The body is yet to have its redemption.
The redemption is termed the adoption as sons
God is the means of our freedom; in the verse, it is the spirit.
If you deny PSA, you have become an OT Jew.
- Thread starter Diserner
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The redemption is termed the adoption as sons
God is the means of our freedom; in the verse, it is the spirit.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
God in what Person? The Spirit speaks of the Son and Glorifies the Son.
Ultimately, you're avoiding the facts of redemption relative to all of creation. It is the work of Jesus Christ in the sons of God that brings liberty of life to creation. You can't avoid this. You may try to talk around this but there is no other conclusion to draw from what is clearly stated. In this, the guilt that is common to the whole of humanity has subjected all of creation to vanity. This necessitates a full sense of guilt in humanity in the weakness of the flesh and culpability of the seed of Adam in the suffering of what God has made. Adam didn't make anything. Yet, humanity has certainly caused seemingly endless suffering. Unintended or not.
The guilt of humanity in not seeking God has profound ramifications on the glorious things God has made.
I see unimaginable guilt that others try to avoid. In theologies man often try to avoid what they themselves have caused by finding glory without suffering. This why the writer of Hebrews spoke of how how Christ learned obedience through things He suffered as flesh.
Romans 8:15–25 (NASB95) — 15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
In it we have the firstfruits of the Spirit and are awaiting yet for something.
Waiting for our adoption as sons, that is the redemption of our bodies.
It is a hope we have not yet seen but wait eagerly for
When it happens
The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
I'm going to try one more time.....
I know how to read Tom. I know how to study. I know how to learn. I've been doing it for some time now. Not that I don't appreciate your comments. I do. However, you're avoiding the obvious here.
What self guilt enslaved all of creation?
We must deal with the guilt of humanity in not being what they SHOULD be. Our actions and the actions of Adam dragged the whole of creation into an seemingly endless, repeating spiral into the very image of death.
When Christ was born of a virgin. Christ shared in that struggle with us from the very moment of "conception". Christ became obedient to death. This is the priestly work of Christ for US.
That work is part of the Glorious advent of God Incarnate to redeem all of creation from vanity and death.
Very few theories of the "Atonement" actually deal with this aspect of human existence. It is one of the reason why @Dizerner is struggling with alternatives to PSA.
If it isn't PSA... what is it? I know my answer and it very seldom completely aligns with most any "theory" I've learned over the years.
Sin is not just what we do wrong but also what we don't do right.....
We are a very weak creature with such limited time and opportunities to be what we MUST be for our fellowman. Christ gave His all in this. Gave His all confined as man among us. Confined in our human experience. He learned what it was to struggle to win the hearts of mankind as a man. He learned what it was to struggle with emotional stress and anxiety of shame and rejection as a man. No one was better. No one will ever be as good or as proficient but we can't ignore the guilt of humanity in doing our best while often selfishly ignoring those around us. Time.... oh so little time and so little means to use it wisely.
Guilt isn't what most make of it or try to avoid. It is dark and lasting. Deep inadequacies and overwhelming sadness in our condition.
Jesus didn't need to suffer the "wrath of God" to save us but He certain experienced our own guilt. Imagine what it was for God Incarnate to hear the words "He has saved others, let him save himself".....
What is it that spirit within YOU..... that desperately wants to do for others you love? Might it be to "save them" from the circumstances they can't control themselves? How is that effort going for you? What lasting guilt do you have for this?
If it wasn't for the love of God.......
Yeah.... I know. "God's got a plan"............
Such things are why I often say "we are our brother's keeper".......
This is what we find in the passage.
In it we have the firstfruits of the Spirit and are awaiting yet for something.
Waiting for our adoption as sons, that is the redemption of our bodies.
It is a hope we have not yet seen but wait eagerly for
When it happens
The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.
PSA, however, is not the subject of the passage.
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praise_yeshua
Active Member
PSA didn't even exist when Paul wrote these words. I never even implied it did.
What they do tell us is that creation itself is the way it is because of US. Creation itself shares in our condition. Maybe I haven't been clear enough in what I said. I believe I have. Tell me that you didn't understand what I was saying in this and I'll believe you.
However, it seems as if you're avoiding the clear connotations of the suffering of creation along with us.
I guess I was not understanding your point.
I did not deny a suffering of creation; however, when I posted.
The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Sorry for the confusion.
Yes. In the manifestation of the fullness of the sons of God. The fullness of resurrection. Yet, you and I will most likely leave our seeds in the ground till later when this happens for all of humanity.
The point I'm making is that creation suffers because of us. With us. Not because of their own actions. Thusly, sin is more than the bad things we do. The offering of Jesus Christ is the means of this benefit upon the whole of creation.
Thusly, the explanation for the work of Christ must include these circumstances.
PSA does deal with the ongoing guilt of humanity. At least at a level that imparts regret for sin.
What other theories adequately do this?
PSA overstates the need for wrath in the suffering of Jesus Christ and also misses the meaning of the Incarnation almost entirely. Yet, it isn't entirely wrong about guilt. In some ways, it better than how Universalists view the Atonement.
Shouldn't that then be a cause for rejection?
civic
Active Member
I’m half way through the book Lamb of the free, I’m learning some things I never knew about the levitical sacrificial system with purification. It’s worth a read. Kindle was only $9
civic
Active Member
Here is where I'm reading now. He has already covered in depth leviticus.
This is the framework within which we need to interpret Jesus’s other comment (found only in Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Supper) about the effects of his death, that it will result in “the forgiveness of sins” (26:28).467 This alludes to when an angel reveals to Joseph that Mary will name her son “Jesus” and he will “save his people from their sins” (2:21). It is common for scholars to read “forgiveness of sins” and automatically think that has to do with “the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 (plus perhaps the atoning sacrifices more generally [e.g., Lev 4:1—6:7]).”468 But as already noted, the notion of “forgiveness of sins” as it is framed in the prophetic hope for Israel’s restoration and within John’s immersion ministry is not about sacrificial kipper. It is all about moral purification, the forgiveness of the sins that caused the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And these sins are understood as the sins of moral impurity that polluted the land itself.
Therefore, the forgiveness of these sins cannot be related to the limited notion of forgiveness for the sins that merely produce a contamination on the sanctuary. This is why a lot of space detailed these interrelated concepts earlier. Now we can easily dismiss such interpretations because sacrificial kipper absolutely cannot be seen as the solution to Israel’s needs regarding these sins, just like Leviticus (chapters 18–26) and Numbers (35:31–34) already made clear. This is also why the sacrificial imagery that is present in all the Lord’s Supper accounts draws from the non-atoning well-being sacrifices: Passover (Matt 26:17–19; Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Luke 22:7–8, 11, 13, 15)469 and the covenant-inauguration sacrifice (Matt 28:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). We will return to these sacrifices shortly below, but here it suffices to note a few points. (1) These sacrifices have no atoning functions.
And this is reinforced by the obvious fact that the Lord’s Supper is eaten. Sacrifices eaten by laity can never be from the kipper sacrifices. (2) It would have been very confusing (to say the least) for Jesus at a literal Passover meal, which is a type of thanksgiving well-being sacrifice, to further “sacrificialize” what he wants his disciples to then consume as a kipper sacrifice, let alone one of the purgation sacrifices on the Day of Decontamination, which not even the high priest ate from. Besides what was burned on the altar, the rest of the flesh and carcasses of the animals were burned outside the camp (16:27; cf. 4:11–12, 21; 6:30).470 (3) More importantly for the present discussion, these are the very sacrifices that would be associated with the beginning of Israel’s exodus-like restoration from exile. This is their ultimate Passover celebration, a sacred meal in thanksgiving for God delivering them from the curses of the covenant, the consequences of their moral impurity. Like the first exodus, this deliverance is then marked by establishing a covenant that uses the well-being sacrifice so that the people partake from the sacred meal.
Therefore, “forgiveness of sins” in Matt 26:28 is to be linked with the new covenant in Jeremiah (31:31–34; 33:8),471 the affirmation of God’s eternal covenant in Ezekiel (16:59–63) and making “a covenant of peace” (34:25; 37:26; cf. Isa 54:10), simply making a “covenant” (Isa 27:9 together with 59:21),472 or even just the promise that God will eventually forgive Israel’s sins by divine fiat (e.g., Isa 43:25; 44:22; 55:7; Jer 50:20; Mic 7:18–19; Hos 14:2–7; cf. Zeph 3:15). The moral purification the prophets announce, which many envision as a divine water-washing and immersion in the sanctifying Spirit, is inextricably bound together with the idea of the forgiveness of the sins that generated the moral impurity (Ezek 22:15; 24:13; 36:25–27, 29, 33; 37:23; Isa 4:4; Zech 13:1–2; Ps 51:4, 9 [vv. 2, 7 Eng.]; Jer 33:8; Mal 3:2–33).
This further strengthens points 1–2. Making Jesus’s comment about “forgiveness” relate to kipper sacrifices is superfluous since now we can see that the new/eternal covenant (of peace) from prophetic contexts makes the most immediate sense, given Jesus’s use of “covenant.” And this was always expected to be a forgiveness that was granted by God apart from kipper sacrifices, especially since these—by God-ordained design—could not address the sins that needed to be forgiven. Trying to then link Jesus’s comment about “forgiveness” to kipper sacrifices is further incoherent since Jesus’s comments are all happening through a meal and offerers (priest or lay) could never eat from the atoning sacrifices offered to decontaminate their sins. From several angles, then, interpretations that attempt to find kipper associations simply do not work.
It is only possible to make such an association by (a) ignoring the differences in function between the well-being sacrifices and the kipper sacrifices in terms of consumption as well as (b) ignoring the built-in limits to what kipper sacrifices address, and (c) failing to appreciate the unanimous prophetic hope that conceptualizes the promised restoration as a divine moral purification, which functions on analogy to ritual purification (i.e., the means of purification is a combination of time and water) and does not analogize from the kipper system in general nor the Day of Decontamination in particular. Furthermore, while we do not need to outline the details here, to see how Jesus’s death qua death relates to moral purification we need to note that the Gospels construe Jesus’s death as the embodiment of Jerusalem’s judgment as they narrate Jesus’s arrest, trials, and crucifixion.
