Introduction
For nearly as long as there have been people, they have been sacrificing animals to their gods. It has been a doctrine of Christianity from its formative days that Jesus was crucified as a sacrifice on behalf of all people. Is this doctrine correct? Or does it simply represent an adaptation of Jesus’ story to fit this ancient and powerful socio-cultural model? And, can we know?
Irrespective of Who the reader believes Jesus was, how should we interpret the events of His life, crucifixion, and the events immediately following? In taking a fresh view of these ancient questions, little of what you will read here could be mistaken for Western “orthodox Christianity”.
The Issues
In this document, we’ll raise and look for enlightenment on several issues that have both historical and theological implications. Among these are:
- Was Jesus divine – a divine expression? Or was He simply a human prophet calling Israel into an authentic, obedient relationship with God? In what way would this answer change the overall story?
- God hated animal sacrifices (and most every kind of oblation) and sought, rather, a pure and loving spiritual relationship with His people as His children. So, did He ordain Jesus’ death despite His rejection of Temple sacrifice (Is 1:11-17, Jer 7:22, Ho 6:6, Mi 6:6-8) and revulsion at child sacrifice (Lev 18:21, Dt 18:10, 2 Kgs 17:17, Jer 7:31)?
- What was accomplished by Jesus’ crucifixion? Did He atone for the sins of the world? Did He simply demonstrate the faithfulness God seeks from all of His children? Did this death (and subsequent resurrection) enable the inauguration of God’s proclaimed New Covenant? If so, how?
- If all of the Fathers and prophets since Adam and Noah have proclaimed the same core moral and ethical “laws” and attitudes of the heart sought by God, what might have motivated Him to send Jesus to proclaim essentially the same message? What was the problem Jesus was here to take on? And what role did He play in its solution? Or, to ask a separate but related question, what was the problem that ultimately led to the 70 AD cataclysm?
- In what ways should Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom of God be interpreted in the light of these same prophetic teachings from the Hebrew Bible? And what, if anything, do they have to do with God’s prophesied New Covenant?
A tall order. We’ll see what we can discover.
Was Jesus Divine?
It is a pillar of Christian belief and doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, the divinity, though housed in a human body. And of course, the New Testament has many statements of Jesus that, short of a flat-out declarative statement, make it quite clear that Jesus saw Himself as an agency of the divine: “I and Father are one”, “Before Abraham was I am(/was)”, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me“, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (an act exclusive to God) “…I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”, etc. And, of course, the authors of the Gospels chimed in, like John proclaiming that Jesus, “the Word”, was in the beginning, and He was with God, and He was God. (The author of John famously has the highest Christological view of Jesus of any of the NT authors. Interestingly, taking the author of John at his word, we’re led to conclude that the “Word” of God — His message to His humanity — is no longer the Bible, per se. It is the life of Jesus — His ministry, suffering, and glorification as the Christ.)
Aside from testimonials, we also have the narratives of the miracles wrought by Jesus’ power – the feeding of the thousands, restoring the Centurion’s servant, raising Lazarus from the dead, reviving Jarius’ daughter from the dead, healing the leper, the paralytic, the man born blind, and several more. These stories seem to have had sufficient credibility to draw the renunciation of later Rabbinic writings in the Talmud and elsewhere denouncing Jesus and His “sorcery” (Sanhedrin 43a, Sanhedrin 107b, etc.). Even the famous Jewish historian Flavious Josephus tips his hat to the stories circulating regarding Jesus’ acts in his Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3—commonly called the Testimonium Flavianum—where he writes:
“…he was one who performed surprising deeds…”
Notice he doesn’t say “he was one who was said to have performed…”. He, as a first-century Jewish historian, is claiming the “deeds” happened, whatever he understood them to be. He should know. (But of course, this phrase is contested as a “later interpolation by Christian redactors. You’ll find that nearly every ancient attestation of Jesus of Nazareth is “contested” by “scholars”.)
If you wanted to construct a narrative (and many of these stories are shared across multiple authors/gospels), you’d be hard-pressed to build a more substantial case for Jesus’ special status and equipping. Where does such power, particularly as repeated in so many different situations, emanate from? The Christian answer is: God. For those that dispute this, it seems their only recourse is to claim (without any Biblical or extra-biblical evidence) that these stories are simply fictional.
Son of God
Jesus implicitly referred to Himself as a “son of God” by referring to God as His “Father”. This is extremely meaningful language. All Israel was commissioned into this role (Ex 4:22-23, Ho 11:1, Jer 3:19, Dt 14:1). Later, Malachi (2:10) proposes that everyone is (potentially) God’s children.
The metaphorical idiom of referring to God as “father” in the Hebrew Bible (or oneself as a child or son of God) is used to identify the unique status of a person (the “son” or “child”) who obeys God and who is in relationship with God as his father – the one who guides, protects and provides for His child.
Deut 32:5-6 is a good example of how this image is used by biblical authors. It reads:
5They (Israel) have dealt corruptly with him (God);
they are no longer his children because they are blemished;
they are a crooked and twisted generation.
6Do you thus repay the LORD,
you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
who made you and established you?
