WHAT DOES “JESUS DIED FOR US” MEAN?

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 1^st-2^nd 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 16^th 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 1^st 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.

THE TANGIBILITY OF “SIN” (chata)

What does the word “sin” mean?  There are four main word roots in Hebrew (OT) for the basic semantic range and others in Greek (NT) that each express different nuances.  However, in English, we basically use two words, “sin” and “guilt.”  What might we be missing?

Warning: This is a technical “devotional” about the main Hebrew word root for “sin” (ḥṭʾ) and probably not for anyone feeling brain weary.  However, I have found the exploration of “sin” important for me, so I will share what I have learned.  (The brain-weary may skip to “Conclusion.”)

Technical Stuff
Problem: The main Hebrew (OT) verb translated in English as “to sin” is ḥāṭāʾ (pronounced chata).  There is a problem understanding and translating this word.  Hebrew has root words with three letters that have a basic (etymological) meaning.  For example, the letters lmd employed as a basic-stem verb has the nuance of “to come to an apprehension or become familiar.”  It is often translated, “to learn.”  When the root is modified for the “doubled stem,” it makes an intransitive verb (no object) factitive with an object.  Therefore, lmd becomes lmmd and now means “to make apprehension to someone,” or better “to teach.”

Here is the problem with ḥāṭāʾ.  Its basic-stem meaning as a verb is “to miss hitting/reaching the desired end, the goal.”  It can literally mean that someone misses one’s target.  However, it is mainly used figuratively for human personal failure in terms of some kind of life standard, whether it be legal, communal, covenantal (with God), or just according to the standard of God’s holiness.  Most contextual uses make sense in terms of a failure to meet an end goal (whether intentional or unintentional).  The problem arises when it is a doubled-stem verb ḥiṭṭēʾ (pronounced chittā).  In its figurative use, it appears to mean “to cleanse from sin” (e.g. Exod 29:36).  Moreover, the noun that is formed from the doubled-stem verb ḥaṭṭāʾt (pronounced chattat) is the main technical term for the “sin-purification offering” (Lev 4:26).  On the surface that conversion of meaning from “to miss the goal” (basic stem) to “cleanse from sin” (doubled stem) does not make sense.  One would expect a meaning like “to make missing the goal to someone.”  What is happening?
Note: Since in the NT, Paul, using a Greek equivalent term, calls Jesus the sin-purification offering (Rom 8:23; 2Cor 5:21), the concept behind the word is important to grasp.

Solution: (This is where it gets interesting!)  In its figurative use, the verb ḥāṭāʾ focuses frequently on the end failure, a negative consequence, more than on the action.  The noun that spins off this verb ḥēṭʾ (chāt) is also more about that negative result than the act itself.  Most importantly, words and concepts associated with the basic-stem verb and noun show that people envisaged sin-results as “tangibly” real.  They concretized the negative result.  For example: God sees the sin (1Sam 2:17); a person must bear one’s sin (Lev 20:20); when God forgives sin, God lifts it (Exod 32:32) or covers it (Ps 32:1) or washes it (Psa 51:7); or in the Temple symbol system, it is likened to filth polluting God’s dwelling place/altar and needing to be cleansed away (Exod 29:36).

A modern analogy would be the “sin” of running a red light.  No one was around to see.  There was no danger.  There appears to be no tangible result.  However, a camera caught you and now the consequence becomes tangible as a ticket and a fine.

With this focus on the “tangible” result in mind, the doubled-stem verb makes sense.  The verb means “to make the result (sin-weight) to someone/something.”  Used literally in Gen 31:39, Jacob says to Laban that regarding any sheep lost under Jacob’s care, Jacob will “make the ḥiṭṭēʾ (sin-result – here financial loss) to himself.”  That is, he move/removes the resultant sin-weight (financial loss) to himself.  That makes sense now in the figurative use of the tangible sin-consequence.  The consequence of sin (ḥāṭāʾ) is moved/removed, which in context basically means to “cleanse/purify from sin.”  So, too, the atonement-technical noun form from the doubled-stem (ḥaṭṭāʾt) refers to the ritual act that moves/removes the consequence (sin-weight) makes sense.  The focus is on what is happening to the “tangible” consequence.

Conclusion:
The concrete, root concept of ḥāṭāʾ is about failing to hit the end goal (e.g. Jud 20:16, stone-slingers miss their target; Prov 19:2, one misses the way).  Abstractly it is used in terms of personal behavior measured against standards (e.g. legal contract of social groups, Gen 43:9) or in terms of religious abstraction of God’s standard or spiritual wholeness (Lev 4:2).  The focus of the idioms is on the negative consequences.  Particularly in a religious context, that consequence is conceptualized as real and “tangible” like a weight (Lev 20:20) or like unclean pollution (Psa 51:2).  Sin (ḥāṭāʾ) results in real consequences for which one is accountable.  In particular, the atonement ritual system sought to concretize the nature of sin as well as God’s graceful acts of forgiveness.  Such concretizing of the intangible in rituals helped the Israelites to comprehend the utmost seriousness of sin and the amazing grace of God’s forgiveness.  I need this help as well.

Application
Every offense I commit, intentional or not, against others and against God, not only is a failure to achieve the right (righteous) end goal, but it also results in real consequences.  Whether I can see them or not, God sees them.  As one who sins, I bear the weight of those consequences whether I feel it or not.  I must accept the reality of sin.  However, when I seek God, confess and repent of my sins, my God merciful moves/removes that “tangible” consequence.  God “bears/lifts” (=forgives) my sin.

