In the last issue I was addressing the idea that sprang up in the West about Jesus’ death being necessary to atone for the sins of mankind. An idea and attitude which, I’m sure, all of my readers are keenly aware. The view of atonement affirms that Jesus’ death was truly necessary – God required a perfect sacrifice and Jesus was it. I must admit that I was convinced that this was absolutely true during my childhood. The death of Jesus was the most important thing about His life. This is the heart of the most widespread modern and contemporary view and understanding of Christianity’s gospel: Jesus died for our sins, so that we can be forgiven. It is usually accompanied by the promise of a blessed afterlife: if we believe that he died for us, we can go to heaven.

This theological framework is the result of literalizing the metaphorical language of Hebrews and some other passages in the New Testament. It also involves a rationalizing of this language, reducing it to statements in doctrinal formulations.

All of this goes far beyond what the language of Hebrews communicated near the end of the first century. The   author is obviously using metaphorical language. He did not think Jesus was literally a high priest; he knew that Jesus was from the tribe of Judah and not Levi. He knew that Jesus never served as the high priest of Jerusalem. He knew that Jesus never entered the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple. All of this is a metaphor. It is truly a meaningful metaphor. For Christians, Jesus is the great high priest, even though He was never really the high priest of the Jerusalem temple.

So also the language of Jesus as sacrifice is metaphorical. He was not literally a divine-human sacrifice planned and required by God, so that our sins can be paid for and we can be forgiven. In Hebrews (and in the NT generally when the language of sacrifice is used), what Jesus sacrificed was His life because of His passion for God. To sacrifice is to make a gift of one’s life to God. That is what Jesus did – not because God required it, but because of His passion for God and God’s will.

I’m sure that his will be startling for many. We are so used to hearing that Jesus suffered and died for our sins that we cannot think of His death on the cross in any other way. And yet, true to the Eastern Church’s approach, His death was not for our sins but, rather, to reveal to us that human death is not the end of the life that we have.