What is the Bible’s Big Story?

Part 1 - By Ronn Johnson

I recently heard that we see more images or pictures in one day (whether on our phone,
on the TV, on a billboard, etc.) than a pre-Renaissance person would have seen over the
course of their entire lifetime. Apparently our brains have been able to adjust to this
visual onslaught, and we are not necessarily suffering because of it. But this is just
another reminder of how much data we are being hit with (and hit seems to be the right
word) every day, all day. We are victims of too much information.

Now in one sense I like this problem. Better having too much than too little. But it still
counts as a problem, one that is relatively new to my way of life, and I find myself
having to change the way I live because of it. For example, Susan and I now watch the
evening news on fast-forward, pausing only if one of us interrupts with a “Hey, let me
see that.” It is our new normal, turning something that used to be a half an hour into five
minutes. I am not yet sure whether this is a good thing. It just means I have more time
for more information.

For those of us who like to read and study the Bible, we could guess that this
too-much-information condition would poke its nose into our tent as well. Biblical study
is not immune from informational overload. The Bible is more accessible than ever,
especially electronically. I have three Bible search applications just on my phone,
allowing me navigate through almost any kind biblical study I can imagine, even while
waiting in line at the store. So there is no excuse for not knowing Scripture. Or is there?
Is modern accessibility to our Bible, at least the kind of accessibility we are accustomed
to, actually putting us in a position to understand the Bible less than we did before? I
think this question is worth considering over the course of several posts.

I recently spent a week in Phoenix, on business, joined by my wife. This was our first
time in Arizona, so Susan took the rental car sight-seeing each day while I sat in an
office building (yes, it was one of those kinds of business trips). At night, however, the
town was ours to enjoy. We just typed in the address of where we wanted to go, or
where we wanted to eat, and our phone map took over. I never felt lost in a huge and
totally unfamiliar city.

So I “learned” Phoenix that week. Or did I? After returning home, I realized that my
experience of that city was limited to, quite literally, left- and right-hand turns. I never
wondered where I was because that question never came to mind. My map took away
the wonder, and may I say the “story,” of Phoenix. If you were to drop me in the middle
of the city today, I would be lost, guaranteed. I have since decided that someday it
would be fun to go back to Phoenix and get to know it the old fashioned way—with a
map spread across the dashboard, wondering where in the world we are while
simultaneously wondering whether we were ever going to get where we wanted to go.
That dreaded feeling of being lost would be a good thing.

I think it is the same way with the Bible. To know what the Bible is about, to know its
larger story, we need to experience the stories and plotlines and themes snaking through
Scripture much like we need to drive (and even get lost in) the highways which lead into
and around a city. We can’t just jump in and experience a few right-and left-hand turns
and say we know what the Bible is about. We need to draw back, look at our map, and
even get lost.

Evangelicals and the Big Story

So let’s admit the information we receive from the Bible (and its electronic retrieval
systems) doesn’t necessarily help us experience its main plotline, what I will call its Big
Story or leading narrative. This problem has not been lost on religious schools and
publishers, of course. They know we are suffering from biblical information overload.
Even as I wrote that last sentence I received an email advertisement for a free class at
Dallas Seminary entitled “The Story of Scripture” (I will try to finish the class before
completing this blog; if I do, I’ll let you know how it went!). In bookstores, I am
noticing that the word “story” now appears in many titles of books about the Bible.
Probably the best example is Zondervan’s recently published The Story, an abridged
version of the NIV translation. Its subtitle certainly baits the hook for us: “The Bible as
One Continuing Story of God and His People.” Out of curiosity, I opened to the
beginning of The Story the other day to see if its editors would reveal where they were
headed with their project. Here is the first paragraph from the Forward:

“This book tells the grandest, most compelling story of all time: the story of a true God
who loves his children, who established for them a way of salvation and provided a
route to eternity. Each story in these 31 chapters reveals the God of grace—the God who
speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God whose love for his people
culminated in his sacrifice of Jesus, his only Son, to atone for the sin of humanity.”

This Big Story sounds familiar to most of us, I would suspect: God wants us to spend
eternity with him, but he can’t because of our sin. Jesus’ death paid for our sin so that
we can go to heaven. In simplest terms, let’s call this the Sin Paid For story. To bring
the Bible into it, Genesis 3 (the sin) is resolved by Matthew 26 (the paying). Everything
between these bookends counts as extra information, at times related to the main story
but not necessary to it.
“Putting it that way, I would disagree,” said a friend to me in response to that last line.
“The Bible has many stories which culminate in Jesus’ atonement, with these stories
coming both before and after Jesus’ incarnation. So I would say the Bible’s main story,
that of sin and atonement, has many smaller stories leading up to it. I don’t see why
that’s a problem to you.”

I do have a problem with it, and I will lay out why we should all have a problem with
it a bit later. But first I am curious if The Story’s version of the Bible’s grand narrative
could be considered par for the evangelical course. So let’s try another book. The Bible
in Sixteen Verses by Chris Bruno (Crossway, 2015) caught my attention because of its
title (now there’s an idea—just read sixteen verses to get the point of the whole Bible!),
and from the blurbs included on the book’s dustjacket. Many evangelical leaders
apparently loved the book, one even saying it was the most valuable book about the
Bible he had ever read. So now I’m interested. Bruno offers a summary statement of the
sixteen verses he chose to tell the story of the Bible on page 142:

“God created a kingdom, and he is the King, but he made human beings to represent him
in that kingdom. Adam and Eve rejected this call, which led to sin and death. But God
promised to defeat the Serpent through the seed of the woman, who is also the seed of
Abraham. Through Abraham’s family, and specifically Judah’s royal seed, David, the
covenant blessings would come to the world. Because all people were guilty and
deserved death, the sacrifices of the Mosaic law revealed more clearly their need for a
substitute—the suffering servant. Through the servant and the work of the Spirit, God
would establish a new covenant and give lasting life to his people in the new heavens
and new earth. Jesus is the One through whom all of these promises find fulfillment,
first in his sacrificial death as a necessary and just payment for sin and then in his
victorious resurrection and reign as King. This great story will find its culmination when
the redeemed from every tribe, tongue, and nation gather in the new creation to live with
God forever.”

I applaud Bruno’s attentiveness to detail. But I maintain that what he is describing as the
main story of the Bible is the same basic story we encountered earlier, now with other
plots and sub-plots simply included as filler material. Here is the giveaway: notice how
the word “necessary” connects the second-to-last sentence (“as a necessary and just
payment for sin”) to his second sentence (“Adam and Eve rejected this call, which led
to sin and death”). Bruno’s crisis is sin, solved by atonement. Of course other stories
happen and other characters are introduced between these bookends. But we are right
back where we started. The Big Story is the problem of sin and the solution of payment.
It could even be argued that skipping completely over Jesus’ life, all 30 years of it,
would not offend Bruno’s story, provided we include Jesus’ cross. Read Bruno’s
paragraph again and ask yourself if he thinks that Jesus’ ministry—his teachings, his
healings, his exorcisms—have any place in the main story of the Bible. Something is
missing. And I maintain it is the Big Story of the Bible itself.

I close with five concerns, with each being the subject of another post to follow:

Concern #1: Evangelicals are content to describe the Big Story of the Bible without
appealing to what is actually happening in the Bible. We (and I include myself as an
evangelical, so I have been part of the problem) have been so busy making left- and
right-hand turns through the Bible—think of your favorite massive commentary as
Exhibit #1—that we have lost sight of the big picture. The solution is not making more
careful turns, either. That would just be another commentary. The only way out of this
problem is to step back and notice what is linking one story to another in the Bible, even
linking one book to another. I will recommend not thinking of the bookends of the
traditional story (sin and atonement) as the shiny objects that demand our attention, but
instead spend time looking at what is lining up on the shelf between those bookends.
When we do that we will notice that the Bible does not render sin management as its
main narrative. I am convinced a brief tour of the Bible will convince you of this, and
so this will be the subject of my next post.

Concern #2: We have been taught to ask what the Bible means to us instead of asking
what it meant to them. We are doing a good thing when we read the Bible for ourselves.
But no ancient document, not even the Bible, can be understood without first drawing
it through the lens of its original authorship and readership. This is the primary burden
of this Naked Bible website. I believe the main narrative of the Bible is not hiding from
us, but happily standing out in plain view for those who simply listen to the Bible in its
original context. This will be the burden of this coming post. We will identify several
key contextual elements which must be understood in the discernment of the Bible’s Big
Story.

Concern #3: Evangelicalism, especially the modern American version of the movement,
has concentrated on providing answers to the wrong questions. This is where I have
come to appreciate the books of the British scholar N. T. Wright. If you have not read
any of his books, I would recommend starting with Simply Christian and then trying The
Day the Revolution Began. The first book will give you a scent of Wright’s Big Story,
and the second wades into the details. Wright’s genius in my opinion is challenging the
questions that Luther and Calvin tried to answer when reforming the Roman Catholic
Church in the 16th century. He is an evangelical writing to evangelicals. But he thinks
that evangelicals should basically start over when interpreting the Bible’s bigger story.
I will dedicate an entire post to looking at N. T. Wright’s writings. While I do not end
up subscribing to everything he maintains, listening to him challenge long-held views
within the Western Christian tradition is refreshing and will lead us to think for
ourselves, especially when trying to rethink our original questions.

Concern #4: We are still awaiting evangelicals to take other gods seriously. This of
course strikes the nerve of this website. I would recommend reading Mike’s The Unseen
Realm, at least up to chapter 14, to getting a running start for my coming post on this
subject. There would have been nothing more commonsensical to the ancient Bible
writer than the reality of an unseen host of gods ruling over the affairs of men from the
heavens, and for this reason there is no more commonsensical place to start for
understanding the larger story of the Bible.

Concern #5: We should never have described God as a payment-based being. My last
post will challenge the Sin Paid For model of the Big Story, claiming that it not only
fails the Bible, but fails in explaining God’s character. It is a serious thing to damage
God’s character, and I believe a leading culprit in this regard is the idea that God can be
satisfied with payment for sin. I look forward to explaining this further.
What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 2 - By Ronn Johnson

In my opening post I recommended that locating the Big Story of the Bible can be
difficult, and that simply being more fluent in the Bible does not solve the challenge. I
should also add that I do not think this is anyone’s direct fault. No one is conspiring to
keep the Story hidden. Maybe the modern Sunday sermon shares some of the blame,
however: we are dropped into a text and then guided, often expertly, through left- and
right-hand turns while never backing up (or backing out) to hear what is generally going
on. During the sermon I suspect that everyone assumes—even the preacher—that
everyone else knows how the text works in the larger scheme of things. When the
sermon ends, we leave knowing the Bible better … yet the main story of the Bible is
either assumed, or left out, and very likely left unchallenged. I think you know the drill.

But while no one is hiding the main story of the Bible from us, neither is our current
evangelical climate excited at the prospect of rethinking it. I speak here from personal
experience, having taught and pastored in the movement for all of my adult life (for the
record, I’m fifty-five, which may be old or young depending on how you interpret
fifty-five. I used to think it was old, and now find it to be rather middle-aged, lost
somewhere between teenage impulsiveness and senior moments of forgetting why I just
stood up). I have worked for academic deans, Bible departments, denominational
leaders, and even college presidents who are simply not interested in reviewing the Big
Story question. When the question is asked, I sense that a siege mentality appears. Why
challenge the system? But why is precisely my burden here—why would a movement
so interested in explaining the Bible clam up (or worse, clamp down) on the greatest
question we could ever ask of the Bible? I begin to wonder if we are hiding something
after all.

My last post included two sample paragraphs of evangelical renditions of the Bible’s
Big Story. For fear of creating, and then destroying, a straw man, let me to offer two
more quotations which come from well-respected evangelicals. I am trying to find short,
representative readings that reflect current traditional thinking. As you read these
paragraphs, my hope is that you find yourself saying yes, this is the Big Story I have
been hearing. I want to be an honest critic, which means I first have to define my
opponent’s view to his liking. This first sample is from the opening pages of the recently
published ESV Gospel Transformation Bible (Crossway, 2013):

“We will understand what Jesus meant about all of Scripture bearing
witness to him as we remember the big picture of the Bible. An old
cliché says, ‘Biblical history is “his-story.”’ But how is this story of
Jesus unfolding across the past and future millennia the Bible describes?
 A standard way of thinking about the whole picture of God’s dealing
with humanity begins with a good creation, spoiled by Adam’s fall,
redeemed by Christ’s provision, and perfected in the consummation of
C h r is t’s ru l e o v e r a l l t h i n g s . T h i s c r e a t i o n - f a l l -
redemption-consummation perspective helps us map all the events of
Scripture. All have a place in this great unfolding plan of ‘his-story.’”

This “creation-fall-redemption-consummation” story is another way of describing the

Sin Paid For model which I mentioned earlier, where the problem of sin on the front end
(here called the fall, coming on the heels of the creation) is solved by atonement on the
back end (Jesus’ redemption, followed by the consummation). The story goes from
Genesis 1 to Genesis 3, then jumps to Matthew 26 and finally to Revelation 22. It is the
distance and time between Genesis 3 and Matthew 26 about which I am most concerned.
That is quite a jump. N. T. Wright has cynically described this not as making a jump but
as “helicoptering our way” over the Bible, arriving at our destination with suspiciously
clean feet. We certainly wouldn’t want a big story that makes us trudge through the
details! It seems like there should be more to it all than this.

Here is another sample paragraph. It is a bit long, but there may be no better spokesman
for evangelicalism than Timothy Keller:

“Through two-thirds of the Bible, the part we call the OT, an

increasingly urgent, apparently unsolvable problem drives the narrative
forward. God is a God of holiness and is therefore implacably opposed
to evil, injustice, and wrong, and yet he is a God of infinite love. He
enters into a relationship with a people who are fatally self-centered.
Will he bring down the curse he says must fall on sin and cut off his
people, or will he forgive and love his people regardless of their sin? If
he does either one or the other, sin and evil win! It seems impossible to
do both. The resolution to this problem is largely hidden from the reader
through the OT, though Isaiah comes closest to unveiling it. The
glorious King who brings God’s judgment in the first part of Isaiah is
also the suffering servant who bears God’s judgment in the second part.
It is Jesus. Victory is achieved through [Jesus’] infinite sacrifice on the
cross, where God both punishes sin fully yet provides free salvation.
Jesus stands as the ultimate protagonist, the hero of heroes. Therefore,
because the Bible’s basic plotline is the tension between God’s justice
and his grace and because it is all resolved in the person and work of
Jesus Christ, Jesus could tell his followers after the resurrection that the
OT is really all about him (Luke 24:27, 45). So everything in the
 Bible—all the themes and patterns, main images and major
figures—points to Jesus” (The Story of the Bible: How the Good News
about Jesus is Central [in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, 2015]).

Let’s be fair, but pointed, in summarizing what Keller just said: God is holy, and he
hates sin, but he cannot freely forgive the sin of those he also loves. So God is at an
impasse between his love and his justice. God solves this tension by punishing Jesus on
our behalf, thus providing us with a free and gracious salvation. What do you think? I
hope that you can see that we are once again staring directly into the Sin Paid For model
of the Bible’s Big Story. Nothing has changed. He has added some nice flourishes
reflecting his pastoral concern, and for that he is to be thanked. He wants people to
treasure God’s love for them as presented in the death of Jesus. I responded to this
message when I was five years old, and my father was a pastor who ended almost every
sermon by inviting people to respond to this story. So in one sense I am thankful for
what Keller writes. But my concern remains. Is this really what the Bible is about?

Last time I mentioned five concerns that I had with the Big Story of the Bible as told by
evangelicals. My first concern was this: Evangelicals are content to describe the Big
Story of the Bible without appealing to what is actually happening in the Bible. I use the
word “content” here because evangelicals often own up, very quickly, to this concern.
I have heard them say rather often, in fact, that the main story of the Bible is likely not
visible to those who simply pick up the Bible and read it. That sounds harsh. But Keller
said it himself: “The resolution to this problem is largely hidden from the reader through
the OT.” He then describes this problem/resolution as the “basic plotline” of the Bible,
identified as “the tension between God’s justice and his grace.”

