The Sin Offering of Jesus Christ
An Orthodox and Lutheran Discussion of Christ's work in the crucifixion
This post is a continuation of the string of comments at Necessary Roughness. To catch up on what has already been said, please make sure you read Dan's blog! Just to recap up to this point, the comparison/contrast between the Orthodox and Lutherans is this: Lutherans believe that Christ offered to God perfect obedience to the Law and He was a sin offering for His people. He took our sins upon the cross into death that we might be freed from the power of death and the corruption of sin. The Orthodox belief is that Jesus offered perfect obedience to the Law and thereby doing took away the need to punish sin. Hopefully I have correctly stated the Orthodox belief, but the purpose of the discussion is exactly to see what the Orthodox believe about Christ's crucifixion and whether or not they believe that Christ was our sin offering before God.
Lutherans do believe that our Lord was a sin offering, as can be seen in these Bible passages:
+ “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
2 Cor. 5:18-21
[Here Christ is made sin for us. His death is the death of sin, not just the offering of perfect obedience unto death.]
+ "For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself."
Hebrews 7:26-27
[Christ, undefiled before the Law, offered up Himself as the sacrifice for the people's sin just as Aaron offered a male without defect to remove the sins of Israel.]
+ "For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. "
Hebrews 8:3
[Christ's obedience extends not only to the Law, the keeping of perfect morality and sinlessness, but He is also obedient in the role of the High Priest. To be perfectly obedient He must also make the sin offering that was required of the high priest to make.]
+ "For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation."
Hebrews 9:24-28
[Christ was offered to bear the sins of many, not as the Levites did, but once. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He was the sin offering.]
+ "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"
Isaiah 53:5-6
[Here Christ suffers bearing the sin of all people which He took to the grave in death.]
The conclusion to be made is this (in my husbands words):
Jesus makes an offering for sin. He's the sin offering. His obedience isn't limited to morality, but also includes obedience as the Mediator of the New Covenant. He is obedient as a Son, which is obedience as Prophet, High Priest, and King. These are the original "roles" of Adam from creation. Jesus is the New Adam. Remember, Adam's proper role was to receive everything from God in faith and to return everything to God by thanksgiving. So Christ's obedience is as the New Adam. As such He culminates all creation in Himself, and returns it to God in Himself. In order for this to be possible, His work must also include the sin-offering, which happens by Him bearing our sins in His body on the tree. When He dies, our sins die in Him. Baptism is our joining in this death, and the beginning of our resurrection.
The Great Reversal: Christ gives us His perfect obedience (imputed righteousness; Romans 3). In order for Him to impute obedience to us, He must actually live the perfectly obedient human life first. In EXCHANGE Christ takes our death-sentence. Lutherans see the atonement as an exchange. We get Christ's righteousness obtained under a life of perfection under the law, while Christ suffers our death-sentence. In this way, the entire (moral) law is fulfilled. On one hand the guilt and corruption is removed. On the other hand righteousness is imputed (justification) and then begun subjectively in us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (sanctification).
I hope I did a well enough job stating our Lutheran beliefs. I am eager to understand how the Orthodox may interpret these same passages. Indeed, the goal is not to attack our separate beliefs but in love to seek understanding of one another. For surely there is much to be gained in understanding, but if that may not be accomplished, then may it in the least increase our own faith and learning.
This post is a continuation of the string of comments at Necessary Roughness. To catch up on what has already been said, please make sure you read Dan's blog! Just to recap up to this point, the comparison/contrast between the Orthodox and Lutherans is this: Lutherans believe that Christ offered to God perfect obedience to the Law and He was a sin offering for His people. He took our sins upon the cross into death that we might be freed from the power of death and the corruption of sin. The Orthodox belief is that Jesus offered perfect obedience to the Law and thereby doing took away the need to punish sin. Hopefully I have correctly stated the Orthodox belief, but the purpose of the discussion is exactly to see what the Orthodox believe about Christ's crucifixion and whether or not they believe that Christ was our sin offering before God.
Lutherans do believe that our Lord was a sin offering, as can be seen in these Bible passages:
+ “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
2 Cor. 5:18-21
[Here Christ is made sin for us. His death is the death of sin, not just the offering of perfect obedience unto death.]
+ "For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself."
Hebrews 7:26-27
[Christ, undefiled before the Law, offered up Himself as the sacrifice for the people's sin just as Aaron offered a male without defect to remove the sins of Israel.]
+ "For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. "
Hebrews 8:3
[Christ's obedience extends not only to the Law, the keeping of perfect morality and sinlessness, but He is also obedient in the role of the High Priest. To be perfectly obedient He must also make the sin offering that was required of the high priest to make.]
+ "For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation."
Hebrews 9:24-28
[Christ was offered to bear the sins of many, not as the Levites did, but once. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He was the sin offering.]
+ "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"
Isaiah 53:5-6
[Here Christ suffers bearing the sin of all people which He took to the grave in death.]
The conclusion to be made is this (in my husbands words):
Jesus makes an offering for sin. He's the sin offering. His obedience isn't limited to morality, but also includes obedience as the Mediator of the New Covenant. He is obedient as a Son, which is obedience as Prophet, High Priest, and King. These are the original "roles" of Adam from creation. Jesus is the New Adam. Remember, Adam's proper role was to receive everything from God in faith and to return everything to God by thanksgiving. So Christ's obedience is as the New Adam. As such He culminates all creation in Himself, and returns it to God in Himself. In order for this to be possible, His work must also include the sin-offering, which happens by Him bearing our sins in His body on the tree. When He dies, our sins die in Him. Baptism is our joining in this death, and the beginning of our resurrection.