The author here is focusing specifically on the behavior of Israelites who do not relate to God as their father (i.e. with obedience and reverence), but he is implicitly calling them to do so (“Is not he your father…?”) This is made clear a couple of verses later where he provides a poetic, reflective description of God: Dt 32:9-13
9But the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
10“He found him (speaking of Israel) in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
12 the LORD alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.
13 He made him ride on the high places of the land,
and he ate the produce of the field,
and he suckled him with honey out of the rock,
and oil out of the flinty rock.
We find this idiom of “child”/”father” being used throughout the Hebrew Bible when discussing those whom God considers His (faithful, obedient, respectful) children/sons whom He then guides, protects, nourishes, and … disciplines (e.g. 2 Sam 7:14, Ps 68:5, Is 63:16, Is 64:8, Jer 3:19, Mal 2:10). As noted, its most significant use in the Bible’s meta-narrative was of Israel the nation – what God wanted His people to be.
In using this idiom of Himself, Jesus is telling His hearers that He is in the role of faithful, obedient, loving child to God’s role of guiding, preserving, and providing father. He is saying He is in right relationship with God, a role we don’t find being claimed for the vast majority of either His contemporaries or His ancestors (e.g. Solomon(!), perhaps David). Jesus casting Himself in the role of God’s “son” isn’t a divinity claim, per se. But at the very least it identifies Him as in a special relationship with God that equates Him with God’s original intention for Israel, putting Him in a very small, exclusive group who God judges as in the right.
Did Jesus’ Sacrifice Atone for the Sins of the World?
Now, there are many people, not least Jews, who completely dismiss these narratives as a result of dismissing Jesus as divine. Why is that? The reasons may be as varied as the people holding the opinion. But one of the most common reasons (I have learned) is that they do not believe that God, who hated sacrifices[i], would do so to His own “Son” (whatever that term may mean). Many of these don’t believe that God would sanction, let alone ordain, the murder of anyone.
This position is easy to hold as long as you see “God” and Jesus as different entities. If Jesus is simply human, then you can immediately dismiss all of the “died for the sins of the world” sacrificial imagery emanating from (later) Christianity. (To these people, why was Jesus murdered? Because He posed an existential threat to the Temple Cult, its sacrificial system, and its leaders. End of story. Of course, that’s the literal truth.)
But also, as I have learned, the logical path for these folks isn’t free of challenges. For openers, they identify a community of Jewish-Christians, so-called Judaizers, that argued for the preservation of Jewish practices, as “early Christianity” (as if all the Gentile churches in Asia Minor and Greece were of the same mind). Judaizers, and their demands for Gentile conformance, including circumcision, were the source of most of Paul’s problems, certainly as recorded in Galatians and Romans.
They also try to make the case that the early Christian communities just didn’t think about sacrifice as an atoning event in the sense of a sacrifice ‘forgiving’ (by which most think, incorrectly, of an act of expunging/eliminating) another’s “sins”[ii]. So, they go to great lengths to wash out the “redemption” language of the NT, which of course is plainly there. We’ll have to dig into how redemption can be done.
Which brings us to another important topic – the perceived need for atonement.
Sacrifice As an Atonement Imperative
Humankind has sacrificed animals (and even children) for eons to 1) pay homage to a god, 2) gain the favor of a god, or 3) secure pardon from their god for some transgression. This final objective was the motivation for all of the Temple’s sin offerings, those for which the price offered through the animal’s life was thought to atone for (i.e. send away, cover, expiate) the offeror’s debt to God that he incurred (i.e. the pollution it brought within proximity of the holy place and its objects) by His sin.
For whatever deep-seated psychological reasons, people have used this practice for millennia to assuage their sense that their god was never quite satisfied with them. Nobody told the ancients to do this. They simply felt a deep unease that they were possibly in trouble with or at risk from their god and so developed the habit to show their enduring devotion through offerings which, they hoped, would make their life better.
Right Relationship with God, and Sin in the Hebrew Bible
Likely a majority of moderns have no such intuition, at least that they respond to. Some of these, familiar with the Hebrew Bible, have read its “Bible in the Little” and have concluded that they’re just fine as they are (Mi 6:8):
8He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
They claim, at least to themselves, that they do these things. So, they ask, “Why do I need some man to die on a cross ‘for me’, 2000 years ago?”
And what does the text tell them they are to do if they fail to act out these behaviors? Fortunately, there are pat “solutions”, as found e.g. in Lev 26:40-42
40“But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, 41so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies-; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
One thing to note here. The term “repent” (7725. שׁוּב šûḇ) is not present. The term rendered here “make amends” has the meaning of “pay for”, or “make up for”. So seemingly, without saying exactly how one is to do that, the message is essentially: “redeem yourself”.
Admittedly, other Hebrew Bible passages make confession or simple contrition the cornerstones of one’s response to committed sin. For example, Ps 32:5
5I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
and Ps 51:1-2:
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
Passages like these contribute to the impression in some that all God has ever wanted from His people is the humility to confess and be contrite about their sins. God then forgives, and everything is back to normal. They ask: “Where’s the problem?”
