The Bible Project | Sacrifice and Atonement: A very powerful symbol of God's justice and grace
Recent posts on overviews of the Story of God found in the Bible:
The Story of God, the World, and You | Our World Belongs to God | Creation, Crisis, Covenant, Christ, Church, (New) Creation | Jesus as the "True and Better" One | The Messiah | The Covenants | Heaven and Earth | God's Holiness | God's Multi-Ethnic Family | Hell
For this post, I'm including a video and the manuscript for an Animated Explanation of Sacrifice and Atonement by Tim Mackie and Jon Collins via The Bible Project, a wonderful new and free video series on YouTube.
Animated Explanation of Sacrifice and Atonement by The Bible Project
Produced by Tim Mackie and Jon Collins
We all long for the world to be good, for people to live in peace, and act in love and justice. But there's a problem. Something compels us humans to constantly wreak havoc and destruction instead. And we call this, "evil."
From the Bible's point of view, evil ruins things in two ways: (1) There's a direct effect of our evil. Like when someone steals from another person, they've created injustice. Therefore, they owe something to make it right. (2) But there's another indirect effect of evil because they've also ruined the environment of the relationship, creating a lack of trust. There's emotional damage. It's like vandalism. And they need to make that right, too.
Now many people believe, hey, God is good. He should be the One to get rid of all the evil in the world. But let's be honest, the evil I see everywhere out there, it's the same evil inside of me. We have all contributed and we keep doing it. So this kind of puts us in a bind. If God is going to rid the world of evil, He'll have to get rid of us.
And this is what's so remarkable about the story of the Bible. This God is so good that not only is He going to rid the world of evil, He's going to do it without destroying all of humanity. So how is He going to do that? Early in the story of the Bible, we're introduced to this practice of animal sacrifice, which I know, seems weird to us. But for the Israelites, it was a very powerful symbol of God's justice and of His grace.
So remember, I'm a contributor to the evil that's in the world. I should be removed. But God is allowing this animal's life to be a substitute. It's symbolically dying in my place. The biblical word for this is atonement, which means to cover over someone's debt.
But there's a second part to this ritual. Remember that evil also causes this relational vandalism. And in the Bible, this idea is described as polluting and defiling the land and making it unclean. So the priest would symbolically wash away the vandalism by sprinkling the animal's blood in different parts of the temple. So the animal's blood is cleaning things? Remember this is a symbol, and it's a symbol we're not used to. The blood represents life. The sprinkling of the blood is the representation of how God is cleaning away these indirect consequences of evil in their community. In the Bible this process is called purification. So the temple and the land now become clean space where God and His people can live together in peace.
So this ritual makes things right between Israel and God. And more than that, the Israelites experience God's love and His grace through these symbols. And by being forgiven, ideally this would compel them to become people of love and grace, too. That's the ideal, but it wasn't always happening.
So the prophet Isaiah talks a lot about this. He opens his book by saying that the continual sacrifices of the Israelites have become meaningless because they were also allowing great evil in their midst. Ignoring the poor and the oppressed. Even the Israelite kings were distorting justice. But Isaiah looked forward to the day when a new king in the line of David would come and deal with evil, but in a surprising way. The king would become a servant. And not just serve, but also suffer and die for the evil committed by his own people. And his life would be offered as a sacrifice.
This is the promise Jesus believed He was fulfilling. He's the king of Israel suffering and dying on a cross. In fact, Jesus Himself used Isaiah's words when He said He came to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. And that word "ransom" refers to a sacrifice of atonement. And so all over the New Testament we hear about how Jesus' death was an atoning sacrifice for us. It covered the debt that humans owe God for contributing to all of the evil and death in His world. But the New Testament authors also talk about Jesus' death providing purification. And so we hear about Jesus' blood as a symbol of His life, having the ability to wash away the vandalism that evil has caused in us and around us so we can now live at peace with God. So that's the meaning behind Jesus' death.
But there's more to the story. The New Testament makes this powerful claim that Jesus' death was not final. He rose from the dead. And so He's the sacrifice who broke the power of death and evil, which means He lives on to offer His life to anyone who will accept it. He is the perfect sacrifice for which all the previous sacrifices were pointing to all along. So because of Jesus, the early Christians stopped participating in the ritual animal sacrifice. They were given new rituals. There were two Jesus' taught His followers to perform.
The first ritual is called baptism. Just as Jesus died, so going into the water becomes this personal connection you now have to His death. And in coming out of the water, you, so to speak, come back to life with Jesus. The baptism is this sacred ritual that joins your story with Jesus' death and resurrection.
The second ritual is called the Lord's Supper, which is a reenactment of Jesus' last meal with His disciples. He used bread and wine as a symbol of His coming death and sacrifice. And so now followers of Jesus take the bread and the cup regularly to remember and to participate in the power of Jesus' death and in His life.
So these rituals remind us of God's love and encourage us to live a life of love and grace. But they do more than that. They connect us to a new life source. The very power that brought Jesus back from the dead is the same power that can deal with the evil in our own lives and transform us into people who lead lives of love and peace.
Next post: The Story of God | The Law
– Sully
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