Hi, I'm David Bercot. And tonight I want to answer some of the questions that my listeners have asked me about the early Christian view of the Atonement. If you've ever written me an email or a letter, you were probably quite disappointed that you didn't get an answer back. In truth, there are a few things I enjoy more than interacting with my readers and listeners. You don't know how much I wish I had the time to answer everyone's questions in detail and to correspond with my readers.
But I received so many letters and Scroll Publishing received so many emails. The only way I would be able to answer all of them would be to neglect my family, which I'm not going to do. However, I've received a number of letters and inquiries from people who've heard the CD on the Atonement, who've had additional questions on it.
I haven't had time to write anybody individually, but I thought maybe this would be good for me to prepare a follow-up message that would answer some of these questions that people have asked. Now before I say anything more, I do need to mention that before you listen to this CD, you need to have already listened to the CD set that I made last year on what the early Christians believed about the Atonement. If you haven't listened to that, I don't think tonight's discussion is going to make a lot of sense to you.
Actually, when I gave my message on what the early Christians believed on the Atonement last year, I was dreading getting a bunch of angry letters castigating me and accusing me of all kinds of heresy. So I've been extremely surprised and delighted that all of the letters I've received about that CD have been expressions of appreciation. At the same time, as I've said, people have had questions because it's not easy to shift from a model of the atonement that you've grown up with to a considerably different model.
This is what's called a paradigm shift, which has become a fairly often used phrase these days. Let me give you just a couple of examples of what we mean by a paradigm shift. One of them would be Copernicus and his heliocentric model. That is his model that the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun rather than the Sun and the planets revolving around the Earth, which is what everybody had generally thought. And the old views seem to fit what everyone saw.
I mean, the sun starts down in the morning at the horizon and it moves up. You can see it moving across the sky, or at least notice the effect of its having moved across the sky, and then it sets in the west. To the naked eye, it certainly looks like the sun is moving around the earth. So it was quite a paradigm shift, a shift in thinking for people to realize, okay, we're the ones moving, not the sun.
And even though it looks like the sun is setting and rising every morning, it's really the Earth that is revolving. What for so many thousands of years had been just taken as a given, that this is the way it is, the Earth is the center of the universe, suddenly was torn apart, and people are having to adjust their thinking. It's the same way with the Atonement. Let me give you another example of a paradigm shift. Right now, as I'm making this message, the United States is in war over in Iraq.
Now the paradigm or the model that most Americans see is that the United States wanted to remove a cruel and evil dictator who posed a threat to Israel and to neighboring Mid East countries, who was desiring to develop weapons of mass destruction, and our only desire was to remove this potential threat and to help the Iraqi people to establish their own democratic free state. And as soon as things stabilize there, we can't wait to get out of there. That's one paradigm.
But now the insurgents over in Iraq and many other Muslims see a very different paradigm. What they see is that America is primarily after Iraq's oil. It's invaded a totally autonomous nation on the trumped up charges that its president was working on developing weapons of mass destruction, which he wasn't. They would say America's invasion of Iraq is essentially the same as Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
The United States really wants to set up a puppet government in Iraq that it can control, and thereby it can control Iraq's oil as well. So there you have the exact same events, but two very different ways of looking at them. And I think it would be very difficult to change the viewpoint of the various Muslims who hold to the viewpoint I just mentioned. Likewise, it would be very difficult to change the viewpoint of most Americans, particularly those who supported George W. Bush in the recent election.
Well, it's the same way with the various models we have of the Atonement. Now, once a Christian's mind has had the satisfaction model imposed on it, he or she is going to read every verse in the Bible with that frame of mind. And it will seem that verse after verse fits it perfectly.
Now to refresh your memory, the satisfaction model is the doctrine that's almost universally taught in the West, and has been since the Middle Ages, that Jesus had to die, had to suffer in order to satisfy the Father's sense of justice, that he was punished by the Father in our place. In contrast, the early Christian model was that Satan held mankind in bondage, and Jesus gave his life as a ransom, handed himself over to Satan to die cruelly as a ransom so that Satan would let us free.
