1 Jesus’ Death: The Ransom for Us

When two of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples came to him, request­ing a “min­is­te­r­i­al office” in the future King­dom of God, he rebuked them, mak­ing ref­er­ence to his own mis­sion:

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ran­som for many. (Mark 10:45)

As he cel­e­brat­ed his final Passover with his dis­ci­ples on the evening before his death, pre­sum­ably not long after he had spo­ken these words, he inau­gu­rat­ed the Lord’s Sup­per as a last­ing lega­cy, show­ing, in his words about bread and wine, how he him­self inter­pret­ed his death from God’s per­spec­tive:

And he took bread, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, say­ing, “This is my body, which is giv­en for you. Do this in remem­brance of me.” And like­wise the cup after they had eat­en, say­ing, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:19–20)

Jesus was ful­ly aware that his death was not mere­ly an acci­dent or unex­pect­ed tragedy. He was also con­scious that he was not sim­ply the vic­tim of a judi­cial mur­der.¹ He gave his body and his blood for us.

He was sent by God to give his life:

For this rea­son the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have author­i­ty to lay it down, and I have author­i­ty to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:17–18)

Jesus was not suicidal—he did not ini­ti­ate his own death—but he offered no resis­tance to the wicked­ness of men who, in their hatred and mur­der­ous con­tempt, despised the love and kind­ness of God which came to them in Jesus. He was so deeply root­ed in God’s love that he trans­formed the evil done to him by his ene­mies into good by will­ing­ly bow­ing to it, as an expres­sion of his devo­tion to the Father and his love for mankind. Jesus, whose very life was love and devo­tion, demon­strat­ed his devo­tion to the point of death.

His aim was our free­dom:

Jesus answered them, “Tru­ly, tru­ly, I say to you, every­one who com­mits sin is a slave to sin.… So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34,36)

Jesus viewed his death as serv­ing this aim. That is why he called his death a “ran­som for many”. In antiq­ui­ty, when some­body wished to lib­er­ate a slave, he had to pay a ran­som. Jesus died for our free­dom. That is why his death is a ran­som for us. Try­ing to deter­mine who the ran­som is paid to—God or Satan—misses the point, tak­ing the metaphor lit­er­al­ly and mis­un­der­stand­ing the inten­tion of the state­ment. When God “pur­chased“² his peo­ple Israel out of slav­ery in Egypt, the ques­tion did not arise as to whom the price was paid to.

In Psalm 49:15 the psalmist prays:

But God will ran­som my soul from the pow­er of She­ol, for he will receive me.

Full of con­fi­dence, the psalmist looks for­ward to being freed from death to res­ur­rec­tion and eter­nal fel­low­ship with God. Yet he did not ask with what ran­som God would set him free from the pow­er of death. He prob­a­bly would have been aston­ished at such a ques­tion.

To whom ought Jesus have paid this ran­som? To Satan?³ That would be to pre­sup­pose on the one hand that Satan is the right­ful own­er of fall­en mankind, while on the oth­er hand assum­ing that God regards Satan as an equal coun­ter­part in a busi­ness trans­ac­tion. For the first idea there is no bib­li­cal foun­da­tion. The sec­ond thought (view­ing Satan as an equal busi­ness coun­ter­part of God) is blas­phe­my.

Can we imag­ine that Jesus paid the ran­som to God? Should he have ran­somed mankind from the wrath­ful grip of God? An even greater blas­phe­my than the pre­vi­ous idea! Why should God, who is love him­self, keep mankind bound in slav­ery?

Sure­ly though, God’s right­eous­ness requires the just pun­ish­ment of sin, does it not? Did not Jesus, by his death, bear the due penal­ty for all sin, sat­is­fy­ing the right­eous­ness of God?

The con­cept of a God who can only over­come his “split-per­son­al­i­ty” of lov­ing mer­cy and wrath­ful indig­na­tion by slaugh­ter­ing his own son is a prod­uct of (in)human fan­ta­sy and has noth­ing to do with the God whom Jesus revealed to us.

Final­ly he sent his son to them, say­ing, “They will respect my son.” But when the ten­ants saw the son, they said to them­selves, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inher­i­tance.” And they took him and threw him out of the vine­yard and killed him. (Matthew 21:37–39)

God sent his son to rec­on­cile us to him­self because through our sins we had become his ene­mies. It was not to resolve his own inner con­flict between his right­eous anger and mer­ci­ful love! God is love through and through, and his right­eous­ness is none oth­er than his self-giv­ing love which he made known in Jesus’ devo­tion.

