God’s Word for You
Daniel 9:24 Part 3 to atone for guilt
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, December 23, 2025
24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophecy, and to anoint a most holy one.
The third gospel promise that Gabriel makes to Daniel is that Christ would come “to atone for guilt.” The threat God made in Eden was that the penalty for sin would be death. “When you eat of the tree you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). And although Satan lied to Eve about this very threat (“You will not surely die,” Genesis 3:4), death was certainly a part of Adam and Eve’s punishment. God declared, “For dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). But death alone is not the only punishment. The curse means that man is now sinful, and sinful man cannot inherit eternal life (Genesis 3:22); for sin is followed inevitably by punishment in hell (Matthew 5:29-30; Mark 9:43-47).
What is the answer to being damned? No human being can appeal or plead their case. There is no intermediate space between heaven and hell, either. And since the guilt of the whole human race is infinite, who could possibly pay the price for it all?
Man is as helpless as a filthy child covered in mud, slime, and manure from the pigsty. He is not fit to come into the house, let alone go into town or go to church. His mother will need to clean him off in the bathtub, scrubbing his nails and behind his ears and into every wrinkled corner of his filthy, stinking little body while his clothes tumble around in the washing machine. And like such a child, we need someone else to scrub us clean, for man isn’t capable of wiping one quarter-inch or millimeter of sin from his flesh, let alone getting his eyelids and between his toes and up inside his nose clean. We need the loving and thorough hand of Christ. And we need the robe of his righteousness to replace our garment of sin. And more than that, there no human soap or lye that could scrub away the guilt of our sin. Only the blood of the sacrifice can atone for what we have done and failed to do. Only the blood of Jesus himself will do.
And here we come to the remedy of the atonement. For in the days from Abel, and then to Moses, and then to Ezra, and up until Caiaphas, men slaughtered animals and put their blood on an altar to show sorrow for sin. And beginning with Aaron, the high priests entered into the Most Holy Place once every year in the autumn to take the blood of an animal slain with the sins of the nation on its head, and the priest would sprinkle that blood on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, the slab of gold with two cherubim depicted on it. This blood was offered every year (Hebrews 9:25). Who knows today whether they offered a goat during the years when there was no ark to offer it on? If I had been the high priest during those years, or his advisor, I would have still offered the ram, because the people would still have seen the scapegoat that was set apart with the goat of the sacrifice, and I still would have carried the blood behind the curtain and sprinkled it on the ground there. Or better yet, I would have prayed for God’s guidance and forgiveness and had a new one made. But perhaps I am too rash to say this. It is always easier to say what I would have done than to actually do it. But as I get older, my concern for the gospel and for the forgiveness of the people does not grow less. If anything, if possible, it grows more and more firm and urgent, both in my ministry with them and in my prayers for them.
The blood of Christ is infinitely more valuable than the blood of any goat, or of a thousand years’ worth of goats. Isn’t a single drop of the blood of the Son of God enough to atone for all of the sins of all mankind for all time? “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people” (Hebrews 9:26), and his sacrifice was “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). The atonement for man’s sin and guilt, as it was carried out by Christ, was necessary for the redemption of sinners.
God by his own authority is able to inflict the ultimate punishment. He is “the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Therefore it was always God, not Satan or anyone else, who actually held the human race captive on account of sin and his threat about sin, and to him, to God alone, the price for the captives could and ought to be paid, and had to be paid. And therefore it was to God alone, and not to the devil, or to sin, or to death (since the devil will be punished and sin and death will be destroyed) did Christ pay the price of redemption, his most precious blood, in our place.
His blood fell from his flesh through the air, sprinkled and spattered onto the altar of the cross, and the stones and shims that held it in place, and finally onto and into the dust of the earth on that Friday, the sixth day, on the anniversary of the day in which man had been created, and he suffered there both in the morning and into the afternoon, from the time of the morning sacrifice until the time of the evening sacrifice, remaining on the altar for all that terrible Friday, until the thing was done and his life was spent. The sacrifice was made, and mankind was saved.
And God saw that it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, when the Son of God rested in his grave for our sakes. And just as he rose, we, too, shall rise from death, and live with him forgiven forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.