Note: this is also the meaning in 1 Peter 2:24: “For our sins he [Jesus] bore in his body on the cross….”  That verse is the same OT idiom of divine forgiveness.  It is not picturing a forensic transfer of one’s legal death-penalty onto Jesus.  It presents Jesus showing God’s mercy of lifting our burden.

Lord, please always show me the error of my ways, all of my sins (ḥāṭāʾ), unintentional as well as intentional.  Help me to see the weight, to see the filth, to see it as in Your eyes.  So that I might be ashamed and appalled.  So that I might bow before You, confess, and repent.  So that You in Your mercy might lift it away.  So that there might not be any impediment between me and You.  Amen.

FORGIVENESS AND THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD

(As ever, this Lenten devotional applies to me.)
Forgiveness
At the Ash Wednesday service I attended this week, a key verse was 2Cor 5:21, but in what I consider to be a bad translation, one that miscommunicates the nature of forgiveness.  Many translations render the Greek as,

“The one [Jesus] who did not know sin (hamartia), he [God] made sin (hamartia) on behalf of us, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

Good modern translations will at least provide a footnote stating that the second time hamartia occurs, it could be rendered “sin offering.”  That makes a world of difference!  The lexical situation is that hamartia is the NT Greek equivalent for the Hebrew ḥatat, both of which not only can mean “sin” in the general sense, but also are the technical sacrificial terms for the “sin-cleansing offering” in the Temple system of atonement.

So, which did Paul mean?  If Paul knew the Temple symbolism, which I assume he did, he would never say that Jesus “became sin.”  Nothing and no one became sin in the Israelite atonement system.[1]  However, it makes perfect sense for Paul to see Jesus as fulfilling the function of the sin-cleansing offering.  (Some translations do get this translation correct in another debated text, Rom 8:3, “… God his own son sent in the likeness of sinful flesh and for a sin offering (hamartia)….”[2])

What does that mean about forgiveness?  The sin-cleansing offering is the main symbol of God’s forgiveness in the Temple sacrificial system.  First, the forgiveness of God throughout the OT is never about someone first paying a judgment price of punishment.[3]  It is about God’s gracious mercy.  Second, in the Temple sacrificial system, this mercy is ritualized by the blood of the sacrifice symbolically cleansing away the polluting effect of sin in God’s dwelling in order to restore unimpeded communion with God.  In Paul’s thinking, Jesus’ sacrificial life/blood fulfilled that role.

First Application
In the same way as Jesus, then, Christians are to express the righteousness of God, by thinking of themselves as a life’s-blood-giving, cleansing offering.  The season of Lent reminds us that forgiveness is not easy but is self-costing.  It involves self-lowering, self-giving, enduring unjustly, etc. for the sake of others.  At least for me, such merciful forgiveness never comes easily.  I tend to want the other person to suffer.  I tend to give validity to the adage, “Hurt people hurt people.”  However, merciful people, not only do not hurt people, rather, they give of themselves to “cleanse” the effect of sin.

Become the Righteousness of God
2 Corinthians 5:21 also tells us that we “become the righteousness of God in him.”  What does that mean?  Verse 21 needs to be understood in the context of 5:14-6:2.  A couple of themes come together.  First, Christians are intimately and mysteriously “in Christ” (5:17,19,21).  Second, as ones in Christ, Christians are now ambassadors of God’s salvific ministry of reconciliation (5:18-20;6:1).  God’s righteousness is revealed in how God does not count people’s sins against them but works to reconcile them to God (19).  As Paul states elsewhere, “This righteousness of God is made known …  through the faith of Jesus Christ in all who are believing [entrusting]” (Rom 3:21-22).

Second Application
Christians are to be the righteousness of God!  When we do not count people’s sins against them but offer ourselves in expressions of forgiveness, we, too, reveal the righteousness of God of the salvific work of Christ.  That is – my words can only understate it – a monumental calling.

Lord, I hardly see myself as your expression of righteousness.  Still, I do know that I am in Christ.  I am to live in Christ.  I am to be merciful.  I am to forgive.  I am to live the ministry of reconciliation.  So, help me, Jesus, to be your expression of righteousness.  May it be so.  Amen and amen.

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[1] Sins are not literally transferred from people to animals even in the Day of Atonement scapegoat ritual which was transformed from the ancient Near Eastern realm of magic to function symbolically in Israel.  Although it is popular to allegorize the OT scapegoat as a figure of Jesus, Jesus is never called that in the NT.  Also, a well-known text that might cause some confusion is 1Pet 2:24, in which it is said that Jesus bears sin.  Behind this text is an OT idiom.  “Forgiveness” in the OT is often expressed by the action of God lifting/bearing the sins of people.  It does not mean sins were objectively transferred to God/Jesus; it is a figurative expression of God removing the “weight” of sin, an expression of mercy.

[2] The Greek phrase peri hamartia, which could be translated as “concerning sin” (see NET), is used throughout Leviticus and Numbers in the Greek translation, the Septuagint, to refer to the sin-cleansing offering (ḥatat), an idiom one would presume that Paul knew.

[3] That way of thinking comes into Christian thought via Anselm, Luther, and particularly Calvin, who thought in judicial terms as the lawyer he was.