The Scapegoat

(From a series of devotionals I'm doing where I work)

"...Aaron shall lay both is hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel.... The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself into a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness." -Leviticus 16:21, 22

"Most merciful God, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and hast promised forgiveness to all those who confess and forsake their sins; we come before thee in a humble sense of our unworthiness, acknowledging our manifold transgressions of thy righteous laws." -Book of Common Prayer

After the First World War, Germany was a defeated country, humiliated by the allies, and suffering economically from inflation and the loss of men for the labor force. The nation began to look for someone other than itself to blame. Hitler played into this need by pointing to the Jews as the source of all the ills Germany had experienced. This blaming of an innocent party for perceived wrongs is called "scapegoating." A scapegoat is someone who is made to bear the blame for the actions of others.

The term actually goes back to an Old Testament ritual practiced on the Day of Atonement. The High Priest took two goats, one which was sacrificed, and its blood taken into the Temple to cover the sins of the people; the other symbolically took the sins of Israel upon itself and was taken into the wilderness and released. The first goat was a "propitiation." It took upon itself the penalty for sin (death), and as its blood was placed over the ark, the wrath of God was appeased. The second goat was an "expiation," a term that meant to take sin away out of the presence of God.

The Bible describes Jesus as our scapegoat. Jesus takes away our sins "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12), an infinite distance. That means that through Him nothing can hinder us from the presence of God, and we "can come boldly before the throne of grace" (Hebrews 10:19). God, according to Isaiah, puts all our sins "behind His back" (38:17), and promises to not even remember them anymore (Isaiah 43:25).

But in spite of these promises, Christians lapse into regarding their relationship to God by their own performance, and often live under the shadow of a haunting guilt or fear that God is not fully reconciled to them. I ask myself a question when I am in those moods: Just how valuable is the blood of Christ to God the Father? The only answer is: "of infinite worth." That means that God does not reluctantly forgive us, but does so joyously, with a determination to bring us into deeper and deeper communication with Himself.

One last thought. How did the Jews know that God accepted the blood of the propitiation and the life of the expiation? Because the High Priest came out the Temple alive at the end of the ceremony! How do we know God accepted the sacrifice of Christ for us? Because He came out of the tomb alive! The resurrection was God's way of validating the completed sacrifice.