And then the other part of the early Christian model is that Christ's blood cleanses us from sin. It doesn't affect a change in God. There's no price that He paid to the Father, but rather His blood cleanses us and thereby gives us a new standing with God where we can be reconciled. And you know, once you've grasped the early Christian model, what's sometimes called the classic model of the Atonement, every verse in the Bible seems to fit that model.
So I can't prove to you from Scripture that one model of the Atonement is right, and that the other one is wrong. Now I can prove that the early Christians didn't teach the satisfaction theory of the Atonement, and I think I can demonstrate that the early Christian model is supported by the Scriptures, but I can't prove that their model is the only possible explanation of the Atonement. Now, I'd like to read to you a letter that Scroll Publishing received a couple of months ago.
It reads," I understand that David does not answer questions, but maybe you could help me." I just listened to his tape about the Atonement and his views on that in the light of the early Christian writers. I was wondering, since he believes we already have the forgiveness without the blood atonement, and that the blood atonement was for Satan and not for the Father, if this is so, then how can the word atonement be used? Atoning for what?
And I wondered how does he answer the question of all the blood sacrifices in the Old Testament? What were they for? If Jesus was the price to Satan for man's redemption, then what were all the animal sacrifices for? And wasn't it the father who said," When I see the blood, I will pass over you?" If the blood was not for the Father, but for Satan, what was that all about? I'm very confused and would like a little bit more light shed on the subject.
Well, those are all very good questions, and as I said earlier, other readers have asked some of the same questions or similar ones. So let's start with the word atonement itself. I think that one of the biggest obstacles for most of us from being able to grasp the early Christian understanding of the Atonement, is that we think of the word atonement only in the sense to make reparation. We talk about atoning for some wrongdoing, meaning to make amends or paying some kind of price.
But my Webster's dictionary gives this as the etymology or as the root of the English word atone. It says from the Middle English at Onan, which means to become reconciled, and that is derived from the two words at one, or in accord. Okay, so you look at the word atone, and you have at one. And I've checked other dictionaries, and they say the same thing, that this is where the word came from. It originally meant at one. And so the old definition of the word atone was to be in agreement, according to Webster's.
So what has happened is that the theology of this satisfaction or penal model has so dominated Western thought during the last 600-800 years that it's ended up changing the original meaning of the word atone to mean something entirely different today than what it originally meant. So originally the concept of atonement was to become reconciled or to be in agreement. Theologically, we should be thinking, what was necessary for man to become reconciled with God, or to be at one with God?
Not what sort of reparation or punishment did God require before He could forgive us for our sins? Now many of you have probably already jumped ahead of me and are thinking," Yeah, David, that's the English word." But the New Testament wasn't written in English. It was written in Greek. It's the Greek word that we should be concerned about. What's the Greek word for atonement? Well, I thought of that myself.
But when I went to check my Bible for the word" atone" or" atonement," I found to my utter surprise that neither of those words were ever used by the New Testament writers. I mean, I could hardly believe it. We hear so much preached about the Atonement, and we read about it so much, we all naturally assume it's something that Jesus and the apostles talked about. I mean, I was sure that the New Testament used the word. But it doesn't, at least not in my Bible.
And I should explain, I'm talking about the new King James Bible.
Actually, the word" Atonement" does appear once in the earlier King James versions, and that's at Romans 5:11, where it says," And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the Atonement." Now the New King James there says," Whom we have now received the reconciliation." And my guess is that the translators of the King James Bible, back there in 1611, were using the word" atonement" in its original sense of reconciliation. But that passage is it.
Other than that, the word doesn't appear anywhere in the New Testament, either as atone or as atonement. So this takes us back to the Old Testament. And surprisingly, in the Old Testament, you're not going to find the verb to atone anywhere. But there is the noun atonement. So what is the Hebrew word that is translated atonement in our Bibles? What does it actually mean? Well, the Hebrew word is Kafar.
