Exodus 32:32–33

Bowed down with grief, Moses admits the people have committed a grave sin. He adds: "Yet now, if You will forgive their sin …" He cannot finish his sentence, because he knows well that God cannot forgive unless atonement is made. So he says out loud what he had secretly held in his heart: "If not, please blot me out of Your book that You have written." In this way he offers himself as a propitiation for the people. He has not yet learned what the psalmist will declare later: "Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life" (Ps. 49:7).

He had identified himself with the people so fully that if they were unforgiven he wanted to perish with them. Such identification is the source of all strength in intercession, when the Spirit of God produces it. It was the overflow of his intense love for guilty Israel. The case of the apostle Paul was not unlike it, for he said, "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh." (Rom. 9:3.)

Moses loved Israel with a love stronger than death. Yet the very man who loved them like that did not hold back his horror at the leprosy that had broken out among them. He felt that such evil must be rooted out at all cost, and banished from among them.

Though he felt strongly the affront to Jehovah, yet in His presence not a single ill word escaped his lips about them. On the contrary, he kept reminding Jehovah that they were His people in spite of their grave sin, and that the honour of His great name was bound up with their blessing. Rather than have them overthrown, he was willing that God should blot him out of the book that He had written.

The only solution he proposes shows how deep and real his love for the people was, but it was an impossible solution. He fully confesses the greatness of their guilt, pleading that he might be allowed to be a substitute for them — that he should be blotted out of God's book so that they might be forgiven (vv. 31-32)… He beautifully pictures the love of Christ in his willingness to sacrifice himself. But he could go no further than this in representing Christ, for he was a sinner himself and his sacrifice could atone for no one.

He came down from above — from His dwelling place in the glory of the Father — to do His will. And while keeping the law, He Himself bears the penalty for breaking it. He did not destroy the tables, the signs of this covenant, whose demands man could not meet. He accomplished the atonement before returning above. So He does not go up with a cheerless "perhaps" in His mouth, which the holiness of God at once cancelled. He ascends with the sign that the atonement is finished.

They were put fully under law, each man responsible for his own sin. As law and judgment, that is of course entirely righteous. But no atonement was made, and personal responsibility left everything on the individual.

I believe the book of life is final, and all the devils cannot blot a name out of it. Where it speaks of blotting out, it is like a register of voters. If a name is shown to have no right to be there, it is blotted out… Someone who only claims to be a believer writes his own name in. He has no right to be there unless God has written his name, so it will be blotted out. God takes away no name that He has written.

Grace makes righteousness rest on the obedience of another, and so now it is not the sinner who is blotted out, but his sins, however vile they are. If I say I have sinned, and perhaps He will blot me out of His book, I am standing on law. But the moment I understand that Christ is my righteousness, the ground is completely changed.

Moses himself also fails in the atonement that he proposes. This is impossible, even to a devotion almost unequalled among mere men. But "none can by any means redeem his brother, nor give unto God a ransom for him" (Psalm 49:7). So Moses makes his eager demand: "And now, if You will forgive their sin; and if not, please blot me out of the book that You have written." God can only reply, "Whoever sins against Me, I will blot out of My book."

Moses, however favoured by God, needed a sacrifice to be offered for himself, for he was a sinner like all other men. The mediator of the old covenant could not make atonement.

But the Lord has His own ways: when the whole community has failed, He can still deal with each person in the middle of it according to His own righteous judgment. "Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot out of My book." At the same time He plainly announces that in due time He will punish the sin of the whole community on the community: "nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them."

But the Lord said to him, "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book." This is the principle of the law. Under that law God cannot clear the guilty or let the wicked go unpunished. Everything hangs now upon mediation. But Moses, though taking the place of intercessor, was not perfect in the knowledge of grace. He could only say to the people, "perhaps I shall make an atonement." He could not put away sin.

A register of people's names as living. One book (also called simply God's book) may hold those who only have a name to live. Their names may therefore be blotted out: Exodus 32:32-33; Psalm 69:28; Revelation 3:5. Another is a book of the saved. No name is ever erased from it: Philippians 4:3; Revelation 13:8; Revelation 20:12, 15. A third (called simply "the book") contains the names of the remnant of Israel: Daniel 12:1.

God did indeed bear with Israel in patience. But He still adds, "In the day when I visit, I will visit their sins upon them." It was not forgiveness as we know it now. He forgave them by not cutting them off... The Lord shows present mercy and forgiveness, but at the same time puts every one of the people on his own responsibility. "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book."

Having perfectly settled the whole question of sin, He went up, but not with a "perhaps" on His lips. He has gone up to the right hand of God, and carried with Him the witness of the atonement He has made. So God no longer says, as He did then, "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out." Because Christ has gone up, having blotted out the sins of sinners, He says, "I will remember their sins and iniquities no more" (Hebrews 10:17).

Grace makes righteousness rest on the obedience of another, and so now it is not the sinner who is blotted out, but his sins, however vile they are. If I say I have sinned, and perhaps He will blot me out of His book, I am standing on law. But the moment I understand that Christ is my righteousness, the whole ground changes.