Priesthood of Christ, Aaron & Melchisedec Comparison Series: 10

"Then the individual bore his iniquity, Leviticus 5:1-17;7:1-8, till he presented his offering to the priest and slew it, the priest made an atonement with the blood, Leviticus 17:11, and he was forgiven, then of course free from his iniquity. 

Q: Now at what point did he cease to bear his iniquity? 

A: Evidently when he had presented his victim slain; he had then done his part. 

Q: Through what medium was his iniquity conveyed to the Sanctuary? 

A: Through his victim, or rather its blood when the priest took and sprinkled it before the veil and on the altar. Thus the iniquity was communicated to their Sanctuary. The first thing done for the people on the tenth day of the seventh month was to cleanse it, thence by the same means, the application of blood. 

This done, the high priest bore the "iniquity of the Sanctuary" for the people "to make atonement for them," Leviticus 10:17.

As this legal system which we have been considering was only a "shadow", a "figure" and "patterns" of no value in itself only to teach us the nature of that perfect system of redemption which is its "body", the "things themselves"; which was devised in the councils of heaven, and is being wrought out by "the only Begotten of the Father"; let us, guided by the Spirit of truth, learn the solemn realities thus shadowed forth. 

By these patterns, finite as we are, we may like Paul, extend our research beyond the limits of our natural vision to the "heavenly things themselves". Here we find the entire ministry of the law fulfilled in Christ, who was anointed with the Holy Ghost and by His own blood entered His Sanctuary, heaven itself, when He ascended to the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, as A minister of the (Hagion) Holies, etc., Hebrews 8:6,2. 

Hebrews 6:19,20, is supposed to prove that Christ entered the
Holy of Holies at His ascension, because Paul said He had entered within the veil. But the veil which divides between the Holy and the Holy of Holies is "the second veil", Hebrews 9:3; hence there are two veils, and that in Hebrews 6, being the first of which he speaks, must be the first veil, which hung before the Holy, and in Exodus was called a curtain. When He entered within the veil, He entered His tabernacle, of course the Holy, as that was the first apartment; and our hope, as an anchor of the soul, enters within the veil... 

Q: If the atonement was made on Calvary, by whom was it
made? The making of the atonement is the work of a Priest? but who officiated on Calvary? -

A: Roman soldiers and wicked Jews. 

The slaying of the victim was not making the atonement: the sinner slew the victim, Leviticus 4:1-4, 13-15, etc., after that the Priest took the blood and made the atonement. Leviticus 4:5-12,16-21. 

Christ was the appointed High Priest to make the atonement, and He certainly could not have acted in that capacity till after His resurrection, and we have no record of His doing any thing on earth after His resurrection, which could be called the atonement. 

The atonement was made in the Sanctuary, but Calvary was
not such a place. 

He could not, according to Hebrews 8:4, make the atonement while on earth. --"If He were on earth, He should not be a Priest."
---The Levitical was the earthly priesthood, the Divine, the heavenly.
---Therefore, He did not begin the work of making the atonement, whatever the nature of that work may be, till after His ascension, when by His own blood He entered His heavenly Sanctuary for us. 

----Acts 3:19, "Repent ye therefore; and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord."
Here he exhorts to repentance and conversion (turning away from sins); for what purpose? "That your sins may be (future) blotted out." 

Every one can see that the blotting out of sins does not take place at repentance and conversion; but follows, and must of necessity be preceded by them. Repentance, conversion, and baptism had then become imperative duties in the present tense; and when performed, those doing them "washed away" (Acts 22:16) remitted or sent away from them their sins. (Acts 2:28); and of course are forgiven and have "received the atonement"; but they had not received it entire at that time, because their sins were not yet blotted out. 

First, Convinced of sin; Second, Repentance and
Confession; Third, 

Present the Divine sacrifice bleeding. 

Removed, as the heavenly Sanctuary is from the midst of mortals and entered only by our Forerunner, Jesus, made an High Priest, it can only be defiled by mortals through His agency, and for them cleansed by the same agency.  

---Paul says, Colossians 1:19,20, "For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell, and having made (margin, making) peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile
all things unto Himself; by Him I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven." 

---If they needed reconciling they were unreconciled; if unreconciled, then unclean in some sense in His sight. 

The blood of Christ is the means, and Christ Himself, the agent of reconciling to the Father both the things in heaven and the things on earth. 

"For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself," verse 24."

O.L. Crosier