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We do NOT serve a bloodthirsty God

By Jeremy Myers
12 Comments

We do NOT serve a bloodthirsty God

My new book on the atonement is almost out! One week to go…

I have about 30 people reading through portions of my book on the atonement right now. So far, the feedback has been encouraging. Nobody has the whole book (except my wife) and everybody who has read portions of it says they cannot wait to read the rest.

The atonement of God

Though there appears to be blood all over the cover, the message of the book is that God does not demand or want blood, and Jesus did not die to appease a bloodthirsty God. In fact, the cross of Jesus reveals that God has never required blood to offer forgiveness of sins.

If you are curious how God can forgive sins and rescue us from death without demanding the bloody death of Jesus, you will want to read this book.

I have been reading, teaching, and writing A LOT these past several years on the violence of God in the Bible, and this book also provides the beginning place for understanding these violent, bloody texts in Scripture.

If you want to read a brief excerpt, Brad Jersak posted a bit of it on The Clarion Journal, his online theology blog. Click that link to go read it.

The book officially is released on March 21, so stay tuned for more information as we get closer!

God is Redeeming Books, Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: atonement, blood, Books I'm Writing, death of Jesus, violence of God

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This is my BEST book yet!

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

This is my BEST book yet!

I have sent my next book to the printers… The book is called The Atonement of God, and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

And I am SO excited, because I believe this is my best book yet.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that I have been struggling with the violence of God in the Bible. About 5 years ago, I thought I had a solution to this problem, and started writing a book to present it. I wrote 200,000 words before giving up.

The Atonement of God But in the process, I developed a different solution. I am not quite ready to publish a book on THAT solution, but this book which is now available for pre-order from Amazon contains a large part of the solution. This book forms the foundation for that future book.

If you sort of read between the lines of the book, my solution to the problem of the violence of God in the Bible is in this book, but it is not really stated explicitly.

Instead, this book really just presents Jesus as the solution to it all, and shows how a proper understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus helps sort out a lot of other areas of theology as well.

The book ships on March 21, so order your copy today!

God is Redeeming Books, Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: atonement, Books by Jeremy Myers, crucifixion, death of Jesus, The Atonement of God

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Was the death of Jesus a good thing or a bad thing?

By Jeremy Myers
31 Comments

Was the death of Jesus a good thing or a bad thing?

Most Christians believe that the death of Jesus on the cross was a good thing. That it was a good event. That it was where our sins were taken care of and salvation was accomplished for our sakes.

But we Christians only say this because we have been blinded to the truth. We have become so familiar with the story that we do not see the crucifixion of Jesus for the evil thing it really was.

death of Jesus

The Crucifixion of Jesus was Evil

Forget for a moment that it was Jesus who died on the cross. Let’s just say it was some random guy named Josh.

Josh was a great guy with some good friends. He never harmed anyone, but went about helping others in any way he could. He became somewhat popular among the crowds as a result, and certain religious leaders became nervous about some of the things he was saying, so they got the local government to arrest Josh. One of Josh’s friends even sold him out for money. Others, who didn’t even know Josh, brought false charges against him. He was eventually condemned to death as a traitor. But before the government killed Josh, they tortured him in front of a blood-thirsty mob.

Now…

What is good about Josh being betrayed by his best friends?

What is good about false accusations being raised by religious leaders against a man whom they see as a threat to their power?

What is good about corrupt politicians bowing to the whim of a violent mob?

What is good about soldiers “just doing their job” as they whip and beat a man within an inch of his life before gambling over his clothes?

What is good about sending an innocent man named Josh to a torturous death on a cross?

If anything remotely like this were to happen in our society today, there would be international shock and outrage. It is a terrible, evil thing.

But when we see this happening to a man named Jesus in our Bible, and because we know that Jesus is God, we Christians don’t even bat an eye at it. Instead, we sing songs and listen to sermons about it with smiles on our faces.

Worst of all, we thank God for doing it.

Many strands of Christianity believe that it was God’s plan to send His one and only Son to this earth to die a gruesome death as an innocent victim, and that it was not only God’s plan to do so, but that He orchestrated events to make it happen.

crucfixion of JesusThis sort of makes God like Freddy Krueger, except that He carves up His own Son.