The same things and signs that Jesus prophesies are going to attend the fall of Jerusalem, happen in nuce to Jesus during his arrest, trials, and crucifixion.473 Jesus’s death is like Ezekiel’s laying down to share in and identify with Israel and Judah’s covenant curse (Ezek 4:4–6). Ezekiel is not a “substitute” since Israel and Judah still experience exile. He is “place-sharing” and enacting both their curse and eventual restoration. So too with Jesus. His death is the destruction of the Jerusalem in nuce and his resurrection is the ultimate restoration to come in nuce. Like Ezekiel, Jesus does not suffer as a substitute, but as a prophetic place-sharer. Since his death is his proleptic experience of Jerusalem’s looming destruction, his resurrection therefore signals Israel’s resurrection and thus, their restoration—the forgiveness of their grave sins (Ezek 37). And now we have come full circle with Jesus’s mission to be the agent of moral purification. But this is not because Jesus’s death is a sacrifice (let alone a kipper sacrifice), but rather because by experiencing actual death Jesus is able to make direct contact with the consequences of moral impurity and exhaust them—evidenced by his resurrection from the dead—on analogy to how he is able to make direct contact with ritual impurity and thereby heal it by the contagious holiness of his very being. Put another way, it is only because Jesus’s death has this particular significance of sharing in the death of Jerusalem as the consequences for moral impurity, that Jesus’s resurrection means anything for Israel (let alone the world) (cf. Acts 3:26; 4:2; 26:6–8, 22–23). Jesus takes the judgment that he announces for the temple upon himself as one so united with Israel that their destiny becomes his and vice versa. Just like we have already established, when Jesus contacts ritual impurities, he purifies them.
As the Gospels present Jesus’s teaching, activity, and eventual explanation of his death at the Lord’s Supper, it is clear that Jesus believes he can only bring the moral purification Israel needs by making contact with the deepest consequences of moral impurity—touching death and experiencing God’s abandonment of the temple in himself (compare Matt 27:46 [par. Mark 15:34] with Matt 23:38 [par. Luke 13:35]; cf. Lev 26:31–33; Jer 12:7; 18:17; 22:5; 23:33, 39; Ezek 7–10)—and then defeating that death in his resurrection. Jesus decides he must endure the prophesied destruction of Jerusalem ahead of time to pioneer the way through death into the promised resurrection life (e.g., Ezek 37). Therefore, from this perspective, the resurrection is about purification, both ritual and moral.474 It is also worth pausing to note that Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples that they are called to follow him along the same way (Matt 10:38; 16:24; 20:22–23; Mark 8:34; 10:38–39; Luke 9:23; 14:27; John 12:24–26; 13:16–17, 36; 15:18, 20; 16:1–4; 21:18–22). This conception of Jesus’s death is not a substitution from any angle.
Jesus did not die “instead of” Jerusalem, since it is still going to be destroyed. Jesus did not die “instead of” the disciples, who will still brought to trial and some of them killed. Jesus goes the way of Jerusalem’s destruction on the cross and Jesus’s disciples follow the way of the cross as they pick up their own. This is about solidarity, not substitution. According to the Gospels, Jesus is not dying instead of anyone, let alone his disciples, but rather, ahead of them. He is the one who pioneers the way through death and into indestructible resurrection life, moral purification, the forgiveness of sins, and the establishment of the new eschatological covenant.
This is the framework within which we need to interpret Jesus’s other comment (found only in Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Supper) about the effects of his death, that it will result in “the forgiveness of sins” (26:28).467 This alludes to when an angel reveals to Joseph that Mary will name her son “Jesus” and he will “save his people from their sins” (2:21). It is common for scholars to read “forgiveness of sins” and automatically think that has to do with “the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 (plus perhaps the atoning sacrifices more generally [e.g., Lev 4:1—6:7]).”468 But as already noted, the notion of “forgiveness of sins” as it is framed in the prophetic hope for Israel’s restoration and within John’s immersion ministry is not about sacrificial kipper. It is all about moral purification, the forgiveness of the sins that caused the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And these sins are understood as the sins of moral impurity that polluted the land itself.
Therefore, the forgiveness of these sins cannot be related to the limited notion of forgiveness for the sins that merely produce a contamination on the sanctuary. This is why a lot of space detailed these interrelated concepts earlier. Now we can easily dismiss such interpretations because sacrificial kipper absolutely cannot be seen as the solution to Israel’s needs regarding these sins, just like Leviticus (chapters 18–26) and Numbers (35:31–34) already made clear. This is also why the sacrificial imagery that is present in all the Lord’s Supper accounts draws from the non-atoning well-being sacrifices: Passover (Matt 26:17–19; Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Luke 22:7–8, 11, 13, 15)469 and the covenant-inauguration sacrifice (Matt 28:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). We will return to these sacrifices shortly below, but here it suffices to note a few points. (1) These sacrifices have no atoning functions.
And this is reinforced by the obvious fact that the Lord’s Supper is eaten. Sacrifices eaten by laity can never be from the kipper sacrifices. (2) It would have been very confusing (to say the least) for Jesus at a literal Passover meal, which is a type of thanksgiving well-being sacrifice, to further “sacrificialize” what he wants his disciples to then consume as a kipper sacrifice, let alone one of the purgation sacrifices on the Day of Decontamination, which not even the high priest ate from. Besides what was burned on the altar, the rest of the flesh and carcasses of the animals were burned outside the camp (16:27; cf. 4:11–12, 21; 6:30).470 (3) More importantly for the present discussion, these are the very sacrifices that would be associated with the beginning of Israel’s exodus-like restoration from exile. This is their ultimate Passover celebration, a sacred meal in thanksgiving for God delivering them from the curses of the covenant, the consequences of their moral impurity. Like the first exodus, this deliverance is then marked by establishing a covenant that uses the well-being sacrifice so that the people partake from the sacred meal.
Therefore, “forgiveness of sins” in Matt 26:28 is to be linked with the new covenant in Jeremiah (31:31–34; 33:8),471 the affirmation of God’s eternal covenant in Ezekiel (16:59–63) and making “a covenant of peace” (34:25; 37:26; cf. Isa 54:10), simply making a “covenant” (Isa 27:9 together with 59:21),472 or even just the promise that God will eventually forgive Israel’s sins by divine fiat (e.g., Isa 43:25; 44:22; 55:7; Jer 50:20; Mic 7:18–19; Hos 14:2–7; cf. Zeph 3:15). The moral purification the prophets announce, which many envision as a divine water-washing and immersion in the sanctifying Spirit, is inextricably bound together with the idea of the forgiveness of the sins that generated the moral impurity (Ezek 22:15; 24:13; 36:25–27, 29, 33; 37:23; Isa 4:4; Zech 13:1–2; Ps 51:4, 9 [vv. 2, 7 Eng.]; Jer 33:8; Mal 3:2–33).
This further strengthens points 1–2. Making Jesus’s comment about “forgiveness” relate to kipper sacrifices is superfluous since now we can see that the new/eternal covenant (of peace) from prophetic contexts makes the most immediate sense, given Jesus’s use of “covenant.” And this was always expected to be a forgiveness that was granted by God apart from kipper sacrifices, especially since these—by God-ordained design—could not address the sins that needed to be forgiven. Trying to then link Jesus’s comment about “forgiveness” to kipper sacrifices is further incoherent since Jesus’s comments are all happening through a meal and offerers (priest or lay) could never eat from the atoning sacrifices offered to decontaminate their sins. From several angles, then, interpretations that attempt to find kipper associations simply do not work.
It is only possible to make such an association by (a) ignoring the differences in function between the well-being sacrifices and the kipper sacrifices in terms of consumption as well as (b) ignoring the built-in limits to what kipper sacrifices address, and (c) failing to appreciate the unanimous prophetic hope that conceptualizes the promised restoration as a divine moral purification, which functions on analogy to ritual purification (i.e., the means of purification is a combination of time and water) and does not analogize from the kipper system in general nor the Day of Decontamination in particular. Furthermore, while we do not need to outline the details here, to see how Jesus’s death qua death relates to moral purification we need to note that the Gospels construe Jesus’s death as the embodiment of Jerusalem’s judgment as they narrate Jesus’s arrest, trials, and crucifixion.
The same things and signs that Jesus prophesies are going to attend the fall of Jerusalem, happen in nuce to Jesus during his arrest, trials, and crucifixion.473 Jesus’s death is like Ezekiel’s laying down to share in and identify with Israel and Judah’s covenant curse (Ezek 4:4–6). Ezekiel is not a “substitute” since Israel and Judah still experience exile. He is “place-sharing” and enacting both their curse and eventual restoration. So too with Jesus. His death is the destruction of the Jerusalem in nuce and his resurrection is the ultimate restoration to come in nuce. Like Ezekiel, Jesus does not suffer as a substitute, but as a prophetic place-sharer. Since his death is his proleptic experience of Jerusalem’s looming destruction, his resurrection therefore signals Israel’s resurrection and thus, their restoration—the forgiveness of their grave sins (Ezek 37). And now we have come full circle with Jesus’s mission to be the agent of moral purification. But this is not because Jesus’s death is a sacrifice (let alone a kipper sacrifice), but rather because by experiencing actual death Jesus is able to make direct contact with the consequences of moral impurity and exhaust them—evidenced by his resurrection from the dead—on analogy to how he is able to make direct contact with ritual impurity and thereby heal it by the contagious holiness of his very being. Put another way, it is only because Jesus’s death has this particular significance of sharing in the death of Jerusalem as the consequences for moral impurity, that Jesus’s resurrection means anything for Israel (let alone the world) (cf. Acts 3:26; 4:2; 26:6–8, 22–23). Jesus takes the judgment that he announces for the temple upon himself as one so united with Israel that their destiny becomes his and vice versa. Just like we have already established, when Jesus contacts ritual impurities, he purifies them.
As the Gospels present Jesus’s teaching, activity, and eventual explanation of his death at the Lord’s Supper, it is clear that Jesus believes he can only bring the moral purification Israel needs by making contact with the deepest consequences of moral impurity—touching death and experiencing God’s abandonment of the temple in himself (compare Matt 27:46 [par. Mark 15:34] with Matt 23:38 [par. Luke 13:35]; cf. Lev 26:31–33; Jer 12:7; 18:17; 22:5; 23:33, 39; Ezek 7–10)—and then defeating that death in his resurrection. Jesus decides he must endure the prophesied destruction of Jerusalem ahead of time to pioneer the way through death into the promised resurrection life (e.g., Ezek 37). Therefore, from this perspective, the resurrection is about purification, both ritual and moral.474 It is also worth pausing to note that Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples that they are called to follow him along the same way (Matt 10:38; 16:24; 20:22–23; Mark 8:34; 10:38–39; Luke 9:23; 14:27; John 12:24–26; 13:16–17, 36; 15:18, 20; 16:1–4; 21:18–22). This conception of Jesus’s death is not a substitution from any angle.