And according to my Hebrew dictionary, this word is a noun form of a Hebrew verb that can be translated quite a few different ways in English. It can be translated to appease, or to cleanse, to forgive, to be merciful, to pacify, to pardon, to purge away, to put off, or to reconcile.
So again, when the King James Bible uses the word atonement in the Old Testament, it is quite possible that those translators, they were using it in its original sense, meaning reconciliation or at-one-ment, bringing together, making at one, two people at one. And this would certainly fit what the rest of the New Testament teaches. 2 Corinthians 5:19 says," God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." In Colossians 1:21 and 22," You once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works.
Yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death." So depending upon your preconceived notions of the Atonement, you can understand the Hebrew word" Kafar" to be an appeasement or pacification of an angry god, or you can just as correctly understand the word to mean a pardoning, forgiveness, a coming together, or a reconciliation. Now let's move to the questions people have asked about the blood of Christ.
A couple of people have asked me," David, doesn't the Bible say that without blood, there is no forgiveness of sin?" And the lady who wrote the letter to Scroll Publishing stated in it talking about me," He believes we already have the forgiveness without the blood atonement, and that the blood atonement was for Satan and not for the Father." Well, let me first clarify that I did not say that we already have the forgiveness without the blood atonement, and that the blood atonement was for Satan and not for the
Father.
But if that's what some of you understood, then I definitely need to clarify things. If you will re-listen to what I said in my original message on what the early Christians believed about the Atonement, you'll find that I said that Christ's incarnation and His death accomplished a number of things. One of them was to pay a ransom price to Satan to free us from bondage to Satan and the powers of darkness. But that was only one of the purposes of his life and death here on Earth.
Binding Satan and freeing us from the grasp of Satan was only part of the problem. For us to be fully reconciled to God, more was needed, because sin still alienates us from God, even if we are free from the power of Satan. So we needed to be cleansed from sin. In fact, here's exactly what I said. The satisfaction model essentially says that the barrier in the relationship between God and man was primarily God. To remedy the alienation between God and man, someone had to change God's heart toward mankind.
And so Christ's death on the cross didn't change mankind, it changed the heart of the Father. His justice would not allow him to simply forgive us. So until the penalty was paid, we remained alienated from Him. Once Jesus paid God's imposed penalty, then God could be at one with us again, which is the meaning of the word atonement. Under the satisfaction model, man is no different after the Atonement. He still lives in sin.
But he now has a new legal standing before God, because the price for those sins have been paid. And so we hear this slogan quite often," Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." Well, the early Christian model says it wasn't God's heart that needed to be changed, it was our nature that had to be changed. God always stood ready to forgive, and in fact He did forgive those who truly repented. The problem is that sin by its very nature alienates us from God.
And then in my original message I gave the illustration of a skunk. Let's say a friend of yours has been sprayed by a skunk. Well, until he gets cleansed from that odor, you're not going to be able to have close fellowship with him. That's going to be a barrier between the two of you. He's the one who needs to change, needs to be cleansed. Likewise, we needed changing, not God. A holy God cannot have close fellowship with a person who is unholy. James wrote," Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." So Christ's blood does not change the ledgers of heaven to show that our sin debt has been paid. Rather, it cleanses us from sin. The issue isn't having a new legal standing, it's actually being cleansed, being transformed. His dying reconciled us to God because his blood cleansed us and made us able to stand before the Father. Okay, that's what I said in the original message.
So I certainly didn't mean to imply that Jesus' blood was shed for the benefit of Satan, or that man could be reconciled to God without the blood of Christ. The question I was asking was, did God forgive us our debt, or did God require someone else to pay the debt that we owe? And then we read Jesus' parable about the king who forgave the huge debt that his servant owed him. The king didn't require a third party to pay that debt. He forgave the debt. And this was the model or illustration that Jesus gave us.
Actually, instead of minimizing the role that Christ's blood plays in our salvation and in our reconciliation towards God, the early Christian model of the Atonement amplifies the significance of Christ's blood. One of the typical expressions I hear from evangelical Protestants is that Christ's blood covers our sins. When my family and I were members at an evangelical church about 20 years ago, I remember hearing a sermon about how the blood of Christ covers our sins.
