“He himself bore our sins in his body.”

To subjectively benefit from the work of the high priest in the scapegoat ritual on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:20-22), the individual Israelite had to exercise both penitence and faith. Penitence is a sincere and humble acknowledgment of one’s sins. Faith, in this instance, is believing God’s testimony that his sins were transferred to the goat and that the guilt of them no longer hung over his head.

Of course, the scapegoat could not itself carry away the sins of the people. It was only symbolic of the true scapegoat to come, Jesus Christ. Today we see the reality of the symbol. We see Jesus as the one who not only propitiated the wrath of God, symbolized by the sacrifice of the first goat, but who also removed our sins from God’s presence, symbolized by the second goat led away into the desert, bearing the sins of the people.

Those same two attitudes, penitence and faith, are necessary for all of us today who rely on Christ for salvation. We must acknowledge ourselves as sinners before a holy God. We must, so to speak, lay our hands on Christ’s head and confess over him all our transgression and rebellion. We acknowledge ourselves as sinners before a holy God, and we face up to particular sins we’re aware of.

This heartfelt penitence and faith should characterize our lives throughout every day. We not only come to God through faith in Christ as both our propitiation and our scapegoat, we must live in his presence every day on the same basis. We must believe that just as the Old Testament scapegoat symbolically carried away the sins of the Jews from the presence of God, so Jesus actually carried away our sins.