2) Sacrifice as Atonement

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Atonement is an interesting word. It was first coined by William Tyndale in his original English translation of the bible. He was trying to translate the Greek text in a way that made it easier to understand all that is involved in being reconciled to God. This verse is helpful:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:19)

Atonement is a word which tries to bring together a number of things including reconciliation, as here, but also propitiation and expiation. Here is its use in the Old Testament:

For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.
(Leviticus 17:11)

Another part of the meaning of atonement is that it refers to the cover or lid on the Ark of the Covenant found in the Temple. So here is our usual translation of a verse from Romans:

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. (Romans 3:25)

In other versions this same verse is translated as:

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (ESV)

And in yet another version as:

whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (RSV)

I’m not trying to complicate things, but all this makes talking about ‘atonement’ not very straightforward. In fact, there are anything up to seven different ideas about atonement depending on how you want to look at the subject. I am only going to deal with atonement in one way and do not intend to discuss them all. However, there can be something in each of them which is relevant; in that case, I shall mention this without trying to label it with a name! What is very important, is to recognise that atonement or reconciliation is from God towards us. We are the ones needing to be reconciled with Him: God does not need to reconcile with us because He has done nothing wrong. This might seem a fine point, but some people can have a mentality which imagines that God has wronged them; that somehow, they deserve an apology from Him. This is missing the mark completely.

blood

A central part of atonement is the place of blood. As we saw above: “it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life”. The majority of sacrifices in the Old Testament involved the shedding of blood: the animal died from loss of blood, and this was the only way in which it was to be killed. Hebrews tell us of this fact:

In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. (Hebrews 9:21-23)

The Tabernacle was the first version of the Temple but built as a kind of tent. These verses show how important the shedding of blood is. It had to be ‘shed’ which meant it had to come from a live animal: the carcass of an already dead animal could not be offered. But these verses in Hebrews also state that there was a better sacrifice. The same chapter explains this in more detail:

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)

This passage refers to the ‘Heavenly Tabernacle’ or “the more perfect tabernacle”, in other words, the place where God dwells. The earthly Tabernacle was just a representation to help people understand all that was required to gain access to the real presence of God. In the earthly Tabernacle only one person could enter the Most Holy Place and that was the High Priest and only once a year. He had to be carrying sacrificial blood. Jesus fulfilled all these requirements having made sacrifice of Himself and carrying His own precious blood. And this He did once only, as Hebrews explains:

Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:25-26)

Lamb

John the Baptist had this transaction revealed to him and so gave Jesus a title. He said:

‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

The bible is full of representations of atonement using many metaphors and allegories. Here the Lamb is the sacrifice for the removal of sin. It is important to see that sin here is in the singular: it is a transaction against the principle and power of sin. It is the ‘sin of the world’ and not the ‘sins’: sins come from ‘sin’. This is why Jesus only had to do this once. The sacrifices offered in the Old Testament were made continually because people sinned continually. But this sacrifice of Jesus on the cross dealt with the engraved sin of the human heart. Paul wrote this:

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, (Romans 8:3)

The Law prescribed continual sacrifices which could never change the heart in the way that the sacrifice of Jesus for sin did. And this ‘sin offering’ was what made atonement for us and for all who will believe in Him. Here is John:

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)