From all these passages, taken in connection with Numbers xix. 3, we learn two things, namely, that the death of Christ is not presented as the proper, ordinary act of priesthood; and further, that heaven, not earth, is the sphere of His priestly ministry. There is nothing new in these statements—others have advanced them repeatedly, but it is important to notice every thing tending to illustrate the divine perfection and precision of holy Scripture. It is deeply interesting to find a truth which shines brightly in the pages of the New Testament wrapped up in some ordinance or ceremony of Old-Testament times. Such discoveries are ever welcome to the intelligent reader of the Word. The truth, no doubt, is the same wherever it is found; but when it bursts upon us, with meridian brightness, in the New-Testament scriptures, and is divinely shadowed forth in the Old, we not only have the truth established, but the unity of the volume illustrated and enforced.
But we must not pass over unnoticed the place where the death of the victim was accomplished. “That he may bring her forth without the camp.” As has already been remarked, the priest and the victim are identified, and form a joint type of Christ; but it is added, “one shall slay her before his face,” simply because the death of Christ could not be represented as the act of priesthood. What marvelous accuracy! And yet it is not marvelous, for what else should we look for in a book every line of which is from God Himself? Had it been said, He shall slay her, then Numbers xix. would be at variance with the epistle to the Hebrews. But no; the harmonies of the volume shine forth among its brightest glories. May we have grace to discern and appreciate them.
Jesus, then, suffered without the gate.—“Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” (Heb. xiii. 12.) He took the outside place, and His voice falls on the ear from thence. Do we listen to it? do we understand it? Should we not consider more seriously the place where Jesus died? Are we to rest satisfied with reaping the benefits of Christ’s death, without seeking fellowship with Him in His rejection? God forbid! “Let us _go forth_, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.”[18] There is immense power in these words. They should rouse our whole moral being to seek more complete identification with a rejected Saviour. Shall we see Him die outside, while we reap the benefits of His death and remain within? Shall we seek a home and a place and a name and a portion in that world from which our Lord and Master is an outcast? Shall we aim at getting on in a world which could not tolerate that blessed One to whom we owe our present and everlasting felicity? Shall we aspire after honor, position, and wealth where our Master found only a manger, a cross, a borrowed grave? May the language of our _hearts_ be, “Far be the _thought_!” and may the language of our _lives_ be, “Far be the _thing_!” May we, by the grace of God, yield a more hearty response to the Spirit’s call to “_go forth_.”
Christian reader, let us never forget that when we look at the death of Christ, we see two things, namely, the death of a victim and the death of a martyr—a victim for sin, a martyr for righteousness—a victim under the hand of God, a martyr under the hand of man. He suffered for sin that we might never suffer. Blessed be His name for evermore! But then, His martyr-sufferings—His sufferings for righteousness under the hand of man, these we may know; “for unto you _it is given_, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to _suffer_ for His sake.” (Phil. i. 29.) It is a positive _gift_ to be allowed to suffer with Christ. Do we so esteem it?
In contemplating the death of Christ, as typified by the ordinance of the red heifer, we see not only the complete putting away of sin, but also the judgment of this present evil world. “He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” (Gal. i. 4.) Here the two things are put together by God; and, most surely, they should never be separated by us. We have the judgment of sin, root and branch, and the judgment of this world. The former should give perfect repose to the exercised conscience, while the latter should deliver the heart from the insnaring influence of the world, in all its multiplied forms. That purges the conscience from all sense of guilt; this snaps the link which binds the heart and the world together.