7Propitiation 151
It cannot be said that the New Testament writers see the Passover as a dominating concept when they seek to interpret the cross. If they are thinking in sacrificial terms they prefer a general reference. But there are exceptions. Paul says explicitly, 'Christ our Passover was sacrificed' (1 Cor. 5:7; Nrv has 'our Passover lamb', but there are objections to this translation, as will be brought out later). All four Gospels have relevant sections. The Synoptists place the institution of the Holy Communion at a Passover meal, which means at the least that the continuing remembrance of the death of Jesus is done in such a way that Passover associations are present. John seems to place the death of Jesus at the time the Passover victims were sacrificed and to regard that death as in some sense a Passover sacrifice. Nor should we overlook the fact that the exodus is recalled a number of times in the New Testament and, of course, the exodus was introduced by the Passover. It is clear that for the first Christians there were some aspects of Christ's saving work that were best brought out by thinking of the Passover.
THE PASSOVER IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Modern Old Testament scholars ask hard questions about the Passover. What was its original form? How did it relate to the feast of unleavened bread? What is the connection with the full moon? And with the offering of the first-born? And with the coming of spring? Should it be seen as a spring festival? These and other such questions have their importance, but for our present purpose they may be ignored. They are not the questions and not even the kind of questions that the first Christians asked. If we are to see what the New Testament writers had in mind when they applied Passover imagery to the work of Christ, we must see what it was that first-century people thought about the Passover. That means that we must take the Old Testament narrative as it stands. For the first Christians the Old Testament story was the divinely given account of the way their God had delivered their ancestors from Egypt and made them into a nation. So we proceed to look at the account.
The Israelites were in bitter bondage in Egypt. Nine plagues had come and gone on the Egyptians but none of them had procured the release the oppressed people looked for so longingly. God had repeatedly sent the message to Pharaoh, 'Let my people go' (Ex. 5:1; 8:1,20; 9:1,13; 10:3), but Pharaoh had not let them go. Now came the prophecy of a tenth and more grievous plague than any of the nine: 'Every firstborn son in Egypt will die.' In this plague God will protect his own people: 'among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.' This will make it clear that God is acting to help his people: 'You will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel' (Ex. 11:5,7).
The deliverance of the Israelites was not to be automatic. They must do as God directed and identify themselves as those obedient to his commands. On the tenth day of the month Abib each household or group of households must select a lamb or kid, the number being regulated so that the animal would be sufficient for the group for one meal (Ex. 12:3-4). The kid or lamb was to be a year-old male and without blemish. Then on the fourteenth day of the month the chosen animal was to be killed 'between the evenings'. The meaning of the expression is not immediately obvious and it can be understood in more ways than one (NW understands it as 'at twilight'). In the first century this was understood to mean the time between the sun's commencing to decline (say about 3 p.m. on our time) and its actual disappearance. Some of the blood of the animal was to be put 'on the sides and tops of the door-frames of the houses' where the Israelites were to eat the meal (Ex. 12:7). The animal was to be roasted whole and eaten that night, together with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast. The whole of the animal was to be eaten and if any of it remained until the morning it was to be burnt up. It was to be eaten 'with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand' (Ex. 12:11). 'Eat it in haste', the instruction proceeds; 'it is the LORD'S Passover' (Ex. 12:11).
The placing of the blood was important and the reason for it is now given: 'The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt' (Ex. 12:13). The Israelites did as they were told (Ex. 12:28) and escaped the destruction which overtook the Egyptians. The death of the first-born was the last straw for the Egyptians. They wanted no more plagues. So they urged the Israelites to get out of the country. The Israelites needed no second bidding. They left in haste; they 'took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing' (Ex. 12:34).
Such were the events. The Israelites were instructed that they must keep this feast for ever as a memorial of the deliverance God had given them (Ex. 12:14-15). Not only were they to observe the one night of deliverance, but they were to eat bread made without yeast (=unleavened bread) for seven days. The Old Testament often refers to 'the feast of unleavened bread' which includes the Passover as well as the seven days following. This feast was to be an Israelite observance; no uncircumcised person was to eat of it (Ex. 12:43-49).
A GREAT OCCASION
The Passover became a most important part of the Jewish year. It commemorated not simply a deliverance, but that deliverance which made a nation out of the slave rabble into which the descendants of the great patriarchs had degenerated in Egypt. They had been but seventy in number when they went into Egypt (Ex. 1:5), but when they were delivered they were a multitude. In a very real sense the Passover commemorated the birth of a nation and that nation the people of God. To mark the greatness of the occasion the calendar was changed. The month in which it occurred was henceforth to be the beginning of the year (Ex. 12:2).
