Series: The Cross

"Sacrifice of Atonement"!?
Psalm 40:1-8; Romans 3:21-31

Please don't get frightened by the Sermon title! It is religious language par excellence. But that language is found in the Bible and has been taken over into our tradition. Therefore we need to ask what it means, lest we miss an important part of biblical teaching.

The Cross of Christ stands for God's radical commitment to God's creation. This commitment includes us!

The Cross shows humanity at its worst – that may be the positive message of the recent Mel Gibson film The Passion. If we are shocked by what human beings are capable to do to each other. If that shock extends to what we human beings still do to each other today, then the film may have a virtue.

At the same time, where humanity is shown at its worst, God is shown at God's best. Where human violence and selfishness destroyed God's man on earth, there God transfigured the result of human violence into a dreaming that says in many beautiful colours that love is stronger than death.

When that message is heard and obeyed, when that news arrives in our hearts then we experience the moment of truth. The moment of illumination. The conviction that underneath everything there are the everlasting arms.

But how do you say it without sounding dry, callous or ungrateful. How do you gather the most important experience of your life into words?

For that you need pictures, stories, metaphors.

Last week we spoke of the word picture "ransom". The idea of buying a slave free was used to celebrate the freedom that Christians have experienced through faith in Christ.

Today's text from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome adds further word-pictures to throw light on the meaning of the cross.

"Redemption" – Like "ransom" it refers to rescuing a person from a difficult situation by means of a monetary payment. Christians use that idea to say that God did something for us so that we can be free.

"Sacrifice of atonement" ("propitiation", "expiation") – language that comes to us from the sacrificial practices of the Jewish religion. An animal would be sacrificed for the sins of the people. People would identify with the sacrifice by placing their hands on them or paying for them. The animal may be slaughtered or it may be sent into the desert. Christians referred to that practice by saying that such sacrifices are no longer needed because in Jesus Christ God has done something new. Something that met the requirements of the cult "once for all times".

"Justification" – under certain conditions the believer is declared right with God.

Let us keep these word-pictures in mind and ask what the text in Romans 3 reveals about the meaning of the Cross.

It emphasises, first of all, that God accomplished for us what needed to be done for the celebration of life, but what we could not do for ourselves.

To demonstrate God's commitment to us, the apostle highlights some characteristics about God.

God is patient. Human arrogance, sloth and rebellion are serious, but God's patience outlasts human rebellion.

God is righteous. In giving us human another chance, God will remain God. The demands of love and truth will not be surrendered. They will be upheld.

God is universal. Universal estrangement – "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" – is met by universal love. There are Jews and there are Gentiles. God has created them all, God loves them all and God wants to save them all.

That is the important point! How can humanity get out of the prison of sin? How can we breathe the fresh air of life? How in the midst of violence and sickness and death can we have a glimpse of the God who is life and light?

Answer: God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He made right what was wrong. He forgave us for our arrogance and unbelief and violence – and demonstrated it by raising Jesus from death.

Within the Jewish culture that could only be said with language of ransom, atonement, sacrifice, and blood. That is not our language. Indeed we don't like it. It sounds gory and violent.

But lest we throw out the baby with the bathwater, let us note three things that are important for us:

"Once for all times" is the biblical way of saying that with Christ the sacrificial system has come to the end.

Faith – we are invited to become part of the Passion of God, focussed in the Cross.

Spirituality of sacrifice.

Christians since earliest times have been aware of the problems related to categories of sacrifice and atonement.

When the early Christians tried to gather their faith into language they had great difficulties. How do you name newness? Faith in Christ was new for them. They experienced newness and acceptance and forgiveness, but they had no language yet to name the newness.

The world of religious language was filled by two ideas:

the Torah (the religious law of the Jews – like keeping the Sabbath, the need to be circumcised and many, hundreds of other rules that had to be kept if ones relationship to God was to be OK).

the cult with the temple, the priests, and many systems of sacrifice.

Jesus Christ meant and means freedom from Torah and cult. You remember how the apostle Paul proclaimed many times that Christ is the fulfilment and therefore the end of the law. The same is true for the cult. Listen to this from the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Jesus Christ – not the Torah and not the cult – "is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself." (Hebrews 7:25-27)

Jesus Christ, therefore, not a theory about atonement or sacrifice, is the centre and the content of our faith.

That becomes even clearer when we become aware of our part in the relationship between God and us. Not sacrifice, but relationship is important to God. The idea of sacrifice and atonement emphasise that God has made the first step towards us.

But we are in no way coerced. We are invited!

The "sacrifice of atonement by his blood" that God put forward is "effective through faith". And God "justifies the one who has faith in Jesus."

Not intellect, not theory, not even being good, but openness to God, trust in Jesus is what puts us into touch with God.

And there is a third way by which Christians moved away from blood sacrifices. It is already present in the Hebrew Bible. You remember the text in the Prophets. God is speaking.

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24)

In the Psalms we find a similar emphasis:

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps 51:16f.)

Faith in Christ tunes into that tradition. The apostle Paul says it this way:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:1f.)

In plain English this means that on the basis of God's love being stronger than death, trust in God and being committed to God's ways in the world is what is expected of us.

One more point. It has to do with the little word "now" at the beginning of our text. Jesus Christ is the watershed of history. Our text begins with the trumpet sound:

"… now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed … the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe."

This "now", theologians call it the eschatological "now", this "now" is important. It says that with Christ something new has begun, and this new can happen in our life.

Objectively, then and there, with the life, death and resurrection of Christ, God has opened a new way for the celebration of life in the presence of God,

What happened then can happen now, and it happens now when people tune into God's activity, God's passion, by faith.

Then the horizons melt. The newness of what God has done in Christ becomes part of our journey, giving meaning to our lives, sustaining us, and conveying hope to us for the days ahead.

Thorwald Lorenzen
 14 March 2004