We should feel led to ask, Why is this tension largely hidden? And if it is, what is the
point in reading the Bible if we won’t experience, along the way, the very tension that
Keller claims is its main point? Either I am really missing the point of the Bible while
I read it … or maybe the tension Keller is describing is simply not there. I recommend
the latter option. I challenge any reader to find Abraham, Moses, or David describing
a tension between God’s righteousness (the Hebrew word for justice and righteousness
is the same, tsedaqah) and his grace. Moses received the stipulations of the law at the
same time that he heard God describe himself as “gracious, long-suffering, and
abounding in goodness and truth” (Exod 34:6). Yet we sense no tension. The Psalms
commonly celebrate God’s righteousness and grace in the same breath (e.g., 103:17).
And Jesus agreed. His parable of a creditor who “freely forgives” two debtors (Luke
7:42) is presented as though it is an honorable thing to be gracious without requiring
payment. It is possible, even good, to “just forgive” a sinner without implying that their
sin was not grievous. This graciousness is odd, yes, almost to the point of being
ridiculous, but that is the point. God is just this ridiculous in his grace, and always has
been. That is the kind of God that Jesus is trying to explain. Yet Keller rejects this view
of a God, saying that we should have been sensing, all along, a grace/justice tension
instead.

By the way—and I will return to this in a later post—evangelicals like Keller use
Romans 3:25-26 as their proof for this tension between God’s justice and grace. I
believe they are misreading the passage. But let’s say, for argument, that they are right
about the meaning of Romans 3, and that the main tension of the Bible is finally exposed
and resolved by two verses written by Paul to a church in Rome in A.D. 52 (what took
so long?). I find this hard to believe. It is one of several reasons why Romans 3:25-26
will not support this interpretation. The point of 3:25-26 is summed up in 3:29-30,
dealing with the Jew/Gentile problem, thus dismissing the idea that Paul was trying to
clear up something that people had not known since the fall of Adam. I will deal with
this passage when I explain my Concern #3, which is that Evangelicalism, especially the
modern American version of the movement, has concentrated on providing answers to
the wrong questions.

Let me close by taking an even closer look the Sin Paid For model, beginning with an
illustration. Pretend we are trying to decide whether we should repair an old brick wall
or demolish it and start over. From a distance the wall looks usable and sturdy. But
when we get close we realize that some of the bricks are loose, others are misshapen,
and some simply don’t belong. It appears the wall has been put together in hopes that
no one will really inspect it. We conclude the whole thing needs to come down since its
appearance does not match its reality.

So let’s inspect the bricks which make up the Sin Paid For wall. Actually, I would like
you to do the inspection first, and I will save my opinions for my next post. Below I
have listed the individual ideas or elements that go into the Sin Paid For story, or which
comprise the finished wall. I’ve grown up staring at this wall, and I have heard or read
each brick t some point on my journey. Your job is to determine whether a brick should
be kept or thrown away. Or maybe it just needs reshaping. Maybe it was never part of
the wall in the first place, and can just be ignored.

So how should you evaluate each brick? I recommend a simple test: in keeping with my
concern that the Big Story of the Bible be found by appealing to what is actually
happening in the Bible, I would like you to look at each brick and ask yourself: Is this
idea taught, or is this happening, in the Bible? If it is, keep the brick. If not, throw it
over your shoulder and move on. We will see what is left before rebuilding.
Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden

Adam’s sin resulted in the punishment of hell for all humanity

Adam’s sin resulted in the corruption of a perfect creation

Adam’s guilt is the primary cause of God’s wrath on humanity

Human beings since Adam are naturally and totally sinful

God’s holiness demands moral perfection from human beings

God’s holiness demands that he cannot be in the presence of moral sinfulness

God’s holiness demands that sin must always be punished

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred toward sin

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach the general concept of substitution

God’s wrath against sin was temporarily assuaged because of OT sacrifices

God taught that a substitute could take the punishment of a morally guilty person

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in OT salvation

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) prefigured Jesus’ future priestly
actions

The OT teaches a constant tension between God’s justice and God’s love

Loyalty to God (“faith”) is necessary for salvation

Idolatry is putting anything in front of God

Salvation is primarily an issue of one’s judicial relationship to God

The idea of “taking away sin” relates to a person’s judicial relationship to God

The offer of God’s “free” salvation depends on prior payment

God’s grace cannot be shown without prior payment

God’s forgiveness of sin is dependent upon prior payment

God’s forgiveness of sin without requiring payment lessens the offensiveness of the sin

God’s forgiveness of sin was not possible until Jesus’ death

Forgiveness of sins is the means of becoming a Christian

Unforgiven sin results in going to hell

It was not possible to actually be righteous until Christ died

When Jesus said he came to “save the lost,” he meant everyone

Jesus needed to live a sinless life in order for humans to be saved

Jesus’ sinless life can be credited to, or attributed to, the Christian’s judicial standing

Our sinful life was credited to, or attributed to, Jesus on the cross

God could not look upon Jesus on the cross because he was credited with our sins

God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus on the cross

God’s wrath against humanity was assuaged by Jesus’ death

Jesus’ momentary death equaled the punishment of eternal hell for all humans

Jesus’ “dying for sin” means that he paid the price/punishment of sin

Jesus’ death was necessary for salvation

Jesus’ resurrection was necessary for salvation

Jesus’ priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) play a role in human salvation

The idea of being “saved from sin” means being released from the punishment of sin
The Apostle Paul explained the plan of salvation better than Jesus

Explaining the meaning of atonement is a necessary step in describing the plan of

salvation

Salvation is dependent upon believing in what Jesus did on the cross

Salvation is dependent upon individually accepting the atonement of Jesus

Salvation is a passive reception of something that is being offered by Christ to us

The principal question being considered in the NT was how to become righteous

Everything in the Bible points to Jesus

The Big Story of the Bible is substituted moral perfection

We both have our work to do. Happy inspecting!

What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 3 - By Ronn Johnson

My thanks to many of you who have emailed me about Parts 1 and 2. Some have
expressed concern about going down the road of challenging historic Christianity on this
issue of the Big Story of the Bible. I agree that this should always be a concern,
especially for those of us who want to adhere to what C. S. Lewis called “mere
Christianity.” Theologians should never try to be creative. I like Lewis’ words on the
matter: “If I have read the New Testament aright, it leaves no room for creativeness,
even in a modified or metaphorical sense. Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite
direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our
own, but borrowed, and becoming a clean mirror that is filled with a face that is not
ours. Applied to literature, an author should never conceive himself as bringing into
existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying
to embody some reflection of eternal beauty and wisdom” (“Christianity and Literature,”
in Christian Reflections).

So I write Part 3 of What Is the Bible’s Big Story trying not to be creative, and I hope
you can read along in that spirit. If I am being creative, I feel I am closer to a child
asking why someone in a parade is under-dressed, and why others seem not to notice.
I admit to asking questions about a very complex theological system placed in front of
me by my evangelical fathers, and about a system with which I have participated for
many years. I am not claiming to know what the Big Story of the Bible is. My aim is
more timid than that for now. I am still in the process of asking questions, as in “Why
are we saying this…when the Bible seems to say that?”

In my last post I proposed that popular evangelicalism’s Big Story of the Bible carried,
in effect, a Sin Paid For plotline since its climax involved Christ’s substitutionary
payment for human sin. There are many subplots to this narrative, of course, but
payment is the main (and indispensable) theme that arches over this reading of Scripture.
Without Christ’s death, all humans would be properly consigned to hell because of
God’s requirement for the payment of sin. That’s the parade that is going by in front of
us. So let’s begin asking questions.

I closed with a long list of ideas which I sense to be the building blocks, or bricks,
which make up the Sin Paid For wall. I asked you to determine whether each brick
should be kept or thrown out, using the simple question “Does the Bible teach this, or
is this happening in the Bible?” to help guide the decision. The goal, of course, is to
reconstruct the Big Story wall using bricks which belong, or ideas that show up in the
biblical narrative. In other words, the goal isn’t to tear down the wall and build some
other wall totally contrary to the first wall. It’s to start building a composite wall that
includes the Sin Paid For bricks along with other bricks that the Bible teaches to make
a more complete “Big Story of the Bible” wall.

(In case you think I’ve actually gotten that far in my own thinking, I have not. My own
Big Story wall is yet incomplete, which keeps my interest in my own posts going
forward. This is a work in progress. I have some idea how my completed wall will look,
but I am fascinated by the prospect of discovering and understanding bricks which so
far have escaped my attention.)

For each brick I will give my opinion on whether it should go or stay, or whether it
needs some reshaping. I will often struggle in deciding how much detail to get into when
looking at a particular brick, since some bricks are the result of centuries of theological
history and debate. In such cases it would be imprudent or rash to just toss a brick aside
as “unbiblical.” We owe each other some reasoning, sometimes some very careful
reasoning, in dealing with bricks that we are used to seeing. But because I’m left
holding this pen, you only get my views here. I would love to dialogue by email if you
find the time.

Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden: From the little we know about the story
of Adam and Eve, this point seems clear. Adam was told to not eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17) and he did (3:6). This was an act of
disobedience. I’m in favor of keeping this brick.

Adam’s sin resulted in the punishment of hell for all humanity: The exact nature of
Adam’s threatened punishment (“you shall surely die,” 2:17) seems rather clear on the
face of it, not least because God chose to use a word which turns out to be the most
common way of describing physical death throughout the OT (mot, appearing 827
times). It is repeated by Eve in 3:3 and by the serpent in 3:4, and from everything said
in the story we would suspect that God was threatening Adam with physical death if he
ate from the tree. Mot describes Adam’s physical death in 5:5 as well as each individual
who is reported to die throughout Genesis 5. So I think it is safest to say that God kept
his death-promise to Adam in the sense that Adam eventually died. That is easy enough.
What we do not know is what would have happened if Adam had not disobeyed.

(I’m not much interested in that question, having gotten my fill of the subject while
writing my master’s thesis at Dallas Seminary on Calvin’s view of Adam’s original
state. But in case you are wondering, Augustine thought it was possible that, as a being
created from dust, Adam was destined to die a natural death no matter what happened
in Genesis 3, and that Adam’s sin only made his life more miserable while waiting for
the inevitable. Calvin later agreed in principle with Augustine’s suspicion, admitting
that we simply don’t know what would have happened if Adam had walked away from
the tree.)

So this much we know: Adam disobeyed, and he later died. God kept his promise.
Maybe God’s means of keeping this promise was as simple as keeping Adam away from
the tree of life (3:22, “lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat,
and live forever”). Scripture never ties human death in principle to Adam’s tree-sin until
Paul does so in Romans (5:12, 15, 17, 21; 8:10), and no writer in either testament will
ever make the claim that Adam’s sin resulted in the punishment of hell for all humanity.
I think what has happened is that over time the phrase “the wages of sin is death” (Rom
6:23) has been interpreted as referring to spiritual death, and so to hell. But this
triangulation is unwarranted, or it at least has no place in the story of Scripture as it is
presented. So I think this brick, as worded, needs to be tossed aside. If people go to hell
they apparently go for some other reason than because of what Adam did in the Garden.
We’ll keep an eye out for that brick later. Mike Heiser’s series disputing that Romans
5:12 teaches that Adam’s guilt was transferred to us may be of interest to readers on this
point, for he argues that we are all guilty before God because of what we do (sin), not
because Adam sinned. As Rom 5:12 clearly teaches (what the text itself actually says),
it was death that passed to all humankind because of Adam, not Adamic guilt. God’s
wrath on anyone is due to their own sin. But more on wrath below.

Adam’s sin resulted in the corruption of a perfect creation: After Adam sinned God
cursed the “ground” (adamah, Gen 3:17), a word that carries general meaning for dirt
or earth. It denotes the whole world in Genesis 6:1 (“men began to multiply on the face
of the adamah”) so our suspicion is that what happened in the Garden was indicative of
what happened worldwide. Humans now toiled through thorns and thistles. But now to
the question of whether the pre-fall creation was “perfect.” After creation God said that
he thought that his work was “very good” (tov meod, 1:31), which indicates that he was
very pleased. It was very good. It may not necessarily mean that everything was perfect,
however. Did mosquitos bite? Did plants that Adam ate “die” in his stomach? These
kinds of questions are often multiplied, and it is not long before we realize that we do
not know how to delimit God’s definition of “very good.” In almost the same breath
God admitted that Adam’s lack of a mate was “not good” (2:18). Paul will much later
speak of the present painful state of creation (Rom 8:21), but he never tries to offer an
opinion about the state of the creation before Adam’s sin. Does the Bible’s description
of the final consummation connect back to a pre-fall Eden? It may hint at it, or allusions
are made, but I don’t find the Bible as actually saying that explicitly. And I don’t sense
that our Big Story depends upon it. God may have created an imperfect but “very good”
earth to start with, and “perfection” (whatever that is) may come finally, and only, at the
end, where mosquitos do not bite and the Vikings win every Sunday.
Adam’s guilt is the primary cause of God’s wrath on humanity: This hearkens back
to Mike’s series on Rom 5:12 as well, but my goal here is to explain how I’m thinking
about this brick. I was on a denominational licensure board awhile back, assigned to
question the young man who wanted to become ordained in the ministry. I soon began
to suspect that whenever our candidate did not have a clear biblical answer to one of our
questions he would quote our denominational handbook. I didn’t like that, so I decided
to stir the pot. “What is the cause of God’s wrath upon humanity?” I asked. “Why is God
angry with us?” This was not a trick question on my part, but I knew the answer would
take some thought. I will never forget how polished and precise the answer came: “In
union with Adam, human beings are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from
God, and under his wrath.” The heads of my fellow board members began to nod
halfway through his answer, as though they were watching the flight of a field goal
which they could tell was on-target. The reason that I can still quote the candidate’s
answer was because he had just quoted, verbatim, our handbook. I was looking right at
it on page sixty-nine. So I then did a very bad thing. “Where do you find this taught in
the Bible?” The pause was only long enough for the chairman of the committee to look
my way with furrowed brow. “I believe he answered the question very well. Let’s move
on.”

So that’s the background to this brick. It’s a test question on the way to getting ordained.
But I think it is fair to start with a simple word search. Does the word “Adam” ever
appear in the same verse as “wrath” or “anger,” whether in speaking of God or anyone
else? Statistical inquiries have limited value, but remember our test: Can the parts of our
Story be found in the Bible? Out of the gate we could assume that if God’s wrath was
due to Adam it would somewhere be said that God’s wrath was somehow related to what
Adam did, or what role we have in relation to Adam. It would not be hard to say this.
Yet our search results come back empty (my program displays “There are no verses in
the current range of the text which fit the current search entry”). On my own, without
using a concordance, I am not aware of any argument in Scripture that Adam’s guilt is
the primary cause of God’s wrath on humanity. Paul did say that Adam’s sin caused our
“condemnation” (katakrima, Romans 5:16), but this is in reference to being condemned
to physically die (5:12, 15, 17, 21), or to have a “body of death” (7:24; cp. 8:1). There
will be plenty of fuel for God’s anger in Scripture, of course, and we will deal with those
bricks when we come across them. But this brick can be tossed aside as simply untrue.
God is not angry with us because of Adam or our relationship to him.

(By the way, as my wife Susan was reading through the list of bricks at the end of Part
2 she predicted that the practice of setting bricks aside without replacing them would
be uncomfortable. I agreed, but felt that this negative job of clearing the wall had to be
done before the positive attempt of rebuilding it. I think it would get confusing to do
both jobs at the same time. I hope you are ok with this approach.)

Human beings since Adam are naturally and totally sinful: There may be no more
common theorem in Christian theology than man’s sinfulness. It is the basis for many
other Christian doctrines, especially those having to do with salvation. But I have been
bothered by this brick for some time. What is at stake with this brick is its precise
wording. No one doubts that humans can be remarkably evil. We cannot get through the
news without hearing stories of deliberate, unprovoked wickedness and cruelty. But the
question here concerns the words “naturally” and “totally.” Are we naturally evil in the
sense that we “sin by nature,” much as we breathe by nature and back away from curve
balls by nature? If we were to settle this question biblically, we would need to find the
place in Scripture where this particular question is both posed and settled in context with
such ideas as “naturally” and “totally.”

Space does not afford a full doctrine of human depravity, of course, so I can only offer
my quick opinion here. When the subject of man’s sinfulness occurs, the biblical writer
quickly and unequivocally finds weakness and sinfulness to be our present lot. We
easily sin. So I would say the Bible (following the pattern set out by Job and the
Psalmists, for example) presents a pessimistic anthropology in that it does not believe
that humans have the ability to be consistently good or moral or ethical for long
stretches (Job 5:7; 15:14-16; 22:5; 28:12-13; 33:12; 35:2; Pss 39:4-6; 51:5; 70:5; 73:22;
78:39; 94:11; 103:14; 109:22; 119:176; 144:3-4). But these same writers also claim that
humans can be very good and very moral at times, even very faithful to the god they
choose to worship (e.g., the entire basis of Job’s story is the fact that he was considered
“blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil,” Job 1:1; cp. Ps
40:1, 4, 8). So why the back-and-forth? Traditional Judaism has a quick answer: That’s
the way we actually are. We are both good and evil at the same time in the sense that,
assuming normal mental health, any human at any time has the choice to do good or to
do evil. It sounds just like Genesis 3:5 has happened in that we have the knowledge (and
ability) of good and evil at our fingertips.