That is why pre­cise­ly in his suf­fer­ing and death God was clos­est to Jesus:

Behold, the hour is com­ing, indeed it has come, when you will be scat­tered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. (John 16:32)

…that is, in Christ God was rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self, not count­ing their tres­pass­es against them, and entrust­ing to us the mes­sage of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. (2 Corinthi­ans 5:19)

…For in him all the full­ness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to rec­on­cile to him­self all things, whether on earth or in heav­en, mak­ing peace by the blood of his cross.… (Colos­sians 1:19–20)

What then do Jesus’ words mean in Matthew 27:46?

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, say­ing, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you for­sak­en me?”

We have to view these first words of Psalm 22 in the con­text of the rest of the Psalm. In the midst of extreme des­per­a­tion in which it appears that God has for­sak­en his right­eous one, the per­se­cut­ed right­eous man turns with com­plete trust to God who sets him free. The Psalm con­cludes with grat­i­tude and praise:

For he has not despised or abhorred the afflic­tion of the  afflict­ed, and he has not hid­den his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. (Psalm 22:24)

Psalm 22 is not talk­ing about a right­eous man being sep­a­rat­ed from God (either through his own or oth­er peo­ple’s sins), but about his per­se­cu­tion by evil peo­ple. Even in mis­ery and tribulation—in which there seems to be no evi­dence of God’s presence—God is very close to his own.

2 Jesus: The Passover Lamb

Cleanse out the old leav­en that you may be a new lump, as you real­ly are unleav­ened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sac­ri­ficed. Let us there­fore cel­e­brate the fes­ti­val, not with the old leav­en, the leav­en of mal­ice and evil, but with the unleav­ened bread of sin­cer­i­ty and truth. (1 Corinthi­ans 5:7–8)

With these words Paul admon­ished the church in Corinth as they had failed to exclude a per­son from the church who was liv­ing in grave sin. Paul applied the sym­bol­ism of the Jew­ish Passover festival—also called the Feast of Unleav­ened Bread—to the church. What did he intend to say?

In the first instance, his inten­tion was to demon­strate the puri­ty of the church. Just as all the old leav­en had to be removed from the Israelite hous­es before the fes­ti­val, in the same way all mal­ice and wicked­ness must be removed from the church of God and from the life of every indi­vid­ual Chris­t­ian. Sec­ond­ly, by refer­ring to Jesus as the sac­ri­ficed passover lamb he alludes to our lib­er­a­tion. The Passover fes­ti­val was the cel­e­bra­tion of the lib­er­a­tion of the nation of Israel from slav­ery in Egypt. Our Passover lamb, Jesus, has lib­er­at­ed us from the slav­ery of sin. It is there­fore nei­ther pos­si­ble for Chris­tians to remain in their for­mer sins, nor for the church to tol­er­ate some­one in her midst who dis­re­gards the free­dom which Jesus grants us.

Here it is not about the con­cepts of pay­ing a ran­som for, or pun­ish­ing sins. The Israelites did not asso­ciate these con­cepts with the passover lamb. The Passover was the fes­ti­val of lib­er­a­tion. As Chris­tians we should also now live in the free­dom which Jesus has grant­ed us through his devo­tion.

3 Jesus: Sacrifice, Priest and Mercy-Seat

3.1 Jesus: The Sacrifice

In the New Tes­ta­ment there are numer­ous pas­sages in which Jesus’ death is com­pared with a sac­ri­fice:

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us, a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. (Eph­esians 5:2)

He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sac­ri­fices dai­ly, first for his own sins and then for those of the peo­ple, since he did this once for all when he offered up him­self. (Hebrews 7:27)

…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eter­nal Spir­it offered him­self with­out blem­ish to God, puri­fy our con­science from dead works to serve the liv­ing God. (Hebrews 9:14)

Thus it was nec­es­sary for the copies of the heav­en­ly things to be puri­fied with these rites, but the heav­en­ly things them­selves with bet­ter sac­ri­fices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heav­en itself, now to appear in the pres­ence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer him­self repeat­ed­ly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suf­fer repeat­ed­ly since the foun­da­tion of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self. And just as it is appoint­ed for man to die once, and after that comes judge­ment, so Christ, hav­ing been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a sec­ond time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eager­ly wait­ing for him. (Hebrews 9:23–28)

