How Did Jesus Die for Our Sins?

018

Good Friday recalls a brutal fact of history: Jesus’ execution under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.¹ Yet this act of imperial brutality is seen by Christians to have had beneficial or “salvific” religious significance. It was “for us and our salvation,”² and hence this day of darkness is also called “good.”

The most familiar Christian way of talking about Good Friday’s significance uses sacrificial imagery: “Jesus died for our sins.” In its fully developed form, which took over a thousand years to emerge, Jesus’ death is not only seen as a sacrifice but as necessary: Without it, forgiveness by God would be impossible.³ “Jesus died for our sins” is thus seen by many to be the crystallization of Jesus’ role in God’s plan of salvation, the central meaning of Good Friday, and the core of the Christian message.

But how is the phrase to be understood? There are three broad possibilities. Is it, first, to be understood as a statement about what Jesus himself intended—that he saw his death (and the ultimate purpose of his life) as “dying for the sins of the world”? Or, second, however Jesus saw it, is his death to be understood as a divinely required sacrifice, made necessary by human sin? Or, third, is it to be understood neither as Jesus’ own view of his death nor as a divine necessity, but rather as the post-Easter voice of the early Christian movement, which used sacrificial imagery as one way of interpreting the meaning of the cross?

The majority of mainline gospel scholars would, I think, deny the first and second understandings and affirm the third. For a number of reasons, it is unlikely that Jesus saw his own purpose as offering up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. Most of the verses employing sacrificial imagery in speaking of Jesus’ death are not in the Gospels but in the rest of the New Testament, and are thus not attributed to Jesus himself, but are the community’s post-Easter interpretation of his death. The relatively few verses attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels that speak of his death as a sacrifice are most likely post-Easter products of the Christian movement. Some scholars also think it psychologically implausible to attribute to Jesus such a self-understanding. To think that one’s purpose is to die for the sins of the world is an odd belief to hold about oneself; and it doesn’t square very well with what else we can glimpse of Jesus.⁴

Most likely, then, the statement is not “true” as a historical claim about Jesus’ own intention. But it can be true in another, important sense. In the image-filled language of the early Christian movement, sacrifice became a metaphor used in speaking about the significance of Jesus’ death.

The use of a sacrificial metaphor to interpret Jesus’ death was due in part to its timing and location. He died during the season of Passover, when the Passover lambs were slain; and he died in Jerusalem, the location of the Temple, which was the center of his own tradition’s sacrificial system.⁵

Moreover, the Temple was the “home” of the image of sacrifice. There priests offered sacrifices for various purposes, including the removal of impurity and atonement for sins, thereby restoring access to God. Temple and sacrifice thus mediated access to God.

Within this frame of reference, what does the use of a sacrificial metaphor to interpret Jesus’ death suggest? In a first-century context, to say “Jesus died for our sins” is a radical negation of the Temple system. To say his death was the sacrifice for sin subverted the role of the Temple: Its sacrifices were no longer the only way of dealing with impurity and sin. The Temple’s claim to an institutional monopoly on access to God was negated.

To say that Jesus is the “once and for all” sacrifice meant that impurity and sin as obstacles in the relationship to God were taken care of. It meant that people were accepted by God regardless of their status as pure or impure, righteous or sinful. Seen within the framework of priestly sacrifice, Jesus’ death becomes a powerful metaphor affirming that God has taken care of sin and guilt, accepting us just as we are. It affirms immediacy of access to God.⁶

How is “Jesus died for our sins” to be understood? Literally, as a statement of how Jesus understood his own life and mission? Almost certainly not. Literally, as a divine requirement which had to be fulfilled and which Jesus accomplished? Again, it seems to me that the answer is no. As a powerful metaphor expressing the early community’s sense of immediacy of access to God? Yes.

When Jesus’ death as a sacrifice is literalized, it strikes me as incredible. But as a metaphor, it can be true (and as a Christian, I would say “is true”). Is it true that we have immediacy of access to God, apart from any institutional monopoly? Is it true that I am accepted by God “just as I am,” as the gospel hymn puts it? A “yes” answer to these questions is the truth of the metaphor “Jesus died for our sins.”

Good Friday recalls a brutal fact of history: Jesus’ execution under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.1 Yet this act of imperial brutality is seen by Christians to have had beneficial or “salvific” religious significance. It was “for us and our salvation,”2 and hence this day of darkness is also called “good.” The most familiar Christian way of talking about Good Friday’s significance uses sacrificial imagery: “Jesus died for our sins.” In its fully developed form, which took over a thousand years to emerge, Jesus’ death is not only seen as a sacrifice but as necessary: Without it, forgiveness by […]