Tonight at sunset, the Feast of Yom Kippur begins.

What is Yom Kippur?
Yom: day of
Kippur: atonement

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the sacrificial lamb was to be sacrificed for the sins of the people.

What does that mean? What IS atonement?

ATONEMENT: A STORY

In prison today, there’s a man on death row. As the day of death draws nearer this man reviews his life and finally realizes that he’s done a lot of evil. He has a change of heart. He determines to do whatever good he can with the time he has left. He was a wealthy man, so he tells his lawyer to sell all he has and give it to the poor and to charities. And he starts being “good” while in prison, doing kind things to all the other prisoners.

Now the question:
Will his good works remove from him the sentence of death?

Answer: No.
No matter what good this man does, he’s a condemned man and no amount of good works is going to reverse the death sentence. It doesn’t make his good works any less good. They’re wonderful, in fact. But the bottom line is that he’s under the sentence of death and nothing can reverse that.

However ..…

Another man comes along…

This one is an impeccably good man, never having done evil, ever, and he has compassion on the death-row inmate. Well, this good man feels so led of God in his heart, that he goes to the highest judge and offers to take upon himself the death sentence of that man, IN HIS PLACE. In this story, the particular judge is deeply moved, and allows the good man to take the death sentence of the criminal – IN HIS PLACE.

The good man, totally innocent, takes the death penalty and is executed in the place of the criminal.

The sentence having been paid, the criminal man is set free, as free as though he had never committed any crime, because the death sentence has been carried out FOR him.

This is atonement.

He paid a debt He did not owe,
I owed a debt I could not pay,
Christ Jesus paid the debt
That I could never pay.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned, every one, to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53: 6

For He made Him who knew no sin
to be sin for us,
that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him.
2nd Corinthians 5:21

But the story doesn’t end there.

It goes on …the good man turns out to be the son of a King. And facing death for the criminal, he had to make arrangements to have his estate settled. Guess to whom he left his inheritance.

Yes, to the pardoned man, the man he gave his life to redeem. And the King, knowing how his son had loved this man so much that he died for him, the King therefore received the freed man as his own son!

He shall see the travail of His soul, and be satisfied.
By his knowledge my righteous Servant
SHALL JUSTIFY MANY
FOR HE SHALL BEAR THEIR INIQUITIES.
Isaiah 53:11

For Christ also suffered once for sins,
THE JUST FOR THE UNJUST,
that He might bring us to God…
1st Peter 3:18

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the man to whom
the Lord shall not impute sin.’
Romans 4:7-8

But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. Much more then,
having now been justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
Romans 5:8-9