Passover was one of the three times in the year when all male Israelites were to appear before the LORD (Ex. 23:14-17; Dt. 16:16; 'the Feast of Unleavened Bread' in such passages means, of course, the Passover and the seven days following). We cannot be sure of how regularly it was observed in early days, but there are references to its observance in the wilderness (Nu. 9:1-5), in the Promised Land (Jos. 5:10), under Solomon (2 Ch. 8:13; cf. 1 Ki. 9:25), on a great occasion under Hezekiah (2 Ch. 30:1-27) and another under Josiah (2 Ki. 23:21-23; 2 Ch. 35:1-19), and by the exiles who returned from Babylon (Ezr. 6:19-22). Clearly it was a most important festival, even though there were times when it was not observed as it should have been (2 Ch. 30:5).
Passover was an annual reminder to the Israelites of the greatest deliverance recorded in their sacred books. To some modern scholars it seems that the number of Hebrews who were in Egypt was very small and that those who escaped were no more than a tiny handful. But that was not the way it appeared to men of the first century as they read their Bibles. To them it was crystal clear that God had once intervened in history to give his people a wonderful deliverance from the hand of a powerful oppressor. God had compelled the strongest power in the world to let his people go. He had made Pharaoh set the people free when Pharaoh's fixed intention had been to keep them as slaves.
The later books of the Old Testament look back to the exodus and regard it as the greatest of all deliverances, the classic example of what God could do to set his people free. Literature like the Psalms contains many references to those exciting days and there is an illuminating passage in which Jeremiah, centuries after the exodus, speaks about this deliverance. Actually he is not engaging in historical reminiscence but trying to bring out the magnitude of the disaster that he foresaw was about to overtake the people. He makes his point by telling his hearers that their plight will be so serious that to get them out of it will require a deliverance greater than that which brought their ancestors out of Egypt!
'So then, the days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when people will no longer say, "As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt," but they will say, "As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them." Then they will live in their own land' (Je. 23:7-8).
Nothing could illustrate more strikingly the fact that for Israel the definitive deliverance was the series of events which made up the exodus and which were commemorated every year when the Passover was celebrated. That was the standard by which all other deliverances would be judged.
The Passover, then, was primarily the commemoration of a great deliverance. Some have so stressed this that they have denied that it should rightly be thought of as a sacrifice. They see 'sacrifice' as a term to be used of rites directed at removing sin or expressing homage to God or the like and they do not see anything of the sort in the Passover. But this is surely to go too far. The Passover is spoken of as'the LORD'S offering' (Nu. 9:7,13) and the verb 'to sacrifice' is used of it (Dt. 16:2,4,5,6). Indeed, on occasion it is called 'the Passover sacrifice' or 'the sacrifice from the Passover Feast' (Ex. 12:27; 34:25). The fact that initially it was a family observance in private houses without the mediation of a priest does not alter this, nor does the fact that in later times it was eaten in the homes of the people rather than in the courts of a temple or shrine.
There is no real reason for doubting that the Passover was seen as a genuine sacrifice, all the more so since in due course the slaughter of the lamb or kid took place at the temple with the priest handling the blood. It is likely, therefore, that there was some idea of forgiveness of sin associated with it. It seems that in time all sacrifice was held to be atoning at least in one aspect and this would be true of the Passover as of all the others. It may be significant, moreover, that when Ezekiel refers to the Passover he has the prince provide a sin offering every day throughout the seven days of the feast (Ezk. 45:21-23). Some draw attention to the importance of the use of blood in the original Passover and suggest accordingly that the idea of cleansing from sin was there from the first. This may be going too far, but it is not easy to deny that there was such an idea in later times.
Be that as it may, there is no denying that the fundamental idea in the Passover is that of deliverance. The day had its solemn side and spiritually minded people always bear in mind their unworthiness and their need of forgiveness and cleansing when they approach the Lord. We must not overlook this. But the main thought in the annual observance was certainly deliverance. The Passover reminded worshippers that God is mighty, that he had once intervened to deliver his people from a strong enemy (and could do so again if need be), and that from that deliverance there had emerged the nation that was in a special sense the people of God.
