Thursday Thinking - Sacrifice and Atonement

Fuller Magazine has posted a very good essay by theologian/author John Goldingay, "Sacrifice and the Death of Christ." It has some very good insights on the meaning and practice of sacrifice rituals in the Old Testament, addresses some commonly mistaken convolutions regarding sacrifice and God's wrath, and gives some interpretive guidance on Isaiah 53. If you're trying to understand how the death of Christ serves as a sacrifice for sin, I think you'll find this article to be very helpful.

Sacrifice and the Death of Christ
by John Goldingay

When Christians think about sacrifice, they commonly make two assumptions. One is that sacrifice is essentially a way of dealing with the problem of sin. The other is that it deals with sin by causing God to stop being angry with us. Neither Old Testament nor New Testament supports these two assumptions. Sacrifice does sometimes have something to do with sin, but dealing with sin is not its main object. God does get angry, but sacrifice does not relate to God’s anger.

The Meaning of Sacrifice
The New Testament speaks of sacrifice in a number of connections apart from seeing Jesus’ death as a sacrifice that deals with sin. For instance, when we give ourselves to God in response to God’s giving himself to us, it is an act of sacrifice (Romans 12). Paul talks about being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of the Philippians’ faith and of the Philippians’ gifts to him as an offering to God (Phil 2:17; 4:18). When we testify to what God has done, it is a sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15).

The New Testament’s way of thinking coheres with the Old Testament’s way of thinking in this respect...

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John Goldingay is the David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament in the School of Theology. His most recent publications include the 17-volume Old Testament For Everyone series (WJK/SPCK, 2010–15), which provides clear, concise comment on all the Old Testament Scriptures, and The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (InterVarsity Press, 2014).