Think of it this way. If we were naturally evil, would we know we are evil or even what
evil is? Does a fish know it is wet? I have conducted many funerals as a pastor, and I am
still waiting for anyone to praise the dead person’s evilness. Just the opposite, in fact:
it appears that we know what good and evil are, and we want to be good while we end
up being (at times) very evil. I find that all biblical passages which set out (in context)
to talk about man’s sinfulness agrees with this basic point. We do not have to sin. We
choose to. And that is what makes evil so evil. In my opinion the Reformed tradition
comes to its view of human depravity (as it is specifically worded on this brick) as the
result of reading lengthily developed conclusions backwards into such texts as Romans
3:10-18 (“There is none righteous, no not one”) to then frame out the idea that mankind
is naturally and totally sinful. It serves their purpose to say this because it sets up their
later understanding of grace and salvation. But I do not believe this tradition is found
while reading the Bible left-to-right, watching the stories of Scripture unfold. I think we
will be able to replace this brick when we discover that man’s behavioral depravity
(however it is defined) is not the problem that Christ came to solve, nor a problem that
even involves itself in the story of human salvation.

God’s holiness demands moral perfection from human beings: I am part of a weekly
Bible study with about a dozen friends, and this week we will be coming to Christ’s plea
that we be “perfect, just as our heavenly Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
By now you have learned to think behind such English words as “perfect,” asking
yourself either what Jesus meant by this in his Aramaic (the spoken language of the
Sermon), or what Matthew meant by this in his Hebrew (most scholars think that
Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, though we have no textual evidence for that), or
how the Greek-reading person would have later understood it (our only surviving copies
of Matthew are in Greek). I don’t think we have to go through all those complications,
but let’s look at some.

1) Neither Jesus nor Matthew was teasing his audience, telling them to be teleios while
knowing they would fail. He was asking them to be complete or mature (the most
tangible meaning of teleios in the Greek NT) in respect to loving the unlovable, their
enemies (5:43-47). This is hard to do, maybe one of the hardest things a person can do
who is truly suffering under the cruelty of another. But that is what God, Jesus’ Father,
is like, and the point that Jesus was trying to make. (We will start our Bible study by
listening to a ten-minute reading of one of C. S. Lewis’ finest essays, “The Trouble with
X.” It has to do with this very point about God being forgiving. I recommend it to you.)

2) If listening to Jesus while being familiar with the OT, we would have connected
Jesus’ request of perfection to the OT requirement to be tamim (often translated as
“blameless,” Deut 18:13). Numerous OT people were considered, or considered
themselves to be, tamim (Abraham, Gen 17:1; David, 2 Sam 22:24; Ps 18:23; Job, Job
1:1) and it was even the goal for the average Yahwist to be tamim (Ps 37:37; Prov 13:6).
What is missing from every occurrence of tamim is any hint of perfection in the sense
of moral sinlessness. Being righteous or upright before God was a million miles away
from any sense of behavioral perfection.

3) Considering the biblical story in its larger scope, do we ever hear that moral
perfection is demanded by God? I know this has been drummed into our heads since
Sunday School, but I’m frankly left scratching my head when I start looking for this idea
in the Bible. It’s a rumor, and a terrible one. Old Testament writers celebrate Torah
without fearing that it sets out an impossible goal (Deut 10:12-13; 30:11-20; Psalm
119), and NT writers agree (Rom 13:8-10; 1Pet 3:8-12; James 1:25; Titus 3:5). Most
importantly, Israel knew Yahweh as a deity who was both righteous/just and forgiving
at the same time—a very unique combination (“Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
yes, our God is merciful,” Ps. 116:5; cp. 36:5-6, 10; 37:21; 85:10; 89:14; 103:17; 112:4;
145:7-9, 17; Prov 12:10; 21:21; Isa 57:1; Dan 4:27; 9:18; Jer 10:24; Hos 2:19; 10:12;
Mic 6:8). So, very importantly, this turns out to be a character issue regarding what kind
of God we have, which is why this brick must be thrown as far away as possible. To say
that God’s holiness demands sinless perfection on the part of humans is to do almost
irreparable harm to the Big Story of the Bible. If that is offensive to your interpretation
of the Story, I ask that you wait for biblical definitions of “holiness” and “righteous.”
It will encourage you to enjoy God’s holiness and righteousness even while being
imperfect.

I will continue looking at these bricks after Easter. He is Risen!

What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 4 - By Ronn Johnson

This post is a continuation of Parts 1, 2, and 3 by Dr. Ronn Johnson. Dr. Johnson
recommends listening to some of the Leviticus podcasts at one point, and that’s good
advice (see the episodes on Lev 4 and 5). For those who might remember the series on
Leviticus, with respect to this installment, it’s good to recall that the blood of the
sacrificed animal was never applied to the offerer who needed to bring it. It’s also good
to recall that most of the sacrifices for sins in the OT were about being made fit for
sacred space, not hatred for a moral sin (most of those had no sacrifice, only a penalty
like the death penalty or restitution. — MSH

I am moving on to look at the next “brick” on the evangelical “Big Story wall”:

God’s holiness demands that he cannot be in the presence of moral sinfulness: This
cliché has certainly been around for a while. Even as a kid I knew it was not true, since
God and Satan talked to each other in Job 1. Plus, I had a mom who seemed to show up
every time I was bad, and I knew that God was in the same business. Sin does not make
God hide his eyes, nor make him go away, which is what I wanted him to do. So if
children understand this, what could this idea possibly mean, and where did it come
from?

Let’s consider the meaning of God’s “holiness,” especially in its relation to sin. The
Hebrew word most commonly translated as “holy” in the OT is qodesh (first appearing
in Exod 3:5, “the place your stand is qodesh ground”), appearing over 400 times. The
general meaning of qodesh is not contested (“holy or sacred; set apart as dedicated to
God”), though its use within the Bible has at times led to confusion. Here is why: while
we know that qodesh may be used to describe non-moral things, such as a day of the
week or clothing (“Tomorrow is a qodesh Sabbath to Yahweh,” Exod. 16:23; “You shall
make qodesh garments for Aaron your brother,” Exod. 28:2), qodesh also seems to
appear in places where the story is trying to describe the non-sinfulness of something
or someone (“So Aaron shall make atonement for the qodesh [place], because of the
uncleanness of the children of Israel, and for all their sins,” Lev. 16:16 [emphasis mine];
“Joshua said, ‘You cannot serve Yahweh, for he is a qodesh God. He is a jealous God;
he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins,’” Josh. 24:19 [emphasis mine]).
So it is easy to see why the idea of “being qodesh” has become associated with “being
non-sinful.”

We do not have room for a full word study here, so I would recommend looking into
“holiness” (and its cognate term “sanctify”) with the help of a careful Bible dictionary.
Listen to Mike’s podcasts on Leviticus, if possible. I would even recommend scanning
through each use of “holy/sanctify” in the OT on your own. Here is what you will find:
qodesh consistently relates to, or is used when describing, the ceremonial or ritualistic
elements within Israel’s religion. “Holy” does not mean “non-sinful.” It means
“special/sacred.” So the opposite of “holy” will not be “sinful,” but
“profane”—something along the lines of normal, regular, or common (“Everyone who
profanes [the Sabbath] shall surely be put to death,” Exod. 31:14).

So if God’s “holiness” is not directly related to the absence of sin, where did this brick
come from? Who came up with the idea that God cannot be in the presence of evil? I am
guessing here, but I think it developed over time as we tried to express how God was
opposed to or against moral evil. When we began to allow the word “holy” to poke its
nose into the tent as the operative word for describing God’s sinlessness (“Holy, Holy
Holy, Lord God Almighty, Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see . . .
perfect in power, in love, in purity”), it was not long before we had a full-fledged
doctrine announcing that God can’t be in the presence of evil. But this simply wasn’t
true. This brick is therefore not useful as part of our Big Story of the Bible. As it turns
out, God can be in the presence of moral evil if he so decides to be. He can also decide
if he does not want to be in the presence of sin. It is his choice.

God’s holiness demands that sin must always be punished: Again, I have always
doubted that this was true, even as a child. God can do anything he wants, including
punish sin or forgive it. If a human can do this, so can God. So this must just be bad
preaching, I thought, or a rumor I’ve picked up. When I got into Bible college and
seminary, however, the textbooks said differently:

“Although God’s punishment of sin does serve as a deterrent against further sinning and
as a warning to those who observe it, this is not the primary reason why God punishes
sin. The primary reason is that God’s righteousness demands it, so that he might be
glorified in the universe that he has created” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
[Zondervan, 1994], 509).

“God being God, he not only may act to preserve his own honor, he must do so. He
cannot simply disregard it. Thus, he cannot merely forgive or remit sin without
punishing it. Nor is it enough for us to restore to God his due. There must be additional
reparation. Only with some form of added compensation can the things that have been
disturbed by sin be restored to equilibrium. Sin left unpunished would leave God’s
economy out of order” (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology [2nd ed; Baker, 1998],
815).
“…Moral offense entails a moral debt that must be paid. Therefore those who sin against
God owe him either their own punishment, or some restitution or satisfaction for their
transgression of his law. God’s justice demands such payment, but human beings cannot
make satisfaction since they are guilty and are deserving of God’s punishment.
Satisfaction can be made only by one who is innocent, so God himself makes this
possible by the incarnation of Jesus Christ” (Evangelical Convictions: A Theological
Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Free Church of America
[Minneapolis, 2011], 120.)

This sounds like philosophy to me, not theology, and not that there’s anything wrong
with philosophy. But again, I think it is fair to ask whether the Bible helps us here. Did
these writers discover in the story of the Bible that God cannot forgive sin without also
punishing it? I do not think so, as then it would have been easy to simply cite where this
happens, or where it is taught. The only quotation of these three that included a biblical
argument along the way was in Grudem’s text, where he concluded his statement with
a passage from Jeremiah: “‘I practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the
earth; for in these things I delight,’ says the LORD” (9:24). I will let you judge whether
this verse defends his argument; in my opinion it does not.

So if this idea does not come out of Scripture, where does this brick come from? Who
started the rumor that God cannot forgive sin without also punishing it? I know that
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) is generally credited with the theology of
“satisfaction,” or the idea that God’s honor was in need of repair because of human sin,
the kind of repair that could not be satisfied by mere forgiveness of sin. But it would be
out of step for the evangelical movement, as well as for these respected authors, to
depend on a Medieval theologian for their view of God and the punishment of sin, or
at least one would think. We have the tradition of going to the Bible to define our views.

I have been around the block numerous times with my Reformed friends about this
issue, and I think I have come to understand why they resist believing that God could
just forgive sin without punishing it. It has to do with adding, as I just did, the word just.
Erickson described the apparent problem this way: “But, we must ask, is sin really
serious if God can forgive without requiring some form of penalty or punishment?” (p.
838). There it is. If God forgives sin—or “just” forgives sin, whatever that means—this
means God does not think the sin was all that serious. Erickson has put into words what
I thought all along was just a bad rumor: forgivable sins cannot be taken seriously. That
is why they are forgivable.

All I can say to this is you’ve got to be kidding (not a very scholarly response, I realize).
The very idea behind forgiveness is being able to punish, to know that the other person
deserves punishment—and then deciding not to punish. I am not trying to be difficult
when I say that I am honestly confused by this brick. Jesus told us to be forgiving
people, even beyond seeming respectability (cp. “Up to seven times?” “No, up to
seventy times seven,” Matt. 18:21-22), and I feel we are going down a very dangerous
path, an opposite direction from that of our Savior, when we believe that forgiven sin
cannot be seriously-taken sin. I have long ago thrown this brick away, and would
recommend you throw it away as well. It has no part on the Bible’s Big Story wall. Of
course sin is serious. That is why forgiveness is serious.

The reaction I have had to this last paragraph has been fairly consistent among my
friends. To close up our thinking about this brick, here is a rough sketch of how the
conversation usually goes (I have filled out our arguments a bit, or made them more
explanatory, for the sake of this blog):

Me: I don’t think you need to believe that God has to punish sin. I think he can forgive
sin if he wants to, and I think that our theology about salvation would function just fine
with a forgiving God.

Friend: Since you mention salvation—what about Jesus’ death? Why else would Jesus
have died than to pay the punishment that God required for sin? It sounds like you are
minimizing the meaning of the crucifixion.

Me: I’m not following. What does one thing have to do with the other?

Friend: I think we can rightfully assume that Jesus must have died for a very great
reason, and I cannot think of a greater one than paying the punishment I deserved.

Me: I agree that Jesus died for a great reason. Please don’t presume that I think
otherwise. But I have to leave the definition of great to God. Sometimes it feels like we
are competing amongst ourselves in trying to come up with the “greatest” reason that
Jesus could have died, and then going with that reason, fearing that if we settle for a less
important reason we would somehow dishonor the meaning of the cross. I don’t think
that’s a wise way to come up with the meaning of the crucifixion.

Friend: Fair enough. But here’s how Jesus’ death seems to tie into God’s need to punish
sin: The greatest reason that Jesus could have died would be to accomplish that which,
if he had not died, would consign me to hell. In other words, I think it is fair to say that
Jesus died to accomplish the greatest possible thing that I can imagine, and the greatest
possible thing I can imagine is making me fit for heaven through that death.
Me: Let me reword that to see if I understand you: We want to guard ourselves against
any theology that would have people ending up in heaven without Jesus dying. So in
that sense Jesus must have died to somehow make it possible for people to go to heaven.
That’s what you mean by saying that Jesus died “for the greatest reason I can think of.”

Friend: Right. And since sin is the reason we deserve hell, it makes logical sense that
Jesus’ death somehow dealt with our sin. Otherwise Jesus’ death would not have been
due to the greatest possible reason.

Me: I agree that Jesus’ death must have somehow dealt with our sin. Scripture says as
much, that he “died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). But I sense you take the “died for” to
mean “died to take away the punishment for.”

Friend: We can get to that later. For now, follow my thinking: Since we know that God
has already been in the business of forgiving sin in the OT, long before Jesus’ death
(“forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” Exod. 34:7), Jesus’ death must have
been for some other reason than forgiving sin.

Me: I totally agree. God was already forgiven people prior to Jesus dying, so the effect
of Jesus’ death could not have been to forgive our moral sins.

Friend: And here is where God “having to punish sin” comes in. The only option left for
Jesus dying would be to take on the punishment of sin in himself.

Me: I see where you’re going. So in this way, Jesus’ death is still necessary to get
humans to heaven (“the greatest possible thing”) even while forgiveness was going on
before the cross.

Friend: Right. So do you believe that God had to punish sin, as accomplished in the
death of Jesus, and that God cannot just forgive sin?

Me: No. While what you did was interesting, the steps were not logically necessary.
Plus, you are assuming too many things that I don’t think are true.

Friend: Like what?

Me: Five things come to mind: 1) I do not believe that Jesus had to die for a “great”
reason in my understanding, nor even his. He may have died for no understandable
reason at all, in his own mind, but just because the Father wanted him to. That may have
been the “great” reason Jesus died. I have to leave that option open. 2) I do not think
Jesus died to get people out of hell, nor into heaven. I believe people could be right with
God before Jesus died, and so the effect of Jesus’ death could not have been to make
them righteous. 3) I do not believe that my unpaid for sin sends me to hell, nor that
forgiven sin allows me to go to heaven. My afterlife is not dependent on issues of sin
management. 4) I believe that Jesus’ death dealt with our sin, but I see him doing what
a priest did in the OT—handling sin or uncleanness in a ritualistic sense—in the end
sanctifying us so that we could approach God’s presence in worship (think of the veil
tearing). Since we don’t believe that priests made people righteous in the OT, it follows
that Jesus’ priestly work was not making people righteous while on the cross. 5) I don’t
think that God “having to punish sin” is therefore anywhere on the radar map of what
we have just talked about, including the purpose of Jesus’ death. I feel like you are
arguing backwards, taking your specific view of the cross and interpreting the entire
story of the Bible through it.

Friend: Well, you haven’t convinced me either. I just think that if God could have
forgiven our sin without Jesus dying, he would have. I guess we’ll agree to disagree.

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred toward sin: Evangelicals take a
great interest in the subject of sacrifice in the Bible, but I find it interesting that we tend
to think through the subject backwards. By this I mean that we don’t start where
sacrifice starts—watching the ritual played out in pre-biblical Mesopotamia—but
instead dwell on the sacrificial meaning of Jesus’ death and only then work our way
back into such books as Exodus and Leviticus. If that sounds too bold an assertion, try
this experiment the next time you go to church: lean over and ask your friend what
sacrifice meant in the Bible. Then compare their answer to the article on sacrifice in The
Dictionary of the Ancient Near East (University of PA Press, 2000). I’m not saying
which answer is right…I am merely saying that the difference between these two
answers exposes a more serious problem. We are approaching the subject of sacrifice
from two different directions.