God is not Freddy Krueger

It is past time to change this view of the crucifixion.

The crucifixion of Jesus was not a good event. It was an evil event.

And we will never, ever see the real truth of the crucifixion until we first recognize that it was not a good thing.

The crucifixion of Jesus was evil. It was horribly wrong.

And considering that Jesus was truly innocent, and was also God incarnate, the crucifixion is, without a doubt, by far the most evil event ever carried out in the history of all humanity.

God Has Redeemed the Crucifixion of Jesus

I know that you are probably shocked by what I have written so far in this post. You are so accustomed to hearing about the wonderful cross, the glorious cross, and how thankful we should be to God for sending His Son to die for our sins, that it is an affront to your theology to hear someone say that the crucifixion was evil.

But the only reason we say good things about the cross today is because God has redeemed the cross.

Through the resurrection of Jesus, God took something bad, and turned it around for good.

Jesus crucifiedGod has redeemed the crucifixion so that we now sing songs about it and listen to sermons about the horrible death of an innocent victim with smiles on our faces. But this doesn’t make the crucifixion “good.” It only reveals God’s ability to redeem anything and everything.

In a recent podcast on Genesis 1:4 I talk briefly about how God redeems the darkness. The crucifixion is the perfect example of this. God takes the most evil event in human history, and He redeems it in such a way so that most people today do not even think of it as evil, but as the most holy and righteous event in human history.

Isn’t that shocking?

This is the beginning place of theology. This is the starting block.

Our Theology Must Begin and End at the Cross

To understand God, Scripture, ourselves, other people, human history, and everything else, we must begin at the cross, and we must see it as evil.

But then, we must see what God does with the cross in Jesus Christ, and how God reveals Himself to us in the crucifixion of Jesus, and more importantly, how God reveals us to ourselves in the crucifixion of Jesus.

There is so much I want to say about this, and so much I will say in future blog posts, books, and podcasts, but for now I just want to invite you to begin seeing the cross of Jesus as something bad that happened, rather than something good. It is only here that you will begin to understand the true nature, meaning, and significance of the cross, not just for our understanding of God, but also for our understanding of Scripture, and most importantly, our understanding of ourselves.

Note: If you want to read more about this idea of the cross being a bad thing that has been redeemed by God for the good, I highly recommend Saved from Sacrifice by S. Mark Heim. This book is easily one of the best books I have read in the last decade.

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: cross, crucifixion of Jesus, crucivision, death of Jesus

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I See Dead People

By Jeremy Myers
79 Comments

I See Dead People

There is a fourteenth-century poem by Guillaume de Machaut that tells about how the Black Death ravaged a northern French city (I could not find an English translation of this poem online, but I read about the poem in an excellent book I’m reading, Saved from Sacrifice by Mark Heim.)

Curiously, the poem seems to blame the Jews in the city for the Black Death. It condemns Jews in the city for killing large numbers of its citizens by poisoning the rivers, and it also enumerates various grotesque practices by the Jews.

But then the poem goes on to state about how the citizens of the city rose up and carried out a massacre of the Jews, and how this massacre was clearly God’s will because it was accompanied by heavenly signs. Furthermore, after the massacre concluded, the plague left the city, which was seen as proof to the citizens that the Jews were the ones guilty for bringing the plague upon them in the first place.

It’s a tragic poem, but I hope you can read between the lines and see that the events it describes are not historically accurate.

We all understand what really happened.

black death

Reading Between the Lines

Most likely, the Black Plague really did ravage the town, much as it ravaged many towns at that time. But as usually happens in such situations, people started looking for someone to blame, and in this town, because the Jewish people were seen as “outsiders under the curse of God,” they became the scapegoats.

But they could not just be killed. They first had to be demonized.

So the villagers came up with stories about how the Jews poisoned the river and engaged in various grotesque and illicit practices.

Once the Jews were properly demonized, they could be “righteously” killed.

