by God to add:  “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is the BRANCH” (compare chap. 3:8, and Isa. 11:1; Jer. 23:4-6; 33:15, 16); “and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord:  even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne:  and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”  In accordance with these representations a large part of the epistle to the Hebrews is occupied with a discussion of our Lord’s priestly office, in which, beyond contradiction, he is exhibited as the great antitype of both Melchizedec and the Levitical priests.

12.  If the Levitical priests typified Christ, it follows that the sacrifices which they offered were also typical of Christ’s sacrifice for the sins of the world.  So the epistle to the Hebrews argues:  “Every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices:  wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.”  Chap. 8:3.  The Levitical priests stood “daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”  Chap. 10:11.  Their offerings were only typical of expiation, and needed therefore to be continually repeated till the Antitype itself should appear.  But Christ offered his own blood on Calvary, by which he obtained eternal redemption for us, so that his sacrifice needs no repetition.  He was “once offered to bear the sins of many;” and by this “one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”  Chaps. 9:11-14, 25, 26; 10:10-14.

But this doctrine respecting the typical character of the Levitical sacrifices is not restricted to the epistle to the Hebrews.  The New Testament is full of it.  John the Baptist, the Saviour’s forerunner, announced him as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”  John 1:29.  Whether we render, as in the margin of our version, “which beareth the sin of the world,” or, as in the text, “which taketh away the sin of the world,” the words contain the idea of a propitiatory sacrifice, or, which amounts to the same thing, an expiatory sacrifice; since it is by expiating our sin that Christ propitiates the Father.  By bearing the sin of the world Christ expiates it, and thus takes it away.  Thus he is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2.

The Saviour himself announced his purpose to die for his people:  “I lay down my life for the sheep.”  “Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.  No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.  This commandment have I received of my Father.”  John 10:15, 17, 18.  And lest any should think that he died simply in the character of a martyr, he elsewhere explains that “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many”—­more literally, “a ransom instead of many” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45), where the sacrificial and vicarious nature of our Lord’s death is explicitly affirmed.