Jesus did not die “instead of” Jerusalem, since it is still going to be destroyed. Jesus did not die “instead of” the disciples, who will still brought to trial and some of them killed. Jesus goes the way of Jerusalem’s destruction on the cross and Jesus’s disciples follow the way of the cross as they pick up their own. This is about solidarity, not substitution. According to the Gospels, Jesus is not dying instead of anyone, let alone his disciples, but rather, ahead of them. He is the one who pioneers the way through death and into indestructible resurrection life, moral purification, the forgiveness of sins, and the establishment of the new eschatological covenant.
civic
Active Member
continued:
The Lord’s Supper and Communal Well-Being Sacrifices
I have already stated throughout this study that the primary sacrificial associations in the NT to Jesus’s death are the non-atoning well-being sacrifices of Passover and the covenant-making ceremony. This much is easily recognizable given that Jesus’s words at the Last Supper explaining his imminent death happen while eating a Passover meal (Matt 26:17–19; Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Luke 22:7–8, 11, 13, 15) and he says he is inaugurating the promised (re)new(ed) covenant (Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).475 But sometimes what is indeed obvious and right there in front of us goes either unnoticed or underappreciated. Hence, Michael Gorman’s expression of shock: However, the fact that there is no theory or model of the atonement called “covenant,” “covenant-renewal,” “new-covenant,” or something very similar is, or should be, rather surprising.
These terms refer, after all, to a biblical image connected to Jesus’ death—originating, it appears, with Jesus himself at his Last Supper—and the source of the term “the New Testament.”476 In the introduction I have already addressed how uses of “atonement” as Gorman uses here are potentially problematic. But Gorman is right to call our attention to “the obvious,” especially when, as here, scholarship oddly revolves around “the absence of the obvious.”477 I am carrying this notion forward and highlighting what is also rather “obvious” regarding the various sacrificial imagery applied to Jesus, yet has similarly been overlooked. The Lord’s Supper is essentially a “sacrificialized” (to borrow Klawans’s terminology) ritual laid on top of a ritual that just is a non-atoning sacrifice (the Passover). Jesus isolates two elements from this sacrificial meal (wine and unleavened bread) and links them to his imminent murder as a way of memorializing the salvation his death (and resurrection) will obtain. In short, the Lord’s Supper is a ritualization of an existing ritual. Just like handwashing was a way for some Jewish contemporaries to “templize”/“sacrificialize” ordinary meals, ritually transforming common meals into quasi-sacred meals and their table into an altar of sorts, so too with the Lord’s Supper. It is not literally a sacrificial meal thereafter (the Corinthians sure aren’t traveling to Jerusalem each week to eat a well-being sacrifice together), but it is intelligible as a meal partaken of “as if” it was a well-being sacrifice.
In fact, the ritual purity regulations for partaking in such meals are also appropriated by Paul. But rather than instituting, say, ritual handwashing, Paul analogizes this in terms of moral purity. Thus, in 1 Cor 5 he talks about keeping the feast of Passover with Jesus as the Paschal lamb in moral purity terms (5:6–13). And this also explains his comments about eating the Lord’s Supper “in a worthily manner” later on (11:26–34). It is because he knows the Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialization of the eaten well-being sacrifices that he plays on the warnings in Leviticus about eating these in the wrong manner and being “cut off” as a result (Lev 7:18–21; 19:5–8; 22:3–7, 29–30). But Paul’s appeal is not to intimate ritual purity before eating, but rather to ensure that everyone is looking out for the interests and nutritional needs of their neighbor (1 Cor 11:21–22, 33–34). We cannot get into these instructions more here, but it suffices for our purposes to realize that Paul’s instructions and warnings here in 1 Cor 5 and 11 are intelligible precisely because he is thinking of Jesus in terms of the non-atoning well-being sacrifices and their attendant regulations in Leviticus.
Nevertheless, when Jesus’s death is celebrated by a meta-“sacrificialization” of well-being offerings that are eaten, this then excludes any “atoning” function in these texts. No one is permitted to eat a purgation sacrifice that decontaminates their sin (neither priest nor lay). There are no exceptions to this. Knowing this, it is rather easy to see that the Lord’s Supper categorically cannot have any kipper function.478 We have already shown how even Matthew’s lone inclusion of the notion of “forgiveness” cannot be plausibly interpreted within the framework of kipper. Rather, it belongs within the context of the prophetic hope for Israel’s restoration, which will take the form of a moral purification—which which kipper sacrifices are inherently incapable of effecting—and the establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant. It bears repeating that not only is it possible in general for “forgiveness of sins” to happen outside of the atoning sacrificial system, but that the prophetic expectation within which the NT authors explicitly situate the meaning of Jesus’s entire ministry is necessarily a forgiveness that must occur apart from the atoning sacrificial system because the sins that need forgiveness are moral impurities. And this is also why when the prophets draw upon Levitical concepts, they do so on analogy to bodily purification from the ritual impurities, which only require a combination of sufficient time lapse and a water-washing. As we saw, the time lapse is the exile and the water-washing is the immersion in God’s sanctifying Spirit. Neither of these are “sacrificial,” let alone sacrificial kipper.
This explains why water immersion is such a primary rite in John’s, Jesus’s, and Jesus’s followers’ ministries. This was a movement that conceived of “forgiveness” as moral purification on analogy to ritual purification, not kipper. Therefore, when something like “forgiveness” is mentioned, it is exegetically irresponsible to simply equate this with kipper since we now know the notion of forgiveness as it relates to the sacrificial system is extremely limited in scope. When analyzing any NT text about the saving significance of Jesus we need to understand that there are other frameworks besides “sacrifice” and “sacrificial kipper” within which the authors might be trying to express the benefits Jesus brings and/or the meaning of his death in particular.
Sacrificial atonement—kipper—is activated in a few NT texts, but I hope to show how once we have developed sufficient knowledge about the Levitical system and the prophetic expectations (and the reception of these things in the first century) it becomes rather obvious to know when this is happening. Thus, since Matthew’s construal of “forgiveness” is not related to the limited notion of forgiveness in Leviticus for atonable sins, then this means the function Jesus’s death has, according to Matthew, is something other than the kipper sacrifices. Moreover, “the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’ death that is attributed to Jesus himself”479 is that it inaugurates the promised (re)new(ed) covenant and is combined with Passover. This best explains why relating Jesus to kipper is rare in the NT. It is only directly stated in Hebrews and 1 John.480 This idea is an expansion on the original meaning and function of Jesus’s death, which drew upon communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices, which celebrate and mark occasions of divine deliverance and were not linked to kipper in any fashion—and the author of Hebrews acknowledges this, as we will see in chapter 6. Since it is clear now that the Lord’s Supper is linked with the communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices for Passover and a covenant-inauguration/renewal ceremony, here I will discuss more about how the function of these relates to Jesus’s mission of moral purification as well as address one other way some scholars have thought the Lord’s Supper includes the notion of kipper. Then I will discuss other NT texts apart from the Lord’s Supper account that likewise associate Jesus with either the Passover and/or a covenant-making sacrifice.
The Lord’s Supper and Communal Well-Being Sacrifices
I have already stated throughout this study that the primary sacrificial associations in the NT to Jesus’s death are the non-atoning well-being sacrifices of Passover and the covenant-making ceremony. This much is easily recognizable given that Jesus’s words at the Last Supper explaining his imminent death happen while eating a Passover meal (Matt 26:17–19; Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Luke 22:7–8, 11, 13, 15) and he says he is inaugurating the promised (re)new(ed) covenant (Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).475 But sometimes what is indeed obvious and right there in front of us goes either unnoticed or underappreciated. Hence, Michael Gorman’s expression of shock: However, the fact that there is no theory or model of the atonement called “covenant,” “covenant-renewal,” “new-covenant,” or something very similar is, or should be, rather surprising.
These terms refer, after all, to a biblical image connected to Jesus’ death—originating, it appears, with Jesus himself at his Last Supper—and the source of the term “the New Testament.”476 In the introduction I have already addressed how uses of “atonement” as Gorman uses here are potentially problematic. But Gorman is right to call our attention to “the obvious,” especially when, as here, scholarship oddly revolves around “the absence of the obvious.”477 I am carrying this notion forward and highlighting what is also rather “obvious” regarding the various sacrificial imagery applied to Jesus, yet has similarly been overlooked. The Lord’s Supper is essentially a “sacrificialized” (to borrow Klawans’s terminology) ritual laid on top of a ritual that just is a non-atoning sacrifice (the Passover). Jesus isolates two elements from this sacrificial meal (wine and unleavened bread) and links them to his imminent murder as a way of memorializing the salvation his death (and resurrection) will obtain. In short, the Lord’s Supper is a ritualization of an existing ritual. Just like handwashing was a way for some Jewish contemporaries to “templize”/“sacrificialize” ordinary meals, ritually transforming common meals into quasi-sacred meals and their table into an altar of sorts, so too with the Lord’s Supper. It is not literally a sacrificial meal thereafter (the Corinthians sure aren’t traveling to Jerusalem each week to eat a well-being sacrifice together), but it is intelligible as a meal partaken of “as if” it was a well-being sacrifice.
In fact, the ritual purity regulations for partaking in such meals are also appropriated by Paul. But rather than instituting, say, ritual handwashing, Paul analogizes this in terms of moral purity. Thus, in 1 Cor 5 he talks about keeping the feast of Passover with Jesus as the Paschal lamb in moral purity terms (5:6–13). And this also explains his comments about eating the Lord’s Supper “in a worthily manner” later on (11:26–34). It is because he knows the Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialization of the eaten well-being sacrifices that he plays on the warnings in Leviticus about eating these in the wrong manner and being “cut off” as a result (Lev 7:18–21; 19:5–8; 22:3–7, 29–30). But Paul’s appeal is not to intimate ritual purity before eating, but rather to ensure that everyone is looking out for the interests and nutritional needs of their neighbor (1 Cor 11:21–22, 33–34). We cannot get into these instructions more here, but it suffices for our purposes to realize that Paul’s instructions and warnings here in 1 Cor 5 and 11 are intelligible precisely because he is thinking of Jesus in terms of the non-atoning well-being sacrifices and their attendant regulations in Leviticus.
Nevertheless, when Jesus’s death is celebrated by a meta-“sacrificialization” of well-being offerings that are eaten, this then excludes any “atoning” function in these texts. No one is permitted to eat a purgation sacrifice that decontaminates their sin (neither priest nor lay). There are no exceptions to this. Knowing this, it is rather easy to see that the Lord’s Supper categorically cannot have any kipper function.478 We have already shown how even Matthew’s lone inclusion of the notion of “forgiveness” cannot be plausibly interpreted within the framework of kipper. Rather, it belongs within the context of the prophetic hope for Israel’s restoration, which will take the form of a moral purification—which which kipper sacrifices are inherently incapable of effecting—and the establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant. It bears repeating that not only is it possible in general for “forgiveness of sins” to happen outside of the atoning sacrificial system, but that the prophetic expectation within which the NT authors explicitly situate the meaning of Jesus’s entire ministry is necessarily a forgiveness that must occur apart from the atoning sacrificial system because the sins that need forgiveness are moral impurities. And this is also why when the prophets draw upon Levitical concepts, they do so on analogy to bodily purification from the ritual impurities, which only require a combination of sufficient time lapse and a water-washing. As we saw, the time lapse is the exile and the water-washing is the immersion in God’s sanctifying Spirit. Neither of these are “sacrificial,” let alone sacrificial kipper.