The Great Reversal: Christ gives us His perfect obedience (imputed righteousness; Romans 3). In order for Him to impute obedience to us, He must actually live the perfectly obedient human life first. In EXCHANGE Christ takes our death-sentence. Lutherans see the atonement as an exchange. We get Christ's righteousness obtained under a life of perfection under the law, while Christ suffers our death-sentence. In this way, the entire (moral) law is fulfilled. On one hand the guilt and corruption is removed. On the other hand righteousness is imputed (justification) and then begun subjectively in us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (sanctification).
I hope I did a well enough job stating our Lutheran beliefs. I am eager to understand how the Orthodox may interpret these same passages. Indeed, the goal is not to attack our separate beliefs but in love to seek understanding of one another. For surely there is much to be gained in understanding, but if that may not be accomplished, then may it in the least increase our own faith and learning.
Comments
I'll have more to say AFTER my nap, but I'm not sure how soon thereafter, as my schedule is rather crowded on this double festival (Annuniation and Greek Independence Day).
Anastasia
First, thank you very much for your gracious hosting of this discussion. As I’m now two posts behind, I’ll reply with two posts (to keep each one shorter), starting with your first, which raises questions about our respective understandings of sin.
First, though, I need to bring up the issue of immortality. The Orthodox believe that immortality is strictly a divine attribute, just like omniscience or omnipotence. God alone has it. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” and “I am Resurrection and Life” and “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” and “Who only hath immortality.”
We hold that Adam and Eve were not created with this divine attribute. They were created neither immortal nor mortal, but instead, with the capacity to become either. Had they remained in obedient communion with God, eventually He would have bestowed immortality upon them, allowing them to eat of the Tree of Life (AND the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil!) when they were mature enough to handle it. As it happened, though, He drove them out of the Garden specifically lest they eat of the Tree of Life and sin dwell forever and ever in their immortal bodies.
The reason I brought up immortality is that if one believes Adam and Eve were created immortal, then by definition nothing and nobody can cause them to die – except almighty God. Thus, one will have to conclude that God killed them as punishment for their sin.
But we do not think they ever had immortality. The only life they ever had was His life, shared with them. Their life, we can say, was derivative, was borrowed, was God’s life breathed into their inanimate clay.
Within that understanding, then, to say “sin *causes* death” is a bit like saying headache causes pain. A headache IS pain. Sin *is* death. Every sin is some form of rebellion, alienation, separation from God, and separation from God is the very definition of death. To sin is to cut your lifeline, to unplug your life support system, to trash your relationship with God.
Put another way, sin, like jumping off a skyscraper, kills us all by itself, even if we don’t actually die until a bit later, when we hit the ground. Sin is self-punishing, destroying us body and soul (although often we do not notice the damage until it becomes full-blown death). Death is not a response by God to sin, but is an aspect of sin itself. God, the Author of Life, did not institute death as a punishment. Satan is and always was the killer of mankind.
It’s true that when God wanted to reveal to His people that there is a connection between sin and death, He put it into legal terms, offense and punishment. But we believe He did this in great and gracious condescension to stiff-necked and hard-hearted Israel, putting the matter in terms they could understand, who were not very spiritual-minded but were all too familiar with the concept of revenge. There was no way, at that stage of spiritual development, for people to understand that sin in and of itself is lethal, before we even get around to considering God’s response to it. Yet that fact existed from the beginning, before the Mosaic Law. As St. Paul points out in Romans 5, during which time between Adam and Moses, there was no transgression similar Adam’s (no transgression of any direct commandment), yet sin still killed everyone. And sin killed everyone, he says, even though sin was not being imputed.
Sin kills automatically because to sin is to make oneself incompatible with God and the only way God could make sin non-lethal would be by making His own Life compatible with it. Never going to happen! He remains holy; He remains the only Immortality; and if we would not die, we must tap into His Life, must be in communion with Him. It is not God who kills, but lack of God.
To summarize:
With this important caveat that God did not institute death as punishment for sin, but rather sin *already* is deadly in itself, we agree with the Lutheran view that sin causes death. AND we also hold, just as you say, that death is the seat of sin in us. So it works both ways, in a disastrous downward spiral: originally, Adam’s sin killed him and now the death in us, inherited from him, causes us to sin. “The wages of sin is death” AND “The sting of death is sin.”
In practice, then, sin and death are almost synonymous, and we need deliverance from both. Christ provided than upon the Cross. Next post!
Thanks again,
Anastasia
Well, except there is a quibble where you say: “The Orthodox belief is that Jesus offered perfect obedience to the Law and thereby doing took away the need to punish sin.”
When I asked why there should be any need for both perfect obedience AND punishment, I only meant to point out why ISTM that to demand both would be illegal as well as immoral.
The Orthodox believe that whenever people experience punishment it is for chastisement – meaning it is to show us the gravity of our sins and to bring us to repentance. It is, IOW, actually a function of Divine Mercy, is done for our benefit.
Because God is Love and Love seeks not her own, we do not believe God punishes for His own sake, that is, for retribution. There is nothing in Him that requires or benefits from retribution. God never takes any form of satisfaction (emotional, moral, legal or otherwise) in pain, suffering, or death.
Instead, God’s Justice is always aiming at something higher, better, more radical than merely punishing sin, namely, to *destroy* it. That is what we believe He did on the Cross. His death killed death, the devil’s chief weapon, the root of sin.
So in my previous post, I didn’t mean there had been some need for retribution until Christ offered perfect obedience instead.
Nevertheless, in at least two other senses, we Orthodox most definitely DO believe Christ was a sin offering!
On the Cross, we believe Christ was *exercising* God’s wrath against sin to destroy sin, to terminate it, to extirpate it. He was waging the fiercest battle against it and was all the while winning the battle. Such is God’s judgment upon sin: it shall be no more! Christ gave His life in that battle, as a soldier gives his life for his country; and that is ONE sense in which He was/is our sin offering.
