In Mark 10:45, Jesus gives one of his clearest declarations about what he came to do:

For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

In this post, I’d like to talk a bit about the metaphor of a ransom and distinguish it from that of a substitute as construed in PSA.

What is a Ransom?

Ransom, and its close cousin redemption, has to do with liberation. Both are about a transfer; a movement from a place of captivity into a place of freedom. When used as a noun, as Jesus does in Mark 10:45, a ransom refers to the cost or price of that freedom. Simply put, when Jesus calls himself a ransom he is indicating the price he will pay in order to bring about our liberation.

When used as verbs, to ransom and to redeem both mean to rescue or deliver. Consider two Old Testament examples:

Psalm 49:15

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

Jeremiah 31:10-11

10 Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,

    and declare it in the coastlands far away;

say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him

    and will keep him as a shepherd does a flock.”

11 For the Lord has ransomed Jacob

    and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

In both cases, God is the one acting. The language is not about appeasing God but about God coming to the rescue. Also, notice that it is a rescuing from. There is a relocation. The psalmist’s soul is ransomed from the power of Sheol and received back to God. God’s people are ransomed from the nations and gathered back into God’s care.

Ransomed From What?

When it comes to Penal Substitutionary Atonement there is a tendency to conflate ransom language with the idea of a payment made to satisfy God’s wrath. But this is to confuse our metaphors. The Bible never talks about us needing to be ransomed or redeemed from God. As if God is the oppressor from whom we need deliverance. When the metaphor of ransom is invoked it is always used to portray God as liberator — the one who acts on our behalf to free us from oppressive powers, from “hands too strong for us.”

This is the immediate context for Mark 10:45.

Just before this verse, Jesus tells his disciples:

You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.

Jesus is concerned that his disciples are envisioning themselves taking up these “lord-it-overing” positions. As if the point of what Jesus came to do was to simply out-Caesar Caesar; to establish a more powerful empire and elevate his disciples to offices where they can rule as tyrants over others. The disciples are captivated, or rather, held captive, by a certain way of seeing the world.

Jesus follows this up with an emphatic: “Not so with you!” In effect Jesus says to them, “Not so with you because I am transferring you into my kingdom which turns this entire way of thinking upside down. In my kingdom whoever wants to become great must become a servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

How Jesus is a Ransom

Jesus picks up the language of ransom in order to highlight the cost of living this alternative kingdom in a world that mistakes tyrannical rule for greatness. The cross becomes the climactic moment when Jesus gives his life as a ransom for many because it is there that the decisive confrontation between two kingdoms takes place. On the cross, the kingdom of God collides with the kingdoms of this world.

It is only because of who Jesus is that his death has the power to ransom us. If it were anyone else, the cross would be nothing more than one more instance of the strong crushing the weak — one more display of the naked will to power. But if Jesus is the Son of God, as the disciples would soon come to believe, then his death cannot mean defeat; it can only mean the overthrow of the status quo.

This is the crucial hinge on which the entire Christian faith turns. Usually, the cross defines the identity of the one who hangs on it. The crucified are seen as less than, as wretched. They are a sign of what happens if you dare challenge the powers that be. But for Jesus it works the other way around. It is his identity that determines the meaning of the cross.

In his crucifixion, those who imagine themselves wise are exposed as blind, and those who cling to power are revealed as foolish. As God in the flesh — the very embodiment of what true greatness looks like — Jesus shows us that God’s ways are indeed higher than the ways of this world. In Jesus, God takes what the world considers weak to shame what is assumed to be strong; and what is foolish in the eyes of the powerful is shown to be the very wisdom of almighty God.

As ransom then, Jesus does on our behalf what we could never do for ourselves. Without his death, we are left trapped within the same logic of domination, the same cycle of power and retaliation. But in giving his life, he breaks that cycle and opens up a different way. By his death he ransoms us, pays the price, so to speak, in order to bring us out of a kingdom of winner takes all and into another in which the last are first.

