ has made available to us. When the Israelite ate of the peace offering he would surely understand that it was by the death of the sacrifice that communion with God was possible and that food was made available for him. Do we not apprehend that Christ’s death has freed us from divine judgment, has brought us into communion with God, has made spiritual food available to us, and has given us to know the love of Christ and the love of God.
Under law man could not have life, it could not be acquired by anything that man could do; but Christ’s death has made life available to all men, but only those who believe on Him, who feed upon His flesh and blood, have the divine and eternal life that was made known in the Son in Manhood. Faith makes Christ’s death its own, and all the precious benefits that death has secured. We not only have eternal life now, but we shall be raised up at the last day, when Christ comes to claim His own. The dead in Christ will be raised, and the living will have their bodies changed, swallowed up of life.
Jesus went on to say, “He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him” (verse 56). Having received eternal life through feeding upon Christ’s death, it is the habit of the believer to continue appropriating that wondrous death, feeding his soul upon it, and upon all that death brings to us from God. In this way we abide in Him, and so enter into all the blessedness of communion with Him, drawing upon the divine and spiritual supplies that are in Him, constantly depending upon Him, enjoying the place His death has given us with Him before the Father, and dwelling upon the love revealed in Him, and now seen in Him where He lives before the Father. Abiding in us He gives us the consciousness of His love, and dwells in our hearts to give character to our lives, and to direct all our movements within and without for His pleasure, and for the delight of His God and Father, as we set forth His Son in testimony.
The Death of Christ Remembered
The children of Israel had different memorials to keep them in remembrance of God’s dealings with them. When the Lord gave the ten commandments to His people, He gave them the Sabbath as a day of rest, and as a remembrance of what He had done when forming the earth for man’s habitation (Ex. 20:8–11). They were also to remember the day when God brought them out of Egypt by keeping the feast of the Passover (Ex. 12:14). These two days, the Sabbath and the Passover will be kept by Israel in the Millennium, though they have no place in the divine and spiritual order of God’s assembly. We have the substance of the Passover, for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us (1 Cor. 5:7), and we look forward to the rest of God, the Sabbath that remains for the people of God (Heb. 4:9).
Christians however do have a memorial, one that has been instituted by the Lord Jesus, and that brings Him before us in all the deep love that was manifested in the giving of Himself for us. Having kept the Passover with His disciples, the Lord Jesus “took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). This memorial clearly brings the death of the Lord Jesus before us, the giving up of His holy body in death, and the shedding of His precious blood (Verse 20).
After the Lord Jesus went to heaven, the disciples broke bread from house to house (Acts 2:42, 46), but when the Apostle Paul was called of the Lord he received a special revelation of the truths of the Lord’s table and the Lord’s Supper, and showed the place the Supper had in relation to the saints when gathered in assembly. From 1 Corinthians 11 it seems clear that the first thing to engage the saints gathered in assembly is the remembrance of the Lord. How very suitable this is, for the contemplation of the Lord’s death, and of the remembrance of Him as entering into death in love for us, would surely stamp its own divine character on everything taking place in the assembly.
When the saints remember the Lord there is fellowship for them to enjoy, and there is the showing forth of His death to whoever has eyes to see or ears to hear, but the remembrance, the continuance of this precious memorial is for the heart of the Son of God. It is the answer from hearts that love Him to the expressed desire of His heart, when He said, “This is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me…This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24-25). How great is the love that caused Him to give His holy body, and shed His precious blood for us; and it is in this way that He expressly asked us to remember Him.
God’s Witness to the Death of Christ
When the Lord Jesus was found to be dead, one of the soldiers “with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water,” then John adds, “And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knows that he says true, that ye might believe” (John 19:34-35). It is this that the Spirit of God refers to in 1 John 5, where it is written, “This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood” (verse 6). John was a witness to the death of the Son of God, from whose side in death came the blood and water that spoke of the great work the Son accomplished in His death, the procuring of redemption by blood, and of moral purification for sinners.
Jesus had not only come to cleanse the ways of men by His divine ministry of the word, He had come to secure a redemption that would enable God to forgive guilty sinners, and to cleanse them from their moral pollution as derived from Adam. The water and the blood come to us as witnesses from God that this great work was done when Jesus died, and they witness that God’s Son was great enough to complete this great work for the glory and satisfaction of God. God has given us three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and the blood; the Spirit has come from Christ in glory, the water and the blood from Christ as dead upon the cross.
The believer, in having received the Holy Spirit, has God’s witness within him, the Spirit bringing to us the consciousness of the witness of the water and the blood, so that we know the greatness of the Son of God, and know that God has given to us eternal life. Eternal life is in God’s own Son, and we possess it in Him, and the witness from God assures us that the life God has given to us has been secured for us because the Son of God has died.
God has come down to the weakness of men in providing such a witness to His Son. Men receive the witness of two or three as sufficient to establish a matter, God has given three witnesses, one of them His own Spirit, and the others that tell of Christ’s death, and what that death has accomplished, witness to the great love of God in giving His Son that we might be blessed. How very solemn then it is if men refuse the witness of God. Where the witness is received there is the communication of the divine and eternal life, but the one that refuses the divine witness, and has not the Son of God, has not the life that is in the Son of God.
R. 7.11.68