Freeing sacrificial atonement from retributive justice

He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.—Hebrews 9:26b

The biblical terms for sacrificial atonement, in both Hebrew and Greek, are understood better as cleansing of sin than payment to God. That sentence is sure to elicit responses—positive and negative—because it bears upon a major controversy among scholars and layfolk alike. The question concerns how best to understand the gospel message, not only that “Christ died for us” who were sinners (Romans 5:8) but also that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

Which Scriptures neither Paul nor Jesus says. Paul writes that the righteousness of God disclosed through the death of Christ “is attested by the law and the prophets” (Romans 3:21). And the risen Jesus teaches that his suffering, death, resurrection and glorification fulfill “all the Scriptures,” including the law, the prophets and the Psalms (Luke 24:26-27, 44-45).

Early Christians found manifold resources in the Scriptures for understanding Jesus’ death. The Apostles, in preaching and prayer, appeal to the Psalms to interpret Jesus’ death and resurrection as the victory of God over powers—death and hell, rulers and nations—in rebellion against God’s kingdom (Acts 2:14-36, 4:24-30, 13:26-41). The Evangelists of the synoptic tradition cite the Suffering Servant in the prophet Isaiah to interpret the ministry and death of Jesus as obedient service to God that brings healing and peace to a people burdened by sin (Matthew 8:16-17; Mark 10:45; Luke 22:37). And the book of Hebrews employs the sacrificial system in Leviticus to interpret Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for sins.

Each of these motifs—conflict-victory, vicarious suffering, atoning sacrifice—contributes something essential to our understanding of the cross. And there are several more besides—e.g., redemption, reconciliation, justification. None of these was ever defined as the orthodox doctrine for the church catholic by the ecumenical councils. The Nicene Creed affirms simply that Christ died “for us humans and for our salvation,” not preferring any one explanation of how that is so.

Still, one motif—atoning sacrifice—has dominated theology of the cross during the second millennium of the church. In both the Medieval mindset of Anselm and the modern mindset of Calvin, Christian understanding of sacrificial atonement conformed to the Greco-Roman paradigm of retributive justice—to right a wrong requires payment (or punishment) equal (or proportional) to the offense. In Calvinist thinking, especially, atoning sacrifice has been explained as payment of penalty to God to satisfy retribution for sin. Thus, the “penal substitution” theory: Jesus died on the cross in our stead to pay the penalty for sin. This theory, with its notion of atoning sacrifice as a divinely legislated penalty/payment, is popular among evangelical Christians, including Mennonites, and is often claimed to be “the biblical view.”

Does this theory accord with the Scriptures? Do the sacrifices of atonement described in Leviticus conform to the pattern of retributive justice? We can test this claim against the evidence. If the sacrifices were intended as payment to God to satisfy retribution for sin, then we would expect to find both the sacrifices to be directed toward God and the value of what is sacrificed to be “proportional” to the gravity of the sin. An inductive study of Leviticus finds neither of these to be the case.

There are two sacrifices for making atonement (“kipper”) to consider: “sin offering” (“hattat”) and “guilt offering” (“asham”):

Sin offering: Making atonement by sin offering, although done “before the LORD,” is not directed toward God but toward sin on behalf of the sinner—God is never the object of the verb “kipper” (Leviticus 4:20b, 26b, 31b, 35b, 5:6b, 10b, 13). And the sacrifice offered varies according to—not the sin but the status and means of—the sinner (Leviticus 4:3, 13-14, 22-23, 27-28, 5:7-13).

Guilt offering: Transgressions require restitution in addition to sacrifice—if I profit by deceit, I must repay the loss (plus a 20 percent penalty), then present a guilt offering. But reparation is rendered to the injured party, not to God, and is distinct from the sacrifice for making atonement “before the LORD.” And the offering is a ram (“or its equivalent”), regardless of the transgression (Leviticus 5:14-6:7).

The sacrifices of atonement evidently did not function according to the logic of retribution. The theory that Christ died as an atoning sacrifice for sins as payment of penalty to God, therefore, does not accord with the Scriptures.

Rather than payment of penalty to God, atoning sacrifice was the God-provided means by which God acted to remove sin and guilt and so cleanse pollution from the holy places, things and people of God that are consecrated to God’s service (Leviticus 16:15-19, 33; 17:11).