The preacher said that when the Father looks down from heaven, he doesn't even see our sin. He just sees the blood of Christ, which covers over us. Well this makes me think of painting over something. When we lived in Texas, often we would get mildew on the wooden areas of the outside of our house because where we lived was very warm and humid. Now it was easy enough to just paint over the mildew and cover it up. However, if you did that, it would eventually bleed back right through the paint.
Or maybe a better expression would be that it would grow back, because mildew is actually a living, growing thing. So to do the job right, what you had to do was to wash the wood with a bleach solution to kill the mildew, and then clean the residue of it off. And then if the wood actually needed repainting, you could repaint it at that time. Well, the early Christians understood Christ's blood to be like that bleach solution. It doesn't just cover over us. It cleanses us. It gets rid of the sin.
As Cyprian put it, he said," At His coming, the Lord cured those wounds that Adam had borne. He healed the old poisons of the serpent. Thereafter, he gave a law to the sound man and bade him to sin no more, lest a worse thing should befall the sinner." Those sins that had been previously committed are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. And this is exactly what the scriptures say. The letter to the Hebrews discusses this probably in more detail than any of the other books.
Let me just read to you some passages from Hebrews. Starting with Hebrews 9:11, it says not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood. He entered the Most Holy Place, once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.
Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Hebrews 9:22, and according to the law, almost all things are purified with blood. And without shedding of blood, there is no remission. Hebrews 10:1," For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered?
For the worshippers once purified would have had no more consciousness of sin. But in those sacrifices, there is the reminder of sins every year, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Verse 10 of that chapter," By that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." And finally, Hebrews 13:12," Therefore Jesus also that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate." So according to the satisfaction model of the Atonement, once Christ died and brought His blood to heaven, the Father was satisfied. The blood appeased the Father and saved us from His anger. But the blood didn't necessarily have any power over us, it just covered over us.
You know, evangelical Protestants sing the hymn there is power in the blood, but really their teaching on the blood of Christ doesn't really credit His blood with that much power. Just the power to placate the Father. However, under the early Christian model, Christ's blood is not a payoff to the Father, so that the Father will look the other way when we sin. No, his blood has a supernatural ability not only to cleanse away past sin, but to heal our fallen nature, and to strengthen us with divine, eternal life.
Let's review those verses we just read from Hebrews. Let me point out just some things. That first passage from Hebrews 9:11, it said," The blood of Christ would cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God." See, it's doing something, it's not covering over, it's cleansing. Hebrews 9:22," Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." Hebrews 10:1 and said," For the law can never with these same sacrifices make those who approach perfect.
For the worshippers once purified would have had no more consciousness of sin." You see what the blood of Jesus does? It cleanses us. It purifies us. Or again, he said," We have been sanctified to the offering. He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." So it's an ongoing process. We're being sanctified, but His blood can perfect us or complete us. And then again, Hebrews 13:12 talks about He might sanctify the people with His own blood.
But you know what's interesting in every one of those passages that we read, nowhere, nowhere does it say that the blood did anything for the Father, that it appeased the Father. Now we did read that Jesus offered Himself as a pure sacrifice to the Father, and we talked about that in my original message on what the early Christians believed about the Atonement, that there are two kinds of sacrifices. One is the pagan kind where you kill an animal to placate an angry god up there.
The other is the heroic sacrifice where somebody will lay down his life in order to save the life of somebody else. Like a man on a sinking ship who would give the last place on the only lifeboat to somebody else to save their life and sacrifice his life in return. But all of those passages talk about what His blood does for us. It changes us. It has a work on us. It doesn't say anything about changing the Father or doing some kind of work on the Father's heart.
As Jesus Himself said," Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. Now, under the satisfaction theory of the Atonement, everything is law and penal requirements. Under the early Christian model, everything is relationship. Christ's blood doesn't appease an angry God.