Con­se­quent­ly, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sac­ri­fices and offer­ings you have not desired, but a body have you pre­pared for me; in burnt offer­ings and sin offer­ings you have tak­en no plea­sure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is writ­ten of me in the scroll of the book.’” When he said above, “You have nei­ther desired nor tak­en plea­sure in sac­ri­fices and offer­ings and burnt offer­ings and sin offer­ings” (these are offered accord­ing to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to estab­lish the sec­ond. And by that will we have been sanc­ti­fied through the offer­ing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands dai­ly at his ser­vice, offer­ing repeat­ed­ly the same sac­ri­fices, which can nev­er take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a sin­gle sac­ri­fice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, wait­ing from that time until his ene­mies should be made a foot­stool for his feet. For by a sin­gle offer­ing he has per­fect­ed for all time those who are being sanc­ti­fied. (Hebrews 10:5–14)

Pas­sages like these are found most­ly in the let­ter to the Hebrews. The author’s inten­tion is to demon­strate to his Jew­ish Chris­t­ian read­ers that the sac­ri­fi­cial cult of the Old Tes­ta­ment has been inval­i­dat­ed through the sal­va­tion brought by Jesus. Thus, Barn­abas⁴ com­pares the death of Jesus with the sac­ri­fices of the Old Covenant, espe­cial­ly the sac­ri­fice on the Day of Atone­ment (Yom Kip­pur), show­ing that Jesus’ sac­ri­fice is the only one which can real­ly take away sins, unlike the Old Tes­ta­ment sac­ri­fices. What was it about Jesus’ sac­ri­fice that made real for­give­ness pos­si­ble? Barn­abas answers this ques­tion with a quote from Psalm 40:

Behold, I have come to do your will.

Jesus’ death was the result of his holy life. He came to do God’s will from his first to his last breath on this earth. It is not his death in itself, nor his shed blood that saves us. Rather it is his lov­ing devo­tion which he demon­strat­ed by set­ting us free from our sins.

Paul’s ref­er­ence to Jesus’ sac­ri­fice in Eph­esians 5:2 needs to be under­stood in con­text.

There­fore be imi­ta­tors of God, as beloved chil­dren. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us, a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. (Eph­esians 5:1–2)

His love is the exam­ple for how we should love; His devo­tion is the exam­ple for our devo­tion. In the fol­low­ing vers­es Paul explains the details of what this life of devo­tion con­sists of. It is a life of puri­ty, mod­esty, sobri­ety, honesty—a life in which God is glorified.The com­par­i­son with a sac­ri­fice con­veys how every­thing Jesus did in life and in death ful­ly pleased and glo­ri­fied God.

Accord­ing­ly, we find var­i­ous pas­sages in the Bible that com­pare our Chris­t­ian life with a sac­ri­fi­cial offer­ing, with­out need­ing to con­clude that every Chris­t­ian ought to die as a mar­tyr.

I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­i­tu­al wor­ship. (Romans 12:1)

Through him then let us con­tin­u­al­ly offer up a sac­ri­fice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowl­edge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sac­ri­fices are pleas­ing to God. (Hebrews 13:15–16)

A fit­ting pas­sage in this con­text which does not use sac­ri­fi­cial ter­mi­nol­o­gy is the fol­low­ing from 1st John:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. (1 John 3:16)

Also Eph­esians 5:25–27:

Hus­bands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave him­self up for her, that he might sanc­ti­fy her, hav­ing cleansed her by the wash­ing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to him­self in splen­dour, with­out spot or wrin­kle or any such thing, that she might be holy and with­out blem­ish.

When we con­sid­er the com­par­i­son here of Jesus’ devo­tion with that of a lov­ing hus­band, it is obvi­ous that the essen­tial thing is not his death but his dai­ly devo­tion to his wife. A hus­band’s pur­pose in devot­ing him­self is not to die, but to share his life with his wife. Of course, in a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion he will be will­ing to risk his own life in order to save his wife. In the same way Jesus risked his own life to save us.

3.2 Jesus: The Priest

In the Let­ter to the Hebrews Jesus is not only com­pared with the sac­ri­fice of the Day of Atone­ment, but also with the High Priest who was allowed to enter the Most Holy Place once a year on this day.

