From sin to righteousness

We are now going to focus on another aspect of this wonderful exchange accomplished by the death of Jesus. Let’s read verse 10 of Isaiah, chapter 53 which contains this particular aspect of the exchange:

“Yet is was the Lord's will to crush him [Jesus] and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life [or his soul] a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” (NIV)

The Lord made the soul of Jesus on the cross a guilt offering. Now the word in Hebrew that's translated ‘guilt offering’ means both ‘guilt’ and ‘guilt offering’. It's one and the same word. To understand that we have to look at the picture of how sin offerings and guilt offerings were carried out under the Mosaic Law.

The person who was guilty, who had something that he had to expiate before God, would bring his offering, - this might be a sheep, a goat, a bullock,- and he would acknowledge the sin or the guilt that he had. And the priest, as his representative and acting on behalf of God at the same time, would lay his hand upon the head of the offering, the animal and then as the man truly repented and confessed his sin to the priest, by that act of the hands laid on the head of the sacrificial offering, symbolically, the man's guilt was transferred to the animal. And then the animal was slain, paying the penalty for the man's guilt and thus the man could receive pardon and forgiveness.

However that was only symbolical. It was a preview of what was actually accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross. On the cross, Jesus became the sin offering, the guilt offering. In a certain sense, Almighty God laid his hand on the head of Jesus, transferred to him our guilt and our sin. And then Jesus died, he poured out soul unto death.

In the Old Testament, Leviticus 17:11 says, "the soul of all flesh is in the blood." So as Jesus poured out His blood, drop by drop on the cross, until He'd emptied out the blood out of his body, he had poured out his soul - his total life, as the guilt offering, the substitute, the one who bore the guilt of entire human race.