This explains why water immersion is such a primary rite in John’s, Jesus’s, and Jesus’s followers’ ministries. This was a movement that conceived of “forgiveness” as moral purification on analogy to ritual purification, not kipper. Therefore, when something like “forgiveness” is mentioned, it is exegetically irresponsible to simply equate this with kipper since we now know the notion of forgiveness as it relates to the sacrificial system is extremely limited in scope. When analyzing any NT text about the saving significance of Jesus we need to understand that there are other frameworks besides “sacrifice” and “sacrificial kipper” within which the authors might be trying to express the benefits Jesus brings and/or the meaning of his death in particular.
Sacrificial atonement—kipper—is activated in a few NT texts, but I hope to show how once we have developed sufficient knowledge about the Levitical system and the prophetic expectations (and the reception of these things in the first century) it becomes rather obvious to know when this is happening. Thus, since Matthew’s construal of “forgiveness” is not related to the limited notion of forgiveness in Leviticus for atonable sins, then this means the function Jesus’s death has, according to Matthew, is something other than the kipper sacrifices. Moreover, “the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’ death that is attributed to Jesus himself”479 is that it inaugurates the promised (re)new(ed) covenant and is combined with Passover. This best explains why relating Jesus to kipper is rare in the NT. It is only directly stated in Hebrews and 1 John.480 This idea is an expansion on the original meaning and function of Jesus’s death, which drew upon communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices, which celebrate and mark occasions of divine deliverance and were not linked to kipper in any fashion—and the author of Hebrews acknowledges this, as we will see in chapter 6. Since it is clear now that the Lord’s Supper is linked with the communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices for Passover and a covenant-inauguration/renewal ceremony, here I will discuss more about how the function of these relates to Jesus’s mission of moral purification as well as address one other way some scholars have thought the Lord’s Supper includes the notion of kipper. Then I will discuss other NT texts apart from the Lord’s Supper account that likewise associate Jesus with either the Passover and/or a covenant-making sacrifice.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Not sure I understand your question. Can you elaborate? Thanks
civic
Active Member
The Lord’s Supper Celebrates Moral Purification, Not Kipper
Combining the covenant sacrifice with Passover by deliberately staging his words of institution at a Passover meal “is the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’ death that is attributed to Jesus himself.”481 For good reason then, “it is the most widespread interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament,” which arguably renders it “the most important, the most foundational, interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament.”482 Since all texts that discuss the Last Supper combine both the Passover and the covenant-inauguration sacrifice I will treat the concept as a whole rather than give special attention to each pericope.483
Both events, Passover and the initial covenant inauguration, are related to God’s liberation of Israel from Egypt.484 The Passover marks the beginning of Israel’s journey, and the covenant inauguration marks its climax—sealing the covenant bond between God and Israel, which then immediately results in constructing the dwelling place and establishing their ongoing sacrificial worship there.485 It makes good sense, then, that as the prophets draw upon the paradigm of the exodus to depict Israel’s restoration from exile and proclaim the hope of (re)new(ed) covenant so Jesus would institute a ritual that unambiguously tethers the climax of his mission—his crucifixion—to the communal well-being sacrifices that memorialize the first exodus. Recall that remembrance or memorialization of God’s prior acts of deliverance is one of the main purposes for well-being sacrifices (e.g., Num 10:10; Exod 12:14)—and Luke and Paul both state this explicitly (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–25).
While it may be tempting to read “blood of the covenant” (Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28) or “new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25) and link this with kipper, recall that this is the phrase used at the covenant-inauguration ceremony in Exod 24:8. And as Shauf observes, “the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 says nothing about forgiveness of sins and contains no other language of atonement—it is . . . about establishing a relationship between God and Israel.”486 I already argued why the mere mention of “forgiveness” (only in Matthew’s account) is both insufficient to establish a link with kipper and why its meaning has to be interpreted within another framework altogether. Since many of the prophetic expectations of the (re)new(ed) covenant include the notion of forgiveness of the sins that produce moral impurity (e.g., Jer 31:31–34; 33:8; Ezek 16:59–63), this means the establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant entails and signifies that God has granted this promised forgiveness from these sins apart from any kipper sacrifice. The establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant is the celebration and proof that God’s forgiveness has already happened. Thus, Matthew’s inclusion of “forgiveness” is perfectly intelligible apart from the kipper sacrifices, which could never address such sins anyway.
Moreover, as we saw when discussing the blood-sprinkling upon the people in Exod 24:8, this was all about effecting a metaphysical transition and no blood from an atoning purgation offering was used. Therefore, “just as the blood of the sacrificed animals was used to seal the covenant between the Israelites and God in the Exodus” and was sprinkled on the people to index and mark the transition of the people into this covenant relationship with God, so too, “Jesus’ death is thus the sacrifice that seals the covenant between his followers and God.”487 Since the Lord’s Supper is a meta-ritual sacrificialization alluding to this covenant-inauguration ceremony in the middle of a Passover meal, the wine that links with Jesus’s blood was not literally sprinkled on the disciples. Rather, they drank it just like they would drink the wine from which a portion was used as the drink offerings that accompany all sacrifices, per Num 15:1–13.
And Paul expresses the significance of this sacrificialization by noting that drinking from “the cup of blessing” is “a participation [koinōnia] in the blood of Christ” (1 Cor 10:16), which he then links to the “new covenant” (11:25). At each eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper followers of Jesus “remember” (11:24–25; cf. Num 10:10) the establishment of the new covenant and their share and participation in it. Each Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialized “new covenant renewal” celebration akin to the covenant renewal celebrations in the OT where the whole community partook from the well-being sacrifices together. Further, Paul takes this “shared meal” aspect and uses it to reinforce what we might call his “ethics” whereby followers of Jesus are to comprehend the cross as the norm for the pattern of life in Christ.
Thus, the Lord’s Supper, which memorializes Jesus’s death by means of two communal well-being offerings, makes sense of the believer’s very real participation and union with Jesus’s death as a pattern of life since these are the only sacrifices in the OT the offerer has a share in themselves. It is no wonder the well-being sacrifice is the dominant sacrifice used to make sense of Jesus’s death for a movement that understood itself as the body of the crucified Lord (1 Cor 10:16–17; 12:12–13), called to follow Jesus to the cross and participate in his death (e.g., Phil 3:10; 2 Cor 4:10–11; cf. Mark 8:34–38; 10:38–39; 1 Pet 2:21). And this is why we need to be careful to distinguish between the meaning and function attributed to Jesus’s death as a death versus the meaning of Jesus as a sacrifice.
These are not equivalent, but the very nature of ascribing various types of meaning to one event—the crucifixion of Jesus by Romans—means the associations are going to require subtlety and nuance. When viewed from the perspective of the ethical shape impressed upon Jesus’s followers, his death is the pattern for the form of life they are to inhabit and cultivate among one another.488 Similarly, when viewed from the perspective of moral purification, Jesus’s death is saving because it is by Jesus’s direct contact with death itself while having the type of life that cannot be held down by death to decay (cf. Acts 2:24–32; 13:35–37) that made it possible for him to “swallow up death” and emerge “victorious” over it (1 Cor 15:54) and thereby able to effect the moral purification from grave sins (e.g., Acts 13:33–39), the very sins the law of Moses itself says there is no sacrificial or ritual remedy for, as explained in previous chapters (13:39).
But when Jesus’s death is viewed from the perspective of these well-being sacrifices, these memorialize his victory over all sins and death by means of a shared sacrificialized meal drawing upon Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony. The emphasis on the sacrificial aspect is not about what causes the saving event, but how that divine deliverance is remembered, commemorated, and celebrated. Obviously, the institution of the Lord’s Supper by Jesus happened before that final victory took place by his resurrection, but this is no different than the way the first Passover was presented in Exod 12 before the actual exodus out of Egypt happened.
Thus, both the first Passover and Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper are proleptic anticipations of a full deliverance that is imminent. But importantly, both are also celebrating a deliverance that has already started. Israel’s deliverance from the first nine plagues anticipate the full deliverance from Egypt to come just as Jesus’s miracles healing ritual impurities—the forces of death—and restoring people’s bodies to health (even after some have died), declaring forgiveness, all anticipate the full deliverance from death, the full moral purification, to come.
Some, however, think these accounts not only combine the non-atoning sacrifices that mark these events, but also the kipper sacrifices due to Matthew’s inclusion of the idea of “forgiveness.”489 Now, the combination of the Passover and the covenant inauguration/renewal makes sense since (a) they are both communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices that are eaten by the people and (b) they function as a tandem bookending the exodus journey from leaving Egypt to arriving at Sinai. But the idea that these eaten non-atoning sacrifices are then further combined with atoning sacrifices that absolutely cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries (cf. Heb 13:10–11) is suspect from the start. A sacrifice is either eaten or not, depending on its function in relation to the offerer. Since the Lord’s Supper is explicitly indexed along with two types of sacrifices that are eaten and Jesus’s followers are to continue eating this sacrificialized meal together as a way to “remember” (a function only associated with the well-being sacrifices), then this ritual has to be about sacrificializing non-atoning well-being sacrifices since these are the only ones beneficiaries eat. To smuggle in an atoning function to this eaten ritual would introduce a fundamental incompatibility in practice since the atoning sacrifices cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries. Further, there is no “gap” needing to be filled that renders the non-atoning well-being sacrifices insufficient for comprehending the meaning and function of the Lord’s Supper. Adding in the notion of “atonement” only generates (several) problems for making sense of it, thereby obscuring the rather intelligible sense it makes when comprehended in light the non-atoning well-being sacrifices (Passover and a covenant inauguration/renewal).
Combining the covenant sacrifice with Passover by deliberately staging his words of institution at a Passover meal “is the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’ death that is attributed to Jesus himself.”481 For good reason then, “it is the most widespread interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament,” which arguably renders it “the most important, the most foundational, interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament.”482 Since all texts that discuss the Last Supper combine both the Passover and the covenant-inauguration sacrifice I will treat the concept as a whole rather than give special attention to each pericope.483
Both events, Passover and the initial covenant inauguration, are related to God’s liberation of Israel from Egypt.484 The Passover marks the beginning of Israel’s journey, and the covenant inauguration marks its climax—sealing the covenant bond between God and Israel, which then immediately results in constructing the dwelling place and establishing their ongoing sacrificial worship there.485 It makes good sense, then, that as the prophets draw upon the paradigm of the exodus to depict Israel’s restoration from exile and proclaim the hope of (re)new(ed) covenant so Jesus would institute a ritual that unambiguously tethers the climax of his mission—his crucifixion—to the communal well-being sacrifices that memorialize the first exodus. Recall that remembrance or memorialization of God’s prior acts of deliverance is one of the main purposes for well-being sacrifices (e.g., Num 10:10; Exod 12:14)—and Luke and Paul both state this explicitly (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–25).
