The unblemished male of the first year was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ offering Himself for the perfect accomplishment of the will of God. There should be nothing expressive either of weakness or imperfection. "A male of the first year" was required. We shall see, when we come to examine the other offerings, that "a female" was in some cases permitted; but that was only expressive of the imperfection which attached to the worshiper's apprehension, and in no wise of any defect in the offering, inasmuch as it was "unblemished" in the one case as well as in the other. Here, however, it was an offering of the very highest order, because it was Christ offering Himself to God. Christ, in the burnt-offering, was exclusively for the eye and heart of God. This point should be distinctly apprehended. God alone could duly estimate the Person and work of Christ; He alone could fully appreciate the cross as the expression of Christ's perfect devotedness. The cross, as foreshadowed by the burnt-offering, had an element in it which only the divine mind could apprehend; it had depths so profound, that neither mortal nor angel could fathom them. There was a voice in it which was intended exclusively for, and went directly to, the ear of the Father. There were communications between the cross of Calvary and the throne of God which lay far beyond the highest range of created intelligence.
"He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord." The use of the word "_voluntary_" here brings out with great clearness the grand idea in the burnt-offering. It leads us to contemplate the cross in an aspect which is not sufficiently apprehended. We are too apt to look upon the cross merely as the place where the great question of sin was gone into and settled between eternal Justice and the spotless Victim--as the place where our guilt was atoned for, and where Satan was gloriously vanquished. Eternal and universal praise to redeeming love! the cross was all this; but it was more than this,--it was the place where Christ's love to the Father was told out in language which only the Father could hear and understand. It is in the latter aspect that we have it typified in the burnt-offering, and therefore it is that the word "voluntary" occurs. Were it merely a question of the imputation of sin, and of enduring the wrath of God on account of sin, such an expression would not be in moral order. The blessed Lord Jesus could not, with strict propriety, be represented as _willing_ to be "made sin"--_willing_ to endure the wrath of God and the hiding of His countenance; and in this one fact we learn, in the clearest manner, that the _burnt-offering does not foreshadow Christ on the cross bearing sin_, but Christ on the cross accomplishing the will of God. That Christ Himself contemplated the cross in these two aspects of it is evident from His own words. When He looked at the cross as the place of sin-bearing--when He anticipated the horrors with which, in this point of view, it stood invested, He exclaimed, "Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me." (Luke xxiii. 42.) He shrank from that which His work, as a sin-bearer, involved. His pure and holy mind shrank from the thought of contact with sin, and His loving heart shrank from the thought of losing, for a moment, the light of God's countenance.
But then, the cross had another aspect. It stood before the eye of Christ as a scene in which He could fully tell out all the deep secrets of His love to the Father--a place in which He could, "of His own voluntary will," take the cup which the Father had given Him, and drain it to the very dregs. True it is that the whole life of Christ emitted a fragrant odor, which ever ascended to the Father's throne--He did always those things which pleased the Father--He ever did the will of God; but the burnt-offering does not typify Him in His life--precious, beyond all thought, as was every act of that life,--but in His death, and in that, not as one "made a curse for us," but as one presenting to the heart of the Father an odor of incomparable fragrance.
This truth invests the cross with peculiar charms for the spiritual mind. It imparts to the sufferings of our blessed Lord an interest of the most intense character. The guilty sinner, no doubt, finds in the cross a divine answer to the deepest and most earnest cravings of heart and conscience: the true believer finds in the cross that which captivates every affection of his heart, and transfixes his whole moral being: the angels find in the cross a theme for ceaseless admiration. All this is true; but there is that in the cross which passes far beyond the loftiest conceptions of saints or angels, namely, the deep-toned devotion of the heart of the Son presented to and appreciated by the heart of the Father. This is the elevated aspect of the cross which is so strikingly shadowed forth in the burnt-offering.