There is another sense I can think of, too, of which your husband reminds us by pointing out that Christ offered more than perfect obedience. He also offered His Body and Blood and whole self upon the altar of the Cross.
And what did God want with that gory offering? We know God is not bloodthirsty. We know He does not delight in suffering or death. So what’s this offering for?
The first clue comes from Lev. 17:11: “For the life of the flesh [is] in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your life: for it [is] the blood [that] makes an atonement for the life.”
There is complex symbolizing going on here. First, the sacrificial animal represents the sinner rededicating himself to God. (Same thing we symbolize in the offerings of bread and wine.) Then the blood represents the life of the animal, given by God to the sinner, in token of His forgiveness, but more specifically, in token of new life given the sinner, supplied by the animal’s blood. The blood was to atone for (restore) ones life, ones soul.
Did it work? Could an animal’s blood restore the life the sinner had forfeited? According to Hebrews, no, not really. “For we know,” says he, “that the blood of goats and heifers can never remove sin.” Of course God did forgive people’s sins when the High Priest made these offerings. God can forgive, and did, but forgiveness alone cannot remove the catastrophic condition in us we call sin. Forgiveness removes the guilt but not the power of sin in us.
Rather, Hebrews says, these sacrifices were types and foreshadows of things to come: Christ’s risen and glorified and immortal Blood CAN and DOES give us eternal life! That’s why He spilled it: to offer it to the Father, so the Father in turn would have it to offer to us (in Holy Communion, of course) for our everlasting life.
The blood, then, doesn’t have to do with punishment, at least not literally. Figuratively, yes; Christ endured “punishment” as an athlete endures “punishment” in a grueling race. But not in the sense of retribution. (The sacrificial animal wasn’t being punished in our stead either. He was giving his life to give us life, via his blood.) In short, when the Orthodox see or hear “blood”, they think, “Life!”
As you can probably appreciate, the biblical passages you’ve cited all take on a quite different cast when the above understandings and principles are applied to them. To us none of them speaks of retribution, but all speak of mercy. I’ll be happy to deal with any or all of these quotes more specifically upon request.
Anastasia
Emily (my wife) turned me on to your conversation. Even though it's so close to Holy Week, I thought I'd indulge a bit.
Anastasia wrote:
"We hold that Adam and Eve were not created with this divine attribute. They were created neither immortal nor mortal, but instead, with the capacity to become either. "
Response:
Lutherans typically understand Adam and Eve to have been created with a recieved immortality. Immortality speaks to being exempt from death. It's not the same as eternal, which speaks to being without beginning or end. Only God is eternal. Mankind was created apart from death, since God had breathed the breath of His own life into Adam's nostrils. Death is the result of Adam's sin. We don't see Adam and Eve as having a choice to take one path or another. Adam and Eve were created on the path of Life. Through misbelief and disobedience they inflicted death upon themselves and their progeny.
Anastasia wrote:
"Had they remained in obedient communion with God, eventually He would have bestowed immortality upon them, allowing them to eat of the Tree of Life (AND the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil!) when they were mature enough to handle it. As it happened, though, He drove them out of the Garden specifically lest they eat of the Tree of Life and sin dwell forever and ever in their immortal bodies."
Response:
Moses tells us in Genesis that Adam and Eve were free to eat of any tree in the garden, save the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were already allowed to eat of the Tree of Life. However, the Serpent deceived them before they ate of the Tree of Life (so it seems). Lutherans see it as speculation to say that God would have allowed them to eat of the Tree of Knowledge later, but it may be a safe bit of speculation. After all, *everything* God created was good, including that Tree of Knowledge.
Anastasia wrote:
"The reason I brought up immortality is that if one believes Adam and Eve were created immortal, then by definition nothing and nobody can cause them to die – except almighty God. Thus, one will have to conclude that God killed them as punishment for their sin."
Response:
The Lutheran-Orthodox disagreement at this point centers over just what it means to be immortal. Lutherans have understood Adam and Eve's initial condition of immortality to be changeable, though only by God, or themselves through the Tree of Knowledge. This understanding comes from the words of God, where He says, "In the day that you eat of it, you shall die." [Augustine mistakenly translated this "I will kill you," but I've never found anything in our official confessions to bind Lutherans to such an interpretation.] So, one does not have to conclude that only God could kill them. Genesis establishes God as the giver of life - even His own Life breathed into Adam's nostrils. God warns them away from what will kill them. God creates and explains how it works; man is the agent of his own death. The Tree of Life would have bestowed unending days, but not a correction to the corruption of sin (or death, if your Orthodox).
I wonder if we're saying *nearly* the same thing, just from different angles.
Anastasia wrote:
"Within that understanding, then, to say “sin *causes* death” is a bit like saying headache causes pain. A headache IS pain. Sin *is* death."
Response:
Yes, this is true, though it isn't necessarily the entire picture of sin (not that you're saying it is). While it is fine to say sin is death, Lutherans have more traditionally dealt with a cause-effect relationship in this area. Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Here we're not so concerned with the chicken-egg question, but with what giving yourself into sin accomplishes. It accomplishes death. Here death is the opposite of everlasting life.
Anastasia wrote:
"Death is not a response by God to sin, but is an aspect of sin itself. God, the Author of Life, did not institute death as a punishment. Satan is and always was the killer of mankind."
Response:
I assume you mean that the introduction of death into human nature is not God's response to sin. The Scriptures are full of instances where God punishes sin with death. However, I sense that you are speaking in the context of the Fall.
Anastasia wrote:
"Yet even without sin being imputed, sin still killed everyone. That means there's something else than retribution going on."