It was the task of the Old Tes­ta­ment Priests to be medi­a­tors between God and the peo­ple. They brought the requests of the peo­ple to God through the sac­ri­fices. They also offered sac­ri­fices for sin in order to bridge the gap between God and man which was brought about by man’s sin. The fact that the priests them­selves were sin­ners meant that they were only able to ful­fil this role in a very lim­it­ed sense. Only Jesus, who is God and man in one per­son and who nev­er sinned, was able to build the per­fect bridge between God and man. He him­self is the bridge between God and man—the only medi­a­tor.

For there is one God, and there is one medi­a­tor between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave him­self as a ran­som for all, which is the tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en at the prop­er time. (1 Tim­o­thy 2:5–6)

As man, Jesus is ful­ly on our side. He knows all of our weak­ness­es and temp­ta­tions.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sym­pa­thize with our weak­ness­es, but one who in every respect has been tempt­ed as we are, yet with­out sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

That is why he is the one who can help us in our afflic­tions and weak­ness­es. He nev­er sinned, despite being tempt­ed in every way, and so he can empow­er us to over­come sin in our lives. He is a holy High Priest.

For it was indeed fit­ting that we should have such a high priest, holy, inno­cent, unstained, sep­a­rat­ed from sin­ners, and exalt­ed above the heav­ens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sac­ri­fices dai­ly, first for his own sins and then for those of the peo­ple, since he did this once for all when he offered up him­self. (Hebrews 7:26–27)

In his res­ur­rec­tion he over­came death and lives in all eter­ni­ty.

Con­se­quent­ly, he is able to save to the utter­most those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make inter­ces­sion for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

Jesus is the Immanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). He is God incar­nate.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glo­ry, glo­ry as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

3.3 Jesus: The Mercy-Seat

In the New Tes­ta­ment the image of the Old Tes­ta­ment Day of Atone­ment (see Leviti­cus 16) is used in var­i­ous ways to express dif­fer­ent aspects of Jesus’ work of sal­va­tion. Jesus is not only com­pared with the sac­ri­fice and the High Priest, but also with the Mer­cy-seat.

In Romans Paul writes:

But now the right­eous­ness of God has been man­i­fest­ed apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear wit­ness to it—the right­eous­ness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no dis­tinc­tion: for all have sinned and fall short of the glo­ry of God, and are jus­ti­fied by his grace as a gift, through the redemp­tion that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put for­ward as a mer­cy-seat⁵ by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s right­eous­ness, because in his divine for­bear­ance he had passed over for­mer sins. It was to show his right­eous­ness at the present time, so that he might be just and the jus­ti­fi­er of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21–26)

Here, Paul describes Jesus as the “mer­cy-seat” (accord­ing to J.N. Dar­by’s 1890 trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment), in Greek “hilas­te­ri­on”. This is a ref­er­ence to the cov­er of the Ark of the Covenant which, in the Old Tes­ta­ment rit­u­al, was the place where the High Priest sprin­kled the blood of the goat slaugh­tered as a sin offer­ing on the Day of Atone­ment (com­pare Leviti­cus 16:15–16). Luther called this cov­er a “Gnaden­stuhl”, i.e. mer­cy-seat. The sprin­kling of blood on this cov­er sym­bol­ised the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion brought about by God’s for­give­ness offered to Israel.

So the text of Romans 3:25–26a describes how God appoint­ed Jesus as the place of encounter with God—His self-revelation—and as the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion which is effec­tive through the pow­er of his devot­ed life, that is, through his blood. Through Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion God has shown him­self to be the one who meets with us and rec­on­ciles us.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heav­ens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our con­fes­sion. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sym­pa­thize with our weak­ness­es, but one who in every respect has been tempt­ed as we are, yet with­out sin. Let us then with con­fi­dence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mer­cy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14–16)

In the New Tes­ta­ment the var­i­ous aspects of the Jew­ish rit­u­als of the Day of Atone­ment are applied fig­u­ra­tive­ly to Jesus. So, depict­ing him as a High Priest, a sac­ri­fice, and even a mer­cy-seat express­es that we have been rec­on­ciled to God through him, while also reveal­ing that we should not take any of these pas­sages too lit­er­al­ly.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the New Tes­ta­ment does not utilise the analogy—which some have used—of com­par­ing Jesus with the goat that was dri­ven into the desert after the High Priest had “put” the sins of the nation on it (Leviti­cus 16:21–22). In the Old Tes­ta­ment too, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion was brought about through the sac­ri­ficed goat, not through the goat sent into the desert. This goat “for Azazel” (Leviti­cus 16:8) illus­trates the removal of sins, noth­ing more. Jesus is not our scape­goat; he is our Priest and Lord.