It cleanses and sanctifies us so that we can be reconciled to a holy God and have a relationship with Him again. Christ's death was once for all time, but the effects of His blood are something that are applied to us on a daily basis if we abide in Him. And you know this ties in perfectly with Jesus' words to His apostles at the Last Supper, where He said," I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit.
For without me you can do nothing." If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. You see, if Jesus' blood was simply a payoff to the Father, it would be over with. The price was paid. God will look the other way when we sin, and on the ledger books of heaven will be credited as being righteous. But you see, that's not what the Scriptures say.
1 John 1:7-9, we read," If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Do you see how this is an ongoing relationship? If we walk in the light, then His blood cleanses us from all sin. What happens if we don't continue walking in the light?
Well, like we read a minute ago from John 15, Jesus said," If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." Now all of this fits perfectly the early Christian understanding of the Atonement. Christ's blood, with all of its power, is applied to us on a daily basis. It's like, again, as Jesus said, our being a branch on a vine.
When you look at a grapevine, the branches on that vine receive life-giving water and nutrients from the roots and from the trunk of the vine. The branches drink this in on a continual basis. It's an ongoing relationship between the vine and the branches. Likewise, with the blood of Christ, Jesus' death was a one-time ransom paid to free us from Satan's grasp. That part is over with. But the power and the benefits of his blood are an ongoing thing.
And there are conditions attached to keep receiving the life-giving nutrient of His blood. We have to abide with Him by keeping His commandments. We have to continue to walk in the light. And notice what Hebrews tells us about all of this.
It says," If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries." Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled on the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace. For we know Him who said," Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the LORD. And again, the Lord will judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Again, can you see the ongoing relationship that is required? The blood is applied to us on a daily basis.
But if we continue to sin willfully after having been cleansed by Christ's precious blood, there's no sacrifice left for us. We're going to be lopped off Christ's vine. But you see, that passage there in Hebrews 10 doesn't at all fit the satisfaction theory of the Atonement. If Christ's blood paid some price to the Father, if the Father punished him instead of us, then it's all finished. The price was paid. So what we do shouldn't matter.
And that's why evangelical Protestants have such a hard time with this passage in Hebrews 10. It simply doesn't fit their model. Luther tried to keep the book of Hebrews out of his canon. Well, how do we feed on this life-giving supernatural blood of Christ? Well, certainly there are many, many ways that we have communion with Jesus Christ and His supernatural body and blood. But the early Christians believed that the primary way is through communion.
Because Jesus had told His apostles at the Last Supper," This is my body!" And again, this is the blood of the new covenant when he handed them the cup. Likewise, Paul wrote," The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" So the Scriptures teaches, yes, we have communion with the body and the blood of Jesus Christ through the Eucharist or communion. In fact, that's why it was called communion.
We're supposed to be having communion with Jesus Christ and His Father through this. Now, the early Christians generally believed in what's called the real presence of Christ in the wine and the bread in some supernatural way, not in a human or fleshly sense. Their view wasn't necessarily the same thing as transubstantiation. But they did think of the bread and the wine as something more than just symbols.
And again, I would refer you to the message I gave years ago on what the early Christians believed about communion, which is available on CD. But even if you hold to the Zwinglian view of communion, that the bread and the wine are just symbols. Nevertheless, in some real but mystical way, we who are on this vine of Christ partake of His supernatural body and blood. There is some kind of nutrient that passes from Christ to us. In some way, we commune and receive His blood.
Likewise, we receive the Holy Spirit who dwells in us if we walk in the light. As Peter phrased it," His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life." And again, Peter said," We become partakers of the divine nature through the Spirit, through communion, through our ongoing relationship on this vine. We become partakers of the divine nature. It flows from Jesus into us.
So that our human bodies can be healed of sin, so that we can truly be transformed." So certainly then, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. As Jesus said," Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." Christ's blood didn't give some benefit to the Father. Rather, it gives us an incredible, life-sustaining benefit. Perhaps by now you've realized what the purpose of the animal sacrifices were in the Old Testament.