So what was sacrifice in the days of the Bible, and what did it mean? Who started it? We
really know so very little of this ancient practice, largely because, well, it is just so very
old. We are told that humans were sacrificing as early as Genesis 4 (Cain and Abel), but
we are not told why. We are not necessarily told that God “instituted” sacrifice any more
than he invented the harp and flute (Gen. 4:21) or the process of smelting bronze and
iron (Gen. 4:22). I know we want to give sacrifice meaning, especially religious
meaning, but we may be moving too fast. After Genesis 4 it will be hundreds/thousands
of years and possibly millions of sacrifices before Moses is even born. From there, many
of the whens and whys and hows associated with sacrifice in Torah are still left
unanswered, and any ability to psychoanalyze the mind of the worshipper during
sacrifice is simply not afforded us. In my reading, I get the sense that the ancient
historian would give his left arm to be able walk up to the prehistoric sacrificer and ask,
“Why are you doing this?”

Yet here is my opinion for what it is worth. In reading the Bible left-to-right, it appears
that sacrifice was an early invention of mankind, possibly being associated with early
“religion,” though that word reflects a rather modern construct. The individual
participated in sacrifice as a communal event, such as during a feast, and in this sense
it was not attached to individual belief as much as to some kind of public social
performance. Here is how one historian understood the practice: “What mattered most
was the expected traditional gesture, made in the right way, at the right time. For the
population at large, traditional rituals reinforced confidence in the belief that the security
of the community required the attention of the gods. Communal rituals [such as
sacrifice] represented the group acting as one and invited the gods to participate in
human endeavor. Conversely, failure to perform a communal ritual properly could put
the entire community at risk” (Susan Cole, “Greek Religion,” from A Handbook Of
Ancient Religion [Cambridge U Press, 2007], 276-7).

Though Cole is describing ancient Greek ritual tradition (going back as far as the 8th
century B.C.), I think she is putting into words how Abraham (and maybe even Cain and
Abel) would have interpreted sacrifice. It was a public means of communing with a
deity, a human way of bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds.
Whether the deity would “accept” the sacrifice, or hear the plea of the sacrificer, was a
difficult matter to determine. There were no guarantees. Sacrifices connected the
community with the gods, but it also reiterated a kind of expected social order in which
implied responsibilities existed between the humans and the gods. The supplicant
constantly faced the possibility that he had offended his god in the smallest of matters
(had he pronounced his god’s name correctly? was the fruit properly ripe?), and so
sacrifices were often done in an over-the-top style in hopes that it would “take.” Animal
sacrifice was considered the most impressive means of gaining the attention of a god,
though vegetables or grains were more common (and certainly more affordable if the
entire sacrifice was to be burnt away). The special requirements for participation in
sacrifice (gender, status, kinship, profession, etc.) depended upon local interpretation
of the god’s requirements, usually interpreted by the king or priest.

So if this is how scholars generally handle the subject of ancient sacrifice, what about
our brick? Did God institute OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred for sin? I am going to
side with the secular historian on this one and say no. I do not sense that God
“instituted” sacrifice at all, but that it developed as a natural response among humans
as we tried to commune with the world above us. It would be like asking who started the
tradition of folding our hands and closing our eyes when we prayed as children. God
certainly didn’t “tell” us to do this, but we somewhere along the way decided that it was
a proper posture for talking to God (or to keep the kids’ hands to themselves in junior
church). So why did individuals in the OT sacrifice? The biblical record shows that
altars were constructed with regularity, whether by Noah (Gen. 8:20), Abraham (Gen
12:6 ff.; 13:18; 22:9), Isaac (Gen 26:25), Jacob (Gen 33:20; 35:1-7), Moses (Exod
17:15), Joshua (Josh 8:30 f.; cf. Deut 27:5), Gideon (Jdg 6:24 ff.), or David (2 Sam
24:18-25). I believe that these individuals were simply following cultural norm, whether
living before or after Moses. This view is not uncommon among evangelical authors,
by the way. Daniel Block argues that most of the categories of sacrifice found in
Leviticus 1-5 are attested to outside of Israel, including the zebah (sacrifice, sacrificial
meals), selamim (peace/well-being offerings), ola (whole burnt offerings), and mincha
(gift, grain/cereal offerings) (“Other Religions in Old Testament Theology,” in Biblical
Faith and Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004]
43-78).

But what about sin? When God instructed Moses on the practice of sacrifice at Sinai,
was this in any sense due to His desire to teach Israel about the seriousness of moral sin,
or his hatred of it? As much as I would like to say Yes to this idea—as it makes sense
if I don’t think about it too deeply—I simply cannot find enough evidence to do so, and
in fact find strong evidence in the opposite direction. (If the question was changed to
“Did God instruct Moses within Torah about the seriousness of sin, and his hatred of
it?” then the answer would be an easy yes; so notice that the issue here concerns
sacrifice, not Torah.) See if my proposal works for you: If sacrifice had been designed
to teach the seriousness of sin, then the rules on sacrifice would have looked much
different than they do—namely, the bigger the sin, the bigger the sacrifice. But that is
not what we find. The biggest sins of all (let’s say murder) had no sacrificial equivalent.
So something else must have been going on with the meaning of sacrifice when it came
to Moses’ teaching. We will deal with that when looking at the next brick. For now, toss
this one aside.
What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 5 - By Ronn Johnson

From my count, I am up to the 10th brick on the evangelical Big Story wall. Please refer
back to Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 if you need to get up to speed. I will only look at two bricks
in this post, due to the importance they seem to carry.

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach the general concept of substitution: In my last

post I recommended that the practice of animal sacrifice was not invented by God. This
is a new idea to some, I understand, though I believe the evidence supports it. We know
that sacrifices and offerings were part of ancient religion long before Moses, and that
Torah’s instructions regarding sacrifice mirrored many of the ceremonial practices of
foreign nations. It is often helpful to turn to traditional Judaism for a question such as
this, especially when it concerns a practice so foundational to Israel’s history and
culture. Here is a selection taken from The Teaching Company’s course entitled
Introduction to Judaism (taught by Shai Cherry from Vanderbilt University) concerning
the origin of animal sacrifice:

“Sacrifice was a commandment, but it was also a concession to human

psychology. Here’s how it works. [The medieval Jewish theologian]
Maimonides said in The Guide of the Perplexed, that, quote, ‘A sudden
transition from one opposite to another is impossible.’ What he means
is that people can’t go from understanding everything about the world
in one way to understanding everything about the world in a completely
different way. They need time to adjust. He says this in context of the
Israelites being freed from slavery in Egypt where they were steeped in
idolatrous practices. Those practices included animal sacrifices. So
Maimonides says that when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt into
the desert, the only way the Israelites knew to worship God was through
these animal sacrifices. So as a ‘gracious ruse,’ or as a ‘noble lie’—there
are different translations of that platonic idea—God allowed the
Israelites to continue in this idolatrous practice of sacrificing animals,
but to the right address. In other words, the only thing that changed was
the address, so that way the Israelites could still feel that what they were
doing was efficacious. What they were doing was still worshipping God,
even though that’s not the most noble, the most authentic way of
worshipping God—because God doesn’t need it.” (italics added)

I realize we should be wary of labeling any one view within Judaism as “standard.” The
rabbis have always been adept at collecting and even appreciating dissenting and
minority opinions among their ranks. At the same time modern Jews hold the views of
Maimonides in highest respect. Personally, I believe his opinion about the origin of
sacrifice makes good and practical sense. So if it is accurate—if sacrifice makes its way
into the Bible not as an invention by God but as a concession to the psychology of
mankind, akin to divorce laws (Deut. 24:1-4; cp. Matt. 19:8)—then we as evangelicals
are guilty of giving sacrifice (as a bare practice) too much meaning in our theology. We
need to change the word “instituted” on this brick to something closer to “allowed” or
“permitted,” before moving on to what OT Israelites were supposed to learn from the
sacrificial system.

But now let’s move on to the question of substitution. Did God allow OT sacrifices to
teach the general concept of substitution?

I started struggling with this brick several years ago, after teaching it for over twenty
years as a Christian college prof. You could guess that this is not a brick that
evangelicals like to debate. It sets up so much of our larger theology, or our larger story
(or we presume it does). It is a brick that stabilizes a huge portion of the Big Story wall.
At least that is what it feels like when I talk about the idea of substitution with my
theologically-minded friends. So I appreciate your patience here as I challenge the idea
by asking some background / preliminary questions:

1. What do we gain by believing that sacrifice includes substitution? Better, let’s ask
this the other way around: what would we lose if we do not include substitution within
sacrifice? I am not asking, yet, whether the view itself is right or wrong; I am just asking
a question going in. I have often received odd looks (or perplexed emails) when I have
asked this question, sometimes even getting what feels like a hand-over-the-mouth
aghast reaction. It is like I am rejecting some important doctrine. But then I remind them
it’s only a question: Why should I include substitution in sacrifice? What is the value?

2. When an answer to #1 is offered, does it come directly from the Bible? Let’s say a
person were to say “Substitution is important because it’s the way God can teach the
sacrificer about divine hatred for sin.” I’ve heard this argument many times. My reply,
you could guess, would be But where is this actually said? Remember that the bricks for
our wall need to be ideas that are actually stated, or actually happening, in the Bible. We
can only dream of a text where someone stops mid-sacrifice to look into the camera and
say “This teaches me God’s hatred for sin.” Short of that, or in want of that kind of
explanation for sacrifice, I do not feel led to think that sacrifice teaches hatred for sin,
nor that it teaches the general principle of substitution. At least it would not teach me
that if I were the one doing the sacrificing. My mind would go elsewhere. This leads to
my next question:
3. If sacrificing taught substitution, what is exactly being substituted for what? If I were
bringing a trespass offering after contacting an unclean carcass, for example (Leviticus
5:2-6), I may experience a passing sense that the animal is taking my place on the altar,
but this would be a momentary emotion only. I know I do not deserve to die—I’ve only
touched a carcass, and probably plan on touching another carcass next week—and yet
I have just killed an animal for my trouble. There is no substitution here. (Again, if the
argument comes back, “Oh, but you did deserve to die,” I would need to hear this
discussion played out in the Bible. Torah gives us plenty of opportunity to say
something like this, and it is never said. This should tell us something. Or not tell us
something.)

4. To go philosophical on this question, what does substitution say about God? Knowing
what we know of Yahweh, how would he be satisfied in substituting one thing for
another, such as an animal for a person? Jesus acknowledged that animals are nowhere
as valuable as people (Luke 12:24), and yet substitutional sacrifice seems to presume
at least some kind of equality. I find the entire concept of substitution out-of-bounds for
the character of God.

5. Outside of the impersonal world of bookkeeping or accounting, do we as humans ever

deal in substitutes? We are not allowed to do it in a court of law (“Your honor, my
neighbor has volunteered to go to jail for me”) nor do we imagine doing it in the course
of human relationships (“Sorry I offended your spouse. Is there something I can give
you?”). I just find it odd to think that God would be open to the idea of substitution
when our normal human condition is so opposed to it.

6. As for the text, why is the Bible so silent on the topic of substitutionary sacrifice
when given the chance? The Hebrew and Greek words for “substitute” or “exchange”
(chalaph and mur, Lev. 27:10; antallagma, Mark 8:37) are not uncommon (some 50
times from what I’m seeing), but they are never used for the subject of how sacrifice
works. In test-driving the idea of substitutionary sacrifice, one of the first proofs we
would look for would be a text which states the idea simply and clearly. But this is not
what we find.

I welcome your comments to these questions if you believe good answers are available
(my email is at the end of this post). Meanwhile, I am content to say that this brick needs
some help if it is to find a place on our Big Story wall. Maybe it can just be reworded,
as the idea of a “proxy” (a representative who leads the way for others while not actually
becoming a substitute for them) will certainly play a significant role in describing our
ultimate salvation. But that discussion will come later when we start to build the wall.
For now, I am content to set all talk of substitutionary sacrifice aside. It will not play a
role in the Big Story.

God’s wrath against sin was temporarily assuaged because of OT sacrifices: This
seems to represent a key turning point for the interpreter who is moving from the OT to
the NT. Similar to what we have seen before, the wording on this brick seems to be the
result of thinking backwards: If Jesus’ death finally solved God’s wrath against sin (a
later brick we will talk about), and if Jesus’ death was a substitutionary sacrifice
(another brick we will talk about), then that means that the substitutionary sacrifices
which came before Jesus (i.e., OT sacrifices) must not have finally solved God’s wrath
against sin. Thus the logical inference is that OT sacrifices did partially what Jesus’
sacrifice did fully as it concerned God’s wrath. I will recommend that this whole idea
is unnecessary, and that the logic is faulty on the front end.

The wording on this brick changes slightly from author to author, and I can pass along
two examples here. I mentioned earlier that I took a free Dallas Seminary online class
entitled “The Story of Scripture.” Here is the professor’s exact wording on his brick:
“God is willing to accept a temporary substitute for sin, and God’s grace allows
judgment to be postponed until sin is dealt with in totality.” So he speaks of God
postponing sin’s judgment, which seems to be another way of saying that God’s wrath
is temporarily assuaged. The professor’s comment was based on Romans 3:25, the verse
which is commonly appealed to for arguing this postponement idea. Here is the verse:
“Whom God set forth to be a propitiation in his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his
righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were
previously committed.”

I will look at what Paul meant by “passing over sins” in a moment, but here is another
example quotation, this one coming from Douglas Moo’s commentary on Romans:
“Paul’s meaning [in 3:25] is that God postponed the full penalty due sins in the Old
Covenant, allowing sinners to stand before Him without their having provided an
adequate satisfaction of the demands of His holy justice (cf. Heb. 10:4). In view of this,
it is clear that ‘his righteousness’ must have reference to some aspect of God’s character
that might have been called into question because of His treating sins in the past with
less than full severity, and that has now been demonstrated in setting forth Christ as the
propitiatory” (Romans 1-8 [Moody, 1991], 241-2).

So Moo’s argument is similar, where God’s wrath is postponed presumably through OT

sacrifices. But now let’s ask what Paul could have meant by “passing over sins” in
Romans 3:25. I sense we have quite a leap to make between the two ideas of “passing
over” sin and “postponing the payment” of sin.
Here again is Romans 3:25, plus the beginning of the next verse: “…because in his
forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to
demonstrate at this time his righteousness . . . .” We notice that Paul’s larger argument
concerns God’s righteousness, concluding with the realization that no one can boast
because of it (3:27) and that one God will save Jews and Gentiles in the same way,
through faith (3:30). Many commentators interpret the idea of righteousness
(dikaiosune, used 92 times) along the lines of legal justice, even repayment, but I find
this to be a forced idea that does not bear up behind the normal use of the word across
the NT (e.g., 2 Cor. 9:10 uses dikaiosune in the sense of gratuity and kindness, almost
the opposite of justice or repayment, and numerous other uses [Matt. 5:6, 10; 6:33; Rom.
6:18; Gal. 5:5; Eph. 5:9; 1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Pet. 3:13] signal general virtue which would not
be associated with straightforward justice). My point is that we need to decide the
general meaning of righteousness before figuring out what “passing over sin” means
since the two ideas are so closely tied together in Romans 3:25. If we prepackage
dikaiosune to mean justice in the legal sense, we will likely interpret “passing over sin”
legally as well. This is what Moo does, coming up with the idea of “postponing the full
penalty due sins” as his explanation of how God “passed over sins that were previously
committed.”

So let’s pause and ask what Paul would have thought about righteousness. Did he think
that God’s righteousness (Heb., tzedaqah) was primarily a legal concept, something that
demanded a get-what-you-deserve “justice”? On the contrary, Paul read an OT which
commonly tied God’s righteousness to his mercy and grace (“Gracious is the LORD, and
tzaddiq/dikaios [LXX]; yes, our God is merciful,” Ps. 116:5; “The LORD is
tsaddik/dikaios [LXX] in all his ways, gracious in all his works,” Ps. 145:17; cp. Ps.
36:5-6, 10; 37:21; 85:10; 89:14; 145:7-9; Prov. 12:10; 21:21; Hos. 2:19; 10:12; Mic.
6:8; Isa. 57:1; Jer. 10:24; Dan. 4:27; 9:18). This OT evidence leads me to suspect that
Paul’s reference to “passing over sins” in Romans 3:25 is hinting toward God’s
graciousness more than to what Moo calls the “adequate satisfaction of the demands of
His holy justice.” It strikes me that Moo is making this idea up out of thin air, in fact.