The Bible’s Unmistakable Message: “We’ve Got a Problem”
However, while the Biblical narrative continued to offer “forgiveness” from one’s sins, that is not the larger scale narrative of the Hebrew Bible. Disobedience to God’s will is endemic and is eventually judged, as in the flood, the wilderness wanderings, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and finally the Jerusalem destruction narratives, only to be followed by a metaphorical new “Creation” (e.g. the flood subsiding, exodus from Egyptian bondage, entry into the land, and restoration to the land).
Our next example of a prescription for sin remediation is a bit more challenging than our earlier, more genteel examples (Eze 18:30-32):
30“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. 31 Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”
Uh oh. This starts to hit a little closer to home (especially considering the Bible’s characterization of who we are: Is 30:9). First, you are to repent[iii]. What does that mean? It seems to mean to turn away from what you have done and, in the future, to turn to and obey God’s way – deciding not to do it again. And, “cast away” (שָׁלַךְ šālaḵ meaning to get rid of) “from you all of your transgressions”. How can we do that? And finally, the coup de grâce, so to say, you are to “make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!”
So, we are to repent, in humility. We are to make amends for and turn away from (i.e. stop/give up) “all the transgressions that we have committed.” And then, so that we are rehabilitated for the future, we are to make ourselves a new heart and spirit. Other verses sound nearly as difficult (e.g. Is 55:6-7, Joel 2:12-13, Jer 3:12-13). Most all speak of significant change in one’s attitude and life.
To me (and maybe it’s just me), that sounds like a daunting and likely impossible job. Are there people actually capable of, and that have done such a thing? I haven’t met any. So, it may be that there is some hubris out there from those who assume they’re “just fine” that first needs attention before getting to the humility, contrition, and remaking-of-one’s-heart-and-spirit parts.
The greater challenge may be that for those who don’t see any need for any external action leading to their redemption, the idea of their confessing their repentance (regret and desire to be redeemed) for living outside of God’s will approaches a near-impossibility. How is someone who doesn’t think they are in any state of unrightness ever going to internalize that they have been living outside of God’s will? Seems, sadly, unlikely.
James J DeFrancisco has written quite extensively on these topics[iv],[v]; ancient sacrificial practices and their meaning to those who practiced them (fascinating), the fact that the Prophets near-universally disclaimed the Temple and its sacrificial practices, and the implications for the sense and logic of Jesus’ death. This author, in defending his Noahide interpretation of Jesus, tries to cite the Aramaic Peshitta[vi] as, for example, disclaiming the term “redemption” in Ro 3:24 (629. ἀπολύτρωσις apolútrōsis), saying that the Aramaic (from which it no doubt came as the principle verbal language of 1st-century Israel) is ”salvation” (zavan badmey – “he brought us from death”); his point being a) Aramaic is closer to the original than Greek, and b) that while redemption (ἀπολύτρωσις apolútrōsis) necessarily implies paying a ransom to buy back, salvation does not. Therefore, to him, there was no sacrifice for sins.
This author does, however, raise some interesting questions regarding sin atonement. For example, if Jesus understood His death to atone for the “sins of the world”, why would He, after His death, exhort His disciples (Lk 24:47 and Jn 20:23):
and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Why would He overtly forgive the sins of the paralytic, the woman at the well, the woman who washed His feet with her tears, etc., if His death was going to result in the forgiveness of the sins of the whole world?
If everyone’s sins had already been forgiven through Christ’s death, why would He tell His disciples to go preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (which, by the way, is the ancient mantra of the Hebrew Bible[vii] – 2 Chr 7:14, Ps 32:5, Ps 51:17, Prv 28:13, Is 55:6-7, Jer 26:3, Ezk 18:21-3, Joel 2:13)? In these passages we should notice that the prescription for remediating sin is having humble remorse, regret, and repentance (certainly not considering oneself “fine”). The act of whole-hearted repentance seems to have a continuing, prominent role in the granting of justification.
Similarly, if Christ’s death was the propitiating sacrifice for the sins of the world, what purpose would his disciples serve in forgiving or not forgiving sins themselves? Something doesn’t add up if the traditional Christian doctrine as we currently understand it describes the result of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
What of the Crucifixion?
As we’ve already posited, if you believe Jesus was merely a human prophet (and separate from God in this event), then His crucifixion means essentially nothing.
But if it did, indeed, mean something to God on behalf of mankind, what? What did God accomplish by it? Did He accomplish something beyond simply providing the perfect model of His child – His “son”? (I have speculated on this meaning in: Why Jesus? – A Pilgrim’s Search.)
This is indeed the question. DeFrancisco proposes that Jesus demonstrated the willingness to die for one’s neighbor to encourage others to be willing to sacrifice for others.[viii] (Ah, OK.) And certainly, Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7), reinforced and elaborated all of the core principles of living that God gave us in Moses’ Ten Words, including the selflessness of His death.
If hearing it explained in Jesus’ words, through His examples and parables, was the only thing missing from the pastiche of scriptures and life lessons that Israel knew well and had lived through, then wouldn’t Jesus’ predecessor prophets, particularly the Latter Prophets, have already provided that missing ingredient – encouragement to humbly return to their God?
We’re asking if there was a purpose to Jesus’ death (and the life that preceded it) beyond His message, its obvious inspiration, and His human tragedy. Well, for the author of Matthew there certainly was.
