Do you have a Bible question? Ask Stephen by clicking here. I want to begin by acknowledging that God, in His sovereign plan, determined what would be required and what would not be required for salvation.
God determined that for men and women to be saved, there must be the shedding of blood. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.
One thing to clarify is that God is connecting the shedding of blood with the giving of a life. For example, in the sacrificial system, the Israelites could not simply pick an animal, and gather a few drops of blood for the alter. That wouldn't be sufficient. When we think of our salvation that Jesus accomplished, Jesus could not have shed a little blood on the cross and then come down off of it.
Modern western Christians are so infatuated with sin, that we see sin everywhere and believe that our biggest problem in the world is sin and that God is sitting in heaven trying to figure out how to stop us all from sinning.
Sin is not that big of a deal for God. The only reason He is concerned at all about sin is because sin hurts and damages us , and since He loves us beyond all imagination, He wants to do something about that annoying flea, because it has bitten us and injected us with all sorts of harmful toxins. Also, God must do something about sin because sin is a big deal for Satan, and Satan uses sin to lay claim to our lives, which is something God does not want.
But this too is another rabbit trail which we must avoid for now. The bottom line is that sin is not a big deal for God , and sin is not the issue in Hebrews This is the seventh point about this important text. The word which the author uses here is the Greek word aphesis. It has in mind the picture of someone who is enslaved and in chains, and someone else come along with the key to unlock them and set them free.
I have written previously about aphesis. In Scripture, we are freely forgiven of all our sins, past, present, and future, completely and only by the grace of God. We are, however, called upon to obey God so that we might enjoy the freedom from sin that He wants for us. Sin injects us with toxins that further enslave us, which God wants to liberate us from. This sort of release often requires something on the part of the one who is being released, lest they fall right back into slavery after having been released!
In this way, aphesis is a symbiotic forgiveness. It not only requires that the liberator unlock the chains; it also requires that the liberated run away from what had chained them.
In Hebrews 9, it is not people who are being released, but the covenant itself! This eighth point is that the blood of Hebrews has absolutely nothing to do with the removal of sin. Instead, the blood was for the enactment of the Mosaic Covenant. The author of Hebrews could not be more clear. He says that a testament, or will, is not put into effect until the one who wrote it dies Hebrews My wife and I have Wills, and as is the case with all Wills, they do not go into effect until we die.
So after Moses wrote the Covenant, or the testament, he enacted a death over it to make it effective and active upon the people Hebrews Prior to the shedding of the blood of the bulls and goats, the covenant was not active.
It was under lock and key. A death was needed to free it, liberate it, or enact it. Nor does Hebrews have anything with the conditions of forgiveness, for as we have seen above, the covenant offered numerous ways for people to receive purification from sin, and when it came to forgiveness for intentional sins, the Israelites believed on the grace of God for forgiveness just as we do.
The implementation of the first covenant with Moses took place after the Israelite people had been delivered and redeemed from captivity in Egypt. From a purely legal standpoint, they were runaway slaves.
And according to the laws of slavery, as long as a slave is still living and has not yet been set free, the slave is still a slave, even if they run away. So the redemption enacted as part of the Mosaic covenant was the redemption of the slaves from Egypt.
The death of the calves and goats symbolized the death of the Israelite people to their former life of slavery in Egypt. Through the Mosaic covenant, the people of Israel died to their old identification as slaves to the household of Pharaoh i. This is why the water and the blood was sprinkled not just on the book of the covenant, but also on all the people Hebrews They were dying to their past and were being born again into a new family. As members of this new family, they had new household rules to live by, which were enumerated in the Mosaic covenant.
All of this together helps us understand the discussion in Hebrews 10 that follows about how the New Covenant, which was enacted through the death of Jesus, is far superior in all ways to the Old Covenant which was enacted through the blood of animals. This also helps explain why Hebrews 10 talks about sin so much.
Though we have seen that Hebrews is not talking about the forgiveness of sins , we often get confused about the rest of Hebrews 9 and on into Hebrews 10 because there are many references to the sacrifice or offerings of Jesus Christ for our sins. The best way to understand this is to remember what we have learned from Hebrews about why the blood of the calves and goats was sprinkled over tabernacle and its instruments, along with the book of the covenant and the people, on the day the Mosaic Covenant was instituted among them.