A Ransom Is Not a Substitute

Notice, however, what this does not mean. Strictly speaking, a ransom is not a substitute. The idea is not one of a prisoner swap. Jesus is not taking our place behind bars so that we can walk free. That isn’t how a ransom works.

When we buy a product, we do not think of the money spent as substituting for the product being purchased. There is an exchange happening, but it isn’t about one thing being substituted for another. Rather, the money affects a change. That change is the transfer of ownership from the seller to the buyer. This is precisely the logic at work with a ransom. Jesus gives his life as a ransom to effect a transfer of ownership.

Again, we are not bought with a ransom to rescue us from God. Rather it is God who “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,” (Col. 1:13). This is what we mean when we say that we were bought with the precious blood of Christ (1 Cor. 6:20, 1 Pe. 1:18-19). It is about a transfer from one kingdom to another, not about a change in God from wrath to forgiveness.

Conclusion

So, it isn’t so much that Jesus dies so we don’t have to. Jesus doesn’t die instead of us, rather, he dies ahead of us. Jesus telling his disciples that he comes to serve and give his life as a ransom is not so the disciples can say, “Phew, good thing we don’t have to do any of that!” The whole point is that Jesus as a ransom opens up the way of the kingdom for them (and us!) to follow in his footsteps.

To sum up, conflating ransom and redemption with substitution can lead us down two confused paths. First, we risk mistaking God as the one Jesus is ransoming us from. Second, we may be lead to believe that as our substitute almost everything Jesus did he did so we wouldn’t have to. But this is precisely the opposite of what Jesus said and taught. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve — and those who belong to his kingdom, who have been ransomed and redeemed, are called to do the same.

Many of us who grew up with Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) as the Gospel, probably learned it through the Romans Road.

The Romans Road consists of four verses that are presented together as a succinct summary of what you need to believe in order to be saved.

The Romans Road

• Romans 3:23 (all have sinned)
• Romans 6:23 (wages of sin is death)
• Romans 5:8 (Christ died for us)
• Romans 10:9-10 (confess and believe)

It begins with Romans 3:23: “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

From here, it jumps to Romans 6:23, which states that “…the wages of sin is death.”

This is the bad news. No matter how good you think you are, the Bible plainly states that all have sinned. And because the wages of (any) sin is death everyone is deserving of execution.

The good news of the Gospel, however, is that Christ died for us. To get there we curiously have to backtrack a chapter to Romans 5:8: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

The “for” here is doing some heavy lifting. It is taken to mean that Jesus died instead of us. As a sinner, you are deserving of death, but Jesus steps in and dies the death you should have died.

From here the Romans Road jumps 5 chapters ahead to conclude with Romans 10:9-10: ”9 … if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation.”

A Closer Look at Romans 6:20-23

I’d like to take a closer look at Romans 6:23. In a way, the entire Romans Road turns on what it means that “the wages of sin is death.”

In the PSA way of looking at things, there are only two parties. Us and God. Sin is narrowly defined as actions we commit that “miss the mark” — things that God takes offense with. Because there is only us and God then it has to be God who is the one paying the wages due to us who sin. God must take our life because as the verse says “the wages of sin is death.”

But if we look more closely at what Paul is talking about in Romans 6, sin does not seem to be only about the things we do. Sin is described as an active agent in the world. Paul personifies it as a power to which we are enslaved.

Here is the full context in which verse 23 is the climactic conclusion:

Romans 6:20-23

20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For Paul it isn’t just us and God. There is a third party, a menacing entity called Sin. We don’t sin just because as humans we are born sinners. We sin because we are held under an oppressive power that causes us to sin. This is the human predicament. We are caught up in forces that we are helpless to break free from.

As we looked at in our last post, this is how the Gospels contextualize the ministry of Jesus. God sends Jesus into enemy territory in order to plunder the Strong Man. Paul is saying the exact same thing, just worded differently.