Response:
That people died apart from sin being imputed in the legal sense does underscore the lethal effect of sin's corruption. Lutherans should have no problem with that idea. However, "retribution" still shows up. Romans 1 speaks of how men basically turned from God, so God gave them up to a debased mind to do all sorts of unspeakable things. Then St. Paul says, "...who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them" (NKJV). Death is deserved for such sins. Retribution is defined as a suitable return for what one has done (Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary). For most of human history God's retribution is held off until the Last Day, so that we have a chance to repent. In some cases though we see God's retribution poured out upon wickedness, which serves as a warning sign to everyone else (consider Ananias and Sapphira).
Romans 2 brings in the future Day of God's wrath and judgment, where everyone will be judged by their works. V.12: "For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law." On one hand the corruption of sin has a lethal effect on the human race. On the other hand, there is a day of retribution to come.
I only bring this up, because I'm not sure where or if the Orthodox see retribution coming into play in our current, New Testament context. Lutherans, as inheritors of Western theology and tradition, have a living sense that God is wrathful towards sin and the willfully unrepentant, that there is a divine justice which will be revealed on the Last Day, but that in Christ we are saved from the wrath to come. Sometimes I suspect, though, that Lutherans don't bother to look at *why* God is wrathful. In some sad instances it has led to Lutherans preaching that the Father hates the sinner, but Jesus absorbs that hatred. Usually, though, Lutheran preachers stick to the surface themes: God is wrathful towards sin, but desires to be merciful in Christ. They don't usually go any deeper than that (some do, many don't).
Anastasia wrote:
"To summarize: With this important caveat that God did not institute death as punishment for sin, but rather sin *already* is deadly in itself, we agree with the Lutheran view that sin causes death. AND we also hold, just as you say, that death is the seat of sin in us:"
Response:
Lutherans should be able to agree with what you wrote. When Lutherans speak of the "seat of sin in us," we usually call this [inner] corruption, the Old Adam, or just plainly "sin." Most Lutherans don't treat death as the seat of sin, because of that cause-effect mentality I mentioned above. However, Dr. Luther often lumped the two (sin and death) together in this sense. A Lutheran familiar with the Scriptures shouldn't have a problem with "death" as the seat of sin, though we might have trouble giving death exclusive rights.
"The Orthodox believe that whenever people experience punishment it is for chastisement – meaning it is to show us the gravity of our sins and to bring us to repentance. It is, IOW, actually a function of Divine Mercy, is done for our benefit. "
Response:
Lutherans understand that God chastises His children with punishment. (See Hebrews 12:5-6) We also understand that there is just punishment in retribution for sin. However, given what is written about God's desire that the sinner turn from his evil way and live, these just and retributive punishments have the goal of turning people to repentance, or where the sinner refuses to repent, then as a means of limiting sin's influence in creation and warning others away from similar behavior.
Anastasia wrote:
Because God is Love and Love seeks not her own, we do not believe God punishes for His own sake, that is, for retribution. There is nothing in Him that requires or benefits from retribution. God never takes any form of satisfaction (emotional, moral, legal or otherwise) in pain, suffering, or death. "
Response:
I would disagree that retribution means "punishing for one's own sake." God punishes in congruity with His holy and good Nature, but not so as to derive any benefit for Himself. God needs nothing to satiate Himself. He is altogether complete. Creatures cannot disturb this. Retribution deals only with what is appropriate and just. And it is the Creator alone who knows what is good, appropriate, and just for His creation.
Anastasia wrote:
"Instead, God’s Justice is always aiming at something higher, better, more radical than merely punishing sin, namely, to *destroy* it. That is what we believe He did on the Cross. His death killed death, the devil’s chief weapon, the root of sin."
Response:
That sounds just fine. We say that, too, from Hebrews 2.
Anastasia wrote:
"There is complex symbolizing going on here. First, the sacrificial animal represents the sinner rededicating himself to God. (Same thing we symbolize in the offerings of bread and wine.) Then the blood represents the life of the animal, given by God to the sinner, in token of His forgiveness, but more specifically, in token of new life given the sinner, supplied by the animal’s blood. The blood was to atone for (restore) ones life, ones soul."
Response:
Lutherans understand there to be two kinds of sacrifice: a propitiatory sacrifice and eucharistic sacrifice. The propitiatory sacrifice appeases God's wrath over sin. The eucharistic sacrifice does not bring about any sort of reconciliation, but is offered by those who have been reconciled with God.
Only Christ's self-offering on the cross is a true propitiatory sacrifice. In this connection we cite Isaiah 53, "When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He will see His seed," etc. The Celebration of the Eucharist is, of course, the chief eucharistic sacrifice. There (and here I lean on St. Irenaeus) the bread and wine and other offerings are tokens the faithful offering themselves as a living sacrifice.
Let me take a stab at interpreting Lev. 17 from a Lutheran perspective. The sacrificial animal stands in place of the one offering it. In Leviticus 17 the animal will serve as a propitiatory sacrifice. The blood of the animal is offered upon the altar, which points to this basic need: that sinful man cannot enter again into the paradise of God's presence and fellowship apart from passing through death. If that death is of the sinner himself, then that death will consume him. The animal (which points to Christ) is offered in place of the sinner (its life poured out unto death). The sacrifice (Christ) takes the sinner's corruption, guilt, and death sentence and completes its course by bringing it into death. [The sinner has this death count as his own through baptism; thus baptism is truly death.] Lev. 17 is about a propitiatory sacrifice.
For Lutherans, what you describe in your comment is the eucharistic sacrifice. The bread and wine are first tokens of ourselves and everything we have from God. They are presented with thanksgiving in faith that God will vivify them (and we who partake of them) in His kingdom by showing them to be for us the true Body and Blood of His Christ. The eucharistic sacrifice depends on the once-for-all propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. As the High Priest, Christ alone makes atonement (see Leviticus 16), and it is offered once to stand as a perpetual means of forgiveness. We receive the benefits of that sacrifice through the Holy Communion (which is that sacrifice [noun] made manifest for the forgiveness of our sins).
