Divine Gratuity

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“For you know that it is not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish or defect.” —1 Peter 1:18, 19

On the hills outside of Jerusalem shepherds guarded the lambs that would be sold to petitioners coming to the Temple to make their sacrifices for sin. They had to be careful with their charges—an injured or marked animal was useless. A perfect lamb was more valuable than the shepherd who watched it—shepherds were the lowest of the low in the society of that time. Max Lucado speculates in Six Hours One Friday that some of those shepherds might have wondered at the futility of so many dead lambs, so much shed blood—rituals that led to more dead lambs and more shed blood year after bloody year. I wonder if any of those shepherds discovered for himself, on that terrible day when Christ died on that cross, that Jesus was THE Lamb who would die once for all, shed His blood once for all, and provide forgiveness once for all time for anyone who asked? I wonder if any of them discovered that there would never have to be another lamb sacrificed for sin?

Did any of those shepherds do as we do: lift our heads to look into the face of Jesus Christ and be thankful, thankful for something we can’t adequately describe, but about which countless volumes have been written?

Romans 6:23, one of the most recognizable verses of Scripture, says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The word gift in the original language of the text is charisma. It means a divine gratuity and that captures my attention.

We reward people for services rendered well by giving them an extra percentage, a tip, a gratuity. But they had to DO something to GET something. The better they do their jobs the more they get from a grateful public. We withhold the tip if we don’t get what we want delivered in the way we want to receive it.

But God gives us something for doing nothing—it’s a gift—no sacrifice or service necessary on our part. And it isn’t just any old something—it’s forgiveness at the cost of the lifeblood of His Son. It was given long before we ever knew what it was, long before we appreciated it, long before we asked for it. We never did anything to earn it, nor could we have earned it no matter how hard we worked, or how much time we had been allotted to work off the debt—even if we could! 
James Kennedy writes, in Cross Purposes, Discovering the Great Love of God for You: “We need to remember that apart from His protective blood shed on the cross, we have no hope. In providing that blood, it was necessary that the Lamb should die. Substitution. Propitiation. The innocent dying for the guilty. This was God's omnipotent plan—that pure innocence should die for utter depravity. So Christ came to be the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world” (page 57).

The Past Becomes the Present

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“In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven” —Leviticus 4:35b

Did the religious authorities realize how “Old Testament” they were being when they insisted that Jesus be crucified? Did they notice that the actions they took that led to the Lord’s death paralleled closely the atonement ritual that their ancestors had carried out so assiduously, and that they themselves practiced. The death of the lamb, the sprinkling of the blood on the altar, was part of their own religious observance, as familiar to them as their wives’ faces.

            The trouble with familiarity is that oftentimes doing the same thing over and over again gets so routine that its true significance is lost in the science of the script and the art of the ceremony.

            Leviticus, one of those books of the Bible that most of us avoid, describes the numerous sacrifices that the ancients once offered. There were offerings for every occasion: for priests, for the community, for community leaders, for individuals. There were different animals that were part of the ritual: bulls, goats, lambs, and doves.

            In the case of an individual who committed a sin, Moses records this: “When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned and, as a penalty for the sin he has committed, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering; and the priest will make atonement for him for his sin” (Leviticus 5:5, 6). The animal was killed. Some of its blood was sprinkled on the altar, the rest was drained out at the foot of the altar. The animal was then offered as a burnt offering to make atonement for the sin of the offender.

            The priests of Jesus’ day would not have recognized the cross-shaped altar, the cleansing flood of blood that flowed from the Lord’s body to pool at its base. Nor would they have understood that in the instant when the perfect Lamb died, atonement was provided for them. The Lamb had been sacrificed for the guilty. No, they would not have understood. They would not have confessed their guilt because they saw Jesus as guilty and themselves as the righteous. That was their fatal flaw.

            In a recent Bible study something the group was looking at triggered an “aha” moment in my head.  The Bible teacher was talking about the temple mount in Jerusalem where once these sacrifices described in the Scriptures were made. A mosque now sits on the site. It is the greatest desire of every orthodox Jew to see that mosque destroyed and the temple rebuilt where once it stood. I asked myself why God would have allowed a mosque to be built on the site of the holiest of holy places for the people of Israel, the place where once the cloud of His presence dwelt. As I thought about the question, I also wondered if God would ever allow the Jews to rebuild the temple, or if He would thwart every attempt to restore it.

            Is it possible that the mosque is there to prevent the Jews from returning to a system that doesn’t work, to keep them from sacrificing lambs in the futile attempt to do what has already been done once and for all time?

            The only completely sufficient sacrifice has been made. There is no need for another.