And David said unto God . . . let thine hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be on me, and on my fathers’ house; but not on thy people, that they should be plagued.
1 Chronicles 21:17, the Bible (KJV)
We have already discussed why it is that in the Christian religion, it was incumbent upon Christ to offer Himself as the “sacrificial lamb” at Passover, rather than at the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). This is because in Christianity, Atonement is not so much a financial transaction, as it is a rescue or deliverance. The role of the Kinsman-Redeemer is in view here. We are Satan’s hostages and Christ has come to liberate us.
There is another component that is little understood, and that is the king as priest and sacrifice.
Sound theologians will tell us that God is not so interested in the sacrificial system. Obedience to the will of God is His preferred outcome: “For to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22).
While a priestly caste might financially benefit from a steady stream of sacrifices at a temple, the need for sacrifice indicates moral failure on the part of the people – in other words, a breakdown of the social order.
Much like the system of indulgences during the Middle Ages, the Temple system became, by the time of Christ, a mere money-making venture. Run by the Herodian Sadducees, they benefited from the Pharisaical imposition of an “oral law” upon the people, which in its changing demands for perfectionism, drove the people to madness: hence, Christ’s ministry of exorcism.
While the Levitical sacrifices did not take away the guilt of sin – and could never have done so according to the writer of the New Testament Book of Hebrews (10:4) – it was a penitential system which put a financial restraint upon sin. (It does cost money to purchase or raise a sacrificial animal; sinning too much could bankrupt the worshipper.)
The role of the priest is one to offer atonement; it is the role of the king to prevent the need of atonement by promoting obedience through the enforcement of the temporal sanctions of the law. That is why the king is portrayed as a shepherd because it is his use of the scepter and the staff which keeps the flock from the evil path.
[King James the First of England correctly identified the role of the king as a shepherd in his short treatise, “On the Divine Right of Kings”; it’s just that he based his authority upon property rights which implied autonomy. Samuel Rutherford spent 400 pages (Lex Rex) to argue that the king as God’s minister must be subject to God’s Law.]
The king must teach the people the Law and he must warn the people of its sanctions. A good king is far more valuable to God than a good priest, because the work of the priest comes after the offense has been committed and the harm has been done. It is the priest who must find a way to undo the evil, while the king prevents the evil from ever occurring in the first place.
However, if the people should follow the path of evil, or if the king himself should do so, then it is the king who needs atonement, and lacking one, must forfeit his life. The king is a surety for the people to God that the land will be filled with righteousness and not wickedness. If he fails, the land itself will spew out the people. They will become dispossessed.
[Side Note: Driving the peasants from the land into the cities which are demographic black holes is the beginning of this process of dispossession. Great cities are the signs that a civilization is in an advanced state of decline.]
Consequently, Christ’s atonement is that of king and sacrifice. That is why the Gospels carefully record Pilate’s epithet on the Cross: “This is the King of the Jews.” Jesus died as the righteous king rejected by the people, but who, nevertheless, must die in their stead to save them.
Following it, salvation is not for all, but only for those who become members of His household, who become His people: not as Jews in circumcision, but as Davidians in baptism.
His death and resurrection is the “gospel” (good news) of the kingdom because the king of the failed Israel has been raised to be a new king for a new Israel. You can become a member of His household by washing (footwashing) and eating (communion) in His house.
He is Risen!
— JWS, 3/31/24
Postscript (4/7/24): Because some of the European royal houses have not placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of Christ’s Atonement nor bent the knee to His sovereignty, it is alleged by some that they practice human sacrifice, even of their own kind, in homage to a Satanic being which they believe keeps them in power. This is Moloch religion which we should expect to become more desperate as the power of these royal houses decline. It cannot be known for certain if such insulated people are involved with what would be murder, but historically, blood magic is a real thing.
