Romans 5:6-11
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
“Jesus Died for Your Sins.” This past summer on our road trip up to Washington state I was, probably naively, surprised at the number of billboards along the highway with this message and others like it. “Jesus Died for Your Sins.” The further north we went, the more signs there were. I know such sights are common in the southern states and in the Bible Belt but I just hadn’t seen any like them on the west coast for quite a while.
Like many of you, I was raised with this drummed into my head – Jesus died, and it was all my fault. The Catholic church of my childhood may have phrased it a bit more gently than the local Assembly of God, for instance, but Jesus’ suffering was my fault, nonetheless. I grew up with the knowledge that I was to blame.
In the Judaism of the Old Testament, relief from guilt was a commodity to be sold and purchased. If you sinned, you went to the Temple, put out your money for the appropriate animal and the poor creature was slaughtered on the altar in your place. God’s honor had been satisfied by a death and you were home free. This wasn’t just common among the Jewish people, but in most forms of religion in the Mediterranean world of that era. It was the perfectly normal way to think, back then.
When Jesus was crucified by the Roman state in order to silence him and any thought of rebellion that might have grown from his radical teachings, it became entirely obvious to the young faith growing around him that his death was a perfect example of this payment-for-sin-to-satisfy-God’s-honor theology. Coming from the world they lived in, it made sense to everyone in that era.
It makes less sense to many of us today. In fact, many of us reject it outright. For myself, I see any god who would insist on the death of their own child just to settle a score, as a monster – certainly no one to be worshiped. I've heard others refer to it as “divine child abuse.”
On the other hand, equally many believers would never dream of arguing with church authority over their long-standing understanding of atonement theology, and they somehow manage to convince themselves that it all is completely reasonable.
There have been some fascinating essays and studies popping up in the past few years dealing with the concepts of liberal vs. conservative. We think of those words now almost exclusively in terms of politics, but they existed long before our current political situation. They actually are psychological/sociological terms that describe differences in how we see and interact with the world around us.
To give you the sixty second cheap-seats explanation, conservatives are authoritarians. They believe in and trust their authority figures, whether in the area of religion or politics or the military. These are the people who trust their leaders, even when those leaders are demonstrably wrong. Conservatives are simply wired that way. If the Bible says it, then it is so. Period.
Liberals, on the other hand, derive their authority from things like empirical evidence, scientific study and their own direct observation. Edicts issued by an authority figure who is provably mistaken are simply wrong and therefore, hold no authority. The Bible, in this view, is a tool to be used in digging out our own truths.
The Christian belief spectrum runs from the uber-liberal “whatever” at one end to the “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe as I do” of the uber-conservatives. Most of us float somewhere in the middle, leaning on the history and traditions of our faith while adding in our own experience to the mix.
Much of this muddle, as is often the case, is a gift from Paul and his writings. And specifically, much of it comes from Romans.
Paul, in all this talk of justification and faith in this letter makes what is perhaps his most important point in this discussion of life and death and new life – but, being Paul, he uses a boatload of words to do so and it is all those words that lead us into confusion.
When Paul writes of Jesus dying as an offering for our sins, is he using those words literally, in the sense of a blood offering - a meaning that probably would have made sense in that time and place? Or is he using them metaphorically, to convey a whole new reality? The answer is probably, “Yes.”
It is important for us to keep in mind that Paul was a somewhat cosmopolitan first century Jew. He was not remotely a twenty-first century Christian. He did not necessarily use words the way we use them today. He did not write out of anything like our experience of the world. We simply cannot equate our worldly lives with Paul’s and hope to make sense of them.
We can, however, listen to Paul describing and explaining his spiritual life and experience and compare it with our own. Paul experienced a new life after he met Jesus – and we could talk all day about just what that phrase “he met Jesus” truly means. Whatever happened, Paul recognized that this change that hit him was equivalent to dying and being reborn as a new, transformed person. Paul knew that nothing would ever be the same again for him.
And this is the Jesus Paul writes of with all those laden, easily misunderstood words. This is the Jesus Paul loves so much he simply has to travel the world to tell others about.
So, “Yes.” It’s an answer that most likely won’t completely satisfy either end of that belief spectrum. For myself, since I do not – will not – believe in that vengeful god who demands a sacrifice, I am left to read this truth-claim metaphorically. That Jesus died, and somehow continues to live within us, and in that living carries us along with him into a new life, a transformed, re-born life – different from the life we lived before we experienced this spiritual rebirth.