THE PASSOVER IN RABBINIC LITERATURE
The rabbinic writings give a good deal of attention to the Passover (for example, the Mishnah devotes a whole tractate to it). These enable us to build up a fairly complete picture of the way the feast was observed in the New Testament period. It is clear that it was a great occasion. Josephus says that in the year AD 66 there were 255,600 animals sacrificed at this feast and that 2,700,000 worshippers participated in it.' All agree these figures are greatly exaggerated, but even when we allow for this it is plain that the feast was very popular and that large numbers went up to Jerusalem to celebrate it. Jews came from all over the known world for it, so Jerusalem was invariably crowded at this time of the year.
The ancient rites were scrupulously observed. A distinction, however, was made between that first Passover in Egypt and subsequent commemorations, and this led to a few differences. For example, the victim was no longer selected on the tenth day of the month, nor was blood put on the door-posts and lintel (Pesahim 9:5). The first Passover was eaten in haste as people made ready to move smartly as soon as permission was given, but in later times people reclined at ease and ate in leisure as befitted free men. A slave eats standing, but even the meanest in Israel was forbidden to eat the Passover 'unless he sits down to table' (Pesahim 10:1). Such contrasts underlined the blessings that flowed from God's action on behalf of his people. God had made them free.
The festal character of the day was marked with some unusual activities. Thus Passover was one of the few occasions in the year when the flute was played before the altar (Arakhin 2:3). It was the one occasion in the year when the Holy Place was whitened and one of only two when the altar was whitened (Tabernacles was the other; Middoth 3:4).
Preparation for the Passover started well in advance. Bridges and roads were repaired a month before so that pilgrims could make the journey to Jerusalem unhindered. Jerusalem was the only place where the sacrifice could be eaten (Zebahim 5:8; Kelim 1:8). Graves were whitewashed to guard against people contracting defilement unwittingly. Stringent tests were applied to determine uncleanness where there was any doubt (Oholoth 18:4). This was a most important festival and no uncleanness could be tolerated on such an occasion.
A fascinating example of the lengths to which rabbinic precautions could go concerns a man who had a boil and wanted treatment for it at this time. If a physician cut it off, then the moment it was severed from the body it became dead tissue. Contact with it would render anyone unclean and physician or patient or both were almost certain to be disqualified from keeping the feast. So the procedure was that the physician cut enough to leave the boil hanging by a thread. It was still part of the man's body and thus living and therefore not defiling. The patient then stuck it on a thorn and pulled away from it smartly, thus severing it from his body. In this way neither of them touched the defiling tissue and both were able to keep the feast (Kerithoth 3:8)!
The citizens of Jerusalem were under an obligation to make their homes available to pilgrims and that without charge. However, it was good manners for a man to leave behind for his host his empty wine pitcher and the skin of the animal he had sacrificed (Talmud, Yoma 12a; Megillah 26a). No matter how many people came up to Jerusalem there was always room for them, this being accounted one of the ten wonders of the temple period (Aboth 5:5).
PREPARING FOR THE MEAL
On the evening of 14th Nisan (the day began at sunset, so this was the beginning of that day) the head of each household made a solemn search for yeast, in silence and by candlelight. All yeast found was promptly put away by burning it or by crumbling and scattering it to the wind or by throwing it into the sea (Pesahim 2:1). It was still legal to put yeast away on the following morning, the exact time for its complete destruction being indicated by the removal of the second of two defiled cakes which were placed on the temple porch (Pesahim 1:5).
The evening sacrifice in the temple was put forward an hour to make time for the offering of the large number of Passover victims. The temple court was filled with worshippers and their victims and the gates closed. After this group had offered they went out, the process was repeated for a second group and repeated yet again for a third group. The Levites sang the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) for each group, but they did not finish it with the third group because the number was smaller. The actual slaughtering of the kid or the lamb was done in each case by the representative of the company for whom the animal was offered and for this purpose he might even be a slave (Pesahim 8:2). The blood was caught in a basin and passed down a line of priests with the last one throwing it in one jet at the altar. Prescribed parts were burnt on the altar. Each animal must be offered for a specific company which might include women, slaves or minors but must not be composed exclusively of such (Pesahim 8:7).
In modern times it is widely thought that the victim was a lamb and 'the paschal lamb' or 'the Passover lamb' has become an accepted phrase. This is misleading because, of course, a kid was quite acceptable (Pesahim 8:2; Menahoth 7:6). The term used in the original institution might mean either a lamb or a kid (see footnote in NIV on Ex. 12:3). There is the record of a solemn discussion as to whether sheep were superior to goats and the conclusion is reached that the two are equal (Kerithoth 6:9). It is curious (and inaccurate) that references to 'the Passover lamb' persist.
