Note: With Lent coming up soon, I decided to post a sermon that I gave to some lay pastors. It covers points found in some previous devotions, but communicates them differently.
Opening:
Text: Romans 5:6-8.
First, let me offer a disclaimer about my false
advertising. I could never cover the
full meaning of the statement, “Jesus died for us.” What I want to do is address one model of
understanding that statement that is popular, but, I believe is non-biblical;
and then I want to point us in the right direction for understanding the
language about his death.
I have always warned ALPS students that I am a teacher and
not a preacher, so this time will be no different. But, I think it is OK, because thinking more
deeply about Jesus is also worshipful and encouraging.
I have a difficult topic tonight, but one that is important
to me. I help my wife teach a 1st-2nd
grade SS class. (She is the
expert.) It caught my attention that a
couple of the children would say that Jesus died for their sins, when they had
no clue what that meant. I got to
thinking about how many adults also probably could not give a good explanation.
As an OT scholar, I try to look at the words of Jesus or of
someone like Paul from a Jewish perspective.
I am always pursuing the issue of what the text meant to the original
audiences. But, as I finite and fallible
person, my conclusions may be wrong. So,
please, bear with me, think about it, and particularly seek God about it.
Prayer: “O God, you are aware of my foolish sins; my guilt
is not hidden from you. Let none who
rely on you be disgraced because of me, O sovereign LORD and king! Let none who seek you be ashamed because of
me, O God of Israel! (Ps. 69:5-6, NET)
Overview
I have been thinking about how people look at the atoning
work of Jesus. Some of the early Church
Fathers drew on concepts from their culture.
Anselm in 11th century drew on his model of the feudal system to explain
that Jesus was a substitute for us to restore to God the honor he
deserves. In the 16th cent.
Martin Luther viewed Jesus as a substitute who bore our punishment for failure
under the Law; and, John Calvin, a lawyer, further defined the atonement in
terms of criminal law; Jesus bore our criminal penalties. These models seem to me to be straying from
what a 1st century Jewish Christian would have thought.
I want to make two main points. The first is that the contemporary Church,
particularly on a pop-level, focuses too much on the death of Jesus to the
exclusion of the broader range of the whole work and ministry of Christ. The second is that to better understand the
meaning of the statement, “Jesus died for my sins,” we need to try to
understand what a good Jew like Paul would have thought.
Focusing on Death to the Exclusion of Jesus' Full Ministry
The first point is simple.
There is too much of a focus on the death of Jesus to the exclusion of his
whole work. Obviously, we talk about the
resurrection, because without it Jesus’ death would be meaningless. I am not minimizing that. I am expanding. There is more. Scripture tells us that through Jesus, the
Word of God, all things were created. But,
there is more. Jesus emptied himself of
his divine status, humbled himself, became incarnate and dwelt among us – the
Light of the World in our midst. But,
there is more. Jesus pronounced and
taught about the newly inaugurated era of the Kingdom of God, in which you and
I now participate. God’s rule had begun
in a new way. And, Jesus performed signs
and wonders that demonstrated that God’s Kingdom was indeed here in his
person. But, there is more. He showed himself to be the perfect Adam, the
perfect Israel, the perfect offering a new covenant, the perfect sin offering,
and the perfect High Priest. But, there
is more. His death was followed by the
first fruits of the Resurrection, which proved his words, and which
demonstrated his victory over death, sin, and Satan. But, there is more. Jesus dwells in believers through the Person
of the Holy Spirit, and we dwell in Him as members of His Body. But, there is more. Jesus, in his humanity, having been tested
and tempted in all ways, identifies with us in our weaknesses and at this very
moment and intercedes for you and me before the throne of God. His goal is that you and I might be made
perfect in him and so be prepared for his Second Coming.
A whole year’s worth of sermons could be preached on each of
these points and this is a partial list.
So, I’m sure you get the point: the whole work and ministry of Jesus
must be proclaimed to your congregations.
Better Understanding of “Jesus Died for My Sins”
The second point is to address the statement, “Jesus died
for my sins.” Again, we need to look view
this wholistically. Through the combined
work of Jesus incarnation, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection,
etc. Jesus receives a wide variety of titles that use the figurative language of
the OT to capture who he is. Jesus is
savior, redeemer, one who pays a ransom, one who pronounces forgiveness, the
seat of atonement, a sin offering, Passover lamb, perfect sacrifice, high
priest, the new Man, the victor over death, victor over this world, victor over
Satan and the principalities, etc.