The phrase “pass over” in Romans 3:25 is our translation of the single Greek word
paresis. The word occurs just once in the NT, here in this passage. Mounce believes
paresis means “let pass, pass over,” a word which is not meant to carry much theological
weight. It certainly gives us a word picture to ponder on how God would treat sin. If I
“pass over” someone’s sin again me, it may mean I just let it go, or it may mean that I
hold a grudge until a later time when I can whack him. In God’s case, could his “passing
over” sins include the idea of “postponing” deserved punishment? It might, depending
on how we think about God’s righteousness. For remember, Paul’s larger argument is
very careful: God’s righteousness was demonstrated in his passing over [paresis] of sins
previously committed.

Here’s my opinion on God passing over sins in Romans 3:25—and I think the answer
presents itself fairly easily. In the OT, God was in the business of forgiving sin (“But
[Yahweh], being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them,”
Ps. 78:38). Various analogies are used to describe God forgiving sins, including
“bearing” or “lifting” them (nasa?, Gen. 50:17), “releasing” or “pardoning” them
(salach, Lev. 4:20; Num. 30:5), “covering” them (kasah, Ps. 32: 1; 85:2), and “healing”
them (rapha?, Ps. 103:3). We never get the sense from these common word pictures that
God is postponing his anger for some later time as he bears/lifts/covers someone’s sins.
We are not surprised, then, to also hear of God “passing over” sins with no hint of
postponement or deferment of punishment: “Who is a God like you, pardoning (nasa?)
iniquity, and passing over (avar) the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He
does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in mercy (chesed). He will again
have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the
depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18). Paul may have had Micah’s prayer in mind when he
spoke of God passing over sins. Even if he didn’t, the theology of “passing over” sins
holds; it is synonymous with forgiveness. There is nothing in the biblical phrase
generally, nor in Romans 3:25 specifically, that indicates that God is postponing
punishment.

So what role does righteousness have in God’s forgiveness? What might Paul have
meant by saying that “the righteousness of God was demonstrated” when he forgave
previous sins—presumably those in the OT? Again, I think the answer is fairly simple,
coming straight out of the OT story: By faithfully and consistently forgiving the sins of
his people, God was showing his propriety or his righteousness as the covenant-keeping
God of Israel (Exod. 34:6-7; Num. 14:18; 2 Chron. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8;
111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3). God was righteous in the
sense that he always did what he said he would do, in this case forgiving the sins of
those who were faithful to him. Drop this idea into Romans 3:25-26, and Romans
3:27-30 makes sense. This will be an important brick in my understanding of the Big
Story, so I will spend more time on this text later.

We can do one more thing to help us toss this brick aside in good conscience. Think
again of the specific wording on the brick: God’s wrath against sin was temporarily
assuaged because of OT sacrifices. How would the Bible sound if this were true? It is
reasonable to assume that the words “wrath” or “anger” would appear somewhere in a
conversation about sacrifice in the OT. So let’s ask our computer to do a word search:
How many times do the Hebrew words for wrath or anger (the best options would be
aph [275 times], evrah [34 times] or qatzaph [34 times]) appear in a verse having to do
with sacrifice in either Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers (where the subject of sacrifice is
most prevalent)? When we hit Enter we get this result: “Then Moses made careful
inquiry about the goat of the sin offering, and there it was—burned up. And he was
angry [qatzaph] with Eleazar and Ithamar , the sons of Aaron who were left” (Lev.
10:16). That’s it, one verse—and it isn’t even about God at all.
Some Random Thoughts About Substitutionary Atonement
By Michael Heiser

I just want to post some short thoughts on Dr. Johnson’s series. He’s doing what he does
best – making us think about things we take for granted. I’ve jotted down some notes
and sharing them is overdue. Here are some thoughts…

I believe in the concept of penal substitution, but I’m going to question that terminology
a bit below. I believe in it if what is meant is that “we have redemption through his
blood” (i.e., that the cross event was about our redemption, saving us from a fate that
we could otherwise not avoid). In that regard I consider the atonement more than an
example and not a ransom to be paid to Satan. However, I think the other views of the
atonement make some contributions. We either “have redemption through his blood”
(Eph 1:7; Heb 9:12) or not. Those verses seem quite clear to me. But “penal” implies
a punishment, and “substitution” implies taking a punishment on our behalf. If the death
of Christ on our behalf wasn’t really about giving God a substitute on which to pour out
his wrath (this is what Dr. Johnson is beginning to focus on), then “substitution” likely
isn’t the right word. Again, to repeat, I think Christ did die for our sake, but how to
describe how that worked may require language other than “penal” and “substitution.”
For certain the subject of penal substitutionary atonement has been articulated carelessly
in evangelicalism. This is (for me) the chief value in Dr. Johnson’s series. For now I’ll
go with the traditional nomenclature. So far in my head the issues needing attention are:

Is penal substitution consistent with the character of God? I’d agree with Dr. Johnson
that it’s a mistake to say that the point of the sacrifice of Christ was that God was angry
at the sinner. That’s a common way to talk about penal substitution but the NT
articulation of the cross doesn’t really approach it that way. We might say that God is
angry with the sinner instead of at the sinner. He’s angry because the sinner is forfeiting
what he could have in relationship with God, or that sin is self-destructive. God loves
people and sin destroys them. That makes God angry. But that’s different than God
being angry at the sinner. I think you can make a good case that Rom 1:18 is really
following the trajectory that God is angry with the sinner because of what sin costs the
sinner. God hates what sin does to people. He hates that it irrupted into his good world.
He doesn’t hate sinners, though. I would think John 3:16 makes that clear.
Consequently, what Jesus did on the cross isn’t about satisfying God’s lust for the
sinner’s punishment or soothing his hatred. As noted above, that puts the vocabulary of
“penal” into question.

Did God select and intend the death of Jesus as a penal substitution, or did he just
foreknow what would happen to Jesus on earth (not intending that he die) and then,
through raising him from the dead, endorse him as a substitution? It seems to me that
God foreknew humanity would suffer the loss of immortality (i.e., Eden would fail and
with it, everlasting life with God). God knew this meant that death separated him from
the humans he loved and wanted in his family forever. Death was a problem that needed
solving—for everyone. This makes the focal point of God’s plan the resurrection, not
the violent death. In other words, it ultimately wasn’t the death of Jesus that brought
about redemption for lost humanity. It was the resurrection. Think about the meaning
of “redemption” and you’ll see the point. To “redeem” something is to “buy it back”. In
our case, the death of Christ enables us to come back into relationship with God. It cures
the death problem, which is/was brought on by sin (my own view of Rom 5:12 helps
here — that we are guilty before God not because of what someone else did [even
Adam] but because of what we invariably and inevitably do — we sin). Christ wasn’t
God’s chance to vent his anger on his Son. It was his chance to defeat death with
resurrection and so secure eternal life for all who believe in the work of Jesus on the
cross. So does “substitution” really work to describe this?

Obviously, you can’t have resurrection without a death, and you need a death that is
sufficient for all humanity at all times. I think this necessitates the death of the Son (the
everlasting-ness of the atonement seems to require it). At any rate, it provides symmetry
and a lot of OT thinking about sacrifice is about abstract ideas like balance and
symmetry.

There is also the issue of Passover typology (i.e., what happens to Jesus needs to
correspond to the Passover lamb; 1 Cor 5:7). This is more relevant to the issue of the
cross than other sacrifices in my mind. Evangelicalism has routinely mis-applied the OT
sacrifices to Jesus. The blood, for example, is never applied to people except to sanctify
the priests (they needed to be de-contaminated for occupying sacred space). That had
nothing to do with forgiveness for moral sin. Passover is the more significant point of
reference.

The above (somewhat random and undeveloped) thoughts lead me to believe that, rather
than denying penal substitution, maybe we should do a more careful job of explaining
it in other ways besides wrath and hatred. Dr. Johnson’s series is exposing that need.
The notions of “substitution” and “having redemption through his blood” do not need
to be about hating sinners, but showing what the result would be without the grace of
God in redemption – we are undone, we do not have eternal life, we are de-created in
death. Rather than our de-creation, God offered his son to prevent that. The emphasis
is love and life, not hatred and violence. Or at least it should be.
What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 6 - By Ronn Johnson

This next brick is foundational to the evangelical Big Story wall, so it will take up this
entire post. While writing about it I was reminded of the Sunday School teacher who
asked her students “What is brown and has a fluffy tail and lives in trees and eats nuts?”
One confused child answered “I know it’s a squirrel, but I think you want me to say
Jesus.” I think this is how the average Christian struggles with the question “How does
God ultimately solve your moral guilt?” They want to say something about mercy and
forgiveness, but end up saying “Jesus” because they think they are supposed to. This
brick has been the direct cause of this sort of confusion. Here is its wording:

God taught that a substitute could take the punishment of a morally guilty person:
I now take a step back from the meaning of sacrifice (as I talked about in Part 5) and ask
a larger, or more broad, question: Does Scripture teach that human moral guilt can be
solved in the mind of God through a substitute who is willing to absorb the punishment
which is due the guilty person?

Asked that way, my immediate gut-response is “Wow—how could anyone think like
that?” I hope that is not disrespectful to God, of course, if indeed this is how he thinks
about sin and guilt and how he wants to solve it. I am just being honest. I have never met
anyone who thought this way, nor am I familiar with any culture or society which
conducts its business in this fashion. Parents certainly don’t parent their children this
way, and judges do not sanction substitutes in their courtrooms. I have to leave to you
the decision whether God thinks like this. One of my good friends recently responded
to this question with “Yes—God does solve guilt through substitution, and it is not up
to you to question God’s character. So be careful.” We have to at least consider the
possibility that he is right. But I think it is fair to question this idea, or see if it is taught
in the Bible. If it is not taught in the Bible, the entire evangelical story will need to be
adjusted.

I always like to start with the How would the Bible sound if such-and-such were true?
Test. If God accepted substitutes for solving moral guilt, would the Bible say this? And
how would it say it? In my opinion, I do not think the subject would be handled quietly.
To the contrary, it would get top billing, as this is huge news: God accepts substitutes!
Guilt is transferrable! I believe this captivating (if not incredible) idea would be
celebrated in the Bible’s teaching at all points across the larger story, and discussions
about God’s character would proceed in light of it.

But this is not what we find. In my previous post I said that the original words for
“substitute” or “exchange” (chalaph and mur, Lev. 27:10; antallagma, Mark 8:37)
appear about 50 times in the Bible, and that they are never used for the subject of how
sacrifice works. I just skimmed through all the uses of these words again and believe we
can push the point further: the Bible never uses “substitute” or “exchange” in any
discussion of how God handles human moral guilt. So now we need to ask how this idea
could have become so popular within evangelicalism. Surely it must have some merit.

This quotation from a theological dictionary seems to offer a clue: “While Christ’s
substitutionary atonement is the central theological doctrine of the Christian faith, the
imagery of substitution in the Bible is remarkably scarce” (“Substitute, Substitution,”
Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, IVP, 1998, p. 824). If we flip the two clauses of this
sentence around we discover an interesting admission: the imagery of substitution in the
Bible is remarkably scarce and [yet] Christ’s substitutionary atonement is the central
theological doctrine of the Christian faith. Said another way, Jesus becomes the answer
(“He is my substitute”) before we even settle the question (“Does God accept
substitutes?”).

I can think of two reasons why we may think that God deals with substitutes. The first
goes back to sacrifice again; as the animal lay dead on the altar it may have been
tempting to think “Oh well, better him than me.” While I agree that sacrifices may have
contained a picture of substitution, I do not believe they explicitly taught substitution,
and I trust you can work out that important distinction for yourself (see Part 5 for my
argument). Secondly, and more commonly, our minds naturally think substitution when
we hear of Jesus “laying down his life for the sheep” (John 10:15) and dying “for the
ungodly” (Rom 5:6) and dying “for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3). I will later spend a great deal
of time on Jesus’ atonement when I build my Big Story wall. At that point I will defend,
as a very biblical idea, that Jesus died for our sins. The text says as much, so we know
it is true. But the question here is whether Jesus’ death for us, or for our sins, is teaching
literal substitution in the sense of solving our moral guilt. I do not think so, and ask that
you hear me out as I try to explain why.

First, consider how substitution works, or what we mean by it. We think of a substitute
as something that switches with something else, as in a replacement teacher or a
pinch-hitter, because procedural standards allow for it. For example, the rules of
baseball say that either player A or player B can come up to hit, and it does not matter
to the umpire. He simply wants someone in the batter’s box. He has a higher goal (in this
case a rule book) than hoping for a certain team to win, or for any one player to play
well. His intentions and expectations and means of satisfaction are purely non-personal.
I trust you see where this is going. When we say that God “allows a substitute to take
the punishment of a morally guilty person,” we are likening God to that umpire. We are
saying God’s intentions and expectations and means of satisfaction are non-personal
because he is operating by some kind of standard which gives the concept of
substitution its room to work. Any situation which accepts substitutes must in the end
be impersonal. This is important, of course, because we are trying to understand how
God ultimately solves moral guilt, a highly personal issue.

(We may wonder if a soldier who dies on the battlefield “for” another—falling on a
grenade, let’s say—is a substitute in the sense that we are discussing here. I would say
this is one example of substitution, but not the kind we are talking about here. A battle
does not begin by defining how many people need to die in order to satisfy the general.
It is important to remember that in the evangelical view of Christ’s substitution for sin
that God requires that someone dies even as the story begins. He is like an umpire who
will accept either the guilty sinner or the sinless Jesus—the rules allow for either one.
In this sense the battlefield analogy seems to fall short.)

Secondly, literal substitution is not what we mean when we speak of Jesus dying “for
us.” If we were to hear someone pray, “Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my
sins so that I wouldn’t have to die on the cross for my sins,” we would be
simultaneously impressed by their attempt at accuracy and by their distinct lack of
accuracy. No careful theologian has ever claimed that you or I deserved to be on Jesus’
cross that day, nor that our death would have done any good, for anyone. My point is
that literal substitution is not in view when we hear of Jesus “dying for us/our sins” and
that the evangelical tradition has known this all along. They are not claiming that Jesus
took your place on his cross. So what do they mean?

As I finished that last sentence I walked over to our office printer. While waiting for my
copy I found a stray rubber band and shot it into the wastebasket across the room. It
occurred to me that it had been years since I shot a rubber band, maybe not since my
school days. It also occurred to me that I didn’t really shoot it—I had put one end of it
on a finger and then pulled it back and then aimed it and then let it go. “Shooting”
involved several steps that really didn’t have to do with shooting.

Pardon the illustration, but this seems to be what is happening when evangelicals equate
Jesus’ death to solving moral guilt by means of substitution. Numerous steps are
required to get from “Jesus died for my sins” to “My moral guilt is therefore solved”
even if most people mistake this for a single process, as in shooting a rubber band. I am
honestly not trying to create a brain twister here, but I can count at least thirteen logical
steps that make up the gap between these two ideas:
When the Bible says “Jesus died for my sins”

1) the word sins refers to issues concerning my personal moral guilt, and

2) the words died for mean died as a replacement for the punishment for my personal
moral guilt.

3) The punishment that my guilt deserved was eternal hell.

4) This punishment cannot be forgiven, but

5) must be served by either me or

6) an innocent substitute.

7) Since Jesus was sinless,

8) he qualifies as this innocent substitute for me and

9) for all other guilty people since

10) his physical death counts as eternal punishment. This means that

11) God never really forgives us because

12) he chooses to go ahead with our punishment

13) by means of punishing our substitute. In this way

my moral guilt is therefore solved.

Each of these steps deserves a conversation in their own right. I will deal with some of
them as remaining bricks in the traditional wall (e.g., “Jesus’ momentary death equaled
the punishment of eternal hell for all humans”), though suffice it to say for now that
most people do not realize what is traditionally being packed into the idea that Jesus
died for their sins. What they are hearing from evangelicals is much more than the Bible
is actually saying.

So what should we do with this brick? What does the Bible teach about the relationship
between substitution and moral guilt? I recommend we start with the words of James
Garrett, a Southern Baptist professor who is a proponent of substitutionary atonement
himself: “The NT evidence for Jesus’ death as his punitive substitution for the death due
to be suffered by sinful humans is less pervasive than some of its modern defenders have
claimed….” Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 17). I appreciate his honesty and
recommend it to others. Let’s just admit that substitution has become a forced concept
in our theology and that it is not part of the Big Story of the Bible. If the Bible wanted
to use words like “exchange” and “substitute” for God’s dealing with moral guilt, it
could have. But it doesn’t.