While it may be tempting to read “blood of the covenant” (Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28) or “new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25) and link this with kipper, recall that this is the phrase used at the covenant-inauguration ceremony in Exod 24:8. And as Shauf observes, “the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 says nothing about forgiveness of sins and contains no other language of atonement—it is . . . about establishing a relationship between God and Israel.”486 I already argued why the mere mention of “forgiveness” (only in Matthew’s account) is both insufficient to establish a link with kipper and why its meaning has to be interpreted within another framework altogether. Since many of the prophetic expectations of the (re)new(ed) covenant include the notion of forgiveness of the sins that produce moral impurity (e.g., Jer 31:31–34; 33:8; Ezek 16:59–63), this means the establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant entails and signifies that God has granted this promised forgiveness from these sins apart from any kipper sacrifice. The establishment of the (re)new(ed) covenant is the celebration and proof that God’s forgiveness has already happened. Thus, Matthew’s inclusion of “forgiveness” is perfectly intelligible apart from the kipper sacrifices, which could never address such sins anyway.
Moreover, as we saw when discussing the blood-sprinkling upon the people in Exod 24:8, this was all about effecting a metaphysical transition and no blood from an atoning purgation offering was used. Therefore, “just as the blood of the sacrificed animals was used to seal the covenant between the Israelites and God in the Exodus” and was sprinkled on the people to index and mark the transition of the people into this covenant relationship with God, so too, “Jesus’ death is thus the sacrifice that seals the covenant between his followers and God.”487 Since the Lord’s Supper is a meta-ritual sacrificialization alluding to this covenant-inauguration ceremony in the middle of a Passover meal, the wine that links with Jesus’s blood was not literally sprinkled on the disciples. Rather, they drank it just like they would drink the wine from which a portion was used as the drink offerings that accompany all sacrifices, per Num 15:1–13.
And Paul expresses the significance of this sacrificialization by noting that drinking from “the cup of blessing” is “a participation [koinōnia] in the blood of Christ” (1 Cor 10:16), which he then links to the “new covenant” (11:25). At each eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper followers of Jesus “remember” (11:24–25; cf. Num 10:10) the establishment of the new covenant and their share and participation in it. Each Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialized “new covenant renewal” celebration akin to the covenant renewal celebrations in the OT where the whole community partook from the well-being sacrifices together. Further, Paul takes this “shared meal” aspect and uses it to reinforce what we might call his “ethics” whereby followers of Jesus are to comprehend the cross as the norm for the pattern of life in Christ.
Thus, the Lord’s Supper, which memorializes Jesus’s death by means of two communal well-being offerings, makes sense of the believer’s very real participation and union with Jesus’s death as a pattern of life since these are the only sacrifices in the OT the offerer has a share in themselves. It is no wonder the well-being sacrifice is the dominant sacrifice used to make sense of Jesus’s death for a movement that understood itself as the body of the crucified Lord (1 Cor 10:16–17; 12:12–13), called to follow Jesus to the cross and participate in his death (e.g., Phil 3:10; 2 Cor 4:10–11; cf. Mark 8:34–38; 10:38–39; 1 Pet 2:21). And this is why we need to be careful to distinguish between the meaning and function attributed to Jesus’s death as a death versus the meaning of Jesus as a sacrifice.
These are not equivalent, but the very nature of ascribing various types of meaning to one event—the crucifixion of Jesus by Romans—means the associations are going to require subtlety and nuance. When viewed from the perspective of the ethical shape impressed upon Jesus’s followers, his death is the pattern for the form of life they are to inhabit and cultivate among one another.488 Similarly, when viewed from the perspective of moral purification, Jesus’s death is saving because it is by Jesus’s direct contact with death itself while having the type of life that cannot be held down by death to decay (cf. Acts 2:24–32; 13:35–37) that made it possible for him to “swallow up death” and emerge “victorious” over it (1 Cor 15:54) and thereby able to effect the moral purification from grave sins (e.g., Acts 13:33–39), the very sins the law of Moses itself says there is no sacrificial or ritual remedy for, as explained in previous chapters (13:39).
But when Jesus’s death is viewed from the perspective of these well-being sacrifices, these memorialize his victory over all sins and death by means of a shared sacrificialized meal drawing upon Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony. The emphasis on the sacrificial aspect is not about what causes the saving event, but how that divine deliverance is remembered, commemorated, and celebrated. Obviously, the institution of the Lord’s Supper by Jesus happened before that final victory took place by his resurrection, but this is no different than the way the first Passover was presented in Exod 12 before the actual exodus out of Egypt happened.
Thus, both the first Passover and Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper are proleptic anticipations of a full deliverance that is imminent. But importantly, both are also celebrating a deliverance that has already started. Israel’s deliverance from the first nine plagues anticipate the full deliverance from Egypt to come just as Jesus’s miracles healing ritual impurities—the forces of death—and restoring people’s bodies to health (even after some have died), declaring forgiveness, all anticipate the full deliverance from death, the full moral purification, to come.
Some, however, think these accounts not only combine the non-atoning sacrifices that mark these events, but also the kipper sacrifices due to Matthew’s inclusion of the idea of “forgiveness.”489 Now, the combination of the Passover and the covenant inauguration/renewal makes sense since (a) they are both communal non-atoning well-being sacrifices that are eaten by the people and (b) they function as a tandem bookending the exodus journey from leaving Egypt to arriving at Sinai. But the idea that these eaten non-atoning sacrifices are then further combined with atoning sacrifices that absolutely cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries (cf. Heb 13:10–11) is suspect from the start. A sacrifice is either eaten or not, depending on its function in relation to the offerer. Since the Lord’s Supper is explicitly indexed along with two types of sacrifices that are eaten and Jesus’s followers are to continue eating this sacrificialized meal together as a way to “remember” (a function only associated with the well-being sacrifices), then this ritual has to be about sacrificializing non-atoning well-being sacrifices since these are the only ones beneficiaries eat. To smuggle in an atoning function to this eaten ritual would introduce a fundamental incompatibility in practice since the atoning sacrifices cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries. Further, there is no “gap” needing to be filled that renders the non-atoning well-being sacrifices insufficient for comprehending the meaning and function of the Lord’s Supper. Adding in the notion of “atonement” only generates (several) problems for making sense of it, thereby obscuring the rather intelligible sense it makes when comprehended in light the non-atoning well-being sacrifices (Passover and a covenant inauguration/renewal).
civic
Active Member
Other References in the New Testament to Passover or Covenant Inauguration
The two non-atoning well-being sacrifices activated in the Lord’s Supper appear elsewhere in the NT. I want to use the following as case studies to demonstrate how to apply what we learned about the various sacrificial and ritual procedures to comprehend these texts.521 And just like before, though these are all talking about Jesus in sacrificial terms, I show why I do not think the notion of kipper is present in these texts, despite what others have concluded. John 6:47–56 I begin with John 6:47–56 since, although set in a different context, this is the closest John comes to anything like Jesus’s words at the Lord’s Supper.522 Also, this discourse takes place near Passover in 6:4, so it is likely that Jesus’s words in 6:47– 56 are linking him to the unleavened bread of Passover (as well as the wilderness manna, of course).
The point here is simple: since all this discourse in John 6 focused on eating and drinking, this precludes an atoning significance. As Shauf explains, “The echo of the Last Supper also suggests an allusion to the covenant sacrifice, even if somewhat distant. Finally, v. 56 says that ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.’ This sounds like the kind of communion associated with the shelamim, the offering of well-being.”523 John 1:29, 36 John the Immerser’s identification of Jesus as “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (1:29; cf. v. 36) is well known and used in many denominational liturgies. Before getting to the phrase “takes away the sins of the world,” we need to recognize that the “lamb” image is “rooted in the Passover lamb imagery [that is also] prominent in John’s crucifixion account.”524 John explicitly construes Jesus as the Passover lamb (19:14, 31, 36; cf. Exod 12:46; Num 9:12). In fact, he deviates from the timeline in the Synoptics to drive home this very point.
Who has the “history” right is immaterial. The timing of Jesus’s death serves to reinforce Jesus’s identification with the Passover lamb. The Synoptics have the Lord’s Supper occurring on Passover and Jesus being crucified the following day. In John, however, Jesus is crucified the day before the Passover, “the day of preparation” (19:14, 31), which is when all of the Passover lambs were sacrificed at the temple. Further, Jesus’s death sentence occurs at noon (19:14), which is around the time of day the paschal lambs were being sacrificed.525
Therefore, “lamb of God” is primarily about Jesus as the ultimate Passover lamb. As we have discussed, and Marianne Meye Thompson explains, “the Passover lambs . . . were not killed to atone for sin or to purge uncleanness.”526 So then what are we to make of the phrase in 1:29 that Jesus “takes away the sins of the world”? Shauf thinks this is sufficient “to see a connection to the atoning sacrifices.”527 This is despite acknowledging “lambs were not commonly used in atoning sacrifices at all.”528 But “commonly” is misleading because male lambs were never used for purgation sacrifices in the OT.529 In any case, Shauf is so convinced that “takes away sins” is related to atonement that he at first entertains the idea that “the appellation of Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ would seem unlikely to refer to the Passover lamb, because the Passover lamb was not an atoning sacrifice.”530 That is, because he knows Passover has nothing to do with atonement, but he presumes “taking away sins” has to be about atonement, then he thinks that “lamb” might not be referring to the Passover lamb after all.
But since he equally acknowledges that John is definitely identifying Jesus as the Passover lamb throughout the narrative, he concludes that John must be combining atonement and Passover in 1:29 even though “identifying Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and as atoning for sin is not the most natural of pairs” for all the reasons just mentioned.531 However, the presumption that “takes away sins” is related to sacrificial atonement (kipper) is unlikely for two main reasons. For one, male lambs are never used for any purgation (ḥaṭṭāʾt) sacrifice, as noted above. Thus, it would be odd for John to call Jesus a male lamb if he was hoping people would associate that with a “purgation sacrifice.”
If John wanted to link Jesus with the purgation sacrifices or the Day of Decontamination, then he should have used “the bull and/or goats of God.” Two, the verb for “takes away” is airō. And airō with hamartia (“sin”) does not occur in the LXX. But this same root verb with a prefix apo, “away from,” does. In the six passages where hamartia is the direct object of aphaireō only one of them is used in a sacrificial context (Lev 10:17). All other instances are all about God forgiving sins apart from the sacrificial system (Exod 34:7, 9; Num 14:18; Isa 27:9; Sir 47:11). But Lev 10:17 is difficult to use as an interpretive anchor for John 1:29 because it comes on the lips of Moses in a dispute with Aaron and Aaron is the one who wins the argument (Lev 10:19–20).532 The saying also does not relate to the ritual blood manipulations, but rather to the priests eating from purgation sacrifices offered for other people’s sins (priests cannot eat from a purgation sacrifice for their own sins per Lev 4:1–12; 6:22–23 [Eng. vv. 29–30]).
