1 John 4:7-12, ATONING SACRIFICE. God made a promise to Abraham. Somehow, instead of wiping out human beings, he was going to commit to saving them and restoring them and healing them and redeeming them and if God goes back on his promise, then he is not good and he’s not just. It’s this paradox of God’s justice and his love in the Bible. God has committed himself to saving the human family, this whole story comes to its culmination in the person of Jesus and for the Israelites, every time they go and they offer a animal sacrifice, what their reminded of, is not that God is angry at them for that sin, it’s the exact opposite.
God gave the Israelites this whole ritual symbolism to remind them that he loves them, he doesn’t want to kill them, because this ritual is to sink in to the psyche of the people of Israel, God loves them. God’s not going to give up on them, their moral choices have real consequences and the stakes are so high, because our failure actually creates death in God’s good world, God’s given us Jesus’ life to cover for our failure in our sin. The meaning of the animal sacrifice is the exact opposite of the blood-thirsty God who hates, even wants to kill humans. The fact that they were offering the animal sacrifice in the place of their life, because God told them to do it, means that he loves them. God’s trying to show them, he wants to cover for them in some way.
John, who’s saying the Kingdom of God is here and despite the whole history of human failure and evil and death, Jesus has come as the high priest, as the Messianic King, who’s going to be the human that we are all created and called to be, but perpetually failed to be. Jesus’ going to die and absorb into himself the consequences and the effect of all the evil that we have released into the world and participate in, he’s going to conquer it with his love, with his resurrection life.
When the Apostles used the word atonement in the New Testament, they do not depict an angry God, when they think of atonement, they think of God’s love. John thinks of Jesus dying as a sacrifice that covers our sins, he believes this shows a revelation of God’s love. The fulfillment is in God becoming human, that God would cover for us in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, is the supreme embodiment of God’s love. Despite our deepest flaws and failures, in our worst moments, God loves us, but how do we know there exists a being in the universe whose beautiful mind generated all of this? The historical event of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and we will discover that God loves us, because he covered for us.
God wants to deal with and respond to the evil in the sin that’s in the world, God’s going to do it through the Israelites, their going to be a kingdom of priests, a people set apart, who were going to reflect as a nation God’s character and his justice and mercy to all of the other nations, by how they lived as a contrast community. God going to come and live in their midst in a embodied physical symbol of a space called the tabernacle and so, this whole ritual symbolic space that spoke to the story of God in these people and what God wanted to do through these people of the whole world. Leviticus 17:11, there’s an altar right before the sacred tent and God’s invisible presence symbolized by smoke and cloud hovered over the Ark of the Covenant. God wanted to live in the midst of his kingdom of priests. These people that God loved, that he rescued out of Egypt, he wants to make them into a beacon to all of the nations. What God asked the people to do is live by a different set of standards, how they relate to this God. they’re not to give there allegiance to any other gods.
Even when God reveals his own-self to us in a pure real tangible form, there’s something so broken inside of us, we declare independence from God. If we were God and rescued this people and they thrown it all back in our face, “golden calf.” God had every right to walk out on those people and leave the relationship. After the story of the golden calf, God provided Israel with an elaborate set of ritual symbols that they’re to perform in this space, “tabernacle.” The elaborate set of ritual symbols tell Israel something about their sin and they tell Israel something about God. The rituals of killing animals, the alter is a way to tell God that they were sorry. A person realizes what they done, but whose going to pay? They say to the priest here’s what they done, here’s my offering and the animals throats is going to be slit in front of that person. The animals blood is going to be drained into a bowl and cut in pieces, in front of that person. This blood symbolism, why does an atoning sacrifice work, how does it cover evil? Blood symbolized life, that covers for a person’s life. It’s a life, covering for another life.
Atoning sacrifice, this language of sacrifice is really significant. 1 John 1:5-2:2, vandalism, “sin” that we introduce into God’s good world, but what does Jesus do about that? The blood of Jesus purifies us, a metaphor for Jesus’ death, his execution on the cross. Purification is connected with forgiveness, the death of Jesus provides the meaning of forgiveness, that forgiveness purifies us. That death of Jesus by which we’re forgiven is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, two parties at odds with each other, the way that damage or harm is dealt with, so that the two can be made at one. It’s about relational repair and reconciliation.
The word “cover,” this biblical concept of atonement is to cover for someone’s failure, taking a responsibility for the consequences of wrongdoing or covering a debt. Covering does more than that, covering can also be an image connected with purifying or restoring or repairing, forgiveness itself is an act that requires absorbing a cost. Wrongdoing can’t be overlooked, it has to be dealt with. If Jesus is actually going to forgive us, he has to cover for us, to absorb the cost of what our failure has produced. Atonement, because our perpetual failure starts to make us look like we don’t have any respect for Jesus, dirtying the air of the relationship. So, atonement both has to cover the hard cost of our failure, but there needs to be some resolution of this relational tension. The biblical story of what Jesus’ life and death and resurrection do for the problem of human evil and sin, it deals with the hard cost, it covers and it restores the damaged relationship with this biblical concept of atonement.