Matthew’s Story
As is well known, the author of Matthew emphasizes Jewish themes and symbols in telling his version of Jesus’ story. For him, Jesus’ death was the anti-type of Temple sacrifice as an atoning, purifying event. He has Jesus proclaiming in Mt 26:28:
28for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
We must notice first that we tend to misrepresent the meaning of the word rendered “forgiveness”. The word is 859. ἀˊφεσις áphesis and has the sense of remission; to cause to stand off/away. For example: When a patient’s symptoms diminish or cease — when they subside, we say the patient is experiencing remission. The patient’s symptoms have been removed from them, but perhaps only temporarily, as we know all too well.
The term’s sense is that He is separating our sins from us, not wiping them away (how is that done?). Here we see a direct linkage in the author’s mind between the Temple-based association of the blood of the sacrifice as its ‘gift’ of a life/soul to God, with the idea of atonement (sending away) of all sins, as represented in the Yom Kippur “scapegoat” ritual in which Israel’s sins were carried off into the wilderness so that they “stood away” from the Holy precinct.
Mark’s Story
The author of Mark, on the other hand, characterizes his version of the story by focusing on Jesus’s humble suffering, not unlike Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (in the 4th Servant Song – Is 52:13-53:12). He underscores Christ’s deity with the words of the Roman Centurian at the cross, Mk 15:39b:
“Truly this man was the Son of God!”
The author of Mark also, however, seems to line up with Matthew’s author in relating Jesus’ death as “a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45b) in Jesus’ words, though he seems to emphasize Jesus’ suffering as the atoning agent rather than His death.
Luke’s Story
The author of Luke seems to feature Jesus’ compassion, even to the end, in his version of the story in both Jesus’ intercession for God to forgive His executioners (Lk 23:34, which uses the same “stand away” verb, 859. ἀˊφεσις áphesis, that we saw above), and His promise to the thief hanging next to Him that “Today you will be with me in paradise”, in response to the thief’s plea to be “remembered” by Christ.
Luke is mostly silent on an atoning nature of Jesus’ death. For example, Luke’s book has no parallel to Mark’s 10:45. Luke just drops it. The unmistakable takeaway is that Luke did not see Jesus’ death as an “atonement”; a propitiation requiring the “ransom” of His blood.
Some also see Luke’s story as underscoring Jesus’ death as the defining event in His defeat of Satan, freeing mankind from the bondage of evil (Luke’s metaphor for the indwelt Spirit’s work) – a kind of new Creation[ix].
John’s Story
Finally, the author of John more forcefully than the others, underscored Jesus’ divinity and His resulting sovereignty, in control even in death. He does, however, quote John the Baptist’s confession, Jn 1:29:
29The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So the Gospels aren’t perfectly consistent and precise in their theology of the crucifixion. Perhaps it is because of this, that theories other than the Church’s traditional “atonement for the forgiveness of sins” are proposed by those with other viewpoints.
What Do the Epistles Have to Say? The Law of Sin and Death
Perhaps the most intriguing description of the effect of Jesus’ death and resurrection is Paul’s in Ro 8:2-3
2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
There are a few levels to this passage, so let’s just start at the top. To Paul, Jesus’ death and resurrection have clearly done something beyond (and perhaps even apart from) atoning for sins. He has invoked what he terms the “law of the Spirit of life” which “has” (past tense; remember he’s talking to the already-Christ-followers in Rome. He’s not talking to Jews or pagan Gentiles) “set you free” (that is, you who are) “in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
What’s the law of sin and death? We know the law of death. “Everybody dies”, at least ever since God’s curse of Adam & Eve for their disobedience in Gen 3. And the law of sin? Paul has spent several previous chapters (3-7), most notably chapter 7, articulating precisely the nature of that law. If I had to paraphrase it, I’d say something like:
The law of sin is that ever since the giving of the law (via Moses), man has seen his inadequacy in being able to live by it obediently. He is not naturally equipped to do so. Despite knowing we sin, as a result of knowing the law, and being ashamed of it, and saddened by it, we just continue to act in the same way.
The law of sin is that we are, by nature, effectively condemned to live in a continuous state of sin (separation from God) despite our best intentions, counter to His will for us.
It takes a certain humility to understand this claim rather than simply reflexively reacting in self-righteous anger against it.
This is the law (in so many words) that Christ’s death and resurrection has freed His followers from, according to Paul. This theme of destroying “sin and death” we also find in 1 Cor 15:54-57, Ro 6:9-10, Heb 2:14-15. (We’ll deal with the “in Christ” phrase a bit later.)
Here we should note that there is a vocal minority of the non-believing populace today who think they are not only not guilty of persistent sin, but possibly “righteous” as seen by God, based on their interpretation of some Hebrew Bible tenets (not Prv 21:2). And from this view they say Paul is essentially lying in his epistles (i.e. “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”).
Are these views of the state of humanity vis-à-vis “sin” different than Jesus’ (as some assert)? It would appear that according to the author of John, at least, they’re not. Jesus seems to see our inability to rid ourselves of sin as a kind of universal enslavement, Jn 8:34-36:
34Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house (/family) forever; the son remains forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus’ statement here isn’t intended to identify two different classes of people: those who sin, and those who don’t. He’s using the phrase “everyone who practices sin” to allude to everyone, as enslaved to it.
