Daily Bread - DEC/20/07

Romans 3:25 - Whom God set forth as a mercy seat through faith in His blood, to reveal His righteousness through the passing over of the sins that had taken place in the past, by the forbearance of God.

The Greek word that translates the Hebrew word (kapporeth) for the top or lid of the Ark (the mercy seat) is 'hilasterion,' and it is this word that Paul uses in this verse to describe Jesus. This word only appears twice in the New Testament: here and in Hebrews 9:5. It was upon the mercy seat that the blood was placed to purify the altar of God from all the sins and contaminations of the people (Leviticus 16:16). Jesus appeared for the sole purpose of taking away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36; 1 John 3:5; Revelation 1:5; Hebrews 1:3; 1 Peter 2:24; Colossians 2:11). It is so important to recognize that He took away the sin - which emphasizes its removal. For if we do not have faith that His blood has removed our sins then how is it possible for us to benefit from this work of grace? If we do not believe that our sins are removed then we will die in our sins. When Paul uses this word in connection with what Jesus did for us we must understand that he is referring to the removal of the sin. Just as the sins were wiped away (kippur) when they were removed from off the altar on Yom Kippur.

God did not hold the sins that we had committed against us by executing a divine judgment on us but instead sent His only begotten Son to be the Lamb and sacrifice for our sins (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:2-3). All of our sins were laid upon His body even as they were laid upon the mercy seat. It was His blood that wiped away our sins from off the altar of God in heaven where our sins stood as a testimony against us (Hebrews 8:5; 9:23-24; Leviticus 16:16). It was through His death that our sins were destroyed and the old nature put to death (1 Peter 2:24; Romans 6:6). It is because of Jesus that all of the glory of God can come into our lives and remain (John 14:23; Luke 24:49; John 17:22). Thus, Paul proclaimed Jesus to be the top of the Ark where God's throneroom was depicted and the purgation of sin was accomplished (Leviticus 16:16).

We must be careful with the words that we use and the meanings that we ascribe to them. The word atonement is a relatively new word which traces its origin to the fifteenth century when it appeared as two separate words ("at onement") Many scholars have attempted to dilute the meaning of the Hebrew 'kippur' that is translated by the Greek word 'hilasmos' by translating it 'expiation' or 'covering,' but this is not the intended meaning nor the meaning denoted by these words (1 John 2:2; 4:10) . "Until recently it was widely held among evangelical and nonevangelical scholars alike that the term was related to an Arabic cognate with the meaning 'to cover.' This connection with the Arabic language has been virtually abandoned in modern scholarship because of the failure to demonstrate this meaning based on use in Hebrew as well as the methodological problem of using only Arabic to validate a Hebrew meaning. Thus, two other possibilities have been suggested. The first is to understand the verb to mean 'to wipe, purge.' Support for this position comes from the fact that the cognate term in the Akkadian language had this meaning, and the verb occurs in parallelism to other Hebrew verbs within this semantic range (Isa 27:9; Jer 18:21). This meaning works especially well when inanimate objects are the object of the verbal action. Another proposal is one that understands kipper as a denominative verb from the noun kper, which means "ransom" (e.g., Exod 21:30). The idea would be that a person is paying or making a ransom for himself when he offers a sacrifice. Leviticus 17:11 provides a good illustration of this usage. Thus both of these meanings can be demonstrated from the Bible." (Reference: B. Lang, kipper, TDOT 7:289-90; L. Harris, (kpar), TWOT 1:452-53; Levine, Leviticus, 56-63, and B. Schwartz, "Prohibitions Concerning the 'Eating' of Blood in Leviticus 17," 54, n. 2). Note even the change in the second edition of Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush from "cover over" (Old Testament Survey, 1st ed. [1982], 156-57), to "expiate" sin (2nd ed. [1996], 96); J. Milgrom, "Atonement in the OT," IDBS, 78-82). It is quite possible that the verbs meaning "to wipe" and "to ransom" are actually two different verbs that are spelled the same. They would be called homographs. Schwartz argues for this position ("Prohibitions Concerning the 'Eating' of Blood in Leviticus 17, 54, n. 2).

Be blessed,

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
abidingplace.org