The blood was to inaugurate the covenant and indicate to the people that they had been set free from slavery. Jesus did not die to rescue us from the wrath of God. Nor did Jesus die to secure for us the forgiveness of sins. God has always freely forgiven people of their sins. No, the death of Jesus on the cross was to inaugurate the new covenant of God with the entire world, and to indicate to all people that we were no longer slaves to sin.
That second point is critical. Jesus did not die for God because of sin. Jesus died for sin. No, it was the devil that demanded death and blood cf. Hebrews Sin was the certificate of ownership which the devil held over the heads of humanity. By dying, Jesus cancelled this debt of sin so that the devil could no longer have any claim upon us. This happened because just as all sinned in Adam, and so became slaves to death and the devil, so all died and were raised to new life in Jesus, and so were liberated and redeemed from our slavery to death and the devil.
Just as the Israelites in the wilderness died to Pharaoh, and were raised to new life in the family of God, so also, all people in Jesus died to sin, death, and devil, and were raised to new life in the family of God. This is the basic meaning of the discussion in Hebrews 10 about the sacrifice of Jesus for sin. But the discussion goes beyond this as well.
The author of Hebrews intentionally subverts the sacrificial elements of the Mosaic covenant by transitioning away from images of blood and death, and writing instead about offerings and purification. Following immediately after Hebrews , we read that Jesus also purified the heavenly sanctuary. And just as the first ceremony indicated the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant and the death of the people to their past enslavement to Egypt, so also, the actions of Jesus indicated the inauguration of the New Covenant and the death of the people to their enslavement to sin.
In Hebrews , the author emphasizes the complete failure of the Mosaic law to do anything about sin. In Hebrews , we are informed that if the law could have taken away sin, the people would have stopped making sacrifices, for they would have had no more consciousness of sins.
Yet the sacrifices themselves are a reminder of sins, even though they do nothing about the sins. Then in Hebrews , the author indicates his understanding that the sacrificial system was never intended to take away sins, and that God Himself never wanted such sacrifices or took any pleasure in them. Again, God is a God of life; not death. While it is true that Jesus died a bloody and gruesome death on the cross, it is critical to recognize that the death of Jesus on the cross was for sin, while the life of Jesus was for God.
God did not want nor desire the death of Jesus. God always and only wants life. Building upon this truth, Hebrews moves on to compare and contrast the covenant enacted by Moses and the covenant enacted by Jesus Christ.
After explaining that the sacrifices and offerings of the priests could never do anything about sins, Hebrews shows that Jesus not only dealt with sin once and for all through His death, but actually perfected forever those who are in Him.
The author then makes the absolutely shocking statement that God and Moses knew from the very beginning that the Law of Moses was obsolete and useless for doing anything about sin. In so doing, the author indicates the truth that Moses knew from the very beginning that his law was temporary, obsolete, and ineffective for doing anything about sin. But they were too scared of God, and declared that they would rather have Moses to speak to God for them Exod It was how Moses believed God wanted the people of Israel to live out the 10 commandments.
But forty years later, Moses saw that what he had given to the people was a complete failure. He had been with them for forty years Deut , and knew that the law would be completely ineffective in helping them follow God and live rightly cf. Deut As a result, Moses knew that what he had given to the people would be replaced by what God had wanted all along. Long before Jeremiah ever prophesied that God would do away with the written law and write His law upon our hearts and minds, Moses had said the same thing cf.
Deut , Paul understood Deuteronomy 30 in this way as well cf. Rom In fact, in a recent book on the Pentateuch,. John Sailhamer has argued that one of the central points of the Pentateuch is to show that the law was ineffective, obsolete, and not what God had wanted for His people at all.
God wanted faith, humility, mercy, and righteousness, which are the things the law could not provide. But Jesus provided what the law could not, which brings us back to Hebrews Jesus lived the way God intended, and in so doing, accomplished several things.