God gave the Israelites this whole ritual symbolism to remind them that he loves them, he doesn’t want to kill them, because this ritual is to sink in to the psyche of the people of Israel, God loves them. God’s not going to give up on them, their moral choices have real consequences and the stakes are so high, because our failure actually creates death in God’s good world, God’s given us Jesus’ life to cover for our failure in our sin. The meaning of the animal sacrifice is the exact opposite of the blood-thirsty God who hates, even wants to kill humans. The fact that they were offering the animal sacrifice in the place of their life, because God told them to do it, means that he loves them. God’s trying to show them, he wants to cover for them in some way.
John, who’s saying the Kingdom of God is here and despite the whole history of human failure and evil and death, Jesus has come as the high priest, as the Messianic King, who’s going to be the human that we are all created and called to be, but perpetually failed to be. Jesus’ going to die and absorb into himself the consequences and the effect of all the evil that we have released into the world and participate in, he’s going to conquer it with his love, with his resurrection life.
When the Apostles used the word atonement in the New Testament, they do not depict an angry God, when they think of atonement, they think of God’s love. John thinks of Jesus dying as a sacrifice that covers our sins, he believes this shows a revelation of God’s love. The fulfillment is in God becoming human, that God would cover for us in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, is the supreme embodiment of God’s love. Despite our deepest flaws and failures, in our worst moments, God loves us, but how do we know there exists a being in the universe whose beautiful mind generated all of this? The historical event of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and we will discover that God loves us, because he covered for us.
God wants to deal with and respond to the evil in the sin that’s in the world, God’s going to do it through the Israelites, their going to be a kingdom of priests, a people set apart, who were going to reflect as a nation God’s character and his justice and mercy to all of the other nations, by how they lived as a contrast community. God going to come and live in their midst in a embodied physical symbol of a space called the tabernacle and so, this whole ritual symbolic space that spoke to the story of God in these people and what God wanted to do through these people of the whole world. Leviticus 17:11, there’s an altar right before the sacred tent and God’s invisible presence symbolized by smoke and cloud hovered over the Ark of the Covenant. God wanted to live in the midst of his kingdom of priests. These people that God loved, that he rescued out of Egypt, he wants to make them into a beacon to all of the nations. What God asked the people to do is live by a different set of standards, how they relate to this God. they’re not to give there allegiance to any other gods.
Even when God reveals his own-self to us in a pure real tangible form, there’s something so broken inside of us, we declare independence from God. If we were God and rescued this people and they thrown it all back in our face, “golden calf.” God had every right to walk out on those people and leave the relationship. After the story of the golden calf, God provided Israel with an elaborate set of ritual symbols that they’re to perform in this space, “tabernacle.” The elaborate set of ritual symbols tell Israel something about their sin and they tell Israel something about God. The rituals of killing animals, the alter is a way to tell God that they were sorry. A person realizes what they done, but whose going to pay? They say to the priest here’s what they done, here’s my offering and the animals throats is going to be slit in front of that person. The animals blood is going to be drained into a bowl and cut in pieces, in front of that person. This blood symbolism, why does an atoning sacrifice work, how does it cover evil? Blood symbolized life, that covers for a person’s life. It’s a life, covering for another life.
Atoning sacrifice, this language of sacrifice is really significant. 1 John 1:5-2:2, vandalism, “sin” that we introduce into God’s good world, but what does Jesus do about that? The blood of Jesus purifies us, a metaphor for Jesus’ death, his execution on the cross. Purification is connected with forgiveness, the death of Jesus provides the meaning of forgiveness, that forgiveness purifies us. That death of Jesus by which we’re forgiven is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, two parties at odds with each other, the way that damage or harm is dealt with, so that the two can be made at one. It’s about relational repair and reconciliation.
The word “cover,” this biblical concept of atonement is to cover for someone’s failure, taking a responsibility for the consequences of wrongdoing or covering a debt. Covering does more than that, covering can also be an image connected with purifying or restoring or repairing, forgiveness itself is an act that requires absorbing a cost. Wrongdoing can’t be overlooked, it has to be dealt with. If Jesus is actually going to forgive us, he has to cover for us, to absorb the cost of what our failure has produced. Atonement, because our perpetual failure starts to make us look like we don’t have any respect for Jesus, dirtying the air of the relationship. So, atonement both has to cover the hard cost of our failure, but there needs to be some resolution of this relational tension. The biblical story of what Jesus’ life and death and resurrection do for the problem of human evil and sin, it deals with the hard cost, it covers and it restores the damaged relationship with this biblical concept of atonement.
