If God hates human sacrifice, how could Jesus' sacrifice be the payment for our sins?

Thus far the parallel may be traced between the offering up of Isaac and the death of the Lord Jesus. But there is a marked difference as well. Isaac was saved from death through a substitute provided of God. The Lord Jesus actually died. From the command to offer up Isaac we learn that the sacrifice of human life would be acceptable to God, though, as we know, Isaac himself could never have been a sacrifice which God could accept. For, born in sin like all of us, he could never have been a sacrifice holy and without blemish; for such one without sin was needed. Only one such has ever been on earth since the fall, and that one, the Lord Jesus Christ, did offer Himself a sacrifice of sweet savour acceptable to God. No human sacrifice then but one could be accepted. But that one has been, and the value of it abides unchanging before the throne. So, after God had traced out in the transactions of that day all that could be typified of the death of Christ, by the surrender of Isaac on the part of Abraham, a suhstitute was provided for the patriarch's son, and that substitute was a ram.

God's Love. — But how could this be? A necessity there was for the Son of Man to die, that sinners might have everlasting life. Who, however, of men could command that sacrifice? Speaking later on of His own life the Lord says, "No man takes it from Me; I lay it down of Myself" (10:18). Of His own voluntary will He became the victim. On the other hand, Divine love prompted the sacrifice, and provided it too. Now here for the first time in the New Testament is that love of God mentioned. Neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke makes any such announcement. But in the Gospel, which starts with the Lord as the rejected One, it is revealed. And revealed by Him who was competent to do it; for, being in the bosom of the Father, He could declare Him. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" 16). What joy have these words ministered to many since that day! What light and gladness have they imparted to hearts, when taken in their simplicity, and believed implicitly!

218 In verse 3 it is said, "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before Jehovah." Now, as regards Christ, the act of offering Himself as a sacrifice is simply His own - "through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot to God." We did not offer Him: He was the offerer and the victim; but when we have the Spirit of Christ, we enter into the value of the act as though we laid our hands upon Him. Jesus offered Himself while on earth without spot unto God, presenting Himself as the burnt-offering. In order that we might approach through Him, He must first be exhibited as giving Himself thus willingly. Thus in the account of the sacrifice we see the victim first brought to the door of the tabernacle and then killed. If we had merely seen the fact of Christ's death, we might have thought there was need of it as regarded Himself; but He is first shewn to us as the willing offering, bringing Himself to the door of the tabernacle, and voluntarily offering Himself to God for us.

Under the law the offerer presented the sacrifice for his acceptance (not "of his own voluntary will," as our version has translated the Hebrew word lirzono), owning thereby the ground on which he stood before God. But we do not present the sacrifice, since that has been already done. Christ offered Himself without spot to God (Heb. 9:14), and offered up Himself as well. For though men crucified Him, He nevertheless laid down His life of Himself. (John 10:18.) None could have taken it from Him. Thus both actions, the presenting the sacrifice and the offering it up, indicated by the Greek words prosphero and anathero, were carried out by Him in His grace.

"He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord." The use of the word "voluntary," here, brings out, with great clearness, the grand idea in the burnt offerings. It leads us to contemplate the cross in an aspect which is not sufficiently apprehended. We are too apt to look upon the cross merely as the place where the great question of sin was gone into and settled, between eternal Justice and the spotless victim — as the place where our guilt was atoned for, and where Satan was gloriously vanquished. Eternal and universal praise to redeeming love! The cross was all this. But it was more than this. It was the place where Christ's love to the Father was told out in language which only the Father could hear and understand. It is in the latter aspect that we have it typified, in the burnt offering; and, therefore, it is that the word "voluntary" occurs. Were it merely a question of the imputation of sin, and of enduring the wrath of God on account of sin, such an expression would not be in moral order. The blessed Lord Jesus could not, with strict propriety, be represented as willing to be "made sin" — willing to endure the wrath of God, and the hiding of His countenance; And, in this one fact, we learn, in the clearest manner, that the burnt offering does not foreshadow Christ, on the cross, bearing sin but Christ on the cross, accomplishing the will of God. That Christ Himself contemplated the cross in these two aspects of it, is evident from His own words. When he looked at the cross as the place of sin-bearing — when He anticipated the horrors with which, in this point of view, it stood invested, He exclaimed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me." (Luke 23:42) He shrank from that which His work, as a sin-bearer, involved. His pure and holy mind shrank from the thought of contact with sin; and His loving heart shrank from the thought of losing, for a moment, the light of God's countenance.

Our Lord died a sacrificial death, an atoning death, a vicarious death. He did not die for Himself. He took the sinner’s place on the cross, bearing the punishment due to sin, upholding God’s righteous claims and the holiness of His Person, making the way clear for God to righteously express His love in the offer of forgiveness of sins to guilty sinners. If not a single sinner were saved by His death, yet that death infinitely glorified God.

Paul went on to say, "God presented Him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood" (Rom. 3:25). When the Bible speaks of atonement, God's justice and His love are both involved. When Jesus Christ - God incarnate - died on the cross, He rendered satisfaction to God's holy standard and paid the penalty [.] (see John 3:16,17).

The death of Christ was primarily the offering of Himself to God as a sacrifice of infinite value and fragrance. Propitiation was thereby effected, and satisfaction made, so that the claims of divine righteousness have been met and vindicated in regard to the whole matter of man's sin.

As a general remark it may be said that the blood of the sacrifices in the old dispensation, and therefore the blood of Christ which this typified, was wholly for God. That is, while, as we shall see, there are blessed applications to, and efficacies for, the believer, the blood was offered before all to vindicate the glory and to meet the claims of God on the sinner. Accordingly the first aspect of the value of the blood of Christ is that of PROPITIATION. The meaning and truth of this may be gathered from the action of Aaron with the blood of the sin-offering on the day of atonement. It is said, "And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward," etc. In like manner he was to act with the blood of the goat of the sin-offering. (Lev. 16:14-15.) In addition to this, the blood was to be sprinkled before the mercy-seat, and here seven times because it was for the eye of man. Once was enough for the eye of God. That this spoke of the blood of Christ is shown from the statement of the apostle. He says, "Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth a propitiation (a mercy-seat) through faith in His blood." (Rom. 3: 24, 25.) What, then, did the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy-seat accomplish? To answer this question it must be borne in mind that the mercy-seat in the tabernacle in the wilderness represented God's throne — the throne of Jehovah in the midst of Israel. Hence He was said to dwell between the cherubim. (Ps. 80:1, etc.) The blood put upon the mercy-seat met, therefore, the claims of God's throne upon the sinner. It answered all the claims of a holy God (we speak now of the blood of Christ) upon guilty sinners. It was the vindication of His holy government, and inasmuch as it both satisfied His righteous claims upon man as a sinner, and glorified Him in every attribute of His character, it laid the ground on which He could righteously pardon every sinner that approached Him trusting in the value of the sprinkled blood. This was propitiation — the propitiation which is the foundation on which God can now deal in grace with the whole world, and thus send out, through His ambassadors, the entreating message to all - the vilest and the guiltiest — to be reconciled to Him. (2 Cor. 5:20-21.) Hence, too, John, speaking of Christ, says, "And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." (1 John 2:2.)

Christ has made atonement: God is satisfied and glorified by His work (propitiation), and ‘our’ sins have been born by Him (substitution).