Supplement 1: The Blood of Jesus

At the insti­tu­tion of the Lord’s Sup­per, Jesus spoke of his “blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the for­give­ness of sins”. (Matthew 26:28). In keep­ing with his exam­ple, there are many pas­sages in the writ­ings of the apos­tles that also refer to the blood of Jesus, such as the fol­low­ing:

…whom God put for­ward as a pro­pi­ti­a­tion by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s right­eous­ness, because in his divine for­bear­ance he had passed over for­mer sins. (Romans 3:25)

In him we have redemp­tion through his blood, the for­give­ness of our tres­pass­es, accord­ing to the rich­es of his grace.… (Eph­esians 1:7)

…mak­ing peace by the blood of his cross. (Colos­sians 1:20)

…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eter­nal Spir­it offered him­self with­out blem­ish to God, puri­fy our con­science from dead works to serve the liv­ing God. (Hebrews 9:14)

…but with the pre­cious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb with­out blem­ish or spot. (1 Peter 1:19)

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fel­low­ship with one anoth­er, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleans­es us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

And they sang a new song, say­ing, “Wor­thy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ran­somed peo­ple for God from every tribe and lan­guage and peo­ple and nation.…” (Rev­e­la­tion 5:9)

And they have con­quered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their tes­ti­mo­ny, for they loved not their lives even unto death. (Rev­e­la­tion 12:11)

This incom­plete selec­tion of New Tes­ta­ment pas­sages which refer to the blood of Jesus shows what great impor­tance the apos­tles attached to the blood of Jesus. Through the blood we have sal­va­tion, the for­give­ness of sins; we have been ran­somed and cleansed. Through the blood of the Lamb we over­come. Here, it is obvi­ous that “blood” does not refer to the body flu­id. This is also appar­ent in the for­mu­la­tion, “through the blood of his cross” (Colos­sians 1:20). Blood loss dur­ing crucifixion—cruel though it was—was not very severe in com­par­i­son with oth­er forms of exe­cu­tion such as behead­ing.

Two Old Tes­ta­ment pas­sages can help clar­i­fy this point:

For the life of every crea­ture is its blood: its blood is its life. There­fore I have said to the peo­ple of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any crea­ture, for the life of every crea­ture is its blood. Who­ev­er eats it shall be cut off. (Leviti­cus 17:14)

Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. (Deuteron­o­my 12:23)

Nei­ther of these pas­sages speak about the blood of humans, but the blood of ani­mals. The rea­son giv­en for the Old Tes­ta­ment pro­hi­bi­tion of eat­ing blood is that the life of every crea­ture is in its blood. That is to say, that the blood is its life (or its life force or vital­i­ty). This rela­tion­ship between blood and life prob­a­bly forms the basis for the under­stand­ing of blood in the Old Tes­ta­ment sac­ri­fices. A sac­ri­fice is an expres­sion of a per­son­’s desire to give God his very best, that is, his life. The pur­pose of ani­mal sac­ri­fices was not to have an ani­mal killed instead of the sin­ner him­self, but for a per­son to give God the very best he can. To the cre­ator of all life, some­thing of that life was giv­en back.⁶

This thought helps us to under­stand the val­ue of the blood of Jesus. His blood rep­re­sents his life, which he gave for us. He shed his blood, that is to say, he gave him­self com­plete­ly for us, to the point of death. Through his devo­tion we have for­give­ness, we have been cleansed and he gives us the strength to over­come.

Jesus was not only human. In him, God came to us in human form. The blood, as a sym­bol of life, is con­se­quent­ly a sym­bol of the divine life that has been giv­en to us in Jesus.

