A Question for Christians concerning Blood Sacrifice

[jdrbts]

Perhaps the single fact of the life of Jesus of Nazareth with which I am most uncomfortable is his characterizing his death as a "ransom" (Matthew 20:28: "...[I came]...to give [My] life a ransom for many" [New American Standard Bible]). I can not escape discomfort with the idea of a blood sacrifice. I understand the concept of substitutionary atonement - of His propitiation for our sins - but, first, I can not help thinking of primitive persons, as the Aztecs, and their horrible sacrifices to appease an angry god (although in their case, of course, the sacrifice was an unwilling mortal dying for the benefit of the Aztec priest and the sun god only, whereas Jesus was presumably an immortal willingly giving himself for all persons); and, second, I wish that Jesus, before his death, instead had said to his apostles something like, "I am going to allow myself to be put to death now, as a demonstration of turning the other cheek to the point of death, of forgiveness, and of the kind of love for others that I, your Creator, have, and of which you are capable." I suppose that one could view his death as constituting such a statement, even though he did not use these words.

My question for churchgoing Christians is, "How can you feel comfortable with the idea of blood sacrifice?" In other words, I value the values of Jesus - as forgiveness, loving other persons as one loves oneself, and loving God with all the being of one - but I can not escape discomfort with the idea of blood sacrifice. His values are good news, and his rescuing us from death is good news, but I guess sacrifice is inescapably an unhappy topic, isn't it? Maybe pain - physical and/or psychological - is an inevitable price to pay for wronging a divine being, and Jesus knew that.

[Lion]

It certainly is a mystery, isn’t it? Why should a loving god demand blood for sin? It all goes back to the idea of demanding death for disobedience. To answer your question we have to approach the answer rather obliquely. Blood is the life of every animal. Adam and Eve had disobeyed a direct comand of God and they had to die. To show their belief in the promise of God that one of Eve’s descendants would be the promised redeemer they had to kill an innocent lamb and offer it for a burnt offering. It was symbol of the fate of all sinners, to be destroyed at the last day.

We read of the origin of sin in Rev 12:7-12. Sin originated in heaven itself, with the most beautiful angel, Lucifer.

Is. 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
Is. 14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
Is. 14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Is. 14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Is. 14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;
Is. 14:17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

You may wonder, if Lucifer was such a rascal, why God didn’t just kill him and be done with it? The answer is that God’s rule is built on love and trust and if God had killed Lucifer, God would be seen as a ryrant, one who rules with an iron hand and will not allow dissent. Not only that, we don’t know how many other worlds exist. So God had to allow the rebellion to work out, to prove that the rebellion would result in death and evil. Surely, by this time in history it has become evident what the result has become. This world has become so full of anger and hate that it has the capability to destroy itself. Eze 28 tells what Satan’s fate will be.

Ezek. 28:11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Ezek. 28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
Ezek. 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Ezek. 28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Ezek. 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
Ezek. 28:16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
Ezek. 28:17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
Ezek. 28:18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.
Ezek. 28:19 All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.

So we have not answered your question directly because we had to explain the origin of evil. Now we can approach the answer. God had to destroy the source of evil. So animal sacrfices were required to symbolize the death of the individual and his faith in the promised redeemer, the sinless lamb of God. But when Christ died on the cross the blood He spilled paid the penalty for sin for all men. Satan and all sinners will be burned in the lake of fire and the universe will be clean of sin. Then God will recreate the earth and the righteous will eat of the tree of life and live forever.

[Champagne]

Lion- your explanation just doesn't cut mustard. You say "So God required blood sacrifice"- but that doesn't answer why he had to require ANYTHING. He's God, after all. The fact that he demanded sacrifice is not because there was something "out there" that required blood sacrifice and so God had to play by the rules. There ARE no rules, other than the ones God set up. And unavoidably, if you believe the Bible, God set up rules that innocent animal life had to be killed in his system of sacrifice. Why would he do that? Why would he require the actual KILLING of innocent life? He could have just required grain offerings, or fervent prayers and repentance, or any number of things, but no, he required the blood of an innocent. It boggles the mind. It also seems odd that all the other ancient gods also required blood sacrifice. Could this be b/c the people of that day and age felt that the only way to appease their gods were to offer innocent life, animal or otherwise? Life was cheap back then in many ways, virtually nobody cared about animals like most Americans do today. The concept of animal rights or even that animals had a right not to suffer did not exist.
As an animal lover myself, I cannot comprehend how God could require the death of one of these precious animals in order to forgive my sins. If that was the case I certainly could not go through with the sacrifice and would rather be condemned.

[Contarini]

Perhaps the single fact of the life of Jesus of Nazareth with which I am most uncomfortable is his characterizing his death as a "ransom" (Matthew 20:28: "...[I came]...to give [My] life a ransom for many" [New American Standard Bible]). I can not escape discomfort with the idea of a blood sacrifice. I understand the concept of substitutionary atonement - of His propitiation for our sins

But that's not necessarily synonymous with ransom. The early Christians believed that the ransom was paid to Satan. This seems odd, and is obviously somewhat metaphorical, but it has some Biblical support. Think of the way Satan is portrayed as in the OT as a kind of particularly nasty DA--this gets picked up in the NT by phrases like "the accuser of the brethren." Even in Calvin (who had gotten far away from the patristic conception in many ways), Satan is the minister of God's wrath. So I would distinguish sharply between the sacrifice and the ransom. The sacrifice was one of obedience and love offered to God. The ransom was the penalty for our sins, paid to the only being with an interest in collecting such a grisly fee, namely Satan. By rebelling against God, we came under Satan's power according to God's just decree. But God, rather than taking us from Satan by force (which would violate his own law), paid the ultimate price to buy us back.

- but, first, I can not help thinking of primitive persons, as the Aztecs,

Primitive? The Aztecs? We must have different definitions of primitive. Primitive societies wouldn't be able to afford blood sacrifice on that scale. The Aztecs had a very sophisticated urban civilization. I don't think this is irrelevant, because your use of the word "primitive" implies that this is something humanity has outgrown.

and their horrible sacrifices to appease an angry god (although in their case, of course, the sacrifice was an unwilling mortal dying for the benefit of the Aztec priest and the sun god only,

My understanding is that the sacrifices were for the benefit of the whole universe. Initially the Aztec gods had to sacrifice themselves in order to keep the universe going, till humans took up the job. Blood was essentially the fuel of the cosmos for the Aztecs.

Maybe pain - physical and/or psychological - is an inevitable price to pay for wronging a divine being, and Jesus knew that.

That's one way of putting it. Have you read C. S. Lewis's _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_? I think the "Deep Magic" as described in that book is the best statement of the patristic view I know. It isn't so much that we wronged God, as that God's justice hands us over to the power of the being with whom we have implicitly sided. If we love death, then death will have power over us. There is no conflict or even distinction between the judicial aspect (we are punished by God's justice), the mythological/cosmic aspect (we come under the power of Satan), and the internal, moral aspect (by turning away from God, we become slaves to everything within us that hates and destroys life). Jesus' sacrifice works on all these levels.

In Christ,

Edwin