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its `way out' by stressing the equal need for a sacrificial basis to give Israel, represented
by the High Priest, a `way into' the Lord's presence without which their deliverance from
Egypt would have been incomplete.
Let us give further attention to this by considering the teaching lying behind the
Passover and the Tabernacle. We have this twofold aspect of the one offering of Christ
in several parts of the N.T.:
"In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Eph. 1: 7).
The word `forgiveness', aphesis, is translated in Luke 4: 18 `deliverance' and `to set
at liberty'. This is the exodus aspect.
"Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (Eph. 2: 13).
This is the eisodus aspect. Peter likewise presents this twofold truth:
Redemption. "Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things . . . . . but with the precious
blood of Christ" (I Pet. 1: 18, 19).
Atonement. "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might
bring us to God" (I Pet. 3: 18).
The word translated `to bring' in I Pet. 3: 18 is prosagoge, the same word that is
rendered `access' in Eph. 2: 18.
The same order is observed in Titus 2: 14:
". . . . . Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeemed us from all iniquity, and purify
unto Himself a peculiar people . . . . .".
No.6.
pp. 201 - 206
Continuing our consideration of the finished work of Christ in its twofold aspect,
redemption and atonement, we notice that John's Gospel opens with `the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world' (redemption). In the opening of his first epistle
John reveals the fact that the cleansing blood of Christ enables the redeemed `to walk in
the light, as He is in the light' (atonement, I John 1: 7). Israel had first to be delivered
from the bondage of Egypt before they could learn the preciousness of access into the
holiest of all. The one offering of Christ is both our redemption and our atonement, our
`way out' and our `way in'. In spite of the indiscriminate use of the term, atonement is
not primarily for unsaved sinners, but for the complete salvation of the redeemed:
"Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Whom God has set forth as a propitiation (atonement or mercy seat) through faith in His
blood" (Rom. 3: 24, 25).