After the Jews were killed, any sort of natural occurrence was viewed as a sign from heaven that God approved of the massacre. Maybe the day of the massacre began with dark clouds and fog, but as the massacre commenced, the sun shone through the clouds. Maybe that night a star fell from the sky. Maybe an eagle landed on the house of the town mayor. But whatever the events were, they were interpreted as heavenly signs.

Later, of course, the plague went away, and this also was interpreted as a sign that the Jews were to blame. We, of course, look back and recognize that the Black Plague had simply ran its course, as it did everywhere else.

I am not sure of the exact historical events, but it doesn’t really matter. We are able to read the poem by Guillaume de Machaut and see through the events to what actually occurred: “Frightened citizens persecuted a religious minority, projecting blame for the plague on them and seeking by violence to stop the dissolution of their community” (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 55).

You do not need to have been there to have this historical insight into the true story behind this tragic poem.

Stereotypes of Scapegoating

In his book, Saved from Sacrifice, Heim explains our “insight” into what “really happened” this way:

We don’t take this story at face value. We see through it precisely when it takes up certain anti-Semitic themes. The moment the Jews are mentioned in connection with the plague, the moment they are accused of poisoning the water supply, of bearing physical deformities, of practicing sexual perversions, bells go off.

These are stereotypes, trotted out again and again as preludes to pogroms.

They are characteristic “marks of the victim” brought forward as justification for the violence. We do not credit them as reports of fact. We have learned to read such a text quite against the grain of the writer who composed it, for whom these matters were as real as the death of the neighbors on the one hand and celestial omens on the other. We practice a hermeneutic of suspicion against persecution (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 55).

Yes, that is true. We do. When it comes to these sorts of texts in history and literature, we are fairly adept at “seeing through” the account to what fears and scapegoating mechanisms lie behind the text.

And it is right that we should do so, because this is what Jesus revealed through His death on the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross “rescues us from sin” in that it reveals to us the scapegoating, blame-game mechanism behind most of our sin and violence. We saw it happen to Jesus, and so we are able to see it happen to other people.

Nazi Germany killing Jews

We recognize this scapegoating mechanism at work when we read about a town in the middle ages killing Jews because they are accused of causing the black plague. We recognize this scapegoat mechanism when we read about the Nazis in Germany blaming the Jews for the financial problems and cultural upheaval in that country. We recognize the scapegoating mechanism when people burn women for being “witches.” We recognize the scapegoat mechanism when we read about governments justifying genocide against the native people living in the land.

In all these cases, we practice this “hermeneutic of suspicion against persecution” that Heim talks about in his book. And because of the revelation of Jesus Christ on the cross, we have become quite good at recognizing this scapegoat mechanism when we read about it in historical documents.

… Except in one place.

Reading the Bible with Scapegoating in Mind

Have you ever noticed that ALL of the characteristic “marks of the victim” are brought forward over and over again in the Old Testament as justification for the violence carried out against the enemies of Israel?

The stereotypes are trotted out as preludes to pogroms, but rather than “see through the text” at what is really going on, we nod our head in astonishing agreement with the text.

Like a pre-programmed robot, we say, “Yes … the Canaanites were very evil. Yes, they practiced horrible things. Grotesque things. They worshipped demons and were demonic themselves. Yes, they needed to die to cleanse the land and protect the people of Israel. Yes, God wanted them all to die. Yes, God even sent signs and miracles to Israel when they slaughtered the Canaanites showing that such actions were righteous and divinely ordained.”

Why can we see “through” the blatant lies and false accusations and scapegoating violence when we read such historical accounts, but not when we read the Bible?

Has it ever occurred to you that we read the Bible with blinders on?

It has recently occurred to me, and now, when I read the Bible, especially the violent portions in the Old Testament, my eyes tear up. It’s like reading an account of Nazi Germany … from the viewpoint of the Nazis.

Yet we Christians whitewash the entire thing and say that all the killing, and genocide, and slaughter was “justified.” That it was righteous. That God wanted it. Commanded it. Demanded it.

“And look!” we say. “There’s proof! The waters parted! The walls fell down! The sun stood still! There was peace in the land afterward!”