They were a tutor leading the Israelites to Christ under the early Christian model, just as they were under the satisfaction model. But again, you have to make that paradigm shift in your mind. In the past, you may have viewed these sacrifices in the Old Testament, that they were for the purpose of placating an angry God, that God obtained some kind of enjoyment or satisfaction out of animals being killed and their blood being poured out on the ground.
I hope you realize that that was almost exactly how the Baal worshippers and the other pagans looked at their sacrifices. So either the true God whom we worship fits the role of those pagan gods, or we have really had things mixed up in our mind for quite a few centuries. Now under the early Christian understanding of the Atonement, the purpose of the Passover lamb and the other animal sacrifices was twofold.
Number one, they pointed to the fact that it was going to cost the life of an innocent victim for mankind to ever be free from the power of Satan, sin, and death, and to be fully reconciled with God. A victim would have to die an innocent victim, and of course that was Jesus Christ. Number two, the Old Testament sacrifices pointed to the wondrous healing and sanctifying power that we would one day receive from Jesus' blood.
Now, not all of the Old Testament sacrifices were blood sacrifices, but most of them were particularly the more important ones, because it is Jesus' blood that saves us. Likewise, that was the purpose of the whole Passover. When the Israelites applied the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts, it pictured how Jesus would die as an innocent, unblemished lamb, and then we would have His blood applied to us so that we can be sanctified. Let's read that passage again in Hebrews 10:1 that we read a minute ago.
It said," For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect." See, that was supposed to be the point of a sacrifice to make those who approach perfect. That doesn't necessarily mean totally without sin, but to be complete, to be whole, to live a holy life. Hebrews says," For then would they not have ceased to be offered?
For the worshippers once purified would have had no more consciousness of sins." But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. But it is possible for the blood of Jesus Christ to take away sins. So just as Hebrews says, the Old Testament sacrifices were a shadow of the good things to come. They couldn't take away sin, but they reminded the Israelites of the fact that they had sins that needed to be taken away.
The blood of Jesus Christ can actually cleanse us from sin. So God gained no personal benefit or pleasure from the animal sacrifices the Israelites offered up. Please, we don't worship a vampire god who has this insatiable appetite for blood, whom we can placate with blood. I mean, Hebrews tells us," Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you had no pleasure." That's Hebrews 10:5 and 6.
So these did not placate God, they did not give him any pleasure. They were a reminder to the Israelites of their need to be cleansed from sin. So how could the Scriptures make it any plainer? God received no pleasure from the blood sacrifices. It was the contrite heart and obedience of the persons who made the sacrifices that pleased Him. In fact, God had stated this way back in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 1:11 says," God is speaking, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me," says the Lord." I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs or goats. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good.
Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Doesn't this fit exactly what we've been saying? Reconciliation with God did not depend upon someone appeasing him with blood, or of his need to punish someone. It only depended on our being washed and made clean, on our ceasing to do evil, and doing good instead. And what has enabled us to be washed and to be made clean? The shed blood of Christ. Now let's talk about the verses that say that Jesus is our propitiation.
Let me first explain what the word propitiate means, since it's not an everyday word that most of us use. Webster defines propitiate as to cause to become favorably inclined, to win or regain the goodwill of, to appease or conciliate. So actually there are three different meanings to our word propitiate, even though all three meanings are in some ways related.
But theologians and commentators, since they've all been thoroughly indoctrinated in the satisfaction theory of the Atonement, they tend to think of propitiate only in the sense of appeasing or placating. Actually, our English word propitiate is directly derived from the Latin word propitiri, which means not to placate, but to render favorable. Its root is in the Latin word propitious, which means favorable, gracious, kind.
In English we have the adjective propitious, which means favorably inclined or disposed, gracious, boding well, favorable, advantageous, all of those meanings. So to say that Jesus is our propitiation can mean several different things. It can mean that He appeases the Father for us, which is how theologians under the satisfaction theory have tended to think of the word propitiate. But it can just as well mean that Jesus enables us to gain or regain the goodwill of the Father.
