We frequently hear in the Christian world that Jesus sacrificed Himself for us. To truly understand what is meant by the “sacrifice” of Jesus, we need to understand the Bible’s understanding of sacrifice.

When we truly study this idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament (OT) we find that attention to God’s wrath was not part of the theology of Israel’s sacrificial system. We must constantly remember that the foundation group of Christianity, and therefore the writers of the texts of the New Testament (NT), were all a part of Judaism and therefore had the   same OT understanding of sacrifice. Indeed, the wrath of God was a concept alien to Israel’s understanding of blood sacrifice. Although the OT has a great deal to say about the divine wrath in connection with sin, it says nothing about it in connection with the sin offering (blood sacrifice).

And if the sin offering was not related to the wrath of God, how much less the other sacrifices prescribed in the Torah. The God worshipped in Israel’s ancient temple was not bloodthirsty. When He became angry, the anger might be turned away by the offering of incense, for example, a symbol of prayer, but it was never appeased by the shedding of blood.

Something similar must be noted with respect to punishment for sin. A chief problem with the theory of “penal substitutionary atonement” (a Western concept of redemption that is brought about by the blood death of Jesus in reparation for humankind’s sins) is the difficulty of justifying it within the biblical understanding of sacrifice. In the Torah there is no indication that the victims of Israel’s various sacrifices (e.g. bulls, goats, sheep, doves) were being punished in any sense whatever. Clearly those mactated animals were substitutes, but not in a sense that implied penal retribution.

In Israel’s sacrificial system neither divine anger nor human punishment was a part of the picture.

Although new to Eastern Theology, the word that perhaps more adequately describes what Christ accomplished on earth is ATONEMENT, understood in a different sense than we usually find in English Christian literature.

Why this word is more appropriate is that its true meaning is “the setting at one”. First, “at-one-ment” conveys the Paul’s idea of reconciliation which is expressed in his writings: “now all things are of God, reconciling us to Himself through Jesus Christ and giving us the ministry of reconciliation.”

I shall continue to explore the Eastern theological understand of redemption.