I believe that the Bible argues for a nearly opposite view: everyone will be judged for
what they do, and whatever guilt a person carries, they themselves bear it alone without
hope of transference to anyone else (‘the soul that sins shall die,” Ezek 18:4; “…because
of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die,” Ezek 33:13; “[God] will render to
each one according to his deeds—eternal life to those who by patient continuance in
doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality,” Rom 2:6-7; “so then each of us shall
give an account of himself to God,” Rom 14:12). When we pause later and review the
texts (in both testaments) that argue this way, the sheer volume of material will be
surprising to many of you who were brought up in a traditional church. I know it was
a surprise to me. I have now changed my mind to realize that substitution is both
unnecessary to the Big Story and even contrary to it, principally because sin should
never have been placed at the beginning of the conversation for why people face the
judgment of God. We started wrong, so we got the whole story wrong.

I can’t help but think that the greater message of substitution—the concept that God
needs to replace me and what I’m really like with something morally perfect, even
Jesus—has harmed our modern presentation of the gospel big-time. I can see why many
people are confused when they hear that God loves them but that he also can’t stand
being around them. That would confuse me too. The courtroom substitution picture that
we have so often appealed to is also confusing. A judge who accepts someone else’s
death for what I have done may sound romantic to some, but it does not sound romantic
to me, nor to most of my non-Christian friends. I know this because they have told me.
I’ll paraphrase what one of my atheist friends said about the courtroom picture he was
given as a kid at church: “I did not understand then, nor do I understand now, how this
shows love, or shows forgiveness, or how it ultimately solves the situation. After Jesus
dies I am just as guilty as I was before. The ‘good news’ Christians speak of only deals
with the punishment phase of the story, not with the person who is still left standing in
the courtroom.” This friend is currently the president of Minnesota Atheists.

Of course the Bible will use plaintiff / judge terminology in describing our relationship
to God, but this will be the exception. Most commonly our relationship to God is
defined in terms of ancestry, asking to which family do we belong? And that becomes
a beautiful story of love, forgiveness, and solving my moral guilt. I can understand why
substitution is necessary for those who describe salvation in terms of sin management,
since in this view God ultimately is satisfied by nothing less than moral perfection,
whether mine or Jesus’. But substitution will never enter the discussion for those who
see salvation as primarily relational, or family-oriented. Parents don’t need substitutes
for their kids. I am excited to talk of this when I present my case for the Bible’s Big
Story. I don’t need to be substituted! God accepts me, the real me, as his child. And as
for moral guilt, be assured that once your relationship with God is settled—when you
are a member of his family—your moral guilt will certainly be solved in God’s chosen
way. Thank goodness. Thank God! And toss this brick aside.
What Is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 7 - By Ronn Johnson

In email conversations I have been having with readers of this series, I sense that I am
often causing questions which will be answered in future posts. This is good, and I have
enjoyed practicing some of my thoughts ahead of time in my email replies. It shows that
we are probably going somewhere worthwhile. It also prods me to move at a faster pace,
and toward that end I will try. These next three bricks are pivotal to where I’m
eventually going, however, so I want to take some time with them.

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in OT salvation:

Many evangelicals would be surprised to see this brick on their wall, and most
evangelical scholars would deny that this idea has ever been made into a brick at all. Our
tradition has been careful to avoid saying that an OT priest—or any priest for that
matter—could affect the spiritual state of a worshipper. Put positively, we are
Protestants; we believe that a person in both testaments can be right with God only
through their individual faith, and that bare rituals or ceremonies play no role in a
person’s salvation (e.g., “Animal sacrifices, of course, cannot ultimately save” [Thomas
Schreiner, “Penal Substitution View,” in The Nature of the Atonement [IVP, 2006], 85).
I agree with our tradition on this point. So how can I make the claim that evangelicals
do believe that priestly actions in the OT played a role in salvation?

The answer comes in noticing that this brick quietly functions as a support to another
just above it, a shiny brick which gets a lot of attention. It reads Jesus’ priestly actions
(sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in human salvation. We will talk about this
brick shortly. The logical connection between these two bricks becomes clear as we
realize that the higher brick is taking its cue from the lower: since Jesus’ priestly actions
in the NT were salvific—principally in his atoning sacrifice—it stands to reason that OT
priestly actions must have been salvific as well. We can assume that the evangelical is
trying to be consistent in describing what a priest did, or the effect that his actions
carried, across both testaments.

(I hope you catch the specificity of this point. I am not comparing the effectiveness of
Jesus’ priestly sacrifice to the ineffectiveness of OT animal sacrifices, as the author of
Hebrews does in 10:1-4. I am instead considering the meaning of sacrifices in general.
What were they meant to accomplish? What did they mean to the life of the OT
Israelite? What did they accomplish in the mind of God? Most importantly, did
sacrifices play a role in salvation?)

The challenge to this brick is fairly obvious. The OT nowhere ties righteousness (Heb.,
tsedaqah) to priestly activity and numerous OT stories tell of people who were
considered righteous without a priest or tabernacle in sight (Noah, Gen 6:9; Abraham,
Gen 15:6; the inhabitants of Sodom, Gen 18:23; exiles in Babylon, Ezek 3:20, etc.).
Evangelicals must give theological account for the long stretches of time (the exile is
our best example) when Jewish priests and their sacrifices were not available to God’s
people. In believing that righteousness was by faith we are forced to admit that access
to a priest did not affect one’s ability to be right with God. I am not aware of any
argument by evangelical scholarship that contradicts this rather simple point. So I
believe it is safe to toss this brick aside and deal with another closely related to it.

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) prefigured Jesus’ future

priestly actions: Most evangelicals put a lot of thought, even a lot of weight, into this
idea. Here is a sample quotation: “The citation in Heb 10:6-8 [of Ps 40] is particularly
significant where burnt offerings, in association with other offerings, are shown to be
inferior to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who offered himself as a sacrifice for sin once
for all (Heb 10:1-4, 10). This suggests that the sacrificial system and particularly the
burnt offering foreshadows or typifies the death of Christ for sins” (Mark Rooker,
Leviticus: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Scripture [2000], commenting
on Lev 1:4). Rooker uses the words “foreshadows” and “typifies” where I am using the
word “prefigured.” The larger point is that evangelicals have traditionally interpreted
OT priestly activity as predicting what Jesus would someday do, and they believe it is
important for the reader of the Big Story of the Bible to catch this connection.

But there is a potential problem with this idea, or at least something to think about. It
is probable that the idea of a priest—a person acting as a divine/human intermediary or
arbiter —was not invented by God at all. Instead, the idea seems to originate along with
sacrifice and other religious practices within ancient cultures which pre-dated Israel (see
Part 5 in this series). Recall that divorce law got into Torah not because God invented
divorce but because human experience led to the need of clarifying the practice (Deut
24:1-5; cp. Matt 19:8). The same can also be said for the origin of slavery law (cp. Exod
21:2) and polygamy law (cp. Deut 21:15). The point is that many things find their way
into Torah which were not of divine design, but of human design needing correction.

And recall where priests show up in the biblical story: like sacrifice, they appear well
before Moses (e.g., Melchizedek in Gen 14:18; Joseph’s father-in-law in Gen 41:45).
Add to this that the instructions for the priesthood in Torah compare closely with earlier
pagan law codes (Code of Hammurabi, etc.), and we are led to the likely conclusion that
the origin of the role of a priest is simply religious tradition. It was how humanity
decided to establish and maintain contact with the world of the gods, and not how God
decided to establish his contact with mankind. So how does this realization affect our
understanding of this brick?
In a word, priests are not as important to the biblical story line as we have traditionally
made them out to be. A man like John the Baptist, whose father was a priest (Luke 1:5),
could completely withdraw from Temple/priestly activity and still function as a
righteous man (Matt 11:11; 21:32). Jesus instructed a person to visit a priest on a few
occasions (cp. Matt 8:4), but this was never for the purpose of getting right with God.
All this happened before the crucifixion, of course, which negates the common argument
that Jesus’ death fulfilled or abolished the need for future priests. The relative
unimportance of the priesthood becomes a developing (but clear) story within the
Bible’s larger narrative, extending well back into the days of the OT.

So I think this brick can remain, but its wording should be softened a bit: Priestly
actions in the OT will be compared to Jesus’ future priestly actions. The connection
between Jesus and the priesthood is that of simple association, not fulfillment (we will
deal with Hebrews 5-10, the lone passage that makes this association, later; we should
note that the author of Hebrews never uses the word we commonly associate with
fulfillment [pleroma] anywhere in his book). Of course, we do have many NT passages
which seem to describe Jesus performing priestly functions on our behalf (1 Pet 2:24,
“[He] bore our sins on the tree”), and for those we must give account. So let’s get right
to our next brick—the shiny one I had mentioned earlier.

Jesus’ priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in human salvation:
Almost every gospel presentation you have ever heard has been based on this brick.
When someone says that Jesus “paid for your sin” or “propitiated God’s wrath” or “bore
your penalty of hell” he is appealing to what he believes to be the primary effect of
Jesus’ priestly work on your behalf. (This is commonly referred to as the “finished work
of Christ,” a concept which traditionally investigates the meaning of Jesus’ death as
opposed to his life.) As stated, this brick claims that Jesus’ actions as a priest make a
difference to our spiritual status before God, even our salvation. This is quite an
assertion. So let’s consider this idea more carefully.

It is good to remember that Jesus was not a Jewish priest. He did not qualify for the
office, born of Judah instead of Levi, and he never referred to himself as a priest (cp.
“Go show yourselves to the priests,” Luke 17:14). Nowhere in the book of Acts, nor in
the writings of Paul, is Jesus referred to as a Jewish priest. Writers of the NT often
describe Jesus acting as a priest, however, especially when interpreting the meaning of
his death. As a matter of history, by the way, I think a Jesus-acting-as-priest idea would
not have been surprising to the original audience of the NT, even if they knew Jesus did
not qualify for the office. Herod’s temple was full of non-Levitical (and even
non-Jewish!) priests, as the king had imported Egyptian and Mesopotamian priests to
serve out their functions. The office of the high priesthood was no better, with the
position known to go to the highest bidder. So no one would have been theologically
offended to hear of Jesus the carpenter acting as a priest even if he failed the ancestral
test.

So where does the NT say that Jesus performed priestly functions? Producing such a list
involves a few judgment calls since some ancient concepts like redemption are at times
associated with the Jewish priesthood, while at other times they are not. But we need not
split hairs on this matter. For now, let’s think of as many passages as possible where
Jesus appears to function as a priest:

“The Son of Man came to give his life as a redemption [lutron, cp. Luke 24:41] for
many” (Mark 10:45)

“The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)

“It is expedient that one man should die for the nation” (John 11:50)

“For [the disciples’] sake I sanctify myself” (John 17:19)

“He obtained [peripoieo, cp. 1 Tim 3:13] the church with his own blood” (Acts 20:28)

“Whom God set forth as a place of mercy [hilasterion, cp. Heb 9:5] by his blood”
(Romans 3:25)

“Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6)

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)

“Having now been justified by his blood” (Romans 5:9)

“Reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10)

“Through him we have now received the reconciliation” (Romans 5:11)

“On account of sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3)

“[God] did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Romans 8:32)

“Paul, to those who are sanctified by Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2)

“You are washed, you are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians
6:11)

“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3)

“One died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:14)

“God has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:18)

“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to
them” (2 Corinthians 5:19)

“He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”
(Galatians 3:13)

“In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians
1:7; cp. Colossians 1:14)

“Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been made near by the blood of
Christ” (Ephesians 2:13)

“[Jesus] reconciled both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross”
(Ephesians 2:16)

“Christ has given himself [as] an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2)

“That [Jesus] might sanctify and cleanse [the church] with the washing of water by the
word” (Ephesians 5:26)

“Having made peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:20)

“Who died for us, that we should live together with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10)

“[Jesus] gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and
cleanse for himself his own special people” (Titus 2:14)

“For both [Jesus] who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one”
(Hebrews 2:11)
“Seeing that we have a great high priest … we ought to come boldly to the throne of
grace” (Hebrews 4:14, 16)

“The forerunner has entered [behind the veil] for us, having become a high priest
forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:20)

“Because [Jesus] has an unchangeable priesthood, he is able to save those who come
to God through him” (Hebrews 7:24-25)

“With his own blood Christ entered the most holy place once for all” (Hebrews 9:12)

“The blood of Christ [will] cleanse your conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14)

“By means of death [Jesus] is the mediator of the new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15)

“According to the law almost all things are cleansed with blood, and without the
shedding of blood there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22)

“Jesus has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26)

“Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:28)

“We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all”
(Hebrews 10:10)

“He offered one sacrifice for sin forever” (Hebrews 10:12)

“By one offering Jesus has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews
10:14)

“Brethren, we have boldness to enter the holiest place by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews
10:19)

“A new and living way he consecrated for us through the veil, his flesh” (Hebrews
10:20)

“Let us draw near in full assurance, having our hearts sprinkled” (Hebrews 10:22)

“He will be worthy of punishment [who] counts the blood of the covenant by which he
was sanctified a common thing” (Hebrews 10:29)
“In order to sanctify the people with his own blood, [Jesus] suffered outside the gate”
(Hebrews 13:12)

“You were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish” (1
Peter 1:18)

“[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24)

“Christ suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1
Peter 3:18)

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7)

“[Jesus] himself is the place of mercy for our sins, and for the whole world” (1 John
2:2)

“God sent his Son to be the place of mercy for our sins” (1 John 4:10)

“[Jesus] was slain and has redeemed us to God by his blood” (Revelation 5:9)

The sheer size of this list reminds us that one of the most important bricks on our Big
Story wall will be the priestly function of Jesus, especially in relation to his death.
Something very important happened at the crucifixion! But here is where things
commonly go askew. If we are not careful, we may presume that our salvation is based
on phrases within this list (e.g., “forgiveness of sins,” “reconciled to God,” “place of
mercy for our sins”). For remember where we just were: in the OT, a priest did not
function in a saving capacity. That was not his role. Nor did he grant the ability for
someone to become righteous. If we are going to interpret Jesus’ priestly role as
affecting our salvation, we need to realize what we are asking for—a vast change in how
Israel’s story works, a change in how Torah works, and even a change in how the whole
Bible works.

I am willing to try an experiment without knowing the result that will come. I’m
working on a hunch. Let’s ask our computer how often the Greek words for save or
salvation (verb, sozo; noun, soteria) appear in the context of any of our passages listed
above. This may not prove anything, of course, but it may hint at some kind of
relationship between Jesus’ priestly actions and our salvation. Maybe the Bible will
come right out and say that Jesus saves us through his death, or through his sacrifice. It
certainly could say this. Then again maybe it won’t. Here’s the result:
“Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death
of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans
5:9-10)

“For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus
Christ, who died for us, that we should live together with him.” (1 Thessalonians
5:9-10)

“Because [Jesus] has an unchangeable priesthood, he is able to save those who come
to God through him.” (Hebrews 7:24-25)

“Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for him
he will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.” (Hebrews 9:28)

So there are four NT passages in which the words salvation/save appear in the same
context as Jesus’ priestly work. These are certainly interesting verses to consider, and
we will in a moment. I’m thinking, however, that we need to press our experiment
further and include the Greek words for justify or righteousness or righteous (verb,
dikaiao; noun, dikaiosune; adjective, dikaios) in our search since these words are
commonly associated with salvation in the NT. Here is the result:

“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God set forth as a place of mercy by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his
righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins that were
previously committed.” (Romans 3:25)

“Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us
to God” (1 Peter 3:18)

So now our simple lexical experiment has given us something a bit more substantial to
work with: There are six NT passages which textually combine Jesus’ priestly activity
with human salvation/righteousness. In deciding what to do with this shiny brick let’s
think through these passages, considering whether they include the idea that Jesus’
priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in our salvation.

Romans 3:25: Because “justifying” something in the Bible needs context (dikaiao is
variously translated as “to approve” [Matt 11:19], “to free” [Rom 6:7], and “to verify”
[1 Tim 3:16]), obtaining a clear understanding of “being justified by his blood” is
difficult here, or at least open to discussion. Here is my opinion of this important verse.
In arguing toward his conclusion that non-proselytized Gentile believers can claim the
same God and thus the same family as Jewish believers (3:28-30), Paul noticed that the
Jewish story which included a place of mercy (the ‘seat of mercy,’ or ark lid, in Exodus
25:17) now had a modern (especially Gentile) counterpart in Jesus’ cross and blood
(3:24-26)—he was the new mercy seat, or forgiveness-place. This connection
demonstrated that God was acting with consistency (“acting righteously”) in forgiving
the past and present sins of all believers regardless of race. (Just what “forgiveness of
sins” means will be the subject of future discussion, of course. I will argue that the
“sin/trespass” offering in the OT, and thus the “forgiveness of sins” which accompanied
this ritual, concerned ceremonial, as opposed to moral, cleansing. In this way sacrifices
and priestly declarations of “forgiveness” bore no relation to human salvation.)