When Paul says that “the wages of sin is death,” he doesn’t mean that God is the one who demands death as payment for our sins. Rather Sin, capitalized here to help distinguish it as a power, is the one who doles out death to those it enslaves. When you labor under Sin, what you get is death. This is the meaning of “the wages of Sin is death.”

In Paul’s mind there is the realm of Sin which leads to death and there is God’s realm, which is marked by life. To read Romans 6:20-23 in this way helps make clear what Paul is saying. “When you were slaves of Sin,” meaning, when you were held captive within the realm of Sin, “you were free in regard to righteousness.” That is, “you were free, in the sense that you were not bound to the deeds of righteousness which characterize the realm you now find yourselves in.” And Paul asks, “Tell me, where did that get you? What was the upside of living under Sin?” Paul answers his own question, “The end of those things is death.” Paul then goes on to describe our new surroundings. “But now, you have been delivered from the realm of Sin and you are under new management. You now work for God.” Paul concludes by saying, “And what can you expect for your salary? It ain’t death, which is the wages of Sin. Rather, it is nothing less than eternal life.”

The Gospel

Paul lays this out in a nice and concise manner in another letter of his. In Colossians 1:13 Paul writes of God, “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

This is the Gospel. Plain and simple. There is no need to jump around taking verses out of context. It is not God who demands our death for the sins we commit. As we said in our last post, we need to remember who the real enemy is.

It is not God.

It is Sin.

It is God who has defeated our enemy (and his). In Christ we are freed from Sin so instead of Death we receive the free gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the Gospel of our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

One thing that can happen when we equate the gospel with PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is that we primarily come to think of God as the one from whom we need to be saved. This is the central logic at work in PSA. The death of Jesus on the cross is a kind of payment Jesus makes on our behalf to satisfy God’s anger. Without it, we are fish out of water.

But when you read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), this is not the general sense you get — that Jesus comes to appease God.

If we take the Gospel of Mark as an example, after Jesus is baptized he is immediately sent into the wilderness to do battle with the Satan. Right after he has multiple confrontations with impure or unclean spirits and then is shown overcoming various diseases that afflict the sick.

All this to say, at the outset of his ministry, Jesus is taking on the forces of evil (not God), battling against what ails those he comes in contact with. As his offensive gains momentum, his tactical brilliance proves too convincing and quickly ignites the ire of his opponents. They accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. In response Jesus utters a rather enigmatic parable about a strong man being plundered.

Here is the parable and the context in which it is given:

Mark 3:23-27

23 And he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

The metaphor can be a little jarring. Who is the strong man? We are apt to think it is Jesus, but then the parable describes this strong man as being tied up by someone stronger. So then this stronger one must be Jesus. But then we read this stronger one is a plunderer.

Is Jesus a plunderer?

It certainly seems so. 

This is Jesus’ own self-description of what he came to do. He comes to plunder the strong man — the one who possesses the power to hold captive those trapped within his house.

It goes without saying that the strong man Jesus comes to plunder is not God. It is God’s enemy. The anti-God power that holds creation captive.

Throughout Mark, the shape of this captivity is expressed through those possessed by demons as well as those suffering from physical ailments. What Jesus wants the people to know is that all the exorcisms they see him performing, all the bodies they witness him healing, these are evidence of him binding up the one who has kept them bound for far too long. 

They are the signs that a stronger one has come.

This, in the end, is the Gospel. It is the good news that Jesus has come to save us, not from God, but from the strong man, the Satan, the Devil; to deliver us from Sin and Death, from the powers and principalities, from the cosmic powers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil.

It is they who are the enemy. They oppress and imprison us.

Jesus comes to defeat them and set us free.

This is what we mean when we say Jesus saves.

We see this emphasized throughout the New Testament.

