This statement by bro. John has always bothered me. Both bre. Stone and Hensley are as familiar with the section in the Law of Moses on the burnt offering as anyone. To act like bro. Ellis Higham is introducing foreign thought into the discussion, saying they thought everyone agreed that the Burnt Offering represented complete dedication, strikes me as less than sincere. To disagree is one thing. To knowingly alter facts is quite another.

Bro. Roberts wrote: "The diversity of offerings is a little perplexing at first; and it is some time before we discover the difference between them. They all seem indiscriminately sacrifices-animals to be slain and consumed in the fire of the altar. By and by, we naturally ask, what are burnt offerings as distinguished from sin offerings and trespass offerings? and why should there be a trespass offering in addition to a sin offering, seeing that trespass is sin? The light gradually dawns. We find they represent gradations of the same subject. All were for atonement, [NOTE: Burnt offering was for atonement] but atonement for different degrees of sin, as we might express it. There was a form of sin for which there was no atonement. " The soul that doeth aught presumptuously'... reproacheth the Lord: that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off: his iniquity shall be upon him" (that is, shall not be purged by sacrifice) (Num. 15: 30-31). But this was not a common case. The common case was sin not of presumption: sin of natural state, [NOTE: this is sin-nature] sin of ignorance, and sin of weakness: the first, the constitutional uncleanness that has come into the World by sin, which is "no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. 7: 20): the second, where men do wrong without knowing it as in "sin of ignorance": and third, acts of known disobedience but not deliberate or intentional but the result of infirmity deplored. For these three phases of sin, the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering appear to have been provided, differing in methods and accessories according to the respective cases.

"1. THE BURNT OFFERING--The burnt offering was burnt wholly on the altar (Lev. 1: 89). It was left to smoulder all night into ashes, and the ashes were removed in the morning. It was called the burnt offering "because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning " (6: 9). It was an act of worship on the part of a mortal being, apart from guilt of specific offence. Thus Noah, saved from destruction by the flood, "took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar" (Gen. 8: 20). Thus also the test of Abraham's faith was to offer Isaac "for burnt offering" (Gen. 22: 2). That burnt offering should be required in the absence of particular offence shows that our unclean state as the death-doomed children of Adam itself unfits us for approach to the Deity apart from the recognition and acknowledgment of which the burnt offering was the form required and supplied. It was "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel ", as well as "because of their transgressions in all their sins", that atonement was required for even the tabernacle of the congregation (Lev. 16 : 16).

"The type involved in complete burning is self-manifest: it is consumption of sin-nature. This is the great promise and prophecy and requirement of every form of the truth: the destruction of the body of sin (Rom. 6: 6). It was destroyed in Christ's crucifixion -the "one great offering"; we ceremonially share it in our baptism: "crucified with Christ", "baptized unto his death". We morally participate in it in putting the old man to death in "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts": and the hope before us is the prospect of becoming subject to such a physical change as will consume mortal nature and change it into the glorious nature of the Spirit. "We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!"

"The whole process of consumption is the work of the Spirit, whether we consider the sending forth of Christ to condemn sin in the flesh, or our association with his death in baptism or our repudiation of the old man as the rule of life, or our change at the judgment seat into the incorruptible and glorious nature of the Son of God. When the work is finished, flesh and blood, with all its weakness and its woe, will have ceased from the earth, and given place to a glad and holy race of men immortal and "equal to the angels". It was a beautiful requirement of the wisdom of God in the beginning of things that He should require an act of worship that typified the repudiation of sinful nature as the basis of divine fellowship and acceptability. Those who deny Christ's participation thereof, deny its removal by sacrifice, and therefore deny the fundamental testimony of the gospel, that he is "the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world". They think they honour him by saying his flesh-nature was a clean nature. In reality, they deny his qualification for the work he was sent to do. They mistake holiness of character for holiness of nature, and by a wrong use of truth, destroy."

From the above, we can see that the pioneer position was that the burnt offering represented the consumption of sin's flesh. The key to which view is correct lies in the fact that the burnt offering was for atonement. LEV 1:4 And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Atonement for what? If it was to show total dedication, as suggested by bre. Stone and Hensley and other Central writers, there would be no mention of atonement. The fact that it is for atonement, in the absence of any specified sin; shows that it is not for dedication, but for the natural condition or constitution of man, which is the constitution (body) of sin.