In a recent Bible study group, we discussed Christ’s substitutionary death. Naturally, we looked at the history of substitutionary sacrifice in the Bible, including making reference to Leviticus 17:11 ('For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.').
We naturally discussed that the substitutionary sin sacrifices in the OT did the dual job of reminding people of the seriousness of sin and its consequence in death, and pointing toward God’s provision of a ‘way out’ from their sin; in the OT is was the two-fold act of animal sacrifice, and sending the scapegoat into the wilderness.
Then we linked the OT practice to the NT where the lamb becomes Christ, and a man does the work that a lamb did; more than a man, of course, it was the creator himself.
But why was death required at all? What purpose could be served by killing an animal in a rite and the death of Christ on the cross?
We are steered in our thinking about sacrifice and the cross by the legal references used throughout the Bible, which may have an analogical purpose which, not being fully sensed, causes us, I think, to fail to put sin and death into a covenantal context. I would suspect that the Bible is not explicit about this context, because it is so obvious in biblical terms. That is, the covenantal relationship between God and humanity is dominating and so disappears from discussion and then, when its domination is not expressed, disappears from our theology too.
Thus, we see death in forensic terms and the punishment it represents as purely judicial. We sometimes refer to God’s abhorrence of sin, but we rarely take this further.
The further it can be taken, in my view, is back to Genesis 3:3, where the place of death in the creation is given (but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’)
Death does not only serve as punishment, in a quasi judicial sense, but it results from the break of covenant between God and man. Man’s turning from God is a rejection of God; not merely breaking a rule; and man takes the creation with him. God rejected is no longer God in open relationship with man, and man, and with him the creation, it being his domain, is cut off from life, which only comes from God’s sustaining word.
It’s like a car driver rejecting the offer of petrol for her car and then facing the consequences of it not running, because she distrusted the word of the attendant that she would need to visit regularly to top up her fuel tank.
The death of the sacrificial lamb then, results from the death that comes through Adam, in the garden (of course, Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 15:21), as he steps out of covenant. The death of the sacrificial lamb, resulting from the primal death that Adam brought must point back to that very origination of death. Thus it is an echo of the event of Adam’s choice and a perpetual reminder that there is a great disjunct between our relationship with God now and what it was then (pre Adam’s choice).
This suggests a couple of things to me
Firstly, Christ’s death encapsulates Adam’s death. I say this because the curse came upon Adam (and us) in a global, not immediately absolute fashion. The delay has a gracious aspect to it: that death, paradoxically, is not ‘terminal’; its full effect is deferred: and its deferral takes us straight to Christ. When it has its full effect in Christ, and that is the only instance of its full effect in this life/world: cutting off Christ, then as the sin-bearer for us, from God the Father, which itself is astonishing in every way, it is almost immediately overturned, and death is no more.
In a way, the curse of death is suspended until Christ when it is brought to full effect and then ended: God out-gracing sin with resurrection to new life.
All this stems from the introduction of death by Adam’s rejection of the covenant and therefore all points back to that moment, which must be in continuous history to be theologically contiguous and to have any connection to us; and therefore the great trajectory of salvation has to be anchored in this world at every point: Adam did real things in this world, that undid an aspect of the (real) creation (knowledge of which is only through God's word), which aspect must have obtained before the thing done-- that is, the creation’s very goodness excluded those things consequential upon sin, viz. death, in all its dimensions--for it to be repaired by intervention in the same ‘this world’ in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, with that pointing to the new creation. The setting for all this is consistently given in the Bible as This World (and the resurrection and the pointer to the new creation is also in This World, which brings a continuity between the two).
An interesting corollary of this relationship between pointing toward Christ and Christ pointing back to Adam’s bringing of death, is that with animal sacrifice participating in the chain of reflection and anticipation, it must also have been precluded from the pre-fall world. If it was not, then the sacrifice means nothing, because it would not be pointing back to Adam’s bringing death, and therefore, forwards to Christ and condemning sin by the application of the ‘penalty’, but it would just be part of the normal function of the ‘very good’; and it is clear in the Bible that the animal sacrifice, the ending of its life, is not part of the normal function, but part of the abnormality of the death to which it points, from which it stems and through which the breach of the fall is contrasted with the creation which is now broken.
The setting for this whole drama, for the eviction of the good, followed by the eviction of death, has to be the world in which sin and death plays out; because that is the only point of contact that sin has with the creation: the setting of our relationship with God (and our dis-relationship post-fall) is the concrete world, in which Christ concretely was incarnated, died and was resurrected; or salvation is discontinuous with our world we cannot be reconciled…ever.
So, in summary, Christ brings to its conclusion the curse bestowed upon Adam adn then overturns it in signal and prospect of the new creation continuing but amplifying the very good creation after the lacunae of the fall.
Adam undid life, but Christ undid death!
Christ died our death and we are restored by his life.