The term rendered “practices” is: ποιέω poiéō. Its active, present, participle sense indicates current and ongoing action. The metaphor seems to be identifying Jesus as the son and permanent resident in the house (representing God’s covenantal household) and the “slave” as the one enslaved to sin. Jesus identifies Himself as the member of the household with the power to free the metaphorical slave from his enslavement to sin. If you are a freed slave, you have been made separate from and independent of that which caused your dependence. This seems to imply that the one freed is himself changed from that which he was as a slave.
So, if Paul is correct, then Jesus (His life?, death?, resurrection?) had a direct role in some way in eliminating the power of sin over the penitent’s life. He changed the “law of sin”, as Paul characterized it, so making us “free indeed” from the imperative to sin (i.e. act separately from God’s will).
This is saying something completely different than the currently popular understanding of Jesus’s “forgiveness of sins” in modern Christianity. Setting our sins aside but not taking steps to enable us to naturally love God and our neighbors doesn’t fix the problem we present to God. It doesn’t create people who naturally live out His instructions as His obedient, adopted children.
Look at it this way. If Jesus’s death was just to atone for humanity’s sins, as the anti-type of the Temple’s sacrifices, then what on earth is His resurrection all about? If His dying was propitiatory for the sins of the world for all time, what possible difference would it make for humanity if He was resurrected or not? If the whole world subsequently was not judged by God as sinful because Jesus’ death erased the record of them, then you don’t need a New Covenant and its outpouring of God’s Spirit into His followers since they’re already “sinless” according to God and will be at the judgment on the Last Day. In fact, if that was God’s intent in Jesus’ death, why have a judgment day at all? Everybody is sinless. Obviously (I hope you will agree), that is not the meaning of Jesus’ death.
This is saying that through some agency of Jesus, God has provided the mechanism for our transformation such that sin no longer has control of our lives. And it appears the same agency has enabled those transformed to live (i.e. not die — no small thing!). The Gospel is that the person of Jesus “rose” on the third day (in what form is not important), and now is unified with the One God who, while He was on earth, He addressed as “Father”. “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Who sent His Spirit into those who sought Him.
What’s the Deal With This Spirit? And a Kingdom?
Many reading this are (hopefully) familiar with the fact that via the Latter Prophets, God prophesied that He would change His people so that they would know Him, love Him, and follow His “ways”. (If you’re not familiar with this message of the Hebrew Bible, you can review this reference[x]. Similarly, if you are not familiar with the NT’s narrative of the pouring out of the Spirit of God on Pentecost, there’s some on it here[xi]).
There are two ideas woven into the fabric of the Bible’s meta-narrative that most people, for whatever reason, just can’t see as related. Why is this? It seems that most of us have filters over our vision and understanding that limit our perception to what we’ve been taught, and so believe.
The first of these ideas is that of God’s announced New Covenant. “New compared to what?”, you might ask. New compared to the Mosaic covenant and God’s covenantal mandate that those participating in it adhere to His tenets. Under the Mosaic covenant, the admonitions of God and His prophets were for Israel to change/reform themselves: e.g. to replace their hearts of stone with hearts of flesh (Dt 10:16, Jer 4:4), of their own devices, so that they could live in obedience to God’s law.
The second idea (intimately linked to the first) is that God, again according to the prophets, would ultimately “pour out My Spirit” on Israel and Judah as well as “all flesh” (Joel 2:28), i.e. those promised to be blessed by Abraham’s ‘seed’.
If you read the prophets’ New Covenant descriptions (which I encourage you to do here: Jer 31:31-34, Joel 2:28, Isaiah 44:3-5, Isaiah 32:15-17, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Ezekiel 39:29, Zechariah 12:10), it is virtually impossible to not see that God’s enactment of His New Covenant is via His outpouring of His Spirit on humanity.
So. What does this have to do with Jesus’ death?
Here’s what we’re told explicitly, Jn 16:7:
7Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
The “Helper” is His reference to God’s Spirit, Greek: παράκλητος paráklētos. Notice He didn’t say “But if I go, I’ll atone for your sins and the sins of the world.” If that was indeed the goal He understood of His death, it seems He might have mentioned it here. No. The event on which the pouring out of God’s Spirit is apparently dependent is for Jesus to “go away“.
Not to use too blunt an instrument, but the way God chose to implement His New Covenant (e.g. Dt. 30:6 –“6And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live”) was to indwell Himself (His Spirit) within those who, through their sincere repentance, sought Him. This indwelling changed them: from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, from natural hearts to circumcised hearts, a new spirit causing “you to walk in my ordinances”, a new spirit of “grace and supplication”, and an innate knowledge of God.
The people who have undergone such a change (that Jesus described to Nicodemus as being “born again”) are those who live in the Kingdom of God that Jesus focused on throughout His entire ministry. When discussing the proximity of this Kingdom, He variously referred to Himself (as in Mt 4:17, Lk 10:11, Lk 11:20, Lk 17:21) as ‘among’ them, “in the midst of you”, or to the nearness/immanence in time of the Spirt being poured out (e.g. ‘at hand’, Mk 1:15).