As the Apostle Paul says in Colossians: 

Colossians 2:15 (NIV)

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

The writer of Hebrews puts it this way:

Hebrews 2:14-15 (NIV)

¹⁴ Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. 

The book of Revelation over and over again reiterates the truth of the Gospel as the proclamation that the Lamb wins. The Lamb is Jesus and Jesus saves precisely because the Lamb wins; because he defeats the anti-God forces so memorably portrayed as “the beast” in Revelation. It is the beast who in chapter 17, gathers up an army under his power and authority to wage war against the Lamb. But the Lamb proves too strong and conquers the diabolical forces of the beast and proves the proclamation to be trustworthy and true: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever,” (Rev. 11:15).

What these all point to is that God, in Jesus, comes to rescue us from powers that we have no hope of escaping from on our own. Jesus comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. But it is not to save us from God. Rather it is God and Jesus working in tandem to free us from our enslavement to Sin and Death.

Now, it may be possible to hold this view together with the penal substitutionary model of atonement. I tend to think not, but if there were a coherent way to see both as true, my suspicion is that PSA will inevitably flex to take pride of place. Rather than focus on how God acted on our behalf, at great cost to himself, to deliver us from evil, we will fixate, either consciously or unconsciously, on the claim that God is fundamentally angry at us, so much so that he wants to punish us eternally.

And so we can easily fall into the confused impression that God is our enemy from whom we need Jesus to come and save us.

It’s been a while, but in our last post, we talked about Jesus as the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (Jn. 1:29).

Jesus, is “the lamb of God,” because Jesus is the one in whom we celebrate God’s mighty act of deliverance. Jesus is the ultimate Passover lamb who is a sign of our liberation, not merely from the imperial oppression of Pharaoh and Egypt, but from the cosmic powers of Sin and Death.

And Jesus is the one who “takes away the sin of the world,” because Jesus as the Word of God exercises the divine prerogative to forgive. It is not about his death satisfying God’s wrath, but simply that in Jesus God has deemed it time to “let go of” the sin of the world.

In this post, we want to look at what Jesus says about himself at his last meal, what we commonly know as “the Lord’s Supper.” In particular, we’ll look at Matthew 26:26-28:

Matthew 26:26-28

26 While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Our focus will be on verse 28 and the relationship between blood and forgiveness.

Just as with John 1:29, we make a whole host of unhelpful assumptions about what is happening here:

1. We hear blood and think of God requiring the death of some living thing in order to appease his wrath.
2. We assume Jesus is giving his blood (pouring it out) as a sacrificial offering to God.
3. And this is what allows God to forgive us.

The Blood of the Covenant

The first thing to recognize is the language of covenant. Jesus says, “this is my blood of the covenant.” This is a reference (again) back to the Exodus story:

Exodus 24:3-8

3 Moses went and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances, and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 He sent young men of the Israelites, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar. 7 Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8 Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “Here is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exodus 24:3-8, NRSVUE)

These verses describe a covenant making ceremony. This is not something we are familiar with. The closest thing we have is a wedding ceremony, in which two people make vows to live together in the covenant of marriage. Here, the covenant is made between God and Israel.

It may sound like a broken record, but it must be repeated: God is not making a covenant with Israel because he is angry at them. The blood is not about satisfying God’s wrath. Rather the blood represents the way in which a covenant is sealed, much like what Beyoncé means when she says, “Put a ring on it.”

The way the Bible puts it is, “Put some blood on it.”

In fact, we sometimes still hear the term “blood brothers,” in which two (or more) people, not related by birth, promise undying loyalty to one another. The promise is ratified through a blood oath. In movies, we see them cut the palm of their hand and as the blood flows out they shake on it to solemnize their bond.

This is how Jesus describes his blood — the blood of the covenant. It is Jesus making us his “blood brothers (and sisters)” so to speak.

Again, this has nothing to do with blood needing to be shed in order for forgiveness to happen.

