Everlasting fire was not God’s expected end for man. The Lake of fire was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). The Everlasting Kingdom of Christ was the Father’s expectation. It would be accomplished through two great steps: God’s coming to man and man’s going to God. I speak here of the Atonement (Romans 5:11) and the Adoption (Romans 8:23).

I have often heard people say that atonement is an Old Testament doctrine. “Today,” they would add, “we speak of redemption. When my late pastor, Dr. Harold B. Sightler, preached his first sermon as a young man, he preached on The Atonement, and he was soundly corrected for making such a mistake. But, he made no mistake.

Yes, atonement is throughout the Old Testament. There was a day of atonement, set on the tenth day of the seventh month (Leviticus 16:29). Called the Sabbath of Sabbaths, it is the highest holy day of the Jewish calendar: Yom Kippur. On that day, the priest shall make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord (Leviticus 16:30).

Each year there was a remembrance of sin; and, each year the High Priest offered the acceptable sacrifice. Men speak of atonement as limited, while God endeavors to teach men to look for that one sacrifice by that one High Priest as the covering for their sin. The law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect (Hebrews 10:1).

It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins (Hebrews 10:4). Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein, which are offered by the law (Hebrews 10:8). God prepared a body for Christ (Hebrews 10:5); he came to do God’s will (Hebrews 10:9). It is by God’s will that we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:10). The Atonement is our redemption!

Christ died once, never to lay down his life again. He died for all, the sin of the whole world. His death cannot be repeated. It does not need to be maintained. It is commemorated, because of our Lord’s command to do so in remembrance of him (Luke 22:15-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). And the offerings upon the altar will extend into the Millennial Reign (Isaiah 60:7) and the Eternal Kingdom (Ezekiel 37:26-28) for that purpose.

God’s expectation for man, Jew and Gentile, begins with The Atonement: God would come to earth, in the flesh, and pay for our sin. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached on in the world, received up into glory (1 Timothy 3:16).

To be continued…