Yes, which is exactly what every group always says whenever they carry out scapegoating genocide. Those who carry out genocidal violence “believe they are (a) revenging an appalling offense against their entire community [and God as well], (b) expelling the contaminating evil from their midst, and (c) obeying a divine mandate” (Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 51-52).

Note that this is also what happened when Jesus was killed. His accusers raised a large number of baseless and patently false accusations against Him, then felt that it was necessary to expel His evil from their midst, and they did all this in obedience to the command of God (so they claimed).

Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat … to reveal that we all scapegoat!

When we read the account of the crucifixion of Jesus, we see right through the murderous, scapegoating violence. We see that Jesus was not guilty for that which He was condemned and killed.

I See Dead People

And now we are back to my question: Why can we see “through” the blatant lies and false accusations and scapegoating violence when we read the account of the crucifixion, but not when we read the rest of the Bible?

Again, I think we are reading the Bible with blinders on.

We read and preach and teach these horrible texts without a bat of an eye or a sign of a tear. We talk about what these texts “mean” and “how to apply them to our lives” and what they “reveal about God.”

But we don’t think about what they are really, truly saying.

We don’t see what they really, truly reveal. The victims disappear, and we become guilty of the same crime as those who crucified Jesus. We say they had it coming. We say it was necessary to cleanse the land. We say that God decreed it. We say that God blessed it.

And we ignore the piles of bloody bodies rotting in the hot desert sun.

i see dead people

I am convinced that we will never, ever see the Bible for what it really is until we are able to read it and say, “I see dead people.”

The Bible was not written primarily to reveal God to us, but was written to reveal the same thing that Jesus revealed on the cross, which is that we scapegoat people in the name of God. And until we see this, we will never read the Old Testament correctly, nor will we ever understand God properly.

You will never understand the Old Testament until you see the victims.

The piles of bloody victims.

The masses of people unjustly murdered.

You will never understand the Old Testament until you see the genocide.

And don’t try to sidetrack this with discussions about inerrancy or inspiration or any of the other fancy theological words we use to divert our attention away from the bodies of bloody men, women, and children strewn all over the pages of our Holy Bible.

genocideThis is not about the sanctity of God’s Word, but about the sanctity of God’s people … namely, ALL people.

Once you are able to see this about the Bible, there will be no going back. Not just with how you read the Bible, but also with how you view life.

Once you begin to see dead people in the Bible, your eyes are opened and you begin to see dead people today. You will begin to see that the people we blame for the ills of society and the problems of culture and the war “over there” and the problems in our town, might not be the ones at fault after all…

Maybe, just maybe, those people over there are not to blame. Replace “those people over there” with whatever group you want … the communists, the Muslims, the liberals, the Tea partiers, the gays, the illegal immigrants.

Maybe the fault is not with them … but with us.

This is the perspective that comes from holding the mirror of Scripture before our face and taking a good, long look at how the Israelites scapegoated the Canaanites and how both the Jews and the Romans scapegoated Jesus, and how we ourselves scapegoat other people today.

Thankfully, there are countless Christians around the world who are starting to take the blinders off. They are reading the Bible with renewed eyes and are seeing that the violence of the Old Testament text is actually this genocidal, murderous, scapegoating violence.

And look … I firmly believe in inspiration and inerrancy. I truly do. I just think that the divinely inspired text inerrantly reveals something that few Christians want to see. The Bible reveals the dead people. It is a revelation of death and violence, and where death and violence come from.

The answer? They come from us. Not from God. From us.

But we don’t want to see this. We don’t want to admit it. So we put our blinders on and go back to nodding our heads along with texts that talk about the divinely-sanctioned slaughter of thousands of victims. We participate in the scapegoating, and we put to death the Son of Man all over again.

Until you see dead people, you are no better than those who cried out at the trial of Jesus, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

Until you see dead people, you will be the one who puts people to death.

God is Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: crucifixion, cruciform, crucivision, death of Jesus, scapegoat, violence of God, violence of Scripture

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Did the Death of Jesus Appease an Angry God?

