Divided Interest
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you might be made rich. Will you, then, disregard this great love
and boundless mercy by refusing to be inconvenienced and to deny
yourselves for His dear sake? Will you cling to the treasures of this
life and neglect to aid in carrying forward the great work of truth?
The children of Israel were anciently commanded to make an
offering for the entire congregation to purify them from ceremonial
defilement. This sacrifice was a red heifer and represented the more
perfect offering that should redeem from the pollution of sin. This
was an occasional sacrifice for the purification of all those who had
necessarily or accidentally touched the dead. All who came in contact
with death in any way were considered ceremonially unclean. This
was to forcibly impress the minds of the Hebrews with the fact that
death came in consequence of sin and therefore is a representative of
sin. The one heifer, the one ark, the one brazen serpent, impressively
point to the one great offering, the sacrifice of Christ.
This heifer was to be red, which was a symbol of blood. It must
be without spot or blemish, and one that had never borne a yoke.
Here, again, Christ was typified. The Son of God came voluntarily
to accomplish the work of atonement. There was no obligatory yoke
upon Him, for He was independent and above all law. The angels,
as God’s intelligent messengers, were under the yoke of obligation;
no personal sacrifice of theirs could atone for the guilt of fallen man.
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Christ alone was free from the claims of the law to undertake the
redemption of the sinful race. He had power to lay down His life and
to take it up again. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God.”
Yet this glorious Being loved the poor sinner and took upon Him-
self the form of a servant, that He might suffer and die in man’s behalf.
Jesus might have remained at His Father’s right hand, wearing His
kingly crown and royal robes. But He chose to exchange all the riches,
honor, and glory of heaven for the poverty of humanity, and His station
of high command for the horrors of Gethsemane and the humiliation
and agony of Calvary. He became a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, that by His baptism of suffering and blood He might purify
and redeem a guilty world. “Lo, I come,” was the joyful assent, “to do
Thy will, O My God.”
The sacrificial heifer was conducted without the camp and slain in
the most imposing manner. Thus Christ suffered without the gates of