One issue that I repeatedly find in NT studies is that
people tend to group most of those titles under the category of “atonement,”
but atonement is used in a narrower sense in the OT. The second issue is after having called most
of that “atonement” some people try to settle on the mechanism of atonement in
a very narrow way, and one that I do not find to be biblical.
Penal Substitution
I want to address this model: Jesus is the penal substitute
for my sins. As I mentioned, this model,
which has some antecedents that go back to Anselm, was mainly promoted by some
leaders in the Reformation. They held a
legal notion of atonement that is foreign to the Temple language of
atonement. For them, God is a Judge, for
whom every infraction against his holiness demands a legal penalty, which,
because God is so holy, is the legal penalty of death. In this view, our sins demanded our deaths; they
were transferred over to the Son of God; and then God executed justice on Jesus
by killing him. As a result, this model
holds, we can have a right relationship with God. I understand that this model is supposed to
show the grace of God: God is both the executioner and the victim. However, as a scholar who reads the NT
through the lens of the OT, my point that is that the NT writers, and
particularly Paul, would not have thought about atonement in terms of penal
substitution.
Covenant Language Vs. Atonement Language
The first point is that in the OT there is a difference
between the language of God offering a covenant relationship and God providing
a means of atonement for sin. We must
not overlook the language of covenant.
We need to separate the two. When
God offers a relationship to Abraham, God does not first cleanse him of
sin. There is no judicial punishment for
his sinfulness. God meets Abraham on his
level and offers relationship. It is all
about grace. God “cuts a covenant” with
him. In Gen. 15, the sacrificial animals
are cut in half and placed opposite each other; and God, represented by a
smoking fire-pot, passing through the bloody pieces to seal his covenant with
Abraham. Jesus, in the Eucharist refers
to his blood as the blood of a new covenant.
This is not
atonement language. Then to keep his
promises to Abraham, God later saves/rescues/ransoms/delivers Abraham’s descendants from slavery in Egypt. This is not
atonement language. Then, later God
offers a covenant relationship to the rescued Hebrew slaves without any
punishment of sin, or sacrifices, or cleansing.
God lowers himself to their level to offer a relationship with him
without precondition. It is all about
grace.
This is important: What then made Abraham righteous in God’s
sight? It was not some substitutionary
sacrifice. We are told clearly in Gen.
15:6 that when Abraham believed God – or better, entrusted himself to God, God
counted that as righteousness. This
becomes a key point in Paul’s argument about how the Gentiles, the nations, are
included. In Romans 3 and Galatians 3,
Paul argues that those who are of the faith of Abraham, who entrust themselves
to the God who raised Jesus from the dead, are children of Abraham, recipients
of the promises. The main point to
remember is that God’s offer of relationship is purely by grace and not based
on first punishing sins or cleansing someone.
Atonement Language
The second point is that atonement language follows covenant
language. Atonement language deals with
our failure to be faithful to our relationship with God. It is about restoring our covenant
relationship with God when it is damage by our sin. The atonement language of the Temple system
was symbolic. Sin is real, but it is not
tangible. Sin breaks our rapport with
God, but again, it is not material. The
symbol system of the Temple was heuristic, educational; it graphically
demonstrated the reality of sin. The
Temple represented God dwelling in the midst of his people, but God did not
literally dwell there. Sin symbolically
polluted God’s dwelling place and threatened their relationship with God. So, that pollution, or rot, symbolically had
to be cleansed, and that was done through blood because it is the strongest
tangible symbol of life. Blood cleanses
pollution. The person providing the
animal did so as a gesture of wanting to be forgiven and restored. However, the killing of the animal is not the
main part. The main part was that first the
sinner through public confession repented, having a heart-felt desire for a
restored relationship with God. Such repentance
was greeted with God’s forgiveness, an act of grace. Still, the Temple had to be cleansed from the
pollution of sin to symbolize restored access by the individual or community to
the Presence of God. That is where the
blood of the sacrifice comes in. The
animal was not a substitute being punished by death for the sinner. Rather the pure, lifeblood of an unblemished
animal provided the “cleansing agent” that was manipulated on the altar to
cleanse away the pollution symbolically.
The whole process of forgiveness and a ritual offering communicated
publicly and symbolically God’s mercy and grace.