So, what exactly was Jesus’ role in initiating this outpouring of the Spirit and the resultant inauguration of God’s New Covenant? What we know is that a) the outpouring of God’s Spirit, and the New Covenant change of hearts were prophesied; b) a few hundred years later Jesus showed up; he was crucified in (about) 30 AD; c) Jesus had said He would “send” God’s Spirit, and; d) on Pentecost of that year (commemorating the giving of the Law!), we had the event of the Spirit’s outpouring, starting in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1–41). Taking Jesus at His word (Jn 16:7), how does He “send him” (God’s Spirit) “to you” if He (the human Jesus) is dead? We need to connect the dots here.
Admittedly, this sequence doesn’t prove causation. But you have to rationally ask yourself: If God articulated this plan through His prophets, say in the 6th century BC, then Jesus shows up early in the 1st century AD, is executed before the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and 50 days after He is crucified we have the outpouring of the Spirit related in Acts, is that just some circumstantial coincidence?
Furthermore, and I believe far more compelling, we have hundreds of thousands of people living today (as they have been throughout modern history) who, having elected to wholly submit to God (and His ‘Son’) in obedience and simply trust that He will sustain them, have experienced the same indwelling experience of the Spirit experienced by those in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost, and have been subsequently utterly transformed from their previous selves. Having been attached to worldly things (as we all are or once were), they are now detached from them and focused on the things of God, continuously — purposefully endeavoring to live in obedience to His Words.
Are these folks inoculated against sin? No. But they hate rather than seek it. And they are empowered by God’s Spirit to resist it. They take conscious steps to avoid it. And if it happens, they are remorseful and utterly repentant.
This sin-resistant, changed nature makes me believe that when Jesus said His blood was “for the forgiveness (ἀˊφεσις áphesis – stand off/away) of sins“ in Mt 26:28, He was telling us that His sacrifice was going to result in God equipping us with a ‘sin defense system‘: something that would drive away the occurrence of our sin and suppress our sin nature, so to speak, — the Spirit of God— that completely reforms our heart and its desires.
Once again, this is a completely different interpretation than traditional Western Christian doctrine and thinking. With this idea we could rephrase Mt 26:28 grammatically as:
28for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the putting off/away of sins through the work of God’s Spirit.
This is what God desired from His people from the beginning so that He could live with those who loved Him as His adopted family in communion forever. That was His purpose in creating (Is 43:7).
Summary and Conclusions
We set out to develop a better understanding of Christ’s identity; whether God would ever sanction the murder of a man as a vicarious atonement for another’s sin, and if God did sanction His death, the role His death played in the putting off of man’s sins; and His role in launching God’s New Covenant. Such an inquiry typically raises more questions than it answers. And this one is no different.
Jesus’ Divinity
The simple answer is we’re not told directly. We have all kinds of inferences that are there to make the case that, yes, Jesus was divinity wrapped in human form. Logically, it seems that Christ initiated the action of sending God’s Spirit into His followers after His death and resurrection, which provides a pretty persuasive clue. But we’ll ask (and answer) the question below: Does it even matter in the final scheme of things? (God just doesn’t care about how we judge His actions.)
Jesus’ Death as Atoning for Humanity’s Sin
Sitting here some 2000 years after Jesus’ death and seeing the millions of people who have devoted their lives to following Him[xii] who have had their lives transformed by the indwelling of God’s Spirit, and who are more than happy to tell us about it, it seems odd to dismiss His death (and their experience) as some kind of myth. Did His death atone, in the Temple sacrificial sense, for humanity’s sins? We don’t have explicit texts sufficient to make that assertion indisputable. And we have some that would call it into question.
We know that sin didn’t stop with Jesus’ death (nor did He ever claim that it would). We know that man’s inhumanity to his fellow man didn’t stop at Jesus’ death (nor did He ever say that it would. In fact He said it would create division — Lk 12:51–53).
What we do know is that thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of people who staked their lives on Him and His message as truth were fundamentally transformed by God’s Spirit – freed from the “law of sin” through having their sin nature “sent/put away” from them. After Jesus, these people were placed by God into a category He labels “Children of the Living God”. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God. And Paul called it being “in Christ”.
What Did Jesus’ Death Accomplish?
There is no direct line of causation that we can see from the biblical text. But the circumstantial evidence seems, in this case, to be overwhelming. That evidence is: People lived the same way from the dawn of time until Jesus came. However, after His death (and resurrection), multitudes of people who believed, trusted, and committed themselves to Him and His teachings were transformed, resulting in their sins being “sent away” from them in the sense of their occurrence being actively resisted.
We’re not told the specific relationship between Jesus’ death and thousands being transformed. What we do know is that the one preceded the other by 50 days, according to the NT texts. Additionally, we have no evidence that before Jesus there was any implementation of God’s New Covenant anywhere. (If God is God, it would be extremely unusual for Him to see to the preservation of His New Covenant prophecies in His scripture and not have any evidence of their fulfillment some 2500 years later. Not impossible. But very much out-of-character.