His divine pow­er has grant­ed to us all things that per­tain to life and god­li­ness, through the knowl­edge of him who called us to his own glo­ry and excel­lence, by which he has grant­ed to us his pre­cious and very great promis­es, so that through them you may become par­tak­ers of the divine nature,⁷ hav­ing escaped from the cor­rup­tion that is in the world because of sin­ful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4)

Does not Hebrews 9:22 speak of the absolute neces­si­ty of the shed­ding of blood in order for sin to be for­giv­en? For it says:

Indeed, under the law almost every­thing is puri­fied with blood, and with­out the shed­ding of blood there is no for­give­ness of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)

The expres­sion “under the law” gives us a hint that the author’s aim is not to for­mu­late a uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple, accord­ing to which God is inca­pable of for­giv­ing with­out the shed­ding of blood.⁸ Barn­abas points out that in the Old Tes­ta­ment rit­u­al, blood played a major role, and also that, by and large, for­give­ness of sins was con­nect­ed with the shed­ding of blood. Even in the Old Tes­ta­ment we find exam­ples in which God for­gave sins with­out the shed­ding of any blood, as for exam­ple in the sin offer­ings of the poor (Leviti­cus 5:11), or fol­low­ing David’s sin when the prophet Nathan pro­nounced for­give­ness with­out requir­ing any sac­ri­fice at all (2 Sam 12:13). In addi­tion, Psalms 32 and 103, which praise God for his for­give­ness, com­plete­ly omit any men­tion of sac­ri­fice or the shed­ding of blood.

In the New Tes­ta­ment too, we find that John the Bap­tist pro­claimed for­give­ness of sins on only one condition—repentance, expressed by the sign of bap­tism (Luke 3:3–18).

Jesus, too, for­gave sins with­out point­ing out any need for a bloody sac­ri­fice (Mark 2:1–11, Luke 7:47–48). Jesus repeat­ed­ly showed that God can only for­give us our sins if we are pre­pared to for­give oth­ers (Matthew 6:14–15, 18:21–35).

There is an inter­est­ing episode in the life of David:

And David said long­ing­ly, “Oh, that some­one would give me water to drink from the well of Beth­le­hem that is by the gate!” Then the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Beth­le­hem that was by the gate and car­ried and brought it to David. But he would not drink of it. He poured it out to the LORD and said, “Far be it from me, O LORD, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives?” There­fore he would not drink it. These things the three mighty men did. (2 Samuel 23:15–17)

David’s mighty men risked their lives to bring David his desired water. That is why David calls this water their blood. These men gave their blood for David with­out los­ing so much as a drop of it.

Jesus gave his blood for us. The val­ue of sal­va­tion is found in the love, devo­tion and holi­ness of our Lord. God is not inter­est­ed in a cou­ple of litres of body flu­id. He is not a blood­thirsty idol who has to be appeased through a bar­bar­ic, mur­der­ous rit­u­al. His whole being is love, and out of this love he gave him­self for us in his Son. He is wait­ing for us to reply to his love with our own love and devo­tion which he wants to work in us.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shep­herd of the sheep, by the blood of the eter­nal covenant, equip you with every­thing good that you may do his will, work­ing in us that which is pleas­ing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glo­ry for ever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21)

Supplement 2: A Human Sacrifice?

Not only in the 21st Cen­tu­ry is human sac­ri­fice con­sid­ered to be a bar­bar­ic atroc­i­ty. Long ago the Old Tes­ta­ment strict­ly for­bade the Israelites from per­form­ing any such rit­u­als.

Just one exam­ple is Jere­mi­ah 7:31:

And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Val­ley of the Son of Hin­nom, to burn their sons and their daugh­ters in the fire, which I did not com­mand, nor did it come into my mind.

The wide­spread Canaan­ite prac­tice of human sac­ri­fice was strict­ly for­bid­den for the Israelites. It was in absolute con­tra­dic­tion to the will of God. Such a thing nev­er even entered God’s mind. Even the sto­ry of Abra­ham’s sac­ri­fice in Gen­e­sis 22 demon­strates that God did not want Isaac’s death. What God required was Abra­ham’s readi­ness to renounce even the very son promised to him—not his son’s lit­er­al slaugh­ter.

He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do any­thing to him, for now I know that you fear God, see­ing you have not with­held your son, your only son, from me.” (Gen­e­sis 22:12)

Abra­ham had to learn that his son was not his own pos­ses­sion, but the God-giv­en bear­er of the promise whom he should devote com­plete­ly to God’s ser­vice.