Anastasia wrote:
"Rather, Hebrews says, these sacrifices were types and foreshadows of things to come: Christ’s risen and glorified and immortal Blood CAN and DOES give us eternal life! "
Response:
I won't argue with your comment. But, from a Lutheran standpoint, I wonder if you're only looking at one side of the coin. Christ's risen and glorified and immortal blood gives eternal life, because first He "who knew no sin [was made] to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5). Maybe I'm being hypersensitive.
Anastasia wrote:
"The blood, then, doesn’t have to do with punishment, at least not literally. Figuratively, yes; Christ endured 'punishment' as an athlete endures “punishment” in a grueling race. But not in the sense of retribution. (The sacrificial animal wasn’t being punished in our stead either. He was giving his life to give us life, via his blood.) In short, when the Orthodox see or hear 'blood', they think, 'Life!'"
Response:
Isaiah 53 says that Christ's chastisement brought us peace. He received this punishment from sinners undeservedly, but at God's ordaining. Verse 10, "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief." Jesus is "chastised" and "bruised" and "put to grief." This speaks to Jesus' suffering and death on Good Friday. This is punishment, and not just like an athlete endures punishment. (Likewise, there will be punishment to come on the Last Day, where everyone will be rewarded according to his works.) But the punishment falls upon sin in Christ. Jesus became sin for us, and in Christ sin gets what it deserves. This is God's love waging war against that which kills us. And again, retribution is only about rendering what is due, not satiating some inner desire or rage. Sin deserves punishment and death. In fact, if you consider the lake of fire in Revelation 20, when the beast and false prophet are tossed in, it says they will be tormented forever. Perhaps the Orthodox think this is the torment of being so close to the loving God forever and ever, but the Western mind sees this as intentional punishment (see Mark 9:48). It is just, fair, and necessary if we are to be called into repentance before this Last Day and this lake show up. Punishment isn't just a scare tactic to drive us to repentance. St. Paul says in Romans 1 that those who commit the sins he lists "deserve" death. It doesn't just happen to them, but they deserve it. Punishment is nothing but a penalty for a crime or offense. Hellfire (again, see Mark 9:48) is punishment for sin. Jesus' death is punishment for sin. But in punishing sin unto death, sin is finished and overcome, and through the resurrection death is made the gateway into everlasting life.
Special thanks to you for joining the conversation, especially at this point in the Church year. Probably we should all take a break during Holy Week.
Perhaps we are saying some of the same things or nearly so.
Your description of God’s warning to Adam and Eve is exactly the same as the Orthodox one.
We emphasize, as over and against St. Augustine, that He wasn’t threatening to kill, but warning that they would die.
Agreed, Adam and Eve were set on the path of life – but with the choice to depart from that path, which they did.
Concerning immortality, like you, I also am not using the word to denote without beginning or end. “Eternal,” as you say, would be the word for that.
But I *am* using “immortal” to mean “living henceforth forevermore”. We don’t believe Adam and Eve ever had that in and of themselves. (To say they did would be, to Orthodox ears, tantamount to claiming they had divinity of their own.) We say their life was strictly a participation in God’s, and only to be had in intimate communion with Him.
Moreover, if immortality is “changeable” by anyone but God, then the Orthodox wouldn’t be able to call it “immortality”, but just “life”. Perhaps that’s just a vocabulary difference between us.
You wrote: Through misbelief and disobedience they inflicted death upon themselves and their progeny.
And again, later: man is the agent of his own death.
Just to be very clear, are you agreeing that God did not do this as a response to their mistrust and disobedience? And who do you say administers it? God? Satan? Satan on behalf of God? Satan to steal man away from God? That last option is the Orthodox one.
You wrote: The Tree of Life would have bestowed unending days, but not a correction to the corruption of sin (or death, if your Orthodox).
The result of eating it might have been unending days of unending sin (while God’s objective is always to destroy sin) or, since that Tree planted in the middle of the Garden was Christ, eating of it might have purified their sin on the spot, (for all I know!) destroying them in the process. Like operating on cancer that has spread all over. But having no interest in destroying them, but rather in saving them, in His mercy He drove them away and set a guard.
You wrote: Here we're not so concerned with the chicken-egg question, but with what giving yourself into sin accomplishes. It accomplishes death.
Yes. My point is that it does so directly. To sin is by definition to sever ourselves from the only Living One, the only Life that exists in the entire cosmos, to cut the umbilical cord that conveys our only life, His Life, to us.
You wrote: I assume you mean that the introduction of death into human nature is not God's response to sin. The Scriptures are full of instances where God punishes sin with death. However, I sense that you are speaking in the context of the Fall.
Yes, I’m speaking in the context of the Fall, and yes, I mean the introduction of death, the corruption of human nature, is not God’s response to Adam’s and Eve’s sin. Do we agree or disagree here?
The instances in Scripture you view as God punishing sin with death, the Orthodox view as God simply putting a stop to sin by death. As a last resort, I suppose one could say, or whenever it is the best course.
One could easily see in the destruction of a city or a nation a punitive function but in fact, if we look at it spiritually, such actions of God *benefit* all concerned! If the innocent are either delivered from abuse by the wicked or called home to glory (or both). The wicked are either prevented by death from committing any further sins, from wreaking any further destruction to themselves and others, from accumulating even more torments in the world to come, or are given a solemn warning for their edification. Babies and others who might have responded, had they heard the Gospel? God knows their hearts, knows how they would have responded, loves them with infinite love, and knows best how to deal with them. (We don’t, but He does.)