For the Forgiveness of Sins

And yet, of course, Jesus does talk about “the forgiveness of sins” — “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (Mt. 26:28).”

Admittedly, there is a lot packed into this dense phrase. It helps to keep two things in mind.

First, Jesus makes clear, as we’ve discussed above, that what he means by “my blood” is that it is the blood of the covenant — the blood that serves the purpose of sealing a covenant.

Second, the language of blood poured out is best understood as framing Jesus’ death as a murder. Matthew in fact uses the same phrase earlier to talk about the murder of the prophets (Matt. 23:34-36). To say Jesus’s blood was poured out (sometimes translated as shed) is to say that his death was not a justified execution for a capital crime (what the religious leaders and Roman officials claimed), but rather it was an unjust act of murder.

The blood of Jesus “poured out” is not about God taking out his wrath on Jesus so that he is then able to forgive our sins. Jesus’ death is not at the hands of God at all. Rather it is the disciples, the religious leaders, the state, and ultimately us, who are all inculcated in Jesus’ death — in his murder.

If we put these two together, here is what Jesus is saying through this highly stylized and compact statement: 

“My blood, poured out as a result of your rejection of me, is not what you think it means. While you may think my death is the final straw that breaks the back of God’s faithfulness to you, I am telling you, here and now, that it is not. The worst thing you could do — to side with Caesar over and against God’s Anointed — you indeed will do. But even that will not stand as a barrier that cancels you out from God’s commitment to you. Receive my blood, which is given to you for you to know your sins are forgiven — that God has taken the worst you can do, the murder of his own Beloved Son, and made it the very means by which he is making a new covenant with you.”

Conclusion

There is a kind of theological poetry at work in what Jesus is communicating at his last supper. And that poetic logic can best be expressed by how Joseph sums up his life’s story in Genesis 50:20.

If you are familiar with the story you know that Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him and sold him into slavery to get rid of him. But in the end, what resulted, was that Joseph ended up in a position where he was able to help not only his family, but an entire nation survive a severe famine. And so years later when Joseph is united with his brothers he tells them, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today,” (Gen. 50:20, NRSVUE)

This is essentially what Jesus is saying when he talks about his blood: “What you intended for harm (my blood poured out), God has worked out to accomplish his good intentions for you (the forgiveness of sins and the start of a new covenant).

In Jesus, God takes what ought to mark the final nail in our coffin to be the very thing through which a new way is opened up — God establishes a new covenant with us sealed by the blood that was shed by us and yet miraculously becomes for us.

In our last post we looked at how PSA construes Jesus’ death as a sacrifice made to God. Indeed, Jesus’ death is a sacrifice. It’s just that how we think about sacrifice is not how the Bible thinks about sacrifice.

So take, as an example, how John the Baptist describes Jesus in the gospel of John:

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (Jn. 1:29 NRSVue)

When we hear something like this we unconsciously make a whole host of assumptions about what this means:

1. We first connect “the Lamb of God” with animal sacrifice in the Old Testament (which is the right move to make).
2. Then we assume that animals, like lambs, are sacrificed in the Old Testament in order to appease God’s wrath.
3. We then connect God’s wrath to the “sin of the world.” Our sin must be taken away in order for God to no longer be angry at us.
4. And so Jesus, the Lamb of God, must die because his death satisfies God’s anger and so makes it possible for God to forgive us.

The Lamb of God

To be clear, “the lamb of God” is rightly understood in sacrificial terms. In particular, it has to do with Passover. As we are told in Exodus, the Passover Lamb served two purposes.

The first was that its blood was used to mark the doorpost of every Israelite home. This mark made it so the Angel of Death would “pass over” that household. But notice, that the blood of the lamb does not serve the purpose of appeasing God’s anger.

God is not angry.

Well, God is angry, just not with Israel.

God is angry with Pharaoh.

