The Christian Jewish RootsSýnishorn

The idea God had in mind for Israel to understand was that the sacrificial goat died, so they might live. The high priest emerges from the Holy of Holies, and for all of the following year, the people’s sins are covered and God’s blessings are released. He dips his hands back into that blood. He confesses the curses. “Father there are sicknesses in the land, marriages being destroyed, crops failing, animals dying, and wells drying up in this drought.” That is the curse of the sin. The sins are covered, but he doesn’t just have one sacrifice – he has two.

The sacrificial goat is dead, but what about the other goat?  This is the “scapegoat.” According to Jewish custom, this is the goat that carries our sins into the desert, never to be remembered. Often this goat would run off the cliff. If you were to go to Israel, you would see that there is a cliff right beyond the door through which the goat would run. If the goat died the curse would be broken.

If it survived, it would usually run into the desert. If the goat died in the wilderness the curses were broken. There is no water in the desert through Jordan to the Red Sea, so the goat would try to get back to the place where it last ate and drank.  If the goat managed to come back, the sins of the people remained forgiven, but the curse would remain to block God’s blessings.

Jewish tradition states that Aaron would tie a red ribbon around the neck of the scapegoat and then attach a portion of the same ribbon to the door of the temple.  Every day, they would wait to hear if the goat was dead. If the Jews had repented, and the goat had died in the  wilderness, the ribbon on the temple door would miraculously turn white – a visible sign for the people of God’s forgiveness.

In the Mishna – the book of Jewish wisdom – it is said that sometimes it would turn white and sometimes it would not. Sometimes the curse was broken, and sometimes it was not.  The Mishna also states that for 40 years before the destruction of the temple the ribbon stopped turning white. Since the temple was destroyed around A.D 70 the ribbon would have stopped turning white around A.D 30, or the exact time that Jesus died on the cross becoming our Passover Lamb and breaking the curse off everyone forever and ever.

What did the Jewish nation do in 30 CE to merit such a change at Yom Kippur? By some accounts, on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, the day of the Passover Sacrifice, in the year 30 CE, the Messiah, Yeshua or Jesus was cut off from Israel, and He was crucified as a sacrifice for sin, according to the prophecy of Isaiah chaps. 52 and 53.

To this specific event there is a transference of the atonement now no longer achieved through the two goats as offered at Yom Kippur. Like an innocent Passover Lamb, the Messiah was put to death although no fault was found in Him! “…For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” [1 Cor.5: 7]

But unlike Temple sacrifices or the Yom Kippur events [as mentioned above] where sin is only covered over for a time, the Messianic Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross at Calvary comes with the promise of forgiveness of sins through grace given by God to all those who accept a personal relationship with The Messiah – Jesus Christ. This is essentially a onetime event for each person’s lifetime and not a continual series of annual observances and animal sacrifices. Thus the mechanism providing forgiveness of sin changed in 30 CE forever!