We’d also probably be keen to point out that although we speak of God bringing death and destruction, *technically* what happens, as in the case of Job, is God letting satan have his way for a while, because God purposes, in this way, to bring about the greater good. “Where sin did abound…”
You wrote: However, "retribution" still shows up. Romans 1 speaks of how men basically turned from God, so God gave them up to a debased mind to do all sorts of unspeakable things. Then St. Paul says, "...who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them" (NKJV). Death is deserved for such sins. Retribution is defined as a suitable return for what one has done (Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary). For most of human history God's retribution is held off until the Last Day, so that we have a chance to repent. In some cases though we see God's retribution poured out upon wickedness, which serves as a warning sign to everyone else (consider Ananias and Sapphira).
Perhaps “retribution” is not the word I meant. There’s no doubt that in the end, everyone will be suitably judged and recompensed. There’s no doubt that in spiritual, hidden ways, they are here and now, even. The just live in beautiful intimacy with Christ, after all, while the wicked do not have that joy, but live with an ever-increasing terminal illness called sin. The just live in a peace the wicked can never even imagine. And so forth. Everyone gets what’s right and suitable, in some ways even now; consummately in the world to come.
But as we agree, that’s according to God’s idea of what’s suitable. Jesus Christ reveals to us that God has a habit of giving people better than they strictly deserve. Jesus both demonstrates it in His works and preaches it in His parables. He invites Himself to dine with a tax collector, who deserved no such honor, and does it before Zacchaeus repents, even. He saves the life of the woman caught in adultery, and we aren’t told whether she ever repented or not. He tells of the Prodigal Son, whose father treated him much better than the repentant boy deserved (much to the chagrin of his older brother); the king who cancelled his servant’s debt just out of the kindness of the king’s heart; and the husbandman who paid his last-come workers more than he needed to, in fact, the same as those who had been laboring the longest. God sends the blessings of His rain and His sunshine on the just and the unjust alike.
Furthermore, the biggest, most monstrous injustice of all is for the Creator’s handiwork to be perverted and destroyed at the hands of the devil; for His children seduced away from him, ally themselves with satan, and suffer his torments when God had created them to share in His Own Life and glory. For the devil to be the prince of this world That is injustice on a cosmic scale. Putting *that* right again is the main object of the Divine Justice; and that involves rescuing His children, reclaiming His whole creation, defeating sin, death, and the devil. It doesn’t have to involve what I (perhaps mistakenly?) called “retribution”.
When I said “retribution,” the idea I was talking about, which the Orthodox firmly reject, is any notion of God “getting even,” or God receiving “satisfaction” through human suffering. Or God venting His wrath upon human beings. (He vents it upon sin, to destroy it.) Or any idea that suffering, pain, death, can in any way compensate God or fulfill His Justice(Obedience fulfills that.) or in and of itself do any good at all.
When we Orthodox speak of God’s Wrath against *people* we mean it the same way as when we speak of His Face, His Voice, His Eyes, His strong right Arm, etc. ; we recognize this form of speech as anthropomorphism. God is always far better to us than any of us deserves, far better than anybody or anything requires Him to be. He is always *infinitely* kind to us.
We do not see Romans I or 2 or any other Scripture as contradicting that. In Romans 1, God simply isn’t going to force the reprobate to repent. He is going to let them destroy themselves if they must. You can’t force someone to be free.
The fact that God is always kind to us and good and compassionate doesn’t mean He is not just. Assuredly He is! It simply means sin destroys us all by itself, without need of any help from God. And it does so to the exact degree that we live in it, so we reap precisely what we sow.
In the Last Day, God will reveal with perfect clarity to one and all the condition of every person, and everyone will have to face up to it. And the Light of this knowledge will gladden some and torment others. (Harry Truman, in response to someone in a crowd who yelled out, “Give ‘em hell, Harry!” replied, “I don’t give ‘em hell. I just tell them the truth and they think it’s hell!”) God will compel every knee to bow and every tongue to confess, and some will fall to their knees in joy and gratitude, while for others doing so will be mortifying. And God will haul every human being up to stand before His Throne, and for some, it will be their best dream come true, and for others, their worst nightmare. And He will make all to stand within the furnace of His white-hot Love, and to some, it will feel like light and warmth and refreshment, as typified by the Three Holy Children in Nebuchadnezzer’s furnace, while for others, it will be like getting incinerated.
That’s how we believe God’s Wrath will work: exactly the same as His Love, for it is the same thing. It’s the way we describe Love when it is at work destroying sin and evil.
Anastasia
You wrote: Lutherans understand that God chastises His children with punishment. (See Hebrews 12:5-6) We also understand that there is just punishment in retribution for sin. However, given what is written about God's desire that the sinner turn from his evil way and live, these just and retributive punishments have the goal of turning people to repentance, or where the sinner refuses to repent, then as a means of limiting sin's influence in creation and warning others away from similar behavior.
Yes, God chastises with punishment. Yes, such punishment has the goal of turning us to repentance, and/or of limiting sin’s influence in creation and warning others.
Yes, there is just “punishment” so long as we understand that it comes directly from sin. Sin itself punishes. Furthermore Satan takes out his wrath upon us when we give ourselves to him and flee from under God’s protecting wing. It isn’t God Who does these. When we say He does, we mean He permits us to forsake Him, and He permits us to endure satan’s wrath, because salvation entails causing a person to be free, and a person cannot be forced to be free!
You wrote: God punishes in congruity with His holy and good Nature, but not so as to derive any benefit for Himself.