In Jesus, we learn that God no longer wants death, and He never did. Hopefully, all this provides a deeper understanding of what Hebrews is actually teaching and not teaching about the shedding of blood and the forgiveness of sins. Note: This article by Brad Jersak on Hebrews is also helpful.
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Don't subscribe All Replies to my comments Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Jay D Timm…. Larry Lynn Wathne this is for you guys. Had a chance to read entire article so I deleted previous comment. Hard to get these posts in at work! Yes it did thanks. The atonement of Christ has been the linchpin of Christianity. I appreciate fresh insights. Some things are difficult to wrestle with to say the least.
And I truly enjoyed this piece, thank you for writing it! It will be helpful with friends who yet see the cross from the Penal Substitution Viewpoint; I pray their hearts are ready and open to hear! Thanks mate. Just great. So often I get lost when people start trying to show what you always thought about the bible was wrong.
But this made perfect sense. One question. James, Thanks. People probably get the idea of sins by looking down to or back to Origen and then Anselm affirmed blood sacrifice as dogma for the church. I just re read this properly, so much to process I will be in it for weeks. What really surprised me was the statement that the OT sacrifices were only for unintentional sins.
Thats completely new to me. Lots to process here. We need more of that in our world! Thanks for listening to my rant and rave, and I welcome any dialogue. May we grow closer to the Lord together! Jeremy I found your article insightful and has given me a lot to think about.
Certainly challenges all my past theological teaching and upbringing. Much of it makes sense, what I struggle with is comparing what you allude to in Scripture with Christ in the last supper talking about the bread and the wine to his disciples. Wine and sin…bread broken body. Any insights Jeremy on this is appreciated. Yes, I was just thinking about this over the past week or so. I take the symbolism in the Last Supper to show us that in His death, Jesus was revealing that scapegoating death and bloodshed is the basic human sin and is unnecessary for the forgiveness of sins.
His body and blood are signs of the new covenant, that death and blood are not what God wants or desires. I really need to write a full post on what is bouncing around in my head on this… I know that preceding paragraph is rather disjointed and confusing….
This article is ridiculous. Penal Substutionary Atonement is at the very heart of the Gospel Isa. To deny this crucial component of the Gospel is to deny the very Gospel itself. Sin is a big deal to God as seen in pretty much any book of the Bible. Faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus is the means by which sin is atoned for and we are reconciled to the Father.
I agree with your answer and would like for you to direct me to the sources that helped you to understand the Penal Substitutionary atonement for all human sins so I can learn more of what you know or believe. Who or what persons and books taught you this? Because I feel your sources can help me on questions like: was it 3 or 6 hours the land turn dark? On Sunday when you eat the Bread without any rising ingredient and fruit of the Vine what is your understanding of His shed Blood?
His Blood from it? What is your understanding of this? He must give up His inner Life too? He was dead but to be assured of that a roman soldier threw a spear at His body in which both water and blood poured out. But His Blood being shed is what makes this possible for us Too: Immorality. Whether the requirement of blood atonement is a myth or not is the central argument in understanding whether God has a wrathful or loving nature. In other words, did Jesus come to wash away the sin or to end the real condemnation that comes from the illusion of payment needed for sin?
Sin is a big deal. While this fellow has made some interesting, thought-provoking points, I believe that any argument can run amok if we lose sight of the full counsel of God on the subject. I could expound for hours, but alas I have to go for now. I will have to read this article over and over again to fully get the logic you are saying,however I concur with Janis on disagreeing with your assertion that son is not a big deal to God.
That statement contrasts so much of the Bible view point. To be fair to Jeremy and the proposition he has put forward one needs to read his book on the atonement of God. It stands or falls by what Gods word is really saying.
In this book the whole issue is addressed and provides much more insight from scripture. I have always believed in the penal version of the atonement which unfrotunately came out of the reformation mainly calvin look at his life and see how many people died in Geneva during his reign…. I now believe that is not what the early church adopted.
They understood that murder, punishment and rebellion was always in our hearts and that colours much of our thinking. Especially when we think how God will treat us like how we can treat each other.