By Jeremy Myers
61 Comments

Did the Death of Jesus Appease an Angry God?

In many Christian circles, when people think about why Jesus died on the cross, the following is the basic logic that many believe:

God is infinitely holy and righteous. As such, any sin against God is an infinite offense. Therefore, an infinite sacrifice is required to cover an infinite offense. Because humans are sinners, we deserve eternal punishment for our eternal offense. But God wanted to show mercy to us, and so He sent Jesus to die in our place. Since Jesus is God, the death of Jesus is an infinite sacrifice, which is therefore sufficient to cover the infinite offense of sin.

Though different authors, pastors, and teachers will explain the death of Jesus in different ways, this is the basic outline many will use. I used to teach and write about the death of Jesus in this same way, and in fact, many of the posts and sermons which you can find on this blog will contain this exact sort of theological explanation about the death of Jesus.

death of Jesus on the cross

But let us look a little deeper at what this sort of explanation says about God, sin, righteousness, and the death of Jesus.

The logic of the argument above basically teaches that God gets so worked up over sin, He wants to burn forever and ever those who commit any sin. And since James 2:10 says that even one sin makes us guilty, it doesn’t even matter if we only commit “small” sins. Sin is sin, and even “small” sins deserve eternal hell fire. So if you get mad at your neighbor when his dog digs through your trash, or if you are not completely honest with your boss about why you were ten minutes late for work, God’s justice demands that you get punished the same as if you were serial rapist and mass murderer.

Though this seems unjust, people explain that it only seems unjust because we are sinful human beings and think that some sins are not as bad as others. We are told that since God is infinitely holy and righteous, all sins, no matter how small, are an infinite offense to His holiness. So even getting angry at our neighbor’s dog or lying about why we were 10 minutes late for work is an infinite affront to the righteousness of God, and therefore, deserving of infinite punishment.

But … things don’t seem so cut and dry when we rephrase the question a bit …

Look what happens when we turn the question around:

So it is wrong for me to get angry at my neighbor when his dog digs through my trash, but it is perfectly righteous for God to be eternally angry at me for getting angry at my neighbor? And while I vent my anger by muttering under my breath while I pick up the garbage in my lawn, God gets over His anger … never … while I burn for all eternity in hell?

When the question is presented this way, this sort of god just doesn’t seem very godly. Or at least … this sort of god doesn’t look at all like Jesus.

The typical response, of course, is that this why God sent Jesus. God didn’t actually want humanity to burn forever for muttering under our breath at our neighbor, but His justice demanded that He behave like this. God was sort of captive to His own righteous justice.

But since He loves us so much, He sent His Son Jesus to suffer and die in our place, so that all that “righteous” rage can get poured out on Jesus instead of on us.

Again, this is exactly what I used to believe and teach.

But in recent years, I have begun to have doubts that this is exactly what happened (Get my series of posts on the death and resurrection of Jesus to learn more.)

Problems with the Traditional Explanation of the Death of Jesus

Does it make sense to think that Jesus came to rescue us from God? Does it make sense to think that God sent Jesus to rescue us from Himself? Or at least, from some aspect of Himself?

IF so, God now appears rather schizophrenic. Does God want to kill us for all eternity or love us for all eternity? The theological explanation above makes it sound as if He wants both.

Furthermore, what good does it do for God to pour out His wrath upon the innocent victim, Jesus?

Let us say that after I get angry at my neighbor for letting his dog spread garbage all over my lawn, I go down the street and set a different neighbor’s house on fire. Does my act of arson do anything to relieve my anger at the first neighbor or his dog? No! Setting an innocent third party’s house on fire does not alleviate my wrath toward the guilty party at all. This would still be true if the innocent neighbor noticed my anger at my neighbor’s dog, and said, “Don’t be angry at him; instead, come burn my house down.”

I would look at him like he is crazy. How would burning down his house help me at all? Yet this is what we think happened with God’s wrath in the killing of Jesus. Somehow, though God was angry at us, His anger was appeased by letting us kill His Son? I just don’t see how that would help the situation.

But there are other problems beyond this.