What does it mean that He punishes in congruity with His holy and good Nature? What I’m really asking is, what’s at stake here? What would happen, would it be anything terrible (or wouldn’t it rather be wonderful?) if the only punishment God ever meted out were for correction and growth and edification? (No, that wouldn’t mean anybody ever got away with anything, given the self-punishing nature of sin.)
You wrote: Lutherans understand there to be two kinds of sacrifice: a propitiatory sacrifice and eucharistic sacrifice. The propitiatory sacrifice appeases God's wrath over sin. The eucharistic sacrifice does not bring about any sort of reconciliation, but is offered by those who have been reconciled with God.
One problem with this is that we do not want God’s wrath over sin ever to be appeased until neither hide nor hair of it is ever detected in all of creation again! We want God to go on campaigning against sin and evil until its end is final, complete, thorough, and manifest.
We do want to be reconciled with God. And there were two obstacles in the way of that, one moral, the other, ontological. Christ, in His Atonement, overcomes both obstacles.
The moral obstacle is of course guilt. For that He atones by His offering of perfect obedience, perfect faith, and perfect love, on behalf of us all. (And loving obedience in faith is for us the only thing that *can* atone for our disobedience.) In Hebrews 10 we read that Christ came to replace the previous kind of sacrifices with obedience:
5 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me. 6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. 7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come--
In the volume of the book it is written of Me-- To do Your will, O God.'"*
8 Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), 9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, *O God." **He takes away the first that He may establish the second**. 10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Here guilt is atoned for by perfect obedience, offered on behalf of all.
Nevertheless, Christ, as Great High Priest, offers as well His Body and Blood. And this is to overcome the other obstacle to reconciliation from God: death. Dead people are incompatible with God, Who IS Life. And forgiveness alone does not restore life, for forgiveness is a moral issue, while death is an ontological one. (God forgave the Israelites, but they all still died and languished in Hades.) So Christ gives His body to descend to Hades and free the captives there, and His blood to pour out the Divine Life in it upon the whole world. Here death is expiated, by the Body and Blood of Christ.
Put another way, this was the sacrifice of the *Passover* Lamb. It’s the Passover Lamb that best typifies the Crucifixion.
Nevertheless, since by His offering of perfect obedience by faith and love atoned for the guilt of the whole world, and since He offered His Body to defeat death and His blood to restore Life, the sum of the whole ends up being the perfect sin offering; i.e., the sacrifice that deals the fatal blow to sin. Everything is set to right again.
That, for us, is the sense in which we interpret Isaiah 53. (But St. Matthew, has another and very different interpretation of one snippet of Isaiah 53 in his Chapter 8, approx. 15-17.)
God was pleased with all Christ did, and was pleased to have it so in view of the salvation it wrought, but none of that means literally that God was punishing Christ. The Crucifixion was a monstrous deed, the absolute nadir of sin, homicide and deicide. It was the devil’s wrath (and ours!) Christ was bearing and vanquishing, and God’s Wrath He was exercising all the while.
You wrote: Let me take a stab at interpreting Lev. 17 from a Lutheran perspective. The sacrificial animal stands in place of the one offering it. In Leviticus 17 the animal will serve as a propitiatory sacrifice. The blood of the animal is offered upon the altar, which points to this basic need: that sinful man cannot enter again into the paradise of God's presence and fellowship apart from passing through death. If that death is of the sinner himself, then that death will consume him. The animal (which points to Christ) is offered in place of the sinner (its life poured out unto death). The sacrifice (Christ) takes the sinner's corruption, guilt, and death sentence and completes its course by bringing it into death. [The sinner has this death count as his own through baptism; thus baptism is truly death.] Lev. 17 is about a propitiatory sacrifice.
I’d have to reword that. The sarifricial animal represents the one offering it. He is offering the whole animal, along with and as a token of himself. The animal’s life is being consecrated to God; the sinner’s life is being reconsecrated with it in the holocaust. That’s what Christ’s offering of perfect obedience, love and faith fulfills.
The animal’s blood is offered upon the altar, but *not by the sinner to God*! Rather, the other way around; God Himself says HE is the one offering it, and offering it to the sinner, because blood is the seat of life. This is the sacrifice Christ fulfills by shedding His own Blood.
Of course the obtaining of the life-bearing blood necessarily entails the death of the animal. The animal’s life is given that the sinner may live. So there is a substitution there. It just doesn't have to do with punishing the animal. (Although the animal himself might heartily disagree!)
I need to re-read the relevant Scriptures, but ISTM the animal appointed to bear the penalty for the sinner was the scapegoat. But he not slaughtered. He was sent into the wilderness, there to die, symbolizing the sinner's fate.
That may be why nobody ever says of Christ, "Behold the Goat of God, Who takes away the sins of the world.”
You wrote: … But, from a Lutheran standpoint, I wonder if you're only looking at one side of the coin. Christ's risen and glorified and immortal blood gives eternal life, because first He "who knew no sin [was made] to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5). Maybe I'm being hypersensitive.
You are being perceptive rather than hypersensitive. We say His risen, glorified, immortal blood gives eternal life simply because it is His and He is Immortal.
We just don’t see, in the context of the Crucifixion, where literal punishment comes in – or if it does, where any place is left for forgiveness. (How does one manage to collect His debt in full and forgive it, too?) Or how literal punishment and obedience could both be required, legally or morally. Or how such punishment could be helpful, expiatory, or propitiatory in any way. What's the connection supposed to be?
I realize I haven’t addressed every point you made; that’s because this has become SO long. I If I missed any in particular that you wish I had addressed, I’ll be glad to do so.
Thanks again for your participation here. You have a knack of putting things in a much better way than I have usually encountered which I both admire and enjoy.
Anastasia
I enjoy reading your posts. I've read some of your posts on the Orthodox-Lutheran blog on Yahoo! before. I'm glad to finally have a chance to eSpeak with you myself.
