If Jesus is our atonement, why did He die at Passover instead of the Day of Atonement?

Let us go back to the history of the Lord's life, and to the last days of this blessed life. Two days after was the passover, and the chiefs of the Jews sought to kill Him; nevertheless they feared to stir up a tumult amongst the people, because they felt that His doctrine and miracles had produced a powerful effect in their hearts; they said, "Not on the feast day, lest there be a tumult among the people." This was their opinion, but not God's. The Lord must die as a true paschal lamb slain for us. Besides, He must die the very day of the passover, to surpass the sacrifice of the law, which commemorated the deliverance from Egypt, and which prefigured an infinitely more precious deliverance; that is, the deliverance from guilt before God, and from the dominion of sin.

Does not this instructive type singularly tally with the facts? The Lord entered on the proper functions of His Priesthood, after He had been perfected through sufferings and ascended to heaven. But before this the atoning work was effected and accepted. "Having made [by Himself] purification of sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb. 1:3); nay more, "With His own blood He entered into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12) — the very text misused to confirm the error that propitiation was only made then and there. He obtained that redemption strictly neither in heaven nor on earth, but "lifted up" on the cross. There did God make sin Him Who knew no sin; but if atonement was thus made, its efficiency penetrated the holiest that very moment. "It is finished" said He Who poured out His soul to death. The blood was for God in the sanctuary and for man's sin on the earth.

"And some of those that stood by, when they heard [it], said, Behold, he calls for Elias." This seems to be mere scoffing again. There is no reason to suppose they did not know that He said, "My God, My God," not Elias.164 "And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and fixed it on a reed, and gave Him to drink, saying, Let alone, let us see whether Elias comes to take Him down. And Jesus, having uttered a loud cry, expired."165 Now that death was consummated, the only righteous ground of life and redemption, the "veil of the Temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom." The Jewish system was doomed, and sentence executed upon its characteristic and central feature. The veil was that which separated the holy place from the holy of holies; there was no single point in the Jewish system more emphatic than the veil. For what the veil indicated as a figure was God present, but man standing outside; God dealing with the people, but the people unable to draw near to God, having Him with them in the world, but nevertheless not brought to Himself, not able to look upon His glory, kept at a distance from Him under the law. (Cf. Heb. 9:8, Heb. 10:19-20.) The rending of the veil, on the contrary, at once pronounced that all was over with Judaism. As the darkness supernatural was one testimony before His death, so this at His death declared the power of Christ's blood. It was not only God come down to man, but man now, by the blood of Christ, entitled to draw near to God — yea, all who know the value of that blood into the holiest of all. But as far as the Jewish economy was concerned, here was the abolition of it come in principle. The tearing down this chief sign and token was the virtual profaning of the sanctuary, so that now anyone could look into the holiest. It was no longer the high-priest alone venturing within once a year, and that not without blood; but now, because of His blood which they had spilt, little knowing its infinite value, the veil was rent from top to bottom. This was in the first month of the year. The feast in which the high-priest entered was in the seventh month. Thus the destruction of the veil was the more marked now. The truth is that the real application of the day of atonement and the following feast of tabernacles will be when God begins to take up the Jewish people. We are said to have Christ as our Passover; but the day of atonement, viewed as a prophetic type, awaits Israel by-and-by.

Provision being made for such defilements of the people as allowed of it, we have the revelation of the general provision for the purification of the sanctuary which was in the midst of a people who defiled it, and for the atonement of the sins of the people themselves. In general, there are two great ideas; first, that the atonement was made, so that the relationship of the people of God was maintained notwithstanding their sins; and then, in the second place, in the difficulties which surrounded the entrance of Aaron into the holy place, there was the testimony (according to the Epistle to the Hebrews itself) that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest during that dispensation. It is important to examine this chapter under these two points of view. It stands alone. No mention is made anywhere else of what took place on that solemn day. The sacrifice of Christ, as redemption, was typified by the passover. It was here a question of drawing near unto God who revealed Himself on His throne, of cleansing defilements, of taking away the sins of those who would draw near, and of purifying their consciences. Now, while presenting to us in figure the means of doing this, it signified indeed that the thing was not done.

70 Let us consider a little the nature of sacrifice. "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7). Now, how was this done? Was it by simply shewing love to Israel, in that there was One willing to suffer in this work of love? Nothing of the sort. God was going through in judgment to smite the guilty. Why should not Israel be smitten? They were guilty; they had even fallen, as Ezekiel 20 shews us, into the idolatry of the Egyptians. They were to put the blood on the doorposts, that, when judgment passed, they might be safe. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt." That is, the blood of the slain victim-the figure of the true Lamb-secured them from judgment. Do you deny that Christ was our true paschal Lamb?