God’s love and grace for us is supposedly unconditional. But if He couldn’t actually show us love and grace unless Jesus first came to die on the cross in our place, then isn’t that a condition on His love and grace? It seems that if Jesus had not come to die, then according to this traditional understanding of the death of Jesus, God could not have shown His “unconditional” love and grace for us.

jesus died in the crossFurthermore, people say that God had to pour out His wrath against sin upon somebody (either us or Jesus) in order to satisfy his justice. Yet then we say that God did this out of His mercy.

But this is logically impossible.

By definition, mercy and justice are mutually exclusive. If a man robs a bank and then goes to prison for 20 years, this might be considered justice. But what if, after the crook spends 20 years in prison, the judge meets him at the prison gates and says, “Aren’t I merciful to let you out of prison today?” The recently-freed man would say, “You’re not merciful. I just spent 20 years in jail. Mercy would have been setting me free 20 years ago.” You see? If justice is satisfied, there is no need for mercy. And if one chooses to show mercy, then by definition, they cannot also demand justice. Yet if God poured out His wrath upon Jesus to satisfy His justice, then God is a just God, but He is not merciful. On the other hand, if God decides to show mercy to humankind, then, by definition, He cannot demand justice, even justice upon Jesus.

I could go on and on about this, but here’s the point: There are numerous flaws with the idea that the death of Jesus paid the penalty for our sins or satisfied the wrath of God.

Logically and theologically, it just doesn’t work.

But there is a bigger problem still …

Jesus: The Pagan Sacrifice to God

A short while back I wrote a post about a few things Christians can learn from Pagans. A guy on Facebook blew up about this, leaving comment after comment after comment about how ridiculous it was to suggest such a thing. He argued that Paganism has infiltrated Christianity in numerous ways, and we must root out and destroy all such pagan influences, traditions, and customs.

I know where he is coming from, but I just think that (1) his position is logically, theologically, and realistically impossible, and (2) the most pagan things about Christianity are found at the core beliefs and behaviors of many Christians — especially those who are on the war-path against pagan influences.

In my experience, for example, those who are most concerned with getting rid of all pagan influences in Christianity, are also those who tend to be the most judgmental and critical toward those Christians who still incorporate some of those pagan traditions and customs. But which is more pagan: putting tinsel on a Christmas tree or judging and condemning the people who do?

What does all this have to do with the death of Jesus?

At the core of much of Christian theology is the pagan idea that God requires blood sacrifice to forgive sins. The vast majority of Christians believe that God hates sin so much that He is filled with wrath toward sin.

He hates sin so much, we are told, that He cannot even be in sin’s presence.

But, we are told, God’s wrath toward sin can be appeased with blood. God needs someone to pay for the eternal offense of sin against Him and His holiness. Thankfully, as the theory goes, just when God was demanding that all of us wretched sinners open our veins for God to appease His wrath toward us, Jesus stepped up and said, “I’ll take the bullet. I’ll die for them all.”

So Jesus came to earth, died as a sacrifice for our sins, poured out His blood upon God’s heavenly altar, and in so doing, appeased the wrath of God.

When God looks at us now, He doesn’t see sin; He sees Jesus. Therefore, instead of wanting to incinerate us, God can now love us.

Again, this is the basic sort of theology we hear in most churches about the death of Jesus and why He had to come and suffer and die.

But do you know where this entire theology comes from? Not from Scripture, but from Paganism!

Almost every religion in the world has the idea that the gods are mad at us for our sin, and we must do things to appease their wrath. We must sacrifice our goats, and make vows to visit holy places, and commit to treating people with more love (or commit to killing certain “enemies” of the gods).

When our sin is really serious, the gods want blood, whether it is our own blood, or the blood from someone in our family. As a last resort, the gods may accept the blood of a valuable animal.

And yes, I know that the most popular way of reading the Old Testament sees support for this idea in the Mosaic Law. When most people read the laws that are recorded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they see an angry god who wants blood.