The only “human sac­ri­fice” pleas­ing to God in the Old Tes­ta­ment is in Num­bers 8:

…and Aaron shall offer the Levites before the Lord as a wave offer­ing from the peo­ple of Israel, that they may do the ser­vice of the Lord. Then the Levites shall lay their hands on the heads of the bulls, and you shall offer one for a sin offer­ing and the oth­er for a burnt offer­ing to the Lord to make atone­ment for the Levites. And you shall set the Levites before Aaron and his sons, and shall offer them as a wave offer­ing to the Lord. Thus you shall sep­a­rate the Levites from among the peo­ple of Israel, and the Levites shall be mine. And after that the Levites shall go in to serve at the tent of meet­ing, when you have cleansed them and offered them as a wave offer­ing. (Num­bers 8:11–15)

Here, the Levites are offered as a “wave offer­ing” to Yah­weh. The wave offer­ing did not con­sist of killing the bulls, but of the ser­vice of the Levites. The Levites were the spe­cial pos­ses­sion of the Lord—their whole ser­vice was the offer­ing pleas­ing to God. A far more per­fect offer­ing than the Levites, who need­ed to sac­ri­fice for their own sins, was Jesus. His ser­vice sur­passed that of the Levites by far.

Even if peo­ple had fol­lowed Jesus’ call to repent—and if he had not been mur­dered by criminals—his life still would have been the per­fect sac­ri­fice for the sal­va­tion of the world—a blood­less human sac­ri­fice.

Supplement 3: In Which Sense Was Jesus’ Death Necessary?

Numer­ous pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment speak of our sal­va­tion through Jesus’ death. Does that mean that with­out the judi­cial mur­der of Jesus, God would have been unable to save us? The New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers take Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion as a giv­en fact. They do not spec­u­late about pos­si­ble alter­na­tive ways God could have brought about sal­va­tion. We would like to men­tion just a few thoughts here which should prompt us to think.

Yet among the mature we do impart wis­dom, although it is not a wis­dom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hid­den wis­dom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glo­ry. None of the rulers of this age under­stood this, for if they had, they would not have cru­ci­fied the Lord of glo­ry. (1 Corinthi­ans 2:6–8)

If the “rulers of this age” had under­stood the wis­dom of God, they would not have cru­ci­fied the Lord of glo­ry. This clear­ly means that God’s wis­dom would not have been con­tra­dict­ed if Jesus had not been mur­dered. God’s will was and is the repen­tance of all peo­ple (1 Tim­o­thy 2:4). If the Jew­ish rulers had lis­tened to and obeyed the God’s voice speak­ing through Jesus and if the nation of Israel had put their faith in their Mes­si­ah, sal­va­tion would cer­tain­ly not have failed as a result. God does not need evil in order to do good!

And why not do evil that good may come?—as some peo­ple slan­der­ous­ly charge us with say­ing. Their con­dem­na­tion is just. (Romans 3:8)

Jesus him­self also clear­ly expressed that his aim in com­ing was to lead peo­ple back to God, as shown in the para­ble of the vine dressers:

Final­ly he sent his son to them, say­ing, “They will respect my son.” (Matthew 21:37)

Or in Matthew 23:37:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gath­ered your chil­dren togeth­er as a hen gath­ers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

Jesus was ful­ly aware of the wicked­ness of the peo­ple his Father had sent him to. His answer to this wicked­ness was love—love that was ready to die. Yet, how much bet­ter would it have been for God’s love to be answered by the love of peo­ple! Through Jesus’ death we too are chal­lenged to give up our enmi­ty towards God and to stop run­ning away from him.

Be rec­on­ciled to God! (2 Corinthi­ans 5:20)

How then, are we to under­stand the fol­low­ing words of Jesus?

And he said to them, “O fool­ish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spo­ken! Was it not nec­es­sary that the Christ should suf­fer these things and enter into his glo­ry?” (Luke 24:25–26)

It was nec­es­sary for Jesus to suf­fer and enter into his glo­ry. Not because he had to shed his blood in order to appease God’s wrath and pay the penal­ty for our sins. Jesus did not want to estab­lish his king­dom in this world by force, but by ser­vice and devo­tion. When absolute good­ness comes into this world—a world liv­ing in rebel­lion to God’s goodness—and evil peo­ple refuse to lis­ten to the Good One, their reac­tion is hatred and vio­lence. Jesus remained con­sis­tent in his love. That is why it was nec­es­sary for him to go the way of suf­fer­ing and death, for by doing so he over­came their hatred.