There are several features in this Scripture demanding distinct and separate notice. First, the lamb. As already pointed out, the whole value of this passover lamb springs from its being a type of Christ. Paul thus says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast." (1 Cor. 5:7-8.) We are warranted therefore, on divine authority, in seeing the Lamb of God under the shadow of this interesting type; and it is on this account that every detail of this chapter becomes invested with such exceeding interest. On the tenth day of the month the lamb was to be taken — a male of the first year, and without blemish — and it was to be kept up until the fourteenth day of the same mouth. This has generally been thought to correspond with the setting apart of the lamb in the counsels of God; i.e. on the tenth day, and the actual sacrifice in time on the fourteenth day. But another suggestion has been made, which is given and commended to the judgment of the reader. The tenth day, according to this, will correspond with the entrance of Christ upon His public ministry, when He was marked out by John the Baptist, in a most striking way, as "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." (John 1:29.) Then if the Lord's ministry embraced the term of three years, made up of two whole years and parts of two more, this would, according to Jewish reckoning, be four years, and the time of His death would therefore correspond with the fourteenth day. But why, it may be asked, is the number ten taken for the setting of the lamb apart? Because it is the number of responsibility Godward, and it thereby teaches that ere our blessed Lord was publicly owned as the Lamb of God, He had met every responsibility before God, and was thus proved to be without blemish, qualified by what He was in Himself, to be the sacrifice for sin. He was God's Lamb, and it is full of blessed consolation that the lamb was of God's providing Man could have never known what sacrifice would have been acceptable. Israel would have remained in bondage until this day, had it been left to them to devise a means of satisfying the claims of God on account of their sins. Hence God in His mercy and grace furnished a lamb whose blood would suffice to take away the sin of the world. There can never be therefore any other method of cleansing from sin, any other means of shelter from the just judgment of God: the blood of Christ, inasmuch as it is provided by God, is exclusive of all other methods.

The feast of the day of atonement was not a celebration like the passover, but an annual event that signified how God could go on with His people who were sinners like other men. While it pointed forward to the great work that the Lord Jesus Christ would accomplish for God’s glory and the blessing of His people, it also showed that there was no access into God’s presence under the legal system. God could go on with Israel, dwelling among them on the ground of the sacrifices, and although they were not in the distance from God in the same sense as were the Gentiles, they were morally no better, and could not enter the immediate presence of God.

1878 8 It is of some importance to see, and I therefore remark it at the starting-point, that atonement differs sensibly from redemption. In the book of Exodus stands the great type of redemption, and in Leviticus of atonement; the truth in both centres in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament redemption was the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh and Egypt. In His mercy God interposed to set free the people from the house of bondage, and as the passover set forth its righteous ground in the blood of the lamb, so was there the figure of Christ's death and resurrection in the passage of the Red Sea, or rather of death with Christ, and hence of faith living to God. But this is not so much what is taught in the book of Leviticus, as a sacrifice for sin perfectly glorifying God within the holiest, and a testimony to the people without that their sins were confessed and borne away to be remembered by Him no more.

In the book of redemption, then, we would expect to find atonement a central figure, as indeed we do; and yet not to find so much its intrinsic character dwelt upon as its delivering power for those in whose behalf it is accomplished; — that is to say, its manward rather than its Godward aspect. And this is how, exactly, the passover and the deliverance at the Red Sea present it to us. We must wait for Leviticus to realize in the sanctuary with God its full character for Him. Peace and deliverance must be first known and enjoyed before we are competent, and "at leisure from ourselves," to enjoy the manifestation.

It is important to examine this chapter under these two points of view. It stands alone. No mention is made anywhere else of what took place on that solemn day. The sacrifice of Christ, as meeting God's righteousness against sin as the ground of redemption, was typified by the passover. It was a question of drawing near unto God who revealed Himself on His throne — of cleansing defilements — of taking away the sins of those who would draw near, and of purifying their conscience. Now, while presenting to us in figure God's means of doing this, it signified indeed that the thing was not done. As to the general idea of its efficacy, the high priest drew near personally, and filled the most holy place with incense. So Christ goes in personally in the perfect savour of what He is for God. The place of God's presence was full of it.