But whatever model of the Atonement a person holds to is going to color the meaning that he gives to the word propitiation. Under the early Christian model of the Atonement, there is no problem in saying that Jesus is our propitiation. Since His blood cleanses us from sin, His blood allows us to be reconciled with the Father and to regain the Father's goodwill. Christ is our mediator, through whom we can approach the Father. He is also our great intercessor before the Father.
Finally, through His death, He released us from the powers of darkness, and through His blood, He cleanses us and sustains our spiritual life. As a result of these things, He has caused the Father to be favorably inclined towards us. Not because He did something to the Father, but because He did something to us. But if we imagine that mankind's murdering of Jesus somehow appeased the Father or pacified Him, you know, we're not very far from how the pagans thought.
They imagined that by doing wild dances, or by sacrificing humans, or by painting their bodies in wild colors, they could placate their gods. But have you ever thought what the Bible says concerning the Father's feelings about the murder of His Son? We don't have to guess how the Father felt because Jesus told us. He described his Father's feelings in his parable of the vineyard. No doubt, you remember that parable where the owner of the vineyard leased it out to others?
But then when he would send them messengers to get his share of the fruit, they would never give it to him. I'll pick up there in the parable where Jesus says," Then last of all, He sent His Son to them, saying," They will respect my Son." But when the vine dressers saw the son, they said among themselves," This is the heir! Come! Let us kill him!" and seize his inheritance! So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
Now Jesus says," Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine dressers?" Well, under the satisfaction theory, he would say," Oh, wonderful. Now my wrath is over with. You have placated me. Oh, I feel so much better towards mankind now that you murdered my son." No, that's not what Jesus says.
When Jesus asked him the question," What will He do to the vine dressers?" The Scripture said they said to Him," He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease His vineyard to other vine dressers who will render to Him the fruits in their seasons." Acknowledging that, Jesus said," Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruit of it." So like any other Father, God was not pleased that His own chosen people murdered His beloved Son.
To be sure, the Father sent Jesus to earth, knowing that He would die a sacrificial death. And Jesus came willingly because He and His Father loved us that much. But Jesus didn't come to the earth because the Father received some kind of satisfaction or appeasement when humans beat, tortured, and murdered his son. And the price the Jews paid for their crime was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, accompanied with enormous suffering and loss of life among the Jews.
Now let's talk a little about the Greek words that are involved here. There are actually two closely related Greek words that are translated in the New Testament as propitiation. They are Hilasterion and Hilasmos. Between the two of them, they're used only a total of five times in the New Testament. Let me read one of the passages to you in which this Greek word is used. It's Hebrews 9: 5 where the writer is describing the Ark of the Covenant.
And he says," And above it, were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat." Okay, now I'd like to read another one of the passages in the New Testament, where it uses the word for propitiation. It's Hebrews 2:17. But you're probably thinking," Wait a minute, David, that last passage must have been a mistake, because it didn't have anything to do with propitiation." You're right, it didn't. At least not in the sense of appeasement.
But that passage I just read to you, Hebrews 9:5, does use the Greek word Hilasterion. Only in this verse, it's translated mercy seat. So when the New Testament talks about Christ being our propitiation, our Hilasterion, is it saying that Christ appeases the Angry Father? Or is it saying that Christ is our mercy seat? No doubt you remember what the mercy seat was. It's described in Exodus 25, verses 21 and 22. Let me just read that to you. God says," You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark.
And in the ark you shall put the testimony that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim." So the mercy seat was where God met man and spoke to him. Similarly, Christ is our mercy seat. He is the mediator, by which man and God can meet. Now that's quite a difference, isn't it, from the pagan concept of appeasing an angry god. Now let's look at Hebrews 2:17.
There it says," Therefore, in all things, he had to be made like his brethren" talking about Jesus, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. Now once again, you didn't hear the word propitiation. Actually, in the new King James, it does use the word propitiation. But the older King James uses the word reconciliation. So again, there's room to translate this Greek word in more than one way.
A translator's understanding of the Atonement is going to influence how he translates Hilasterion and the other related noun. All right, 1 John 2:2 says," Talking about Jesus, and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." So what was John saying? Was John saying that Christ is the appeasement for our sins and that of the whole world? Or was he saying that Christ is our means, our only means of reconciliation for our sins?
