Squaring With Paul

In my view, the modern Christian church (as reflected in the NRSV and the NIV Bibles) has it wrong and does so on purpose. The church translates Paul’s writing about Jesus as follows: “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” NRSV Ro. 3:25. The NIV is similar, and both bibles translate John’s first letter likewise, “he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1Jn. 2:2 and 4:10. My NIV Study Bible makes clear the church’s view in its note to 1Jn.2:2 and Ro. 3:25. “God’s holiness demands punishment for human sin. God, therefore, out of love, sent his Son to make substitutionary atonement for the believer’s sin. In this way the Father’s wrath has been satisfied; his wrath against the Christian’s sin has been turned away and directed toward Christ.”

The problem with this interpretation is that neither Paul nor John wrote the Greek words for sacrifice or expiation (atonement). The Greek word used by Paul and John is properly translated as “the place of forgiveness” or “the means of forgiveness”, or specifically the “cover of forgiveness.” The Greek word used by Paul and John is derived from the Septuagint known as the LXX Greek translation of Hebrew scripture written by scholars in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC. The Greek word translated the Hebrew word for the gold covering of the Ark known as the Mercy Seat, the most holy place at which God would appear or dwell (See Ex. 25: 21-22) and the place at which annually on the Day of Atonement the people were reconciled to God through the sprinkling of blood. (See Lev. 16: 1-19). So, what Paul and John were communicating was that God had presented Jesus as God’s new locus of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation with humankind.

Theologian Karl Barth explained it this way in his epic Epistle to the Romans; “The analogy with Jesus is especially appropriate, because the mercy seat is no more than a particular, though very significant place. By the express counsel of God, Jesus has been appointed from eternity as the place of propitiation above which God dwells and from which He speaks; now however, He occupies a position in time, in history, and in the presence of men. The life of Jesus is the place in history fitted by God for propitiation and fraught with eternity—God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor. 5:19).” ¹

Neither Paul nor John wrote that Jesus was offered as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, but theologians for centuries have insisted that Paul meant to say such, principally for the reasons outlined above by the NIV notes.² Frankly, I don’t see it making sense. An atoning sacrifice for our sins smacks of retribution. God loved us so much God directed his wrath to God’s Son? Is this how we express love, by causing another to suffer? Rather, scripture supports the notion that God was about reconciliation, not retribution. Jesus lived for us by teaching and healing. It seems to me that Jesus died a human death to show us his faith in God, his faithfulness to God, that in the death of the flesh through the letting out of his blood, he would gain eternal life. It seems to me that God willed Jesus to do this act in order to show humankind God’s reconciliation with the human condition and to plead with humanity to be alive in faith in God. God willed Jesus the man to walk the talk, “those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 16:25). And the radical nature of Jesus’ condemnation, humiliation and torture by the ruling class of the Temple and Rome, only to be raised up by God to glory, shows that, in Barth’s words, “the righteousness of God is clearly seen to be the unmistakable governance of men and the real power in history.”³

Paul wrote to the Corinthians the following: “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer….Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Cor. 5:16,18-19 KJV). Jesus is a peace offering–God’s attempt at reconciliation. Thanks be to God.

1. Barth, Karl, Epistle to the Romans, translated from the sixth edition by Edwyn Hoskyns, Oxford University Press, first published 1933. p. 105.
2. Truth is elusive among the numerous commentaries written on Romans by theologians over the centuries. One modern commentator suggests that Paul was not referring to the object itself (Mercy seat cover), but the activity occurring there (sacrifice of atonement). So we have Paul using a metaphor to interpret a metaphor. See Keck, Leander, Romans, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2005, pp 108-109. Barth seems to make more sense. Readers are invited to express their own thoughts and come to their own conclusions.
3. Barth, Romans, 106