Romans 5:9-10: In these dense verses Paul combines four ideas into two, and then notes
(through the use of changing verb tenses) that the first concept, once completed, leads
to the opportunity to participate in the second. The first concept—being “approved by
Jesus’ blood” (5:9), paralleled with being “reconciled to God” (5:10)—describes the
ritual cleansing performed by a priest which permitted a person to move forward/inward
during the process of worship in a temple. Paul is falling into line with every other
religion of his day in believing that a person needed to be sanctified or “holy-fied” in
order to approach a deity, including the God of Israel. Jesus’ blood sanctifies his Roman
audience, thought Paul, mirroring the blood of the sacrificial lamb in the OT. But
approaching Yahweh came with a purpose. Paul ended by saying “we shall be saved
from wrath through him” (5:9), speaking of trust in the living Jesus, paralleling this with
“we shall be saved by his life” (5:10). Paul’s point was that the effect of Jesus’ death,
a past event of ritual purification, provides our approach into God’s presence and thus
our future salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:9-10: Paul is clear that the person who is responsible for our
salvation also died. There’s certainly shock value in that idea. What he is not clear about
in this verse is how Jesus’ death affected our salvation. So I will leave this passage
alone, as it cannot be argued in any one direction.

Hebrews 7:24-25: Our salvation is won through Jesus, our eternal priest. This
interesting word picture—“those who come to God through him”—details how the
ancient world thought of the process of salvation. In order to be saved by a deity, one
needed to supplicate him or her, and supplication was usually preceded by ritual
sanctification. This is what Jesus now does for us. We come to God, for salvation,
through the ritual cleansing of Jesus.
Hebrews 9:28: Those who wait for Jesus are saved, presumably meaning that only the
Jesus-loyalist is the one who will gain eternal life. Jesus’ priestly activity is not the
subject of discussion in this verse.

1 Peter 3:18: We often picture getting to heaven as getting across a great divide (hell),
with a person wanting to get from one cliff to another (heaven). Salvation is pictured as
Jesus’ cross spanning the divide, enabling us to walk across Jesus’ sacrifice to get to
heaven. I would recommend changing out this picture for something that fits the ancient
Near East mind much better: think of a building (say, a temple) in which the goal is not
to get across but to get in—and then to move increasingly in until you confront the deity
with whom you want to fellowship, or by whom you want to be accepted. Crossing
sacred space, or approaching a deity, was considered the most dangerous thing a human
could ever do in the ancient world. And so this is why Peter paints this picture for us.
Jesus can now “bring us to God,” giving us confidence to approach Him after being
atoned/cleansed of our ritual impurity.

So what about this brick? Do Jesus’ priestly actions, such as his atoning sacrifice, play
a role in our salvation? Here is where things get tricky. I would say yes and no,
depending on what we do with the subject of priestly ritualistic cleansing. I would say
yes if our approach to Yahweh for salvation required prior cleansing. On the other hand,
I would say no if we should interpret this cleansing as a matter of religious/cultural
tradition. I realize that a lot of theology rides on where we go with these two options,
so I would like to dedicate my next post to working through them. Until then hang on
to this brick.

In closing, I want to affirm the importance Jesus’ death to the larger story of the Bible.
I believe he needed to die by the will of the Father to complete our salvation. As a
separate issue, I believe that Jesus’ actions as a priest are also critical to the Bible’s
explanation of salvation. The challenge remains in sorting through how these ideas
(priesthood, sacrifice, cleansing, death, salvation, etc.) relate to one another. Our goal
is to explain them to the liking of the original writers and readers of the Bible—what the
Naked Bible website is all about!
The Bible’s Big Story, Part 8 - By Ronn Johnson

I ended my last post by painting myself into a theological corner. In wondering what to
do with the brick which says Jesus’ priestly work (atonement, sacrifice, etc.) plays a
role in our salvation I realized that I needed to first play out the subject of ritual
cleansing a bit more. Here is why. If I keep this brick, I am attributing salvific value to
priestly activity—something that should worry me based on the limited role that a priest
had in the OT. We recall that priests did not (indeed, could not) do anything to cause a
person to become righteous in Israel’s religion. Their role was confined to ritual only.
On the other hand, if I toss this brick, I am saying that Jesus’ sacrifice/atonement did not
play a role in my salvation—and those are fighting words by almost any standard.
Central to our evangelical faith is the idea that Jesus died to obtain/secure/provide
(choose your favorite word) our salvation. So now you can see why we need to talk
about this. It feels like neither option will work.

Recall the word picture of using Jesus’ cross to span the chasm between two cliffs. This
illustration has certainly been useful, but it does not depict how the OT Israelite would
have interpreted his situation. He worked with a different picture, something he
physically experienced as a kind of living illustration: the tabernacle/temple. This is
what I meant earlier in saying that the OT worshipper thought about getting in as
opposed to getting across.

So let’s develop this OT picture. Draw a person standing in front of a temple. Directly
above this, up in the heavens, draw God (however that works for you!). Now connect
these three pictures with three lines to form a triangle. Let’s give a title to each of these
lines before taking time with the picture as a whole:

Line #1 (between the person and God): This line is meant to convey something very
simple and certainly very important. Title it simply as A man’s relationship to God. I
will use it to describe the real (as opposed to a cultural or imagined) way in which a
person was to relate to Yahweh, the deity of Israel.

Line #2 (between God and the temple): Once we introduce the concept of a temple into
the biblical story, things get interesting. We sense contradictory messages. On one hand,
Yahweh is said to reside inside one of his temple rooms (e.g., “You who dwell between
the cherubim, shine forth,” Ps 80:1). This is consistent with how other nations thought
of their gods living in the holy rooms of their respective temples, usually indicated by
the placement of an idol. On the other hand, biblical writers also describe Yahweh as
being too “big” for a temple (e.g., “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple which I have
built?” 1 Kings 8:27). So this line (which we can title God’s relationship to physical
space) appreciates two apparently incongruous ideas which seem to have been believed
at the same time: God was somehow present in a physical location while he was not able
to be confined to any one physical location.

Line #3 (between the person and the temple): This line actually extends from the person
to the farthest room inside the temple, the holiest place where the deity was thought to
dwell (the ends of lines #2 and #3 should touch here). Only special people could go into
this room, of course, such as Israel’s high priest, and even then once per year. For
everyone else, the idea of officially approaching one’s god was a matter of wishful
imagination (“Blessed is the man whom you choose, and cause to approach you, that he
may dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, of your
holy temple,” Psalm 65:4). As you can imagine, this line plays a significant role in the
biblical story while also being difficult to explain to a modern audience. Let’s title it A
righteous person’s official approach to God in worship / supplication / service.

With these lines in place, let’s think our way around the picture. I believe this will be
the best way to determine how to handle our brick and even how to eventually
understand the meaning of Jesus’ sacrificial death. I will number my points just for my
own organization.

1) Regarding line #1, the Bible teaches that God desires personal faith/loyalty (Heb.,
aman; Gk., pistis) from every human, and that in response to this faith God declares the
person as righteous (Heb., tsaddiq; Gk., dikios), or proper. The fact that we can honor
Yahweh in such a personal way is remarkable and speaks to the greatness of his
character. No other god has ever treated his human followers in this way. This simple
loyalty-brings-righteousness pattern spans both testaments, starting with the life of
Abraham (“Abraham aman-ed the LORD, and the LORD accounted it to him for
tsedaqah,” Gen 15:6), continuing through the Psalms (“Oh love Yahweh, all you his
saints! For Yahweh preserves the aman, while fully repaying the proud,” Ps 31:23), and
the prophets (“Your aman is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew that goes
away; but I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt
offerings,” Hos 6:4, 6), and the gospels (“He who pisteo’s Him will not perish but have
eternal life,” John 3:15) and Paul’s letters (“Salvation for everyone who pisteo’s, for the
Jew first and also for the Greek,” Rom 1:16), and ending with John’s vision in
Revelation (“…those who come with [Jesus] are called, chosen, and pistos,” Rev 17:14).
So I believe it is important to keep this line unencumbered from heavy theological ideas,
such as the mechanics of inherited sin/guilt or substitutionary payment/righteousness.
Those discussions may have their time and place, but not on this line. The Bible teaches
that it is inherently simple to get along well with God.
2) Lines #2 and #3 intersect at the most sacred item in Israel’s religion, the ark of the
covenant. This box is one example of “sacred space” in the biblical story—where
heaven and earth met, as some would say. (The official definition of sacred space varies
with religious traditions, so I am not really concerned with defining the phrase carefully
at this point. In moving forward, let’s describe sacred space as where God’s presence
was presumed to dwell, just as our picture shows.) We recall that the ark could not be
touched with human hands (Exod 25:12-15; Num 7:9; Deut 10:8), apparently upon the
pain of death (e.g., 2 Sam 6:6-7). I have always been fascinated by this idea, as most
people are. Why would a box be so dangerous? What would be God’s point in making
it dangerous? What if I almost touched it? Did all sacred space operate this way? And
how does sacred space even work? How can two very different (even competing) modes
of existence be merged together? These are interesting questions, and I sense the
answers are above our human pay grade. So let’s move on to think of line #3 by itself.

3) Line #3 represents a man’s official approach toward sacred space. This is different
from line #1, where the question had to do with being right with God. To help us
understand the difference between these lines, and to appreciate the dread associated
with line #3 in the ancient world, think of the story of Esther and the concern she had
of appearing before her husband-king uninvited: “All the king’s servants and the people
know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the king, who has not
been called, he has but one law: put all to death, except the one to whom the king holds
out the golden scepter, that he may live” (Esther 4:11). I remember hearing this story in
Sunday School and wanting to say “Esther, you have nothing to worry about—he just
chose you in a beauty pageant!” From every indication the king was still infatuated with
Esther (cp. 2:17) and yet her fear was real, even justified. Approaching a human king
meant laying one’s life on the line. Now multiply that fear several times over and we
begin to understand the kind of terror that accompanied an approach before one’s god.

4) And how dangerous was sacred space? Of course we would say very dangerous, but
it has sometimes been assumed that humans could not enter that place where God’s
presence was assumed to dwell. For what it’s worth, I would like to challenge that
assumption. Recall that the king in Esther’s story was more important than the space he
inhabited, meaning that he carried the right to determine what would happen to the
queen when she stood before him. This story seems to align with how God handled his
sacred space as well, at least in the stories left to us. Though standing on “holy ground,”
Moses and Joshua were told to only take off their sandals (Exod 3:5; Josh 5:15). While
appearing before Yahweh’s throne (in a vision, admittedly) Isaiah was allowed to
remain after he was ritually cleansed by a seraph (Isa 6:6-7). In these three cases it could
be argued that an otherwise normal human survived his sacred space ordeal just fine
provided he perform some act of reverence prescribed by God. This sounds much like
Esther touching Ahasuerus’ scepter (5:2). Most importantly—and this informs our
understanding of the relationship between lines #1 and #3—each man was already
presumed to be righteous, or right with God, before his sacred space experience began.

5) So let’s think through why and how a person might cross into sacred space. The story
of David’s sin with Bathsheba (2 Sam 11-12) seems to help us here. Though David’s
sins deserved death (cp. Exod 21:12; Lev 20:10), Nathan announced that God had
“passed over” or forgiven (avar, cp. Mic 7:18) them and that he would not die
(12:13-14). Yet David had not offered a sacrifice, nor was he intending to (cp. Ps
51:16). “The sacrifices of God,” he recognized, “are a broken spirit; a broken and
contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps 51:17). David understood that sacrifices
were not about payment for sin, and that they could not replace a simple and humble
request for God’s forgiveness based on his mercy alone (cp. Exod 10:17-18; 32:32;
34:7; Num 14:18-19; 30:5, 8; 1 Kgs 8:30, 34, 36, 39, 50; 2 Chr 6:21, 25, 27, 30, 39;
7:14; Ps 78:38; 86:5; 130:4; Isa 6:7.) Bringing our picture into this story, David’s
concern was on line #1. He knew that the only possible response to his sin was to plead
to God for pity (Ps 103:13), and that God would respond by restoring the broken
relationship (Ps 103:17-18). But the story continues. After asking God to spare the life
of his child who would eventually die (12:16-18), David “arose from the ground,
washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and went into the house of the
LORD and worshipped” (12:20). For some reason David felt compelled to travel along
line #3. Maybe David’s restored relationship with God led to a desire to approach God
in an official capacity. He knew this would require ritual cleansing, which he did, and
the story closes with David bowing before God in worship. Achieving line #1 prompted,
in this instance, the story of line #3. David may even have considered line #3 to be a
necessary and proper ending to his Bathsheba incident.

6) It is common to hear a person say at this point “But Mosaic law repeatedly linked the
priests and sacrifices associated with line #3 to the forgiveness of sins (e.g., “if he has
committed sins, it shall be forgiven him,” Lev 4:26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13, 16, 18), which
ends up sounding a lot like line #1. In other words, weren’t sacrifices necessary for
having a right relationship to God?” In my hearing this has been a very honest question,
arising naturally from the evangelical’s Big Story of the Bible. In this understanding,
what I have called a “sin management” model, the problem of sin is elevated to line #1
and is met by the solution of forgiveness made available on line #3. Evangelicals then
connect Jesus’ death to this story, going so far as to argue that God’s ultimate ability to
forgive sin required the crucifixion. So this question clearly carries considerable
theological weight, even approaching the issue of God’s character. Let’s see if our
picture can speak to this question.
7) Grab an eraser and change the scene to 586 B.C. when the temple was destroyed and
the Israelites were taken into exile. Jeremiah told his friends to build homes and plant
gardens in Babylon since they would not be returning to Israel for seventy years (Jer
25:11; 29:5). This means that everything on line #3 is now gone, even the line itself, for
over a generation. We can erase line #2 as well. All that is left is line #1. What was a
godly person to do about sacrifice and, potentially, about forgiveness of his sins in this
situation? Certainly this period was not an incidental hiccup in the theology of Judaism.
From all indications, this was a time designed by God to teach his people what it meant
to relate to him without a “temple kit.” We are thankful that there is still more story to
tell.

8) The prophet Daniel is one of these final stories in the OT. He was taken to Babylon
as a teenager (Dan 1:1-6) and lived out the remainder of his life on foreign soil. Imagine
how violently and how quickly his understanding of God and sacred space needed to
change. But he was up to it. Undoing almost 1000 years of tradition, he operated
confidently outside the context of priests, sacrifices, and temple, openly asking God for
forgiveness and blessing in the process (“O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen
and act!” 9:19). Daniel got in trouble for his prayer life, we recall. Let’s imagine how
the conversation might have gone on his way down to the lion’s den with one of the
Babylonian guards (6:16):

“So, Daniel, what were you doing that got you into jail in the first place?”

“I was praying to Yahweh, the god of my people, as was my custom.”

“I heard that you prayed out an open window, apparently toward Judea [6:10]. Why?”

“We Jews have long been in the habit of praying in the direction of our temple [cp. 2
Chron 6:34]. But I’ll admit it’s more tradition than anything else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a couple of things. First, we’re like you in treating our temple as our god’s throne
room. But second, we believe that our god alone is responsible for creating everything
that is, including your god, and, as such, he does not limit himself to one place.”

“That’s quite an assertion, but I’ll go with it for now. So how do you approach your god,
now that your temple is gone?”
“Even while our temple was standing, it was understood that our god could hear us
wherever we were [cp. Ps 139:7-8]. Plus, much of our early family history had no
experience with a temple [Genesis 12-Exodus 40]. So as I see it the whole idea of a
temple was temporary. I think it was an accommodation of our god to how humans
imagine the process of worship. It’s what we knew in Egypt before becoming a nation,
and it continues here in Babylon as well.”

“So in praying toward your former temple you were just accommodating a tradition of
an idea which itself was an accommodation?”

“That’s well-said. The beauty of it is that I’m totally fine sitting in a dungeon because
my god thinks I’m totally find sitting in a dungeon. All he needs is my personal loyalty,
and I can do that anywhere. I could even do it in a lion’s den.”

“That kind of god is different from any god I’ve ever heard of before. Are you saying
that priests and sacrifices aren’t necessary in your worship?”

“No, they are not. If they are available, we certainly use them. If they’re not available,
like here in Babylon, we just live by loyalty.”

“So what about sin offerings? How does your religion operate without them?”