Or was he saying that Christ is the mercy seat for our sins, the means by which we can approach God, the place where God and man can meet? Or again, was John saying that Christ is the intercessor for our sins? Because in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, propitiation is used also in that sense of intercession. So the fact that Christ is our Hilasterion, our propitiation, fits the classic or early Christian model of the Atonement just as well as it fits the satisfaction model.
It all turns on what paradigm your theology is modeled after. It depends on what color of glasses you're wearing when you read the scriptures. For the past hour, I've been answering questions that my readers have asked me about the early Christian understanding of the Atonement. Now I'd like to ask all of you a question, or actually a series of questions. These are questions I want you to just reflect on. Under this satisfaction theory of the Atonement, Jesus had to die in order to satisfy God's justice.
God had decreed what the punishment for sin was, and he couldn't simply change his own decree. Someone had to be punished. So Christ suffered this punishment in our place. So my first question is, what was the penalty that God decreed as our punishment, or as the consequence of our sin? What did he tell Adam and Eve would happen if they sinned? Well, he told them that they would surely die, did he not? And Paul tells us that the wages of sin is death. So that was the penalty, death.
So since death was the penalty that someone had to undergo according to this model before God could release us. Why was Jesus not simply put to death with a sword or a spear? Why wasn't he just stoned to death or hung? Think for a minute about the horrible things that Christ went through. First of all, he was flogged by the Romans. Now this wasn't some little whipping with a strap or something like that. It was an unbelievable ordeal for any human to endure.
The Roman whips were leather thongs with pieces of jagged metal at the end, so that they would totally rip a man's back apart. Many men, tough men, died just from the flogging alone. So now if God was the architect of this whole thing, why did he have his son horribly flogged? He didn't tell Adam and Eve that if they sinned, they would be mercilessly flogged. He only said they would die. The wages of sin are death, not flogging and then death.
So why would the Father make Jesus' punishment worse than what He had decreed? If the point of all this was that God's justice had to be satisfied. Secondly, a Roman crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of death that wicked humans have ever come up with. I used to think that burning alive was the worst death. But that was nearly always over with within 15-30 minutes. But a crucifixion lasted for hours and hours, sometimes days and days. Yet God never decreed crucifixion as the punishment for sin.
He told Adam and Eve they would die, not that they would be horribly tortured on a cross until death. So again, if this was all for the Father's benefit so that his justice could be satisfied, why wasn't Jesus stoned to death, or killed with a sword, or even hung like Judas? Why would the Father choose such an inhumane form of punishment? And please don't say that Jesus had to die on a cross in order to take upon Himself the curse of the law.
I realize that Paul wrote," Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." And to be sure, Christ's crucifixion satisfied that requirement. But the passage that Paul quotes from has nothing to do with crucifixion.
He was quoting from Deuteronomy 21, verses 22 and 23, would say this:" If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day. For he who is hanged is accursed of God." So what Deuteronomy is talking about is hanging a dead person's body on a tree. It's not talking about putting someone to death on a tree.
So Christ could have fulfilled the curse of the law simply by having his corpse hung from a tree until nightfall. There was no need for him to be crucified in order to satisfy Deuteronomy 21. In fact, God never even authorized crucifixion under the law. That was not the penalty for any sin, for any crime. There was nothing in God's justice that required or even allowed for crucifixion. So here is my final question.
Does it make sense to you that a loving father, a father who is described by the apostle John as being love itself, that this Father, instead of punishing His Son by giving him the same punishment that had been decreed for us, which was death, that instead he would have cruelly had him flogged, and then put to death in one of the most horrible ways possible.
Or does it make more sense to you that our loving, wonderful Savior voluntarily handed himself over to Satan to let Satan do with him as he wished, as a ransom to have us freed from Satan's dominion. And that Satan, being the cruel monster that he is, was the mastermind behind having Jesus horribly flogged and then put to death in the slowest, most painful way possible. You be the judge.