But this sacrificial way of reading the Bible is influenced heavily by paganism, and is not at all what Scripture teaches.

the death of Jesus was not for godWhen the Pentateuch is understood in its entirety, it appears that the message of the Pentateuch is that God was never angry at people and never wanted sacrifices and offerings, but wanted instead a people for Himself who lived by faith in God and with justice and mercy before a watching world. See Sailhamer’s magnum opus for more on this.

Furthermore, when the Israelite prophets come on the scene, nearly all of them decry and condemn the sacrificial system as not at all reflecting what was in God’s heart. Jeremiah says that God never commanded his people to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings (Jeremiah 7:22-23). Amos says that God hated their religious festivals and burnt offerings (Amos 5:21-24). Micah points out that God doesn’t need thousands of rams and rivers of oil, and definitely not a family’s firstborn son. Instead, God wants justice, kindness, and humility (Micah 6:6-8). God is not delighted with sacrifices and offerings, says the Psalmist, but with a broken and contrite spirit (Psalm 51:16-17).

So it is no surprise, when Jesus comes on the scene, that He tells people through His words and His actions that God is not angry with His people, that He does not want more sacrifices and offerings, that He loves, accepts, and freely forgives all people, no matter what.

While Jesus did proclaim freedom from sin, He did not do so on the basis of the sacrificial system (or even His own sacrifice), but simply on the basis of God’s limitless love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

God forgives, simply because He is a loving and forgiving God. End of story. No sacrifices, offerings, blood, or death are required.

the death of Jesus was not for god

So Why Then Did Jesus Die?

When Jesus went to the cross, He did not die for God.

There are numerous reasons Jesus died. One was to put death to death. Another was to defeat sin and the devil (cf. Heb 2:14-18; Rom 6:4-13; 1 Cor 15:22, 45). But one reason I want to focus on here is that Jesus wanted to expose the lie of the scapegoat: the religious lie that an innocent victim must die for sin.

To put it bluntly, Jesus died to expose religion as a big, fat, satanic lie.

In His death, Jesus put to death the religious requirement of death. In His death, Jesus exposed the emptiness of the sacrificial system for what it was: a form of satanic enslavement by which humans think they are appeasing God for that which He had already forgiven them for.

Religion says: God is angry with you, but will forgive you if you do great things for Him and offer valuable things to Him. By going to the cross under the condemnation of religion, and then being raised again to new life, Jesus exposed the powerful and satanic lie of religion.

Through His death and resurrection, Jesus announced loud and clear that God is not angry at sin, and that just as sin, death, and the devil have no hold on God, they have no hold on us either.

God is not angry at sin. If He’s angry at anything, He is angry at enslavement. God wants us to live free.

And while sin does enslave, the greatest slaver of all is religion.

As such, God wants to free us from religion more than He wants to free us from sin. This is what Jesus proclaimed through His life, death, and resurrection.

The Resurrection of Religion

Sadly, within a few short years of Jesus’ ascension, Christians returned once again the sacrificial mentality of religion. They took the satanic desire to appease God through sacrifice and applied it to Jesus Christ, saying that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice which appeased God once and for all. And ever since this shift was made under Augustine and Anselm, Christianity has been little more than another world religion which seeks to appease God through good behavior and personal sacrifice.

So if people truly want to rid themselves of all things pagan, they need to start not with their holidays and traditions, but with their theology.

Most specifically, we need to rid ourselves of this idea that God is angry at us for our sin and needs to be appeased through blood and sacrifice. This has never been true of God and is not true today.

The sacrificial reading of Scripture is a pagan reading of Scripture, which does not represent the heart of God, but represents a pagan view of God in which God is angry and must be appeased through sacrifice and human merit.

In contrast to this, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is not angry, but loves freely and forgives freely. No ifs, ands, or buts. The death of Jesus did not secure for us the forgiveness of God. God already forgave us freely by His grace.

Now, some of you might be thinking about Hebrews 9:22. But this post is already WAY too long, and an examination of Hebrews 9:22 deservers a post of its own.

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

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God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: atonement, christus victor, crucifixion, cruciform, crucivision, death of Jesus, substitutionary atonement, Theology of God, Theology of Jesus, Theology of Sin

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