I think this, combined with in incongruity of Passover and atonement (or even just male lambs and atonement), is a sufficient amount of incompatibility to dismiss this as a viable option, especially when the other instances of “takes away sins” fit the claims in the Gospel of John seamlessly and do not generate other interpretive difficulties.533 To neglect these in favor of Lev 10:17 is special pleading to smuggle in a sacrificial connotation when all other cues point away from this. In the other Torah passages, the phrase “takes away sin(s)” are all about God removing Israel’s sins, i.e., putting up with their disobedience, after they leave Egypt (Exod 34:7, 9; Num 14:18 [notice v. 19 “from Egypt until now”]). Right after the relationship between God and Israel is established—celebrated with the Passover and sealed in the covenant-making ceremony—Israel worships the golden calf at the foot of Sinai (Exod 32). This is the context of the first use of this phrase, which anchors Moses’s hope that God will listen to his prayer for Israel and God will take away their grave sin of idolatry (34:7, 9). Then after they depart Sinai, the people start complaining and rebelling right away and continually (Num 11–21 contains seven episodes of this).534 Numbers 14:18 occurs in middle of these episodes and it becomes apparent that “taking away sins” becomes a necessary thing for God to do if the people are not going to be totally abandoned or destroyed in the wilderness. But, importantly, this “taking away of sins” in both Num 14 and Exod 34 happens quite apart from the sacrificial system. This is just the prerogative of God because there are no atoning sacrificial remedies for these deliberates acts of rebellion (hence the notice in 15:30–31). If Israel is to have any hope in the face of such sins, they are completely at the mercy of God.
And these wilderness stories give reason for future generations to have hope in God since “taking away sins” is revealed to Moses as part of the divine character—this is the kind of God YHWH is (Exod 34:7, 9). This is exactly what Moses appeals to when he petitions God to do this very thing in spite of Israel’s repeated rebellions in Exod 34:8–9 and Num 14:17–19. Moreover, this phrasing is spoken about as the divine prerogative in the only other Greek texts outside the Torah that use this phrase: Isa 27:9; Sir 47:11. Sirach 47:11 says, “the Lord took away his [David’s] sins and raised his horn forever.” This is clearly referring to David’s grave sins of rape and murder and thus is a comment about the divine prerogative to forgive sins of moral impurity. It may also be alluding to Ps 51, which states clearly that only God can purify David from these moral impurities since nothing in the sacrificial system can. Isaiah 27:9 (LXX) says that the “blessing” God will grant “Jacob” is the end of their exile, which is when God will “take away his sin.” It then goes on to talk about the abolition of idolatry and other altars in the same verse. Again, what we see is that “taking away sin” is something God alone can do because it refers to removing sins of moral impurity, which the sacrificial system is impotent to handle (by built-in design).
This meaning fits seamlessly with what the Gospel of John has claimed about Jesus up to 1:29 and then goes on to develop to the end of the narrative. The prologue has already established that Jesus is the embodiment of God (1:1–18) and thus ascribing to him the divine prerogative to “take away sins” apart from the sacrificial system makes sense. John the Immerser’s declaration is made immediately after he is being questioned about his role in Israel’s promised restoration (is John the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet, or someone else?—1:19–25). His comment that Jesus is the one who will “take away the sins of the world” in this context is most likely a direct reference to Isa 27:9, which is expanded out for all the world. What Israel was looking forward to for God to do for them (quite apart from the sacrificial system) is happening through Jesus, and it will benefit the entire cosmos.
The two non-atoning well-being sacrifices activated in the Lord’s Supper appear elsewhere in the NT. I want to use the following as case studies to demonstrate how to apply what we learned about the various sacrificial and ritual procedures to comprehend these texts.521 And just like before, though these are all talking about Jesus in sacrificial terms, I show why I do not think the notion of kipper is present in these texts, despite what others have concluded. John 6:47–56 I begin with John 6:47–56 since, although set in a different context, this is the closest John comes to anything like Jesus’s words at the Lord’s Supper.522 Also, this discourse takes place near Passover in 6:4, so it is likely that Jesus’s words in 6:47– 56 are linking him to the unleavened bread of Passover (as well as the wilderness manna, of course).
The point here is simple: since all this discourse in John 6 focused on eating and drinking, this precludes an atoning significance. As Shauf explains, “The echo of the Last Supper also suggests an allusion to the covenant sacrifice, even if somewhat distant. Finally, v. 56 says that ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.’ This sounds like the kind of communion associated with the shelamim, the offering of well-being.”523 John 1:29, 36 John the Immerser’s identification of Jesus as “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (1:29; cf. v. 36) is well known and used in many denominational liturgies. Before getting to the phrase “takes away the sins of the world,” we need to recognize that the “lamb” image is “rooted in the Passover lamb imagery [that is also] prominent in John’s crucifixion account.”524 John explicitly construes Jesus as the Passover lamb (19:14, 31, 36; cf. Exod 12:46; Num 9:12). In fact, he deviates from the timeline in the Synoptics to drive home this very point.
Who has the “history” right is immaterial. The timing of Jesus’s death serves to reinforce Jesus’s identification with the Passover lamb. The Synoptics have the Lord’s Supper occurring on Passover and Jesus being crucified the following day. In John, however, Jesus is crucified the day before the Passover, “the day of preparation” (19:14, 31), which is when all of the Passover lambs were sacrificed at the temple. Further, Jesus’s death sentence occurs at noon (19:14), which is around the time of day the paschal lambs were being sacrificed.525
Therefore, “lamb of God” is primarily about Jesus as the ultimate Passover lamb. As we have discussed, and Marianne Meye Thompson explains, “the Passover lambs . . . were not killed to atone for sin or to purge uncleanness.”526 So then what are we to make of the phrase in 1:29 that Jesus “takes away the sins of the world”? Shauf thinks this is sufficient “to see a connection to the atoning sacrifices.”527 This is despite acknowledging “lambs were not commonly used in atoning sacrifices at all.”528 But “commonly” is misleading because male lambs were never used for purgation sacrifices in the OT.529 In any case, Shauf is so convinced that “takes away sins” is related to atonement that he at first entertains the idea that “the appellation of Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ would seem unlikely to refer to the Passover lamb, because the Passover lamb was not an atoning sacrifice.”530 That is, because he knows Passover has nothing to do with atonement, but he presumes “taking away sins” has to be about atonement, then he thinks that “lamb” might not be referring to the Passover lamb after all.
But since he equally acknowledges that John is definitely identifying Jesus as the Passover lamb throughout the narrative, he concludes that John must be combining atonement and Passover in 1:29 even though “identifying Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and as atoning for sin is not the most natural of pairs” for all the reasons just mentioned.531 However, the presumption that “takes away sins” is related to sacrificial atonement (kipper) is unlikely for two main reasons. For one, male lambs are never used for any purgation (ḥaṭṭāʾt) sacrifice, as noted above. Thus, it would be odd for John to call Jesus a male lamb if he was hoping people would associate that with a “purgation sacrifice.”
If John wanted to link Jesus with the purgation sacrifices or the Day of Decontamination, then he should have used “the bull and/or goats of God.” Two, the verb for “takes away” is airō. And airō with hamartia (“sin”) does not occur in the LXX. But this same root verb with a prefix apo, “away from,” does. In the six passages where hamartia is the direct object of aphaireō only one of them is used in a sacrificial context (Lev 10:17). All other instances are all about God forgiving sins apart from the sacrificial system (Exod 34:7, 9; Num 14:18; Isa 27:9; Sir 47:11). But Lev 10:17 is difficult to use as an interpretive anchor for John 1:29 because it comes on the lips of Moses in a dispute with Aaron and Aaron is the one who wins the argument (Lev 10:19–20).532 The saying also does not relate to the ritual blood manipulations, but rather to the priests eating from purgation sacrifices offered for other people’s sins (priests cannot eat from a purgation sacrifice for their own sins per Lev 4:1–12; 6:22–23 [Eng. vv. 29–30]).
I think this, combined with in incongruity of Passover and atonement (or even just male lambs and atonement), is a sufficient amount of incompatibility to dismiss this as a viable option, especially when the other instances of “takes away sins” fit the claims in the Gospel of John seamlessly and do not generate other interpretive difficulties.533 To neglect these in favor of Lev 10:17 is special pleading to smuggle in a sacrificial connotation when all other cues point away from this. In the other Torah passages, the phrase “takes away sin(s)” are all about God removing Israel’s sins, i.e., putting up with their disobedience, after they leave Egypt (Exod 34:7, 9; Num 14:18 [notice v. 19 “from Egypt until now”]). Right after the relationship between God and Israel is established—celebrated with the Passover and sealed in the covenant-making ceremony—Israel worships the golden calf at the foot of Sinai (Exod 32). This is the context of the first use of this phrase, which anchors Moses’s hope that God will listen to his prayer for Israel and God will take away their grave sin of idolatry (34:7, 9). Then after they depart Sinai, the people start complaining and rebelling right away and continually (Num 11–21 contains seven episodes of this).534 Numbers 14:18 occurs in middle of these episodes and it becomes apparent that “taking away sins” becomes a necessary thing for God to do if the people are not going to be totally abandoned or destroyed in the wilderness. But, importantly, this “taking away of sins” in both Num 14 and Exod 34 happens quite apart from the sacrificial system. This is just the prerogative of God because there are no atoning sacrificial remedies for these deliberates acts of rebellion (hence the notice in 15:30–31). If Israel is to have any hope in the face of such sins, they are completely at the mercy of God.
And these wilderness stories give reason for future generations to have hope in God since “taking away sins” is revealed to Moses as part of the divine character—this is the kind of God YHWH is (Exod 34:7, 9). This is exactly what Moses appeals to when he petitions God to do this very thing in spite of Israel’s repeated rebellions in Exod 34:8–9 and Num 14:17–19. Moreover, this phrasing is spoken about as the divine prerogative in the only other Greek texts outside the Torah that use this phrase: Isa 27:9; Sir 47:11. Sirach 47:11 says, “the Lord took away his [David’s] sins and raised his horn forever.” This is clearly referring to David’s grave sins of rape and murder and thus is a comment about the divine prerogative to forgive sins of moral impurity. It may also be alluding to Ps 51, which states clearly that only God can purify David from these moral impurities since nothing in the sacrificial system can. Isaiah 27:9 (LXX) says that the “blessing” God will grant “Jacob” is the end of their exile, which is when God will “take away his sin.” It then goes on to talk about the abolition of idolatry and other altars in the same verse. Again, what we see is that “taking away sin” is something God alone can do because it refers to removing sins of moral impurity, which the sacrificial system is impotent to handle (by built-in design).