I am a firm believer in going back to the original hebrew and greek for meaning as our constrained english is not a good lens of what God is really saying. Furthermore if Jesus is God then we must view scritpure through the lens of Christ. Jeremy addresses that in his book from scripture.
If God was not angry with us but rather deeply distressed over the consequences of sin on us and others it puts a whole new view on things. I was always told out of scripture that its trueth will set you free. I have found that to be very accurate. Thanks, Grahame! Yes, a more detailed explanation is found in the book. Glad you read it and found it helpful!
Jeremy it changed my life and the life of a number of Christian friends. Few books have had that effect. Be encouraged and dont stop please. Just discovered your site and was so interested to read the same questions I have recently been asking.
Also, I may disagree that the Israelites were runaway slaves. The fact that Pharoah reneged only caused more consequences to fall on the Egyptians, but could not change the fact that he most certainly released them. Lastly, for now, I think your argument about deliverance from slavery in Egypt needs to include the blood of the Passover. How does that fit with your schema.
In Genesis blood was not involved until Adam and Eve needed clothes to wear because of their feelings of shame through the knowledge of Evil that God made them clothing through animal skins meaning death entered into the context because of Evil. Universe, Earth. Evil caused Adam and Eve to die instead of living and never to die. There has to be another Adam since the first failed. The first just had to eat from the right tree and live forever. No blood involved. This website posits that it was not about sacrifice but about a Will as in last will and testament , which is another analogy used by the author of Hebrews.
So the question remains, why does the remission of sin require blood. Hebrews was quoting the Old Testament law which stated there was no remission of sins without the shedding of blood. God himself said it is the lifeblood that makes atonement Leviticus God said the life of the creature is in the blood, so God absolutely did require life for sin. But it is through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that the payment of sins is met. A lamb slain without spot or wrinkle from the foundation of the world.
I re-read your initial comment and what I would like to add is that death ultimately is the only way we could have been redeemed. Without death and resurrection we would have been separated from God forever. The scriptures say all of creation was subjected unto futility against its well, and it eagerly waits for the sons of God to be revealed.
This is about redemption, without death, without being born again into newness of life, we would never have had a way to be with God because God is perfectly righteous and without sin. Without the law we would have never sinned, but without having sinned we would never have grasped mercy. Jesus said him who is forgiven little, loves little and the scriptures say God is love. And now having seen clearly the work of God from the very beginning through his Son we can know what love is, we can know God in a way even the angels did not.
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? There are numerous other verses in the Bible that talk about the blood of Jesus. Those other texts require some explanation as well.
I will write a blog post which does so. Stay tuned! But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.
Jeremy is a heretic in your mind, because you mistakingly think that he is speaking lightly and disrespectfuly of Jesus death.
But that is sinners perspective! God is righteous! Law does not satisfy Him! Also, guilty people tend to run away from God, not to Him. Blood of bulls and goats was actually ineffective in that sense, although it did give to religious minds sense of relief. The sense of need to pay the debt is simply ingrained in sinful humanity! But the owner forgave both, freely! But blood of Jesus is effective. Blood is a concession to us sinners, not requirement of God! But how does it clear our conscience?
Is it literal blood bath?! I believe not. The enormity of His gift, the extreme measure He took to show me how He loves me — cannot but open my eyes,heart and mind, which results in cleaning my conscience of all burdens and makes me run to God, not from Him.
We think as if God, potentialy, puts another debt on our account, in form of Jesus sacrifice. Of course, we know that the animal sacrifices ultimately foreshadowed the death of Jesus. On the cross, He offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice.
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
But m aybe there was something more. Maybe all those animal sacrifices were designed to vividly show the people of Israel just how serious, just how disgusting, just how horrifying sin truly is.
Matt Chandler puts it this way in his book The Explicit Gospel :. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Isaiah The Israelites thought that by fastidiously following the Law and offering countless sacrifices, they would earn their own righteousness. They eventually took great pride in their bloody sacrificial system. But they missed the point. Romans He wants humble, broken, repentant sinners—men and women acutely aware of their sin and earnestly desirous of a righteous Savior.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. On weekends he can often be found mowing lawns or playing soccer.
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