And that works for me. Thanks be to God.
Like many of you, I was raised with this drummed into my head – Jesus died, and it was all my fault. The Catholic church of my childhood may have phrased it a bit more gently than the local Assembly of God, for instance, but Jesus’ suffering was my fault, nonetheless. I grew up with the knowledge that I was to blame.
In the Judaism of the Old Testament, relief from guilt was a commodity to be sold and purchased. If you sinned, you went to the Temple, put out your money for the appropriate animal and the poor creature was slaughtered on the altar in your place. God’s honor had been satisfied by a death and you were home free. This wasn’t just common among the Jewish people, but in most forms of religion in the Mediterranean world of that era. It was the perfectly normal way to think, back then.
When Jesus was crucified by the Roman state in order to silence him and any thought of rebellion that might have grown from his radical teachings, it became entirely obvious to the young faith growing around him that his death was a perfect example of this payment-for-sin-to-satisfy-God’s-honor theology. Coming from the world they lived in, it made sense to everyone in that era.
It makes less sense to many of us today. In fact, many of us reject it outright. For myself, I see any god who would insist on the death of their own child just to settle a score, as a monster – certainly no one to be worshiped. I've heard others refer to it as “divine child abuse.”
On the other hand, equally many believers would never dream of arguing with church authority over their long-standing understanding of atonement theology, and they somehow manage to convince themselves that it all is completely reasonable.
There have been some fascinating essays and studies popping up in the past few years dealing with the concepts of liberal vs. conservative. We think of those words now almost exclusively in terms of politics, but they existed long before our current political situation. They actually are psychological/sociological terms that describe differences in how we see and interact with the world around us.
To give you the sixty second cheap-seats explanation, conservatives are authoritarians. They believe in and trust their authority figures, whether in the area of religion or politics or the military. These are the people who trust their leaders, even when those leaders are demonstrably wrong. Conservatives are simply wired that way. If the Bible says it, then it is so. Period.
Liberals, on the other hand, derive their authority from things like empirical evidence, scientific study and their own direct observation. Edicts issued by an authority figure who is provably mistaken are simply wrong and therefore, hold no authority. The Bible, in this view, is a tool to be used in digging out our own truths.
The Christian belief spectrum runs from the uber-liberal “whatever” at one end to the “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe as I do” of the uber-conservatives. Most of us float somewhere in the middle, leaning on the history and traditions of our faith while adding in our own experience to the mix.
Much of this muddle, as is often the case, is a gift from Paul and his writings. And specifically, much of it comes from Romans.
Paul, in all this talk of justification and faith in this letter makes what is perhaps his most important point in this discussion of life and death and new life – but, being Paul, he uses a boatload of words to do so and it is all those words that lead us into confusion.
When Paul writes of Jesus dying as an offering for our sins, is he using those words literally, in the sense of a blood offering - a meaning that probably would have made sense in that time and place? Or is he using them metaphorically, to convey a whole new reality? The answer is probably, “Yes.”
It is important for us to keep in mind that Paul was a somewhat cosmopolitan first century Jew. He was not remotely a twenty-first century Christian. He did not necessarily use words the way we use them today. He did not write out of anything like our experience of the world. We simply cannot equate our worldly lives with Paul’s and hope to make sense of them.
We can, however, listen to Paul describing and explaining his spiritual life and experience and compare it with our own. Paul experienced a new life after he met Jesus – and we could talk all day about just what that phrase “he met Jesus” truly means. Whatever happened, Paul recognized that this change that hit him was equivalent to dying and being reborn as a new, transformed person. Paul knew that nothing would ever be the same again for him.
And this is the Jesus Paul writes of with all those laden, easily misunderstood words. This is the Jesus Paul loves so much he simply has to travel the world to tell others about.
So, “Yes.” It’s an answer that most likely won’t completely satisfy either end of that belief spectrum. For myself, since I do not – will not – believe in that vengeful god who demands a sacrifice, I am left to read this truth-claim metaphorically. That Jesus died, and somehow continues to live within us, and in that living carries us along with him into a new life, a transformed, re-born life – different from the life we lived before we experienced this spiritual rebirth.
And that works for me. Thanks be to God.
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