This meaning fits seamlessly with what the Gospel of John has claimed about Jesus up to 1:29 and then goes on to develop to the end of the narrative. The prologue has already established that Jesus is the embodiment of God (1:1–18) and thus ascribing to him the divine prerogative to “take away sins” apart from the sacrificial system makes sense. John the Immerser’s declaration is made immediately after he is being questioned about his role in Israel’s promised restoration (is John the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet, or someone else?—1:19–25). His comment that Jesus is the one who will “take away the sins of the world” in this context is most likely a direct reference to Isa 27:9, which is expanded out for all the world. What Israel was looking forward to for God to do for them (quite apart from the sacrificial system) is happening through Jesus, and it will benefit the entire cosmos.
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The statement that Jesus is “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (1:29) is likely combining two separate identity claims. That is, the phrase “takes away the sins of the world” is not because Jesus is the “lamb of God.” As we noted, lambs are never used to “take away sins” in any purgation sacrifice. Rather, Jesus is the “lamb of God” and he is the one “who takes away sins.” Jesus is the “lamb of God” because he is the ultimate Passover lamb. And Jesus is the one “who takes away the sins of the world” because he is also the embodiment of God (1:1–18) and thus can carry out this divine prerogative. While these are separate identity claims and highlight different nuances of Jesus’s mission in John, they are nonetheless intelligibly related. The larger point of John 1:29 is to combine these distinct identity claims as having one and the same personal referent: namely, “Jesus,” this most unlikely of candidates who comes from Nazareth (1:45–46). John 1:29 is a declaration that Jesus of Nazareth is both the liberator of a new exodus for the entire cosmos (i.e., the ultimate Passover lamb) and, as the embodiment of God, the one who will “take away the sins of the cosmos.”
These notions of a cosmic exodus, Passover lamb, and taking away sins go together precisely because “taking away sins” is a way of talking about what the promised exodus-like restoration would entail (Isa 27:9; cf. Jer 31:34). But, again, this is not because Passover suddenly brings about the forgiveness of sins, but rather that it marks, celebrates, and commemorates that cosmic-exodus-restoration event of forgiveness with a sacred feast. All this being said, I want to also leave room for the possibility that “lamb of God” might also be referring to the daily burnt offerings, the tāmîd. Recall that these use a male lamb, but they are non-atoning sacrifices. As Shauf notes, “Given the importance of the Tamid, and of the well-known use of lambs in the Tamid, it also seems reasonable to see in the lamb appellation the idea that Jesus is now the most important expression of the people’s relationship to God.”535
Combining the Passover with the tāmîd is more likely than combining it with the purgation sacrifices since both the Passover and tāmîd use male lambs and both are non-atoning sacrifices. Since we learned how the tāmîd visualized God’s continual presence to “meet with” and “dwell among” Israel (Exod 29:42–46), this would also align with what John is claiming about the significance of Jesus himself without generating the problems that combining “lamb of God” with purgation sacrifices does. Jesus would be understood as the fullness of the tāmîd, the very incarnation of God’s dwelling with humanity (1:1–18, esp. v. 14: eskēnōsen, “he tabernacled/dwelt/tented”). Therefore, while I think the Passover is the primary referent for “lamb of God” in John 1:29 and 36, this does not preclude a double reference to the tāmîd as well. The only thing precluded is an atoning connotation because it grates against the non-atoning functions of these sacrifices and does not factor in the non-sacrificial meaning of the phrase “takes away sins,” which is the divine prerogative when dealing with grave sins and the promise linked with the exodus-like restoration.
These notions of a cosmic exodus, Passover lamb, and taking away sins go together precisely because “taking away sins” is a way of talking about what the promised exodus-like restoration would entail (Isa 27:9; cf. Jer 31:34). But, again, this is not because Passover suddenly brings about the forgiveness of sins, but rather that it marks, celebrates, and commemorates that cosmic-exodus-restoration event of forgiveness with a sacred feast. All this being said, I want to also leave room for the possibility that “lamb of God” might also be referring to the daily burnt offerings, the tāmîd. Recall that these use a male lamb, but they are non-atoning sacrifices. As Shauf notes, “Given the importance of the Tamid, and of the well-known use of lambs in the Tamid, it also seems reasonable to see in the lamb appellation the idea that Jesus is now the most important expression of the people’s relationship to God.”535
Combining the Passover with the tāmîd is more likely than combining it with the purgation sacrifices since both the Passover and tāmîd use male lambs and both are non-atoning sacrifices. Since we learned how the tāmîd visualized God’s continual presence to “meet with” and “dwell among” Israel (Exod 29:42–46), this would also align with what John is claiming about the significance of Jesus himself without generating the problems that combining “lamb of God” with purgation sacrifices does. Jesus would be understood as the fullness of the tāmîd, the very incarnation of God’s dwelling with humanity (1:1–18, esp. v. 14: eskēnōsen, “he tabernacled/dwelt/tented”). Therefore, while I think the Passover is the primary referent for “lamb of God” in John 1:29 and 36, this does not preclude a double reference to the tāmîd as well. The only thing precluded is an atoning connotation because it grates against the non-atoning functions of these sacrifices and does not factor in the non-sacrificial meaning of the phrase “takes away sins,” which is the divine prerogative when dealing with grave sins and the promise linked with the exodus-like restoration.
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Conclusion
The institution of the Lord’s Supper conveys the earliest and only explanation of how Jesus’s death factors into his mission. And early followers of Jesus unanimously ascribed this elucidation to Jesus himself. We have discovered that the only sacrifices Jesus himself associated his death with are two communal well-being sacrifices—Passover and covenant-inauguration/renewal. These are the foundational sacrificial feast celebrations of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt and formation into a covenant people of God. The theme of “forgiveness of sins” in the NT is anchored in the prophetic texts that promise a specific sort of forgiveness of sins: Israel’s release from the consequences of moral impurity (exile as covenant death, e.g., Ezek 37), which will be celebrated as a new exodus (hence Passover) and establishing/re-affirming God’s (re)new(ed) covenant (exile as covenant death, e.g., Ezek 37).
Neither the Jesus-as-Passover lamb nor Jesus-as-blood-of-the-(re)new(ed)-covenant effects this forgiveness. Rather, these sacrificial feasts are sacrificialized in the Lord’s Supper to commemorate that the promised forgiveness of sins has already happened apart from any “sacrifice” (atoning or non-atoning). Jesus was literally offering this forgiveness prior to his death because the forgiveness he offers springs from the fact that “the time is fulfilled” (Mark 1:15)—it is the time of God’s promised forgiveness—and that he is God’s “mobile, and powerfully contagious force of holiness in the world . . . that overwhelms the forces and sources of impurity and death, be they pneumatic, ritual, or moral.”557 The Lord’s Supper takes the bread and wine from a literal Passover meal and further ritualizes the sacrificial ritual of Passover. That is, the Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialization of (unleavened) bread and wine that makes them a thanksgiving well-being sacrifice that doubles as both a Passover (e.g., 1 Cor 5:7–8) and covenant-inauguration meta-ritual meal (e.g., 1 Cor 11:23–26). Moreover, we saw that “ransom”/“redemption” is bound up with the liberative eschatological-/cosmic-exodus motif. When those like John the Seer or the author of 1 Peter combine the notion of Jesus as a Passover lamb with Jesus’s blood as the currency for a ransom, they are merely joining together what the Passover commemorates—the (cosmic) exodus—and the prophetic metaphor for the divine act of accomplishing that event.
That is, this combination is not suddenly saying that Passover lamb’s blood qua sacrificial blood is the means by which the (cosmic) exodus happened—i.e., that the blood was a “ransom payment” to some entity. They are just borrowing from the language of the prophetic hope to make the point that those who were once enslaved (and this enslavement itself is variously depicted) have now been set free by Jesus. Jesus is the lamb of the free. Therefore, just as Israel was not ransomed from Egypt with any sort of payment let alone by sacrifice,558 so too the “ransom” of the second exodus would not come about by a payout to any entity (Isa 52:3). This is the theological framework within which the various “ransom” and “purchased” statements in the NT need to be comprehended. The ideas of Passover and (re)new(ed) covenant are tightly linked with the notion of “ransom,” but those sacrifices do not bring about the ransom, but rather celebrate that ransom-event since that is the function of well-being sacrifices in general and these two in particular from the first exodus.
Further, “ransom” is just an image to talk about the freedom and deliverance Jesus—the ultimate Passover lamb—accomplished. It is a way to talk about the significance of Jesus from multiple angles. Jesus himself in his literal contact with and then victory over death—the consequences of moral impurity swallowing up both people and Jerusalem—freed the cosmos from death. Jesus brought about a cosmic exodus, a cosmic liberation, a cosmic ransom. But Jesus’s death was not actually “paid” to anyone or anything. Further, the consistent witness throughout the NT is that people are purified as they contact the risen Jesus, or rather, as Jesus contacts them by touching them with his Spirit (e.g., John 15:3; 17:17–19; 20:21–23; 1 Cor 6:11;559 Rom 8:9–11). This union with Jesus is described as co-crucifixion (Rom 6:3–6; Gal 2:20), co-cross bearing (Mark 8:34–35), and co-suffering with Jesus (Mark 10:38–39; Phil 3:10; Rom 8:17; 2 Cor 1:5; 2 Tim 2:12; Heb 13:11–13). This is what the participatory nature of the well-being sacrifices make possible and intelligible. This is why Paul says eating the sacrificialized Lord’s Supper is “participation” (koinōnia) in Jesus’s shed blood and broken body (1 Cor 10:16–17). But more than this, the Lord’s Supper unites all partakers to each other: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing [koinōnia] in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing [koinōnia] in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners [koinōnoi] in the altar? (1 Cor 10:16–18) We know we are dealing with the non-kipper sacrifices because Paul is talking about sacrifices which are eaten by the people.560
Paul’s point is that eating sacrifices binds one with the deity and to the other worshipers for better or for worse (10:20–21). And Paul’s use of koinōnia elsewhere shows how he thinks about this as all believers sharing in Christ’s sufferings and becoming conformed to the likeness of Jesus’s death together (e.g., 2 Cor 1:5, 7; Phil 3:10; cf. Col 1:24). He says something similar in 2 Cor 4:7–12 where he talks about his life as a living narration of the life and death of Jesus. Basically, to the extent to which believers are living narrations of Jesus’s death, they are having koinōnia with Christ Crucified. A cross-shaped, cruciform pattern of life is the theological result of Paul’s well-being sacrificial imagery. Since eating well-being sacrifices binds us with the deity, it is by partaking of the well-being offering that is Jesus’s body that we become made participants in his broken body and shed blood and made members of the new covenant. It is by this that we become “living [well-being] sacrifices,” ourselves (Rom 12:1).