In the Passover story, God is acting to deliver Israel. He is not mad at them. Rather he has compassion on them and so comes to their rescue and saves them from their bondage under the unjust and ruthless rule of Pharaoh. God does this because God heard their cry. God saw their oppression and acted to free them.

Second, the lamb was sacrificed so the Israelites could share in a celebratory meal anticipating their coming deliverance from Egypt. Later on, the Passover Lamb would become a symbol reminding Israel of their “Independence Day,” so to speak. It isn’t that Israel celebrated the fact that a lamb died as a substitute for them. Rather, the Passover Lamb is a reminder of what God did to liberate them.

The important thing to note is that the sacrifice of the lamb is not the cause of God’s desire to deliver Israel. God has already determined to act. Meaning, as we have mentioned, that God is not mad at Israel and therefore, needs a sacrifice to change his mind. The point of the sacrificial lamb was so that the people could share a meal as a way of commemorating or celebrating the deliverance God has done or intends to do apart from the sacrifice.

Taking Away Sin

So what about “who takes away the sin of the world”?

This phrase is best understood as a figure of speech. That is, the sin of the world is not thought to be taken somewhere. Even in the PSA way of understanding this verse, what is taken away is not sin, but God’s wrath. God’s anger is somehow satisfied by the death of the lamb. But nothing actually happens to the sin.

In the Old Testament, when Israel’s sins are said to be “taken away”, it simply means that God has let go of them (their sins, that is). In other words, God forgives their sins. And this forgiveness happens in the same way it happens for us. Just as we do not require the death of the person we have beef with in order to forgive them, God is said to be able to do the same.

We might think of Psalm 103:12 — “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.” I guess we can assume this happens because some animal sacrifice is made, but that would be doing some pretty “creative” interpretation to put it kindly. Plus, that’s just not what sacrifice is about. Rather, God just “removes” our sins. God forgives our transgressions without needing some kind of sacrifice.

All in all, the phrase “taking away sin” is rare in the Old Testament. One instance can be found in Isaiah 27:9, which the Apostle Paul loosely references in Romans 11:27. In it we read, “and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin.” In Romans 11:27, it reads, “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”

What is being referenced is God’s act to deliver Israel (once again) from those who oppress them. If you read Isaiah 27 in its entirety, it is saying that God will remove Israel’s sin and the fruit of this will be God’s judgment over the nation of Assyria and its foreign gods. It is a passage that takes place on “that day” which indicates the day of God’s ultimate victory over evil and Israel’s final restoration.

Again God does this not because some perfect sacrifice has been made. Rather, God acts because “it is time.” God takes away or removes the sin of Israel — God forgives them — and the sign (or fruit) that his has happened is their liberation.

The Lamb of God Who Takes Away the Sin of the World

So back to John 1:29. When John calls Jesus “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” what he is saying is that in Jesus God is on the move to perform one more Exodus.

That Jesus is linked to the Lamb of God harkens back to the original Exodus story where God delivered Israel from Egypt. But Jesus is also the one who takes away, or removes, not just the sin of Israel, but the sin of the whole world. What we are supposed to hear in what John is saying about Jesus is “that day” foretold in Isaiah 27:9 has finally come. In Jesus, God is on the move to bring about the final Exodus for the whole world.

It is not about Jesus satisfying God’s wrath. It is simply that “the time of forgiveness” has come and “that day” is now being proclaimed in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

In our last post we gave a sketch of what many today presume to be the gospel. We referred to it as PSA (penal substitutionary atonement). It is aptly captured in this lyric from the song, In Christ Alone:

Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

Jesus’ death substitutes for ours and appeases God’s wrath. If we believe this then the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf is applied to us. Our sins are paid for and we are forgiven.

Part of the uneasiness with this account of the cross has to do with what it implies about God. It seems to say that God requires, or at least is accepting of, human sacrifice. I can’t help but think of the old trope about a virgin being thrown into a volcano to satisfy the anger of the gods. 

