Now, the point of contrast which we have been considering, explains, or rather harmonizes, two expressions used by our Lord. He says, on one occasion, "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" And again, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." The former of these expressions was the full carrying out of the words with which He entered upon His course, namely, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God;" and, moreover, it is the utterance of Christ as the Burnt-offering. The latter, on the other hand, is the utterance of Christ when contemplating the place which He was about to occupy as the Sin-offering. What that place was, and what was involved to Him in taking it, we shall see as we proceed; but it is interesting and instructive to find the entire doctrine of the two offerings involved, as it were, in the fact that a single word introduced in the one is omitted in the other. If in the burnt-offering we find the perfect readiness of heart with which Christ offered Himself for the accomplishment of the will of God, then in the sin-offering we find how perfectly He entered into all the consequences of man's sin, and how He traveled into the most remote distance of man's position as regards God. He delighted to do the will of God; He shrank from losing, for a moment, the light of His blessed countenance. No one offering could have foreshadowed Him in both these phases. We needed a type to present Him to us as One delighting to do the will of God, and we needed a type to present Him to us as One whose holy nature shrank from the consequences of imputed sin. Blessed be God, we have both. The burnt-offering furnishes the one; the sin-offering, the other. Wherefore, the more fully we enter into the devotion of Christ's heart to God, the more fully we shall apprehend His abhorrence of sin; and _vice versa_. Each throws the other into relief; and the use of the word "voluntary" in the one and not in the other, fixes the leading import of each.
But it may be said, Was it not the will of God that Christ should offer Himself as an atonement for sin? and if so, how could there be aught of shrinking from the accomplishment of that will? Assuredly, it was "the determinate counsel" of God that Christ should suffer, and, moreover, it was Christ's joy to do the will of God; but how are we to understand the expression, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me"? Is it not the utterance of Christ? And is there no express type of the Utterer thereof? Unquestionably. There would be a serious blank among the types of the Mosaic economy were there not one to reflect the Lord Jesus in the exact attitude in which the above expression presents Him. But the burnt-offering does not thus reflect Him. There is not a single circumstance connected with that offering which would correspond with such language. The sin-offering alone furnishes the fitting type of the Lord Jesus as the One who poured forth those accents of intense agony; for in it alone do we find the circumstances which evoked such accents from the depths of His spotless soul. The awful shadow of the cross, with its shame, its curse, and its exclusion from the light of God's countenance, was passing across His spirit, and He could not even contemplate it without an "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." But no sooner had He uttered these words than His profound subjection manifests itself in "Thy will be done." What a bitter "cup" it must have been to elicit from a perfectly subject heart the words, "Let it pass from Me"! What perfect subjection there must have been, when, in the presence of so bitter a cup, the heart could breath forth, "Thy will be done"!
We shall now consider the typical act of "laying on of hands." This act was common both to the burnt-offering and the sin-offering; but in the case of the former, it identified the offerer with an unblemished offering; in the case of the latter, it involved the transfer of the sin of the offerer to the head of the offering. Thus it was in the type; and when we look at the Antitype, we learn a truth of the most comforting and edifying nature--a truth which, were it more clearly understood and fully experienced, would impart a far more settled peace than is ordinarily possessed.