This makes sense for why Paul calls himself a drink offering (Phil 2:17), which accompanied sacrificial feasts (Num 15:1–13). And he says the Philippians’ gift can be thought of as the smoke arising from the well-being sacrifices that pleases God (Phil 4:18), just Jesus was (Eph 5:1–2).561 Paul’s letters make explicit what is narratively presented in the Gospels via the Lord’s Supper. That is, eating the sacrificialized Lord’s Supper binds one to Jesus and thereby to the cross where his body was broken and his blood shed (e.g., Mark 8:31–35; 10:38–45; cf. John 6:48–58; 12:23–26; 13:36; 21:18–19). The well-being sacrifices are key to understanding the way NT authors, and especially Paul, conceive of the relationship between Jesus and the church, which Paul calls Jesus’s body (1 Cor 12:12–13, 27; Rom 12:5; cf. Eph 1:23; 4:12; 5:30; Col 1:18, 24, 2:19). The participatory nature of the well-being sacrifices allow Paul a way to make sense of believer’s very real participation and union with Jesus’s death (and resurrection) because these are the only sacrifices the offerer eats and so has a share in themselves.
It makes perfect sense for a movement that saw itself as the body of the Crucified Lord and called to share in his sufferings to draw on the well-being being sacrifices activated in the Lord’s Supper when seeking to comprehend Jesus’s death. Therefore, if Jesus is a well-being sacrifice and his followers sacrificially partake of his body and blood and thereby become members of and sharers in his body—a new covenant people united to the ultimate Passover lamb who also seals the new covenant in his blood—then as Jesus’s body, they also become a collective “living well-being sacrifice” (Rom 12:1) and living narrations of Jesus’s cruciform pattern of life.
The institution of the Lord’s Supper conveys the earliest and only explanation of how Jesus’s death factors into his mission. And early followers of Jesus unanimously ascribed this elucidation to Jesus himself. We have discovered that the only sacrifices Jesus himself associated his death with are two communal well-being sacrifices—Passover and covenant-inauguration/renewal. These are the foundational sacrificial feast celebrations of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt and formation into a covenant people of God. The theme of “forgiveness of sins” in the NT is anchored in the prophetic texts that promise a specific sort of forgiveness of sins: Israel’s release from the consequences of moral impurity (exile as covenant death, e.g., Ezek 37), which will be celebrated as a new exodus (hence Passover) and establishing/re-affirming God’s (re)new(ed) covenant (exile as covenant death, e.g., Ezek 37).
Neither the Jesus-as-Passover lamb nor Jesus-as-blood-of-the-(re)new(ed)-covenant effects this forgiveness. Rather, these sacrificial feasts are sacrificialized in the Lord’s Supper to commemorate that the promised forgiveness of sins has already happened apart from any “sacrifice” (atoning or non-atoning). Jesus was literally offering this forgiveness prior to his death because the forgiveness he offers springs from the fact that “the time is fulfilled” (Mark 1:15)—it is the time of God’s promised forgiveness—and that he is God’s “mobile, and powerfully contagious force of holiness in the world . . . that overwhelms the forces and sources of impurity and death, be they pneumatic, ritual, or moral.”557 The Lord’s Supper takes the bread and wine from a literal Passover meal and further ritualizes the sacrificial ritual of Passover. That is, the Lord’s Supper is a sacrificialization of (unleavened) bread and wine that makes them a thanksgiving well-being sacrifice that doubles as both a Passover (e.g., 1 Cor 5:7–8) and covenant-inauguration meta-ritual meal (e.g., 1 Cor 11:23–26). Moreover, we saw that “ransom”/“redemption” is bound up with the liberative eschatological-/cosmic-exodus motif. When those like John the Seer or the author of 1 Peter combine the notion of Jesus as a Passover lamb with Jesus’s blood as the currency for a ransom, they are merely joining together what the Passover commemorates—the (cosmic) exodus—and the prophetic metaphor for the divine act of accomplishing that event.
That is, this combination is not suddenly saying that Passover lamb’s blood qua sacrificial blood is the means by which the (cosmic) exodus happened—i.e., that the blood was a “ransom payment” to some entity. They are just borrowing from the language of the prophetic hope to make the point that those who were once enslaved (and this enslavement itself is variously depicted) have now been set free by Jesus. Jesus is the lamb of the free. Therefore, just as Israel was not ransomed from Egypt with any sort of payment let alone by sacrifice,558 so too the “ransom” of the second exodus would not come about by a payout to any entity (Isa 52:3). This is the theological framework within which the various “ransom” and “purchased” statements in the NT need to be comprehended. The ideas of Passover and (re)new(ed) covenant are tightly linked with the notion of “ransom,” but those sacrifices do not bring about the ransom, but rather celebrate that ransom-event since that is the function of well-being sacrifices in general and these two in particular from the first exodus.
Further, “ransom” is just an image to talk about the freedom and deliverance Jesus—the ultimate Passover lamb—accomplished. It is a way to talk about the significance of Jesus from multiple angles. Jesus himself in his literal contact with and then victory over death—the consequences of moral impurity swallowing up both people and Jerusalem—freed the cosmos from death. Jesus brought about a cosmic exodus, a cosmic liberation, a cosmic ransom. But Jesus’s death was not actually “paid” to anyone or anything. Further, the consistent witness throughout the NT is that people are purified as they contact the risen Jesus, or rather, as Jesus contacts them by touching them with his Spirit (e.g., John 15:3; 17:17–19; 20:21–23; 1 Cor 6:11;559 Rom 8:9–11). This union with Jesus is described as co-crucifixion (Rom 6:3–6; Gal 2:20), co-cross bearing (Mark 8:34–35), and co-suffering with Jesus (Mark 10:38–39; Phil 3:10; Rom 8:17; 2 Cor 1:5; 2 Tim 2:12; Heb 13:11–13). This is what the participatory nature of the well-being sacrifices make possible and intelligible. This is why Paul says eating the sacrificialized Lord’s Supper is “participation” (koinōnia) in Jesus’s shed blood and broken body (1 Cor 10:16–17). But more than this, the Lord’s Supper unites all partakers to each other: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing [koinōnia] in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing [koinōnia] in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners [koinōnoi] in the altar? (1 Cor 10:16–18) We know we are dealing with the non-kipper sacrifices because Paul is talking about sacrifices which are eaten by the people.560
Paul’s point is that eating sacrifices binds one with the deity and to the other worshipers for better or for worse (10:20–21). And Paul’s use of koinōnia elsewhere shows how he thinks about this as all believers sharing in Christ’s sufferings and becoming conformed to the likeness of Jesus’s death together (e.g., 2 Cor 1:5, 7; Phil 3:10; cf. Col 1:24). He says something similar in 2 Cor 4:7–12 where he talks about his life as a living narration of the life and death of Jesus. Basically, to the extent to which believers are living narrations of Jesus’s death, they are having koinōnia with Christ Crucified. A cross-shaped, cruciform pattern of life is the theological result of Paul’s well-being sacrificial imagery. Since eating well-being sacrifices binds us with the deity, it is by partaking of the well-being offering that is Jesus’s body that we become made participants in his broken body and shed blood and made members of the new covenant. It is by this that we become “living [well-being] sacrifices,” ourselves (Rom 12:1).
This makes sense for why Paul calls himself a drink offering (Phil 2:17), which accompanied sacrificial feasts (Num 15:1–13). And he says the Philippians’ gift can be thought of as the smoke arising from the well-being sacrifices that pleases God (Phil 4:18), just Jesus was (Eph 5:1–2).561 Paul’s letters make explicit what is narratively presented in the Gospels via the Lord’s Supper. That is, eating the sacrificialized Lord’s Supper binds one to Jesus and thereby to the cross where his body was broken and his blood shed (e.g., Mark 8:31–35; 10:38–45; cf. John 6:48–58; 12:23–26; 13:36; 21:18–19). The well-being sacrifices are key to understanding the way NT authors, and especially Paul, conceive of the relationship between Jesus and the church, which Paul calls Jesus’s body (1 Cor 12:12–13, 27; Rom 12:5; cf. Eph 1:23; 4:12; 5:30; Col 1:18, 24, 2:19). The participatory nature of the well-being sacrifices allow Paul a way to make sense of believer’s very real participation and union with Jesus’s death (and resurrection) because these are the only sacrifices the offerer eats and so has a share in themselves.
It makes perfect sense for a movement that saw itself as the body of the Crucified Lord and called to share in his sufferings to draw on the well-being being sacrifices activated in the Lord’s Supper when seeking to comprehend Jesus’s death. Therefore, if Jesus is a well-being sacrifice and his followers sacrificially partake of his body and blood and thereby become members of and sharers in his body—a new covenant people united to the ultimate Passover lamb who also seals the new covenant in his blood—then as Jesus’s body, they also become a collective “living well-being sacrifice” (Rom 12:1) and living narrations of Jesus’s cruciform pattern of life.
civic
Active Member
@praise_yeshua let me know what you think. Thanks brother.
For me its good to see things through a different lens and learn some new ideas, concepts.
For me its good to see things through a different lens and learn some new ideas, concepts.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Information is good. Few people actually give what they believe much thought nor even try to systematically construct a full defense of such beliefs. In this, the author is relating his thoughts effectively. That is good.
I do have a real problem with how he has chosen to make his point. I wouldn't choose to defend my beliefs with the evidence he is presenting. The Levitical priestly order was filled with human ritual that really can never accurately represent the work of Jesus Christ. The fact that the priestly work of Jesus Christ was never in the order of Aaron defeats this particular aspect of his defense. The rituals of "Aaron" were filled with "chance" and "guess work". It was the tradition that Peter used in casting lots to fill Paul's rightful place among the 12 apostles. God took that issue into His own hands. Same is true of the work of Jesus Christ. Christ after the order of Melchizedek. When this author references the "order of Aaron" he does so based upon many flawed traditions within Judaism. Jesus mentioned the "traditions of your fathers".
I start with trying to discover the Truth and not just trying to disprove a particular subject. Not that I'm saying anyone is doing this but I believe most people do. I want to ultimately know the truth and sometimes that does start with knowing what isn't true.
The real meaning to be found in animal sacrifices goes all the way back to when God first made the results of Adam's choices real to him. Can you imagine what it was like to have one of your friends die to provide "warmth" for you? A friend had to die at that very moment for Adam. A friend of a lesser and innocent sort. A friend for which Adam was responsible and loved.
He made Himself of no reputation and took upon Himself the form of a servant. We didn't esteem Him worthy of better when He was the best there ever was.
Our sin is more than we can bare without the forgiveness of God in the Empathy of Jesus Christ. Many people believe that guilt hinders us. This comes through in this author's writings to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
Guilt and regret empowers us to serve God.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
I'll finish reading through it a little later today. Thanks for sharing!
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