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. 16:16Lev. 16:16 Leviticus 16: 16 And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.).
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 (Romans 6:6Romans 6:6 6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.). 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”. 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. 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.
The removal of the ashes in the morning out of the camp, has an evident allusion to the change effected in the dawn of the perfect day, when the unconsumed remnants of sin’s flesh—that is, the men who are not changed by the Spirit, or consumed by the altar fire—will be “put away like dross”. The body of the burnt offering as the type of Christ might not seem to leave room for the idea of “ashes” if we think only of Christ personal but when we extend our view to the whole race as federally involved in him, we can see how the treatment of the body of the burnt offering would typify the purpose of God with regard to the race, and therefore leave a place for the ashes to be removed in the morning.
Taken from The Law of Moses (Robert Roberts) p. 238-239.