The holy of holies is the throne room for the Lord. There is only one piece of furniture in this room: the ark of the covenant. Exodus 25:17-22 describes the cover for the ark:
"Make an atonement cover of pure gold - two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law that I will give you. There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites."
As we've noted in the post, "Slip Past the Cherubim," the cherubim remind us of Eden. Cherubim guarding the holy of holies reminds the priest that God will one day open Eden again. The furniture is also a picture of the whole cosmos. (A House for My Name, 83) The ark is God's footstool. It corresponds to the earth. The cherubim throne is heaven. The cover is the firmament, the "vault" or "sky" of Genesis 1:8, stretching over the earth.
This covering already seems to take on more weight than being merely the cap for the ark of the covenant. Once a year, God did away with all Israel's sins on the Day of Atonement, or the Day of Coverings. The atonement cover plays a significant role in the events of this day. Aaron is to slaughter a bull to make atonement for himself and his own family. He sprinkles the blood on the atonement cover. He then slaughters a goat, sprinkling its blood on the atonement cover as well. It is an atonement made for the Most Holy Place itself, a type of reinvestiture, but it is also an atonement for "himself, his household, and the whole community of Israel." (Lev. 16:17) The priest dies and rises. The whole community dies and rises. It is judgment day. It is also resurrection day.
God shows that he is not lenient on the Day of Atonement. Throughout the centuries with Israel, he is accused of being lenient. Habakkuk complains: "Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?" (Habakkuk 1:3) Paul mentions the Lord's "forbearance" in which he had left sins unpunished. (Rom. 3:25) Peter Leithart writes:
"Some crimes make the land unclean (Deuteronomy 21:1-9), and the defiled land cries out for the death of the criminal, as Abel's blood cries out against Cain (Genesis 4:10). So also, the defiled altar, which is made of earth, cries out for the death of the sinner and has to be sprinkled with blood." (A House for My Name, 91)
There are impurities that can only be dealt with on the Day of Atonement, when they are brought all the way into God's presence, all the way into his throne room. This is where God shows that he is just. And this is quite hidden. Only the high priest gets to see it. And even he is instructed to light up such a cloud of incense that he can't see the atonement cover, lest he die. (Lev. 16:13)
We don't see what is truly going on here until Jesus dies on the cross. Paul describes Jesus' cross as a "sacrifice of atonement" in Romans 3:25. Paul seems to be describing the place of atonement, the atonement cover. Jesus is the covering where the blood is sprinkled and displayed before the Lord's throne and atones for the "whole community." The death of the goat on all those Days of Atonement was only prefiguring the ultimate Day of Atonement when all of Israel's sins are dragged out and placed upon Jesus.
This does not mean God is mad at Jesus. God is in Jesus bearing this sin. In fact, God has been bearing Israel's sin all along. In Exodus 34, God says: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." (Ex. 34:6-7) The word expressed here as 'forgiving' can also be rendered 'lifting', 'carrying,' 'taking,' or 'bearing.' In many sin offerings, priests would bear the guilt of the people. But let's face it: as Habakkuk knew very well, sin remained. On the Day of Atonement, the sanctuary itself bore the guilt. God bears sin, and has been bearing it all along. On the Day of Atonement, God atones. On judgment day, God is judged.
In the last post I mentioned that from one perspective, the story of Jesus is a story of a criminal who is tried and executed. But what Paul is saying in 3:25 is that a cross on Golgotha is the new place of atonement. It is the new holy of holies. The change of geography signifies everything. The temple was a picture of the whole world: the Lord in his throne room, the priests in the holy place, Israel in the courtyards, and outside, all the mass of fleshly humanity - the Gentile nations. The cross completes God's journey out of his house. He stepped out from the holy of holies, walked amongst humanity in the flesh, and re-established his temple and his new most holy place outside the walls of the temple. Leithart calls this a "seismic shift." The sanctuary is now inside out. Not only all of Israel's sin, but all the world's sins are dragged out and placed on Jesus on this day of Atonement.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, the author writes that it used to be that the high priest would bring the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place, and would reserve their unclean carcasses for someplace outside the camp. (Hebrews 13:11-12). Now that the world's atonement has been made in the unclean nether-regions, what use is there for a holy of holies anymore? What was so holy that Aaron couldn't even look at it is now completely public, on a cross at Golgotha, before the eyes of Jew and Gentile alike. The dividing walls are down. What use is there left for priest, temple veil, and all the rituals? In Jesus, justice is achieved in the form of a new community of Jews and Gentiles, a new humanity who come charging into Eden. As Leithart puts it, "what has been whispered in secret has been shouted from the hilltop of Calvary." (Delivered, 201)
If the hidden atonement deep within the sanctuary was for the "whole community of Israel," how much more is the public atonement of Christ at the inside-out sanctuary - a cross "outside the city gate" - for the whole world?
We mentioned at the start that the most holy place has one piece of furniture: an ark at the base with cherubim up above, and in the middle, the atonement cover. We also mentioned that this is a picture of the cosmos, with the cherubim representing the heavens above, the ark representing the earth beneath, and the atonement cover representing the "sky" wrapped around the earth. Since Jesus is the true atonement cover, Jesus is the true firmament stretching over the earth, "the one mediator between heaven and earth." (Delivered, 340) Jesus' work has a universal scope and a cosmic significance. Nothing is the same.
In Romans 3:21-26, Paul writes:
"But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in (or, 'through the faithfulness of') Jesus to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood - to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
Ultimately, we see here that Jesus establishes justice, and that it is a good thing. Flesh has been forbidden from Eden under the punishment of death. Now a death has happened, and Eden is here. Jesus, the representative of Israel and also of the world, becomes the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement, and enters into Eden on our behalf. Eden is with him. Justice is with him. He is the breaker of curses, who founds a new community beyond the scope of sinful flesh and death. He is just and the new community he forms is itself justice.
If I think only individually about my own sin, justice is a bad thing, and I want God to either dismiss it or take all the costs of it. But if I think about justice the way Habakkuk did, as something to yearn for, then we can see the way Jesus' ministry perfectly sums up the Day of Atonement. God showed he was just and he dealt with sin there once and for all for the whole people. And so it is with Jesus and the sin of the whole world. It was all exposed and punished. But Jesus also sums up the veiled secret of the Day of Atonement and it's been hard to keep it quiet ever since:
God bears the sin. All of it.
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