Accordingly, we find, the “sin offering” also constitutes the sacrificial ritual of making purification for disease and uncleanness (which are not sins). The sin and purification rituals employ the same Hebrew term for the sacrifice (“hattat”) and parallel formulas to pronounce forgiveness or cleansing (Leviticus 12:6-8; 14:18-20; 15:13-15, 29-30). As Old Testament scholars Jacob Milgrom and Perry Yoder have observed, there is really only one sacrificial ritual for dealing with both sin and impurity. And that ritual concerns not payment of penalty but cleansing of pollution.

This view of sacrificial atonement in the Old Testament fits well with the language of sacrificial atonement in the New Testament. Hebrews portrays Jesus as God’s high priest, who became human “to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people” surpassing all previous sacrifices (Hebrews 2:17; 9:23-10:18). John also writes that Jesus is “the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:2; 4:10). The related Greek words “to make atonement” (“hilaskesthai”) and “atoning sacrifice” (“hilasmos”), as used in the New Testament, signify the removal or cleansing of sin for purification of God’s people. So Hebrews: “he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26b; cf. 1:3; 9:13, 22; 10:2, 4, 11, 14). And John: “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7; cf. 1:9; 3:5). (As to how atoning sacrifice “works,” the Bible nowhere says—it is simply God’s doing.)

All this helps us resolve the “conundrum of forgiveness” (Martin Birkey, The Mennonite, Aug. 5, 2008). Birkey points out a crucial problem: how to square Jesus, on the one hand, who offers forgiveness with authority but without condition (Matthew 18:21-35, Mark 2:3-12, Luke 7:36-50, John 8:2-11), and popular theology, on the other hand, which explains Christ’s death as a substitutionary punishment legislated by God to satisfy retribution. If God forgives sinners only on the precondition that Christ has paid the penalty for sin by the atoning sacrifice of his death, then can it really be called forgiveness, which signifies remission rather than payment?

Birkey’s conundrum, however, is premised on a false assumption. For it assumes, mistakenly, that to say that Jesus’ death was an atoning sacrifice for sin is to say that it was a payment of penalty to God—which assumes that sacrifice of atonement functioned according to the logic of retribution. As we have seen, this was not the case. In sacrificial atonement, forgiveness is the correlate not of payment of penalty but of cleansing of sin. Making atonement was not a transaction between God and humans in the coinage of sacrifice, whereby God rendered forgiveness in exchange for humans rendering sacrifice. Rather, forgiveness signified the reality of God’s gracious action “for us” by means of sacrifice to remove sin and right sinners.

Birkey’s conundrum would leave us with a dilemma—either deny that God’s forgiveness in Jesus is truly a gift or dismiss sacrificial atonement from our theology of forgiveness. I agree with Birkey that the latter is not an option. Once we recognize the false premise of the conundrum, however, we realize that this is an unnecessary choice: sacrificial atonement and divine grace are not at odds; rather, sacrificial atonement is the means by which God acts graciously, whether through priests (now obsolete) or through Christ (“once for all”).

At odds are the divine grace of forgiveness and the Greco-Roman logic of retribution, upon which is based the penal substitution theory of atonement. The “conundrum of forgiveness” results from inappropriately explaining divine grace in terms of retributive justice—grace means that God forgives us because Jesus pays our penalty for sin. What we need, then, is a properly biblical understanding of sacrificial atonement. And what we need to reject is the thinking that insists on force-fitting sacrificial atonement, God’s forgiveness and Christ’s cross into the straitjacket of retributive justice.

Indeed, that God is no prisoner to the logic of retribution is precisely the good news Paul proclaims (Romans 3:21-26). The justice of God is disclosed through the faithfulness of Jesus, not by satisfaction of retribution but “apart from law.” We are thus justified—forgiven and righted—through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, not by payment of penalty but “by [God’s] grace as a gift.” Thanks be to God.

Darrin W. Snyder Belousek serves with Mennonite Mission Network as co-leader (with wife Paula) of the Service Adventure unit supported by Raleigh Mennonite Church. This article draws from a book he is writing on atonement theology.