But is this how God is described in Scripture?

Human Sacrifice in Scripture

There are two haunting passages in the Old Testament where God seems to be ok with human sacrifice. One is the well known story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac in Genesis 22. The other, more obscure one, is the story of Jephthah, who in Judges 11 actually does the deed and sacrifices his daughter. We could easily dedicate an entire series to try and make sense of these difficult texts. But the fact that we find these stories out of place within the Bible goes to show how the overall witness of Scripture seems to say that human sacrifice is appalling.

In fact we have a host of passages where God says just that. In Deuteronomy 12:31 God warns Israel not to imitate the practices of the surrounding nations:

“You must not do the same for the Lord your God, because every abhorrent thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods. They would even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.”

Later on, the prophet Jeremiah has God chastising Israel for doing exactly what Deut. 12:31 explicitly forbids:

“For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind,” (Jer. 7:30-31). 

There are also other verses in Leviticus and 2 Kings that clearly state God wants nothing to do with human sacrifice.

Jephthah and His Daughter

So then what about the Abraham and Jephthah stories?

The first thing to notice about both accounts is that God is not angry in either one of them. That is, God is not demanding a human sacrifice in order to appease his anger.

In the case of Judges 11, we see Jephthah making this strange vow to God: “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering,” (Judges 11:31).

Sadly, when Jephthah comes home, it is his daughter who is the first to greet him.

The wording to describe what Jephthah actually does to his daughter is telling. We are not told that he “sacrifices” or “offers” her up. Rather we read, “he did with her according to the vow he had made,” (Judges 11:39). It is, I think, a subtle way of passing judgment on what Jephthah did — it is too detestable a thing to even mention outright.

In the end, the story seems to be a cautionary tale about making rash vows before God and the grim consequences that could follow.

It is also worth nothing that we are not given any indication as to whether God approves of all of this. We don’t actually know what God thinks about Jephthah and the vow he made or what he ends up doing to his daughter. God is largely silent and in the background.

Abraham and Isaac

With Abraham and Isaac it’s a different story. It is indeed God who commands the sacrifice of Isaac (one wonders if Jeremiah had read Genesis 22!). But again it is not out of anger. God, we are told from the outset in the very first verse, is testing Abraham (Genesis 22:1).

However we may want to explain the morality of God giving such a test, the point of the story seems to be that, in the end, God rejects human sacrifice. We call the story the Sacrifice of Isaac, but Isaac is not actually sacrificed. He is only bound, which is what Jewish readers know this story as — The Binding of Isaac. Abraham straps his son down and just as he raises his knife to do the deed, an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells him to stop. Then Abraham looks up and sees a ram stuck in a thicket and sacrifices it instead of his son.

We often think of this story as giving a rationale for how sacrifice works in the Old Testament. In the story a ram is provided, we assume, as a “substitute” for Isaac. And this we imagine is what sacrifice is about. God is angry and can only be satisfied by putting to death the object of his anger. In his mercy, God allows for animals to serve as substitutes. The animal dies in our place to satisfy God’s anger. This is why sacrifices are made.

But this is reading our own presumptions back into the text. If we pay close attention to the story, the logic is flipped. It is not an animal in place of a human, but a human in place of an animal. In commanding the sacrifice of Isaac God seems to be asking Abraham to substitute his son for the expected sacrifice of an animal. We see this when Isaac asks Abraham, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 11:7). Isaac assumes that they need an animal — not because he thinks he should be sacrificed and there needs to be an animal substitute, but because this is just the normal way sacrifice works. You sacrifice animals not people.

As Andrew Rillera writes in his book Lamb of the Free:

“The surprise of the story as it stands in Genesis is not that an animal is ultimately sacrificed as a burnt offering, but rather (1) that God would even ask Abraham for a human substitute and (2) that Abraham would acquiesce. The story only works because animal sacrifice is presumed as the standard such that offering up Isaac is understood within the narrative as a break from what is normal,” (p. 13).