It is possible Jesus was simply a faithful servant of God murdered for His faithfulness (as many thousands have been).[xiii] However, it seems more likely that He played a role which allowed God to finally fulfill His promises to Abraham. Perhaps He also perfectly modeled God’s love and mercy, and so fulfilled God’s intention for His son, Israel (Ho 11:1), which played a role in enabling the outpouring of God’s Spirit on those (of Israel) who did believe, repent, and commit themselves to live as He had taught and lived Himself, enabling them to become God’s children, of which He was the firstborn of this New Covenant. Recall, He did say He was going to send the Spirit (after He had gone “away”).
But let’s also ask this question: if Jesus was murdered, but then became, a few days later, life in a recognizable form, showing death and life to be within His control, does it matter if He was in His physical life a mere mortal, albeit one animated by God’s Spirit?
The theologians and Christologists would bristle, I suspect, at this question. But if God saw to the subsequent outpouring of His Spirit onto “all flesh” on Pentecost and thereafter, and many trusted Him and were subsequently transformed into beings that love God and are equipped and animated to love their neighbors, does it really matter? I can’t see how it does, practically speaking.
I think that, in the final analysis, the only thing that matters is that God fulfilled His promised New Covenant. And apparently, Jesus’ role was in some respect as the Priestly Mediator between God and His people, once hoped for Israel.
Are the two love instructions the heart of God’s law that He sought from His people from the beginning? The scribe at the Temple thought so (Mk 12:32-33). Paul thought so (Gal 5:14). And Jesus thought so (Mk 12:30-31).
God apparently didn’t want to simply perpetually “forgive” (/forget?) our sin. That was not His stated intention for His relationship with His created people (Gen 12:2-3, Ex 19:5-6, etc.). Therefore, He took it upon Himself to transform us so that we became people enabled to live His new lives that are just and merciful, in which we extend our love to Him and neighbor, and so will be judged as “just” on the Last Day for how we have lived our lives.
What “Caused” Jesus, and Why at His Time?
In the introduction, we posed the question:
If all of the Fathers and prophets since Adam and Noah have proclaimed the same core moral and ethical “laws” and attitudes of the heart sought by God, what might have motivated Him to send Jesus to proclaim essentially the same message? What was the problem Jesus was here to take on, and what role did Jesus play in the solution?
To which we must answer: “Nobody knows the mind of God”. Superficially, and to non-believing people, Jesus was just another prophet. Those who see Jesus in the same category as Jeremiah observe that Jesus didn’t teach too differently from the prophet. Their messages had similarities. But Jesus, I think it is uncontroversial to claim, brought more attention to Himself as the active agent in transitioning the people to faithfulness and obedience to their God. Jeremiah exhorted the people — even wept over them. But he didn’t claim that he was going to make deliverance happen for them.
The most logical answer to the question of “why Jesus in 30 AD?” is that at the time of His advent, we still had several promises of God that were as yet unfulfilled, according to the Hebrew Bible. Abraham’s progeny had not yet blessed ”all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3)/ “all the nations of the earth” (Gen 22:18). The New Covenant prophecies had not yet been fulfilled (e.g. everyone having God’s law written “on their hearts” – Jer 31:33[xiv]).
But these promises had been outstanding for centuries. Why fulfill them finally in the 1st century? A significant reason may be related to the prediction in Daniel’s (9:26) announcement that an “anointed one” had to be killed (“cut off”) before the Temple was destroyed again, which, of course, happened later in the 1st century AD.
As we speculated earlier, something was the ultimate “tipping point” for God in regathering His family from humanity by changing them. His method for doing so seems to be a) enabled by His provision of His agent/”Son”, Jesus, and His resurrection (Who, by the way, was the first instance of the perfect son God sought in His family), and b) inaugurated by the outpouring of His Spirit – God’s Spirit – into those who humbly sought Him.
As we saw, generally in the Tanakh, the nominal model of the response to sin had always been one’s contrition, sometimes confession, and asking for forgiveness (the sin’s “putting away”) leading to the restoration of God’s favor, which resulted in the supplicant’s relationship to God assumedly being restored. In other words, sins being “forgiven” was nothing new to the ancient Israelites.
And that seemed to work for a time. Eight hundred years passed between the wilderness exile and the Assyrian destruction and exile; then another 150 years before the Babylonian destruction and exile, and another 656 before 70 AD.
Whether the tipping point was that too many people weren’t confessing and humbly asking for forgiveness, or doing so disingenuously by never intending to not repeat the same offenses afterward, some factor created what had to be seen by the people of the time (not their prophets – they knew what was coming) as “black swan” events: exile to the wilderness; destruction and exile to Assyria; destruction and exile to Babylon; destruction and exile from Jerusalem.
In other words, for people used to offerings, prayerful petitions, and business as usual, suddenly all hell broke loose. And repeatedly. It’s not like the people in Jerusalem in the 6th or 1st centuries didn’t have any historical awareness to be able to anticipate their future. Certainly, the Latter Prophets understood completely what was going on and what would ultimately result from it, and preached it.
So, the question that has to be asked, and answered, is: if the Israelites (and we now) were all “OK” treating God’s will for them/us as something like interested tourists – occasional visitors, usually asking for forgiveness when we failed to observe it, what then were the exiles and destructions all about? That’s one level of question.