“Like other religions, we used to offer sacrifices ‘for our sins,’ or for those common
things that hindered our official approach to Yahweh’s throne room [e.g., mold or
uncleanness, Lev 12:7; 14:18-20; 15:15, 30; unsolved murder, Num 6:11; Deut 21:8;
inadvertent sin, Num 15:25]. But, again, we have a god who longs for personal loyalty
above those kinds of rituals. So now that we don’t have a temple we simply don’t worry
about doing sin offerings anymore.”

“You’re treating your relationship to your god almost like a personal friendship.”

“Right. And, as my friend, he doesn’t think about me just in terms of my behavior, or

my actions. It’s much deeper than that.”

“Back to those sacrifices. When you sacrificed an animal, were you considering the
animal as your ‘replacement’ on the altar?”

“Of course not. No one who was sacrificing was deserving of death. In fact, just the
opposite—they were deserving of mercy.”
“Whoa. How can you speak of deserving mercy from your god?”

“The best thing about our covenant with Yahweh was that he promised that he would
treat his loyalists kindly [cp. Exod 34:7; Num 14:18-20; Neh 9:7; Ps 130:4; Mic 7:18;
Dan 9:9]. So we Jews like to mix God’s love and justice together in our prayers and
songs [“He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the mercy of the LORD,”
Ps 33:5; “He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness and honor,”
Proverbs 21:21], celebrating that in treating us justly, or righteously, God will be
treating us mercifully.”

“Amazing. But I have this weird feeling, kind of like a prediction, that someday
someone will say that one of the main lessons of your religion was that there has always
been a strong tension between Yahweh’s love and justice.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. It is basically the opposite of what Yahweh is like. In
fact, that sounds like the gods of Canaan. They loved to play justice off of mercy,
threatening their worshippers for all sorts of simple disobedience issues—like even
mispronouncing their name.”

“Well, here we are at the lions’ den. Again, for the record, I’ve never heard of a god like
yours before. If you guys ever go back to Judea, do you foresee building a temple
again?”

“Certainly. Yahweh deserves a beautiful home. Until then, I’m not much concerned
about it. I’m more concerned about the lions actually.”

“Something tells me you’ll be just fine. See you tomorrow.”

So what should we do with our brick? Let’s return to our original question: Did Jesus’
priestly work (atonement, sacrifice, etc.) play a role in my salvation? I hope that our
picture has visualized how the direct answer to this question must be no. We are
pronounced righteous, and are thus considered “saved,” because of our faith/loyalty
(line #1), and, as a separate discussion, those people who approached God’s sacred
space needed ritual cleansing (line #3). A person who enjoyed a good relationship to
God on line #1 may or may not have experienced line #3, depending on his time and
place and opportunity. This is not to say that line #3 is unimportant or simply incidental
to the Bible’s story line. Quite to the contrary, in fact. The Bible was written by people
and to people who believed that sacred space demanded their respect. Remember Peter’s
refusal to even meet with Cornelius. This was not because Cornelius was ungodly, but
because he was ceremonially unclean ( “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man
to keep company with or go to one of another nation,” Acts 10:28). Peter did not yet
realize that Jesus’ death meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, could now travel
down line #3 (cp. Matt 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45; Heb 2:17; 4:16; 6:19; 9:3, 25,
28; 1 Pet 2:23-24; 1 John 1:6-7; 2:2-4; 4:10)—provided, of course, they had taken care
of line #1. This “new covenant,” or new arrangement for approaching Yahweh (cp. Heb
10:16-19), will be the major story line of the New Testament. We will get there in due
time. For now, set this brick aside.
What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 9 - By Ronn Johnson

My last post concluded with the recommendation that the primary effect of Jesus’ death
when viewed in priestly terms (that is, when we speak of Jesus dying as a sacrifice)
found him making an already-righteous worshipper fit for entering sacred space. Most
of my evangelical friends would find this purpose of Jesus’ sacrificial death to be too
limiting, of course, though I think that their concern is due to a miscalculation of how
important sacred space was in ancient Near Eastern religious culture. The dread
associated with officially approaching a holy God (beyond the privilege of offering up
a spontaneous prayer, for example) will play a major role in the Big Story of the Bible,
whether in describing Israel’s worship system in the OT or in celebrating the “new and
living way” to approach God in the NT. So we will certainly revisit the issue of sacred
space as I get to the construction phase of my project. For now let’s look at the next
brick in the evangelical wall:

The OT teaches a constant tension between God’s justice and God’s love: I quoted
from Timothy Keller’s opening article in Zondervan’s NIV Study Bible in part two of
this series when trying to explain the Sin Paid For model of the Bible’s story. Here is the
quotation again, this time offered as an overview for the meaning of this brick:

“Through two-thirds of the Bible, the part we call the OT, an

increasingly urgent, apparently unsolvable problem drives the narrative
forward. God is a God of holiness and is therefore implacably opposed
to evil, injustice, and wrong, and yet he is a God of infinite love. He
enters into a relationship with a people who are fatally self-centered.
Will he bring down the curse he says must fall on sin and cut off his
people, or will he forgive and love his people regardless of their sin? If
he does either one or the other, sin and evil win! It seems impossible to
do both. The resolution to this problem is largely hidden from the reader
through the OT, though Isaiah comes closest to unveiling it. The
glorious King who brings God’s judgment in the first part of Isaiah is
also the suffering servant who bears God’s judgment in the second part.
It is Jesus. Victory is achieved through [Jesus’] infinite sacrifice on the
cross, where God both punishes sin fully yet provides free salvation.
Jesus stands as the ultimate protagonist, the hero of heroes. Therefore,
because the Bible’s basic plotline is the tension between God’s justice
and his grace and because it is all resolved in the person and work of
Jesus Christ, Jesus could tell his followers after the resurrection that the
OT is really all about him (Luke 24:27, 45). So everything in the
Bible—all the themes and patterns, main images and major
 figures—points to Jesus” (The Story of the Bible: How the Good News
about Jesus is Central [in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, 2015]).

I appreciate Keller’s clarity in explaining his view. He is making several bold assertions
along the way, however, with many of them open to immediate challenge by anyone
who is simply reading through the Bible. I can think of seven such challenges: 1) if there
is an “urgent, apparently unsolvable problem” driving the OT narrative forward, it is fair
to ask where this problem is stated; 2) if there is a necessary curse of God which “must
fall on sin and cut off his people” because they are “fatally self-centered,” it is again fair
to ask where this idea is taught; 3) by using the provocative word regardless in the
question “will [God] forgive and love his people regardless of their sin?” Keller implies
that God’s forgiveness includes the idea of downplaying the seriousness of sin; 4) if “sin
and evil win” when “God forgives and loves his people,” we are led to ask how or why
this would be true; 5) if the “resolution of this problem [of sin vs. forgiveness] is largely
hidden from the reader through the OT,” we are allowed to consider whether this
problem ever existed at all; 6) if the “victory achieved through the cross” provides “free
salvation,” it is fair to ask why salvation and righteousness were described as available
before the cross; and 7) if the “Bible’s basic plotline is the tension between God’s
justice and his grace,” we are owed an explanation as to why the OT regularly celebrates
God’s justice and grace together.

It is this last point, of course, which concerns our brick. And this is no ordinary brick;
Keller calls it the Bible’s basic plotline. Recall as well that Keller is not saying this in
an essay tucked into the back of a library, but in the lead article of a major publisher’s
best-selling evangelical study Bible. All this is to say that, in challenging this view, we
are (in the opinion of many, but not all) stepping outside the boundaries of
evangelicalism.

That being said, I think that a challenge to this brick can be surprisingly simple. Part of
me wonders if I have missed something here, for when reading the Bible from
left-to-right I find no tension between God’s justice/righteousness and his
grace/mercy/love. These attributes often appear side-by-side when describing Yahweh,
signaling that they are complementary ideas, even one leading to the other:

Psalm 36:5-6, 10: Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens, and your faithfulness
reaches to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the great mountains; your judgments
are a great deep; O LORD, you preserve man and beast. Oh, continue your
lovingkindness to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed
each other.

Psalm 89:14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; mercy and
truth go before your face.

Psalm 103:6-8, 17: The LORD executes righteousness and justice for all who are
oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the children of Israel. The
LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. The mercy of
the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his
righteousness to children’s children.

Psalm 111:3-4: [The LORD’s] work is honorable and glorious, and his righteousness
endures forever. He has made his wonderful works to be remembered; the LORD is
gracious and full of compassion.

Psalm 116:5: Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; yes, our God is merciful.

Psalm 145:7-9, 17: They shall utter the memory of your great goodness, and shall sing
of your righteousness. The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and
great in mercy. The LORD is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

Jeremiah 10:24: O LORD, correct me, but with righteousness; not in your anger, lest
you should bring me to nothing.

Daniel 9: 16, 18-19: O Lord, according to all your righteousness, I pray, let your anger
and your fury be turned away from your city Jerusalem . . . . O my God, incline your ear
and hear; open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by your
name; for we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous
deeds, but because of your great mercies. O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen
and act! Do not delay for your own sake, my God, for your city and your people are
called by your name.

Hosea 2:19: I will betroth [Israel] to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in
righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy.

Romans 3:24: [We are] being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus.
Romans 5:17, 21: For if by one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much
more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign
in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might
reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Titus 3:7: That having been justified by his grace we should become heirs according to
the hope of eternal life.

These verses seem to set a clear path for understanding Yahweh’s justice and love as
working hand-in-hand, not in tension with each other. Because God had promised to
love and care for his own, he was considered righteous or just (these are based on the
same Hebrew word) in honoring this commitment. In this sense being righteous is a
virtue available to anyone (e.g., Ps 112:4: “[The man who fears the LORD] is gracious,
full of compassion, and righteous”; cp. Ps 37:21; Prov 21:21; Isa 57:1; Hos 10:12; Mic
6:8).

But this is where things can get confusing for the modern evangelical. Keller is
apparently using “God’s righteousness” as a reference to a demand for moral justice as
we would understand legal fairness. Used this way, I understand how he can see
righteousness and grace as almost opposite ideas. And he may be right. The lexical
meaning of tsaddiq in Hebrew, however, does not support his use of the term. The
word’s basic meaning simply refers to being properly aligned, or to being found “in
order” (Ludwig Koehler, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the OT), which means
we must always start by considering what standard is in play before saying that God is
aligned with that standard. In reviewing the above verses again, I believe it can be
argued that the standard God is aligning to is the promise that he would bless the family
of Abraham. Think again of the audience that originally heard these verses. So in saying
“God is righteous,” the writer was saying that God would keep his side of the covenant.
The original reader would have been shocked to hear this. The gods of the ancient Near
East were notoriously bad at keeping their promises. If anything, they were the ones who
played justice and love off one another, threatening either at any time. But because
Yahweh was righteous, because he was a promise-keeping God, he would necessarily
be merciful/gracious to those he loved. This is what made Yahweh so unique, so
wonderful, so worthy of worship.

I therefore recommend tossing aside this brick. There is no tension between God’s
justice and his love, and in fact the opposite is true. It is because God is righteous that
we know he will be loving and gracious to his own. This teaching will become a
foundational element in our Big Story of the Bible.
Loyalty to God (“faith”) is necessary for salvation: The evangelical tradition has
strongly argued that individual faith is necessary for salvation. I believe we are right on
target here, though some issues of definition may still come into play. My understanding
of faith/belief starts with the Hebrew words for faith (aman) and loyalty (amuna), which
are basically the same words with different endings. Faith and faithfulness thus become
interchangeable ideas in the OT. In the NKJV, for example, aman is translated as
“believed” in Genesis 15:6, then as “faithful” in Numbers 12:7; amuna is translated as
“faithfulness” in Psalm 36:5, then as “faith” in Habakkuk 2:4. So one meaning bleeds
into the other, much like stress and stressful and care and careful are built on the same
words in English. When I was a pastor, I recall sometimes leading the bride and groom
in reciting old marriage vow “To thee I betroth my faith” during a wedding. I sense it
has only been recently that when someone says “faith” we don’t also presume they mean
fidelity/faithfulness.

The same relationship between faith and faithfulness follows through into the NT, where
the Greek pistis (“faith”) is basically the same word as pistos (“faithful”), just with a
different ending (the –os ending on a Greek root often carries the meaning of –fulness
or –ful). So pistis gets translated in the NKJV both as “faith” (Matthew 9:22) and
“faithfulness” (Romans 3:3) and pistos gets translated as “believe” ( 1 Timothy 4:3, 9)
and “believer” (2 Corinthians 6:15, 1 Timothy 4:12) and “faithful” (2 Timothy 2:2).

I would recommend Matthew Bates’ Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith,

Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker Academic, 2017) for a book-length
defense of this idea that biblical faith refers to loyalty. It is not until the sixteenth
century that Protestant theologians made the meaning of faith to become something to
be believed as opposed to something we do (showing allegiance is more than mental
assent; it requires an act of the will). You may have heard of this as the faith vs. works
question, which really is the result of Luther’s and Calvin’s reaction to the medieval
theology of their era.

(Just last week Susan and I went to a Presbyterian church while on vacation, and it
struck me how confused Paul would have been by the sermon. The pastor was preaching
from Galatians 2:16, and he said that the “works of the law” mentioned there were any
of those things that people did to earn their salvation, and that Paul wanted people to
believe in, or put their faith in, the finished work of Christ instead. So salvation is a
belief issue as opposed to a doing issue, the pastor said, and he piled on verse after verse
about the virtue of faith. I think Paul would have liked the sermon for its emphasis on
faith, but he would have struggled with what the pastor meant by faith as an English
word. Paul’s concern in Galatians was not Roman Catholic legalism, as Luther saw it,
but the fate of God-fearing Gentiles who were being told that they needed to add
specific rules of Judaism [like circumcision, Sabbath, kosher, and other “works of
Torah”] to their loyalty to Jesus in order to become authentic members of Abraham’s
family. No, Paul argued, all a person needed was loyalty to Jesus to become an inheritor
of God’s OT covenant promises [Gal 3:26-29]. As for the sermon, I think Paul would
have been concerned that the pastor gave his audience a passive description of faith—as
though it was the opposite of active obedience—and that he did not describe faith in
terms of becoming loyal to Jesus while turning from the worship of the gods of ancient
Greece and Rome. This is how Paul’s Galatian audience would have understood it.)

This understanding of faith becomes important because it adjusts the story of the Bible
back to the beginning. When Abraham is said to aman (“believe”) Yahweh in Genesis
15:6, Yahweh in turn considered Abraham righteous (tsedaqah). This would have been
an outrageous idea to the ancient world; could a human be considered “right” with a
deity due to simple (inward) loyalty? Deities usually demanded all sorts of ritualistic
rule-keeping and sacrificial hocus-pocus. Clearly what was at stake was Abraham’s
allegiance, or his worship of one god over another (cp. Joshua 24:2). The ripple effects
of this idea will be felt throughout the rest of Scripture whenever people wondered how
Yahweh, the deity of Israel, was to be honored. This was new territory, for no other god
had ever been approached just through inward loyalty.

If you are following my thinking this far, it should become apparent why aman and
pistis are never used in the partial sense in the Bible. When used in describing a person’s
relationship to a deity, a person was either considered faithful or they were not. No one
was considered kind of faithful to their god. For example, Paul used pistos in 1
Corinthians 6:15 to describe Christians: “What part has a pistos [faithful person] with
an unbeliever?” So the opposite of being pistos was being a non-Christian. In the same
way, Paul starts Ephesians with “To the saints who are in Ephesus and pistos [faithful
people] in Christ Jesus” as though he is talking to a single group of Christian people (cp.
Col. 1:2 as well).

One more benefit of this view of faith comes in noticing that the Bible says that we will
all someday be judged by inward realities (John 7:24), by the secrets we carry (Rom
2:16), by all of our hidden thoughts (1 Cor 4:5), and even by what we do (1 Pet 4:7;
Rom 2:11; James 2). This is exactly how loyalty works. Faithfulness (loyalty) is an
inward disposition, especially (in the context of most biblical storylines) answering the
question of which god a person worshipped. So when Paul told the Philippian jailor to
“Believe [pisteo] in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31), notice
what he was saying as well as what he was not saying: Paul was not telling the jailor to
try to follow the moral imperatives of Jesus’s teaching (works), nor to merely believe
(mental assent) in Jesus’ finished work on the cross, nor even to become faithful to Jesus
in some kind of behavioral sense. Quite simply, Paul was telling the jailor to become
loyal to Jesus and to stop worshiping any other deity.

So is loyalty to God (“faith”) necessary for salvation? Absolutely. I appreciate my

evangelical heritage for getting this one right, provided we work through what faith
means. So keep this brick, preparing to use it as a foundational element in the Big Story
of the Bible.

If you would like to respond to this post, I welcome your emails to

ronnjohnson7@gmail.com. I will certainly reply.