There are a few things I'd like to continue to discuss from your post, but the season will not permit. So I'd like to throw out a comment about death and punishment, maybe to help clarify my personal understanding of things.
Death "happens" to human beings because Adam and Eve sinned in Eden. Traditional Western thought has been known to hold that such death was inflicted by God upon mankind as just dues, this way of thinking coming from Augustine. I have not found such an argument in the Lutheran Confessions, so it is a wonder to me that so many Lutherans tend to advocate this. (I.e. it isn't something Lutherans are bound to.)
When this death that man has introduced into creation through disobedience is inflicted upon a person by God, that is when death becomes a punishment. The punishment aspect is that it is used as a means of opposing, restricting, or ending sin.
When God sends Jesus to die, because this death is not as the natural result of sin, but is inflicted purposefully by God (for God does send His Son to die) to kill sin, this is punishment.
If Jesus, after bearing our griefs, carrying our infirmities, and becoming our sin were to have just keeled over dead without bloodshed, then it would easier for me to factor out this punishment perspective.
But God sends Jesus to not only bear all this sin, but also to meet death violently. Compare this with how God will deal with sin, death, and the devil on the Last Day. Yes, out of love, He will cast them into the lake of fire. However, this lake of fire is where their worm does not die. It is a place of everlasting torment. Because this is inflicted upon sin, death, and the devil (and those who will not repent of their association with them), this is a punishment. The punishment falls upon sin, for sure, but that sin is only distinguished from the people in torment, not separated from them.
Again, I think that when death is willingly inflicted (even though the motive is love), that amounts to punishment.
What is gained by that punishment when applied to the crucifixion? Only the putting down of sin, so that life in the Holy Spirit may take its place. Westerners have often imputed motives of hate, rage, the need to be emotionally sated, etc., for sure. Particular Scripture passages have been pointed to as support, though they all seem to be either misused or improperly translated. The common thread behind all this, though, is that sin needs to be opposed actively by God (i.e. punished).
I will post again after Easter. I look forward to sharing in the mystery of our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection through the liturgical celebration of Holy Week. It is kind of neat that East and West will celebrate on the same day this year. A blessed Pascha to you and yours.
- Rev. Benjamin Harju
It’s true that to inflict death is punishment. And it’s true that there is death. And it’s true that impenitent *people* do and will suffer, for sin doesn’t exist in the abstract.
But how can we manage to suppose that the Author of Life, He Who is not only Love Itself but Life itself, inflicts death? Granted we sometimes speak that way, but mustn’t we pause and reflect that technically, strictly and literally speaking, it cannot be?
If we want to speak more literally, then we should say Satan inflicts death (seduces us to sin); this, after all, being his goal. And God permits him to do it whenever God knows He can use the devil’s mischief for some greater good. In this case, it’s the good you mention: to restrict, end, evil.
Or, more technically still… In just the same way as darkness = no light, death = no God. (Okay, God is still there, but ones connection with Him has been severed.) Darkness and death alike have no substance of their own (no “dark waves”), but consist of deprivations: of photons/light waves and of God/Life, respectively. Being cut off from God doesn’t *cause* death, it quite literally IS death. Man does it to himself. What God does is to lengthen or shorten the time before it takes full effect, according to His knowledge and wisdom and love.
If we say God inflicts death, what is satan’s role in the picture? Does he, as mankind’s enemy, approve of what God is doing, or does he, as God’s enemy, oppose God’s killing us?
Sin doesn’t need to be punished; it needs to be destroyed.
I’ll grant you Christ’s death *looks* very much indeed like punishment. It even, unjustly, takes the form of a criminal’s execution. But what does Jesus say about His own coming crucifixion? Here’s the comparison He makes: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, just so must the Son of man be lifted up…” Just so. Just like that. Just like the serpent, which was not being punished. The serpent was for healing, was medicinal, we may say; and so is the Blood of Christ. Shedding the Blood was necessary, not for punishment but for everlasting life. “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.” But obtaining the Blood of Life means its owner dies.
Another point, WRT the Crucifixion: punishment implies sentence, sentence implies verdict, verdict implies a trial. But the world isn’t going to be put on trial until the Last Day, when “He shall come again, to judge the living and the dead.” So far, there has been no trial, no verdict, no sentence. (And I’m sorry, but even though it appears to us perfectly, inescapably obvious what the coming verdict must be, the fact remains that *we do NOT know*! We must not presume to predict God’s unsearchable judgments.) In any case, Christ tells us He has not come to judge the world, but to save it. If the world hasn’t been judged, how can sentence be carried out?
If we postulate that the Crucifixion is punishment, then that question remains: who is being punished and why, given the perfect obedience Christ offered His Father for all of us? How is that legal, to demand both perfect obedience and death? How is that even moral?
Sin didn’t kill Him, God didn’t kill Him, and we didn’t kill Him, either (except in the sense that there would have been no need for Him to die, had we never sinned). The Roman soldiers didn’t kill him; the Jews didn’t kill Him, satan didn’t even kill Him, except metaphorically. Nobody, but nobody, kills the Incarnate Word. His death is absolutely voluntary. Not only can He come down from the Cross at any moment, not only can He summon legions of angels to His aid, but He also has the miraculous power to die at will! “I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again.” He gives a LOUD cry and dies. This is to demonstrate that He dies not because of any of the things that have been done to Him, for He is still in possession His full strength; but He dies solely of His own will. As the Roman centurion recognizes, it takes a Divine Being to do that. “And when the centurion, who stood across from him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God!”
God sent the Lord not to kill Him, but that He Himself might lay down His own life for us.
A blessed Holy Week and Pascha to you as well (and Emily, you, too!) as we all ponder these things. Looking forward to more dialogue afterward.
Anastasia