The next level is: If living natural lives, in which we sometimes sin and seek His forgiveness (“A”), is God’s ultimate pattern for mankind’s living, then what on earth are the New Covenant prophecies (“B”) all about? If “A” is OK, then why would He need “B”? This is a quite basic, fundamental question that we should be able to answer.
I would conclude (and I am not looking for any confirmation here) that something was fundamentally unacceptable in the “A” arrangement as seen by God (for which we have copious biblical evidence). That is why, after repeated attempts to call His people back to Him as their God (not just as someone they mouthed contrite words to periodically, but rather who they continually lived in the presence of and served), He simply moved on to His ultimate (I believe) resolution. I don’t see how else to interpret the story.
I think it is easy to hear God rhetorically telling His people: “If you’re not going to love Me; if you’re not going to live within My will, then I’m going to change you by installing My Spirit within you which will be the source of your love for and knowledge of Me, will change you so that you desire to be obedient to My will, will enable you to reject sin, and will animate you to express a love of your neighbor.” Of course, this tactic still allows our free will to reject His offer. And most do. Those that don’t Paul identifies as “in Christ” or having “Christ in you”.
Do we know that this scenario is a fact? All I can tell you is that it fits perfectly with all of the narratives of the Tanakh and New Testament with which I am familiar, as well as their overarching meta-narrative of God creating a family that seeks to live with, love, and be obedient to Him – “So shall you be my people, and I will be your God” (Jer 11:4). This is precisely God’s covenant with His people.
Ecumenical Perspective
Jesus is anathema to Jews (and many former Christians). Jews, because they rejected Him, are anathema to “Christians” (many of whom have no apparent relationship with Christ Jesus). But this subject isn’t about one religion vs the other. It’s about understanding what God said He was going to do in the Hebrew Bible, seeing in those messages God’s imperatives, and as a consequence, seeing His solution and being drawn to His transformation by His indwelt Spirit and living as His faithful children – that is, in His Kingdom.
Personal View
It’s likely that if you’ve read this far you already know my views on the subject of Christ’s identity and what His Crucifixion accomplished. For what it is worth, my view is founded in my belief that Jesus was God’s Spirit wrapped in human form, not too unlike the theophany we read of in Gen 18, but with a far more cosmic purpose. The human element that was the man Jesus referred to the Spirit essence that is God (“God is Spirit”, Jn 4:24) as “Father”, acknowledging that having a human form presented certain distinctions and limitations not experienced by the Spirit.
Something about experiencing Jesus’ human suffering, death and resurrection enabled God to then distribute His Spirit into all of those who, having believed the truth of Jesus, sought Him and His life for themselves — His ultimate gift of mercy. Jn 15:13
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
For me, this understanding checks all of the necessary, but traditionally troublesome, boxes in addition to providing a lens through which the entirety of the Bible can be consistently interpreted and make sense, particularly the enigmatic New Covenant prophecies. You may not agree. As noted, it is not traditional Christian doctrine. But I think we can all agree that Jesus wasn’t here to be mutilated and die so that we, 2000 years later, could profess “belief” and go about living our lives however we choose. That is not what He was about. 2 Cor 5:10:
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Ps 62:12
12and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work.
[i] Did God Want a Temple, Sacrifices, or a Monarchy? – A Pilgrim’s Search
[ii] The animal sacrifices carried out by the Temple Cult did atone for the sin of the offerors. However, they atoned for that sin on behalf of the Tabernacle/Temple, not on behalf of the sinner (Lev 16:16).
[iii] All occurrences of the words ‘repent’ or ‘turn’ in this passage are 7725. שׁוּב šûḇ: A verb meaning to turn, to return, to go back, to do again, to change…
[iv] DeFrancisco, James J., “In What Way Did Jesus Die For Our Sins?”, 2017
[v] DeFrancisco, James J., “In What Way Did Jesus Die For Our Sins? – Part Two”, 2017
[vii] The word typically translated “repent” in the Hebrew Bible is 5162. נָחַם nāḥam. It’s meaning is quite strange. This word is often translated “comfort:”, “to be sorry”, “to pity”. The verb always means to console or comfort, sometimes yourself. This is not our modern concept of rejecting something and turning to another. This is more like, having observed some injustice, being grieved that it happened and perhaps giving solace to its victim. It’s more compassionate remorse than a purposeful turning from that from which one is “repenting”. In other words, there does not seem to be any connotation of fundamental change that the subject wills to persist, but simply a kind of sadness over whatever it was that happened in the first place. In other words, it has no concept of a redemptive change.
[viii] DeFrancisco, James J., “In What Way Did Jesus Die For Our Sins? – Part Two”, 2017, 7
[ix] Garrett, Susan R., “The Meaning of Jesus’ Death in Luke”, Yale Divinity School, 1992
[xi] Jesus’ Fulfillments – A Pilgrim’s Search
[xii] NOT your garden variety Christian church-goer
[xiii] I will have another piece concerning Paul’s statement of the source of our justification (Ro 5:2) shortly. It is not the traditional view. But it is Paul’s view.
[xiv] Possibly even Jer 31:10 that speaks of regathering Israel (see Rom 11:26) and keeping “him” as a shepherd keeps a flock.”
