The Language of Forgiveness

¿Es difícil leer esta frase?  Как трудно читать это предложение?  Both of these sentences, first in Spanish and then in Russian, say “How hard is it to read this sentence?”  Kind of tough to figure out if you don’t speak the language, right?  But when you stop to think about it, the words used in church services to speak about faith-related issues form their own language.  When we use terms like “redemption, justification, and propitiation”, we might as well be saying, “Ukombozi, kuhesabiwa haki, na suluhu.” (Same thing, but in Swahili).

So how do we get across the truths of the Bible without having to teach listeners another language?  By using the pictures those words represent.  In fact, the Hebrew language (in which the Old Testament is primarily written) is actually a language of images. In Hebrew, the word for the lid placed on the Ark of the Covenant is כַּפֹּרֶת.  Unless you read Hebrew, seeing the word doesn’t do you much good, but the picture the word represents is “lid”.  Makes sense right?  But it can also be translated “cover” – as in a cover for something (it covers the ark).  Even more to the point, it can mean “to cover” in verb form.  That’s starting to sound like something that might have religious overtones.  And its ultimate interpretation is “mercy seat” which refers to its role as the place where the high priest of Israel sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice on the day of Atonement to “cover” the sins of the people.  Here’s the passage:

“Make a mercy seat of pure gold…Make two cherubim of gold…The cherubim are to have wings spread out above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and are to face one another…Set the mercy seat on top of the ark and…I will meet with you there above the mercy seat, between the two cherubim that are over the ark….”  (Exodus 25:17-22)

How does this all fit together?  The word translated “mercy seat” in both the Old and New Testaments is also translated in both to mean propitiation.  That’s a religious word that means when Jesus died, He satisfied the wrath of God toward us because of our sin.  Said another way, God will never take out His anger on us (who accept Jesus through faith as our substitute sacrifice) since Christ propitiated all that sin on the cross.  Confusing when we say it that way, right?

Here’s the picture God sent us:

One time each year, the high priest of Israel entered the holiest place in the temple and offered a sacrifice for the sin of the people.  The priest approached the golden box that held the stone tablets of the Law that showed everyone’s guilt before God.  (Go back and read the post, Raiders of the Lost Art, if you need a refresher on what’s inside the Ark.)  The high priest then took the blood from the sacrifice, and sprinkled it seven times on the lid, the mercy seat, of the Ark.  Then, symbolically, the glory of God would “meet” the people above the mercy seat, between the angels positioned there.  And as God looked down at the Ark, He no longer saw inside the sin and guilt of mankind, but instead saw the mercy seat covered by the sacrificial blood offered for sin.  The blood covered our sin.  See why it’s called the mercy seat?

What a perfect picture of God’s mercy and grace toward us!  While we are rightfully convicted of sin by the law, we are freed from the wrath of God and His judgment because we are covered by the blood of Christ.  By the time Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, the Ark had been lost to history.  So on the day He died, instead of the blood of an animal sacrifice dripping from the edge of a gold-covered Ark, the precious life-blood of the Lamb of God flowed down onto an axe-hewn cross.  For you.  And that doesn’t require any translation.

 感谢耶稣的血  - In Chinese it says, “Grateful for the blood of Jesus”

Jacob