…and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are wit­ness­es.

But what God fore­told by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suf­fer, he thus ful­filled. Repent there­fore, and turn again, that your sins may be blot­ted out, that times of refresh­ing may come from the pres­ence of the Lord.… (Acts 3:15,18–20)

4 Jesus: The Victor

Jesus’ death only makes full sense in con­nec­tion with his res­ur­rec­tion. His res­ur­rec­tion demon­strates to us that Jesus was not one of numer­ous ide­al­ists who was ulti­mate­ly defeat­ed by man’s wicked­ness. The res­ur­rec­tion is the divine con­fir­ma­tion that Jesus’ words and his claim to be the incar­nate God were true. The res­ur­rec­tion demon­strates that death does not have the last word, but that Jesus over­came death through his devo­tion to the point of death. He bore the wicked­ness of sin­ners and by being unit­ed with him we expe­ri­ence free­dom from sin.

And you, who were dead in your tres­pass­es and the uncir­cum­ci­sion of your flesh, God made alive togeth­er with him, hav­ing for­giv­en us all our tres­pass­es, by can­celling the hand­writ­ing⁹ that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nail­ing it to the cross. He dis­armed the rulers and author­i­ties and put them to open shame, by tri­umph­ing over them in him. (Colos­sians 2:13–15)

But thanks be to God, who gives us the vic­to­ry through our Lord Jesus Christ. There­fore, my beloved broth­ers, be stead­fast, immov­able, always abound­ing in the work of the Lord, know­ing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain. (1 Corinthi­ans 15:57–58)

1. Judi­cial mur­der is the unjus­ti­fied exe­cu­tion of death penal­ty. ↩
2. Exo­dus 15:16 “…till your peo­ple, O LORD, pass by, till the peo­ple pass by whom you have pur­chased.” Com­pare also Psalm 74:2, Isa­iah 50:1, 52:3. ↩
3. This was a wide­spread expla­na­tion in the first mil­len­ni­um AD. ↩
4. Accord­ing to Ter­tul­lian (De pudici­tia), Barn­abas was the author of the Let­ter to the Hebrews. ↩
5. At this point in the text we have replaced the word “pro­pi­ti­a­tion”, as quot­ed in the ESV, with “mer­cy-seat” as trans­lat­ed by Dar­by. The ren­der­ing “pro­pi­ti­a­tion” implies the thought that God requires com­pen­sa­tion or sat­is­fac­tion to be paid for the offence com­mit­ted against him—a thought that is for­eign to the bib­li­cal con­cept of God, who him­self is the one who takes away our sins. It is not God who needs to be rec­on­ciled to us, but we to God. Wycliffe trans­lat­ed hilas­te­ri­on as “for­giv­er”. ↩
6. This expla­na­tion seems to be fit­ting for both sin offer­ings and thanks­giv­ing offer­ings. The expla­na­tion that the ani­mal dies a sub­sti­tu­tion­ary death for the guilt of the per­son who is sac­ri­fic­ing can­not be applied to sac­ri­fices that had no con­nec­tion with sin, but were offered pure­ly out of grat­i­tude. Fur­ther­more, it is impor­tant to note that for very poor Israelites, the con­cept of an animal’s sub­sti­tu­tion­ary death as a sin offer­ing did not appear, because accord­ing to Leviti­cus 5:11 their sac­ri­fice con­sist­ed of a tenth of an ephah (approx. 2.2 litres, accord­ing to anoth­er expla­na­tion, 4 litres) of fine flour. When we con­sid­er this sac­ri­fice as a gift, we can under­stand why it was pos­si­ble for poor peo­ple to replace the blood with flour. ↩
7. The expres­sion “par­tak­ers of the divine nature” of course does not mean that we are no longer human, but points to the close con­nec­tion with God which has been giv­en to us in Jesus. ↩
8. Some fun­da­men­tal­ists hold the opin­ion that the rea­son God reject­ed Cain’s offer­ing was because he offered only plants and did not shed blood. ↩
9. This is the lit­er­al mean­ing of the Greek word cheirographon. We have thus amend­ed the ESV’s ren­der­ing of “record of debt” to read “hand­writ­ing” as in KJV and Dar­by. ↩