Leviticus 3:1

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Without blemish." Lev 3:1

This qualification occurs again and again in the designation of sacrifices, and is therefore of supreme importance. This call for the ideally pure is itself an instrument of discipline. Where can we find that which is absolutely without blemish? Even where we cannot find the ideally perfect we are bound to look for it, for the very act of looking for it trains the attention to true criticism and the conscience to moral exactness. The sacrifice was not to be almost blameless; or as nearly perfect as possible; it was to be without blemish. God has always been calling for this description of sacrifice. Can we find it in ourselves? Experience emphatically says No. The more we know ourselves the more conscious we are of blemishes, not always visible, indeed, but not the less blemishes that they are invisible to public eyes, and sometimes almost invisible to ourselves. Let a man examine himself. All this inquiry for the ideally perfect points to a certain issue. Not until Jesus Christ himself appeared was it possible to secure a perfectly blameless sacrifice. He was without sin. He knew no sin. He was the just sacrificed for the unjust. Sometimes we have to wait long for the explanation of profoundly spiritual terms. An ideally perfect lamb of the flock or bullock of the herd was simply impossible, if only for the reason that the sentence of death was in every one of them. The blemished can never give birth to the unblemished. There is an hereditary taint in all living things; not, of course, a moral taint in all cases, not the less, however, a taint or a fault. The blemished offered for the blemished is a mere mockery of law and divine claim. The whole merit of the work of Christ turns upon his absolute pureness, according to Apostolic theology. There are times when we hardly see the full pith of such a doctrine or feel its necessity; there are other times in the soul's experience when we feel that the purity of Christ was the chief element of his sacrifice.

We must have a theology that covers all the moods and phases of spiritual experience; that grows with the day; that expands with the summer; and that fills even the winter with light and enriches the night with stars. We do not want a theology that is adapted to one set of circumstances only. That theology could be easily invented, and could be as easily perverted. We must have a theology so lofty as not to permit of the handiwork of man, and yet so genial and condescending as to elicit the confidence and the love of the poorest and weakest of mankind. Our judgment is not without blemish; our giving is not without blemish; our affections are not without blemish. Possibly there may be a line of selfish calculation running through all our most religious arrangements. The object of Christ's priesthood is to make the Church "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing a glorious Church." When we would consider what the Church is to be we must fix our attention upon the blamelessness of Christ. He is the pattern. He is the consummation.