Let me give an example of another important ritual, that of
the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement, a ritual which is mistakenly taken as a ritual
of penal substitution. Apparently, the
Israelites borrowed this ritual from someone like the Hittites and changed
it. The Hittites believed that a person
could magically transfer the sins of a person onto a goat, drive that goat into
the desert, and fool the offended god or goddess who went chasing after that
goat. But, the Israelites did not
believe that. They did not believe that
sins were somehow material and could be transferred by magic onto another
person. God is against such notions of magic. God cannot not be fooled like demonic “gods.” The Israelites adopted this ritual
symbolically but adapted it to communicate the grace of God. Again, repentance expressed by fasting and
communal confession of sin was main part of the Day of Atonement. Driving the scapegoat into the wilderness
symbolized the removal of those sins to the realm where they belong, a place of
chaos and death. And, application of
blood to the cover of the Ark of the Covenant (the mercy seat) symbolized the
cleansing of the impediment of pollution between God and the people.
In this sermon/teaching, I cannot go into all of the NT
passages that speak about the death of Jesus and show how they are based on OT
language and concepts, but I want to emphasize the symbolic nature of the
language. I am not minimizing sin. Sin is real.
Sin has consequences. But, God
does not literally forget sins. God does
not literally move our sins as far as the east is from the west. God does not literally cast our sins into the
sea. God does not literally cover over
our sins. God does not literally blot
our sins out of the ledger. God does not
literally wash away sins. God is not fooled
by a goat carrying sins away into the wilderness. This language was meant to help people
realize the reality and seriousness of sin, and, most of all, to illustrate the
unfathomable grace of God.
In Isaiah 43, God is mad at Israel for not understanding
this, and God say, “I, I myself, am he who blots out your transgressions, for
my own sake; your sins I do not remember.” (Isa. 43:25 Duke). God forgives for God’s sake; God’s character
is merciful and graceful.
But, again, sin is seriously burdensome. The main term in the OT that gets translated
by the verb “forgive” is nasa. It
means to lift, to bear. Our sins weigh
us down and God lifts them; God bears them.
When Peter states in 1 Pet. 2:24 that Jesus bore our sins on the cross,
he is not thinking some kind of magical manipulation of sins for penal
substitution. He is using good OT
language. [This also takes us into language
that is borrowed from the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. That is another concept. Israel could see how the generation of those
who suffered the Babylonian Exile bore the sins and punishment of many
generations. Paul picks up on that
language as well in 1 Cor. 15:3-4 and Rom. 5.
But, I can cover the main concept but not every text.
I want to come back to some atonement language in the NT and
point out how rich the language is that Paul borrows from the Temple system. For instance, in Rom. 3: 25, Paul calls Jesus
the hilastarion. Some translators
have “expiation” or “propitiation,” but I am convinced that Paul knew the
Jewish sacrificial system. He is
thinking of the Day of Atonement. The hilastarion
in the Greek version of the OT was the lid of the ark of the covenant, call the
mercy seat. It was the closest point
symbolically connecting God to God’s people.
It was where the lifeblood of the sin offering was applied on the Day of
Atonement to rid the pollution of the Israelites’ deliberate sin. Paul is calling that hilastarion (mercy
seat) Jesus. However, later in Rom 8:3,
Paul shifts his metaphorical language and refers to Jesus as the sin offering (hamartia)
itself that provided the cleansing blood that was put on the mercy seat on the
Day of Atonement. [Depending on the
context, hamartia can be translated generically as “sin” in many places,
but in sacrificial contexts it was also the technical term for the “sin
offering,” which is clearly what Paul means here.] To blend language from John and Paul: Jesus,
who is the Life, both provides the perfect, pure, cleansing lifeblood of the
sin offering and is the point of mediation between God and humanity, the mercy
seat. That is wonderful language of
grace.
Summary
Let me summarize the main points. The first simple point is that we need to
preach the fullness of the work and ministry of Jesus, the fullness of his
identity and roles. Second, when we
distinguish between the language of covenant relationship and that of
atonement, we see the biblical model that God offers relationship with himself
as pure grace. He does not cleanse the
person first. There is no judicial
punishment. God, in humility condescends
to offer himself in communion with us.
When people entrust themselves to God in that relationship, that is
considered “righteousness.” Third, when
we do talk about the NT atonement language borrowed from the OT, we must be careful
and ask what it meant to a Jew of that time.
When many people outside of the Church hear a pop-cultural, Christian
model that everyone’s sins have been transferred to Jesus, who was then
executed to exact the price of justice, they do not hear the Good News. They do not hear a God full of grace. The bottom line of what I am saying is that the
language of the NT that draws on the sacrificial system in the OT was meant to
communicate God’s grace and mercy in Jesus.
It is grace from the beginning to the end.
