The Jubilee Is a Type of the Gospel
Priest blowing the shofar. Image by Alphonse Lévy.
Today's Devotional
Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of Jubilee to sound, on the tenth day of the seventh month… And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: It shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family… Leviticus 35:9-11.
The jubilee was a type [an Old Testament symbol of Christ’s coming work] and prefigured:
The jubilee of grace. This finds us deeply in arrears to the divine justice, and fully and freely remits all our debt. It reverses our state of spiritual bondage, restoring us to the rights and blessings of freedom. And it invests us with a new title to our forfeited inheritance, opening to us the kingdom of heaven (Acts 10:3, Romans 6:14, John 8:36, Ephesians 1:12).
The jubilee of glory. The jubilee of grace is the jubilee of the Church militant on earth; and the jubilee of glory is the jubilee of the Church triumphant above.
Now, the Christian jubilee, even in time, may well be understood as bringing great and delightful enjoyments; but still, obstacles will impede; inconveniences will annoy; so that the perfect jubilee can only be expected in eternity.
About the author and the source
William Sleigh created over three hundred outlines of Scripture to aid Christian workers who voluntarily ministered in villages but who did not have the time for deep study because of their weekday work. On this thirty-second day of the year, we present excerpts from his thirty-second study.
William Sleigh. Aids to Reflection Contained in Three Hundred and Thirteen Outlines of Thought on Select Portions of Scripture in a Regular Series from Genesis to Revelation. London, 1843.