Conclusion

The overwhelming witness of the Old Testament seems to be that God detests human sacrifice. The two stories we have that could be used to justify human sacrifice are (1) at best quiet on the matter (in the case of Jephthah) or (2) end up being a rejection of human sacrifice and an affirmation of animal sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac). Add this on top of the collection of verses where God clearly condemns the practice of human sacrifice, it would seem wildly out of character for God then to require his Son to die as a (human) sacrifice for us.

I’d like to start a series of posts exploring the question, “What is the Gospel?”

What is interesting, and perhaps more so, frustrating, is that nowhere in Scripture do we get a nice, concise answer to this question. Or perhaps, more pointedly, none that explains, to our satisfaction, what precisely happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Most of the time, we are merely told that the gospel is simply the good news that these things happened. The gospel is that Jesus died for us and that he was raised for us. This is what we see in the most straightforward account of the gospel we have in the New Testament.

1 Corinthians 15:1-7:

1 Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

The gospel here is equated with three essential events: Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. And these events are attested to by witnesses to whom the risen Christ appeared. Whether these references to Christ’s post resurrection appearances are part of “the gospel” is unclear. What is clear is that the gospel is centrally about the fact that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and then was raised on the third day; and all of this according to the scriptures, which is itself another conundrum — nowhere in the Old Testament does it plainly say the Messiah would die or be raised on the third day.

But aside from the question of how the gospel is “in accordance with the scriptures”, what many of us are looking for is why. Why did Jesus (have to) die? Why was Jesus raised? Why is any of this good news for us?

Penal Substitutionary Atonement

By far the most familiar explanation, at least in Evangelical circles, is known as penal substitutionary atonement (PSA for short).

It goes something like this: 

1. We are all sinners.
2. And because of our sin we are deserving of God’s wrath, which is God’s just and righteous response to sin.
3. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus comes to take our place. Instead of God taking out his wrath on us, he takes it out on Jesus. This is why Jesus had to die. Jesus came to die as our substitute.
4. If you believe this, that Jesus died for you, then God will count his death on your behalf and you will be reconciled to God.

This account of the gospel is “penal” because it is largely about punishment. The sinner must be punished for the sins they have committed against a holy God. The only punishment severe enough to satisfy God’s wrath is death, which leads to the substitutionary part.

It is “substitutionary” because Jesus takes our place. He dies so that we don’t have to. His death satisfies God’s wrath and substitutes for ours.

Lastly, it is “atonement” because through Jesus’ death we are made “at one” with God (this is what atonement literally means — “at-one-ment”). We no longer live under the condemnation of God’s wrath. Our sins have been paid for and we are now brought into a new relationship with God.

In short, PSA says that Christ died for us (substitutionary) to take upon himself the just punishment for our sins (penal) in order to reconcile us to God (atonement).

I imagine for many of us, this just is the gospel. There isn’t really anything to talk about.

What This Series is About

But for others, you may have questions about this particular understanding of Christ’s death. In my case, there have been things about it that have always made me uneasy. At first it had to do with the notion of God requiring (human) death as payment for sin. But later it also had to do with whether this account is “in accordance with the scriptures.” On this last point, there has been more and more debate among scholars as to whether PSA is the best way to account for the biblical witness.

This series will be my attempt to collect my scattered thoughts and findings into one place to help me (and hopefully anyone reading this) come to a better understanding of what Scripture seems to say is the good news announced to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

One final note for this introductory post: I don’t want to belittle PSA. Hopefully I have done it justice in explaining its key tenets above. My intent is not to attack PSA, but rather to explore how holding only to PSA as the entirety of the gospel can end up alienating us from other passages in Scripture that may be pointing in other directions regarding what God has done for us in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

With that, feel free to comment below about your own thoughts/observations/questions about PSA or the Gospel as you have come to know it.