When the temple ritual was concluded the worshipper took his slain animal away to be roasted, but he must not take it outside Jerusalem (Makkoth 3:3). It was roasted whole, a spit of pomegranate wood being inserted at the mouth and passing through to the vent. Care was taken both in the roasting and subsequently in the eating that no bone be broken.
THE FEAST
At the meal the animal was, of course, the principal dish and it had to be consumed in its entirety. Each member of the company was required to eat at the very least a piece the size of an olive. If any part of the animal was not eaten (and this included bones, sinews and the like) it was to be burnt next day. Other necessary constituents of the meal were bitter herbs and bread made without yeast. An interesting provision is that there should be four cups of red wine for each member of the company, even if they had to be provided from the paupers' fund (Pesahim 10:1). This does not mean that the meal was a drunken revel. The Rabbis detested drunkenness and they required the wine to be heavily diluted, the normal proportions being three parts of water to one of wine. An incidental reference to a kettle in the context of mixing the four cups seems to show that warm water was used. Justification for the four cups was found in the four expressions used to describe the deliverance from Egypt (Ex. 6:6-7). As an aid to the enjoyment of the meal it was provided that all should fast from the time of the evening sacrifice.
The meal began with the appropriate blessings (i.e. thanksgivings), that of the festival and that of the wine, after which the first cup of wine was drunk. Then the herbs, the bread and the roasted animal were brought before the head of the company. It seems that the food was not eaten straight away. Instead a second cup of wine was poured out and then the son of the house asked his father why there were such unusual happenings that night. This was the father's cue to explain the significance of it all and it was required of him that he include the whole section beginning at Deuteronomy 26:5 (Pesahim 10:4). Rabban Gamaliel laid it down that three things must be included in this explanation if the man was to fulfil his obligation:
Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs: 'Passover' - because God passed over the houses of our fathers in Egypt; 'unleavened bread' - because our fathers were redeemed from Egypt; 'bitter herbs' - because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our fathers in Egypt (Pesahim 10:5).
This part of the evening concluded with the singing of the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) as far as the end of Psalm 113 according to the house of Shammai or as far as the end of Psalm 114 as the house of Hillel would have it. This was followed by a thanksgiving for redemption.
The second cup of wine was drunk. Hands were washed and one of the two unleavened cakes was broken followed by the giving of thanks. Pieces of the broken bread with bitter herbs between them were dipped in haroseth (a compound of dates, raisins, etc. with vinegar) and handed to the members of the company. This brings us to the main part of the meal: the lamb or kid was eaten.
Now came the third cup of wine and over it the president said the blessing for the meal. This appears to be 'the cup of blessing' to which Paul refers (1 Cor. 10:16) and the name makes it likely that it was at this point in the meal that Jesus instituted the Holy Communion. Now came the fourth cup and the singing of the rest of the Hallel. The whole ends with two short prayers called 'the Benediction over song' (Pesahim 10:7).
It is provided that there must not be an epikoman, but unfortunately nobody now knows what the word meant. It derives from two Greek words with a meaning like 'after meal'. This has been understood to signify that there must be no dessert. Alternatively, it may mean that there must be no revelry at the close of the meal (which could reduce the solemn commemoration into little more than an ordinary convivial gathering). It must all be over by midnight, a conclusion reached from the words of Scripture, 'That same night they are to eat the meat' (Ex. 12:8). Actually the passage goes on to provide only that it must not be left until morning (verse 10), but'the sages' prescribed midnight for duties that must be performed before day 'to keep a man far from transgression' (Berakoth 1:1).
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PASSOVER
The Rabbis tell us a good deal about the proper way to keep the Passover and they dwell on the joyfulness of the whole festival. But they are not inclined to go deeply into the meaning of what was done. There are, however, some indications which help us understand the meaning of it all as they saw it.
In part the Passover was seen as bringing about forgiveness of sins. This was far from being the most prominent feature of the observance, but it seems that the Passover, in common with all the sacrifices, had this as part of its aim. Thus we read, 'God said to Israel: "I am now occupied in judging souls, and I will tell you how I will have pity on you, through the blood of the Passover and the blood of circumcision, and I will forgive you"' (Exodus Rabbah xv. 12). In line with this Josephus tells us that the Israelites 'in readiness to start, sacrificed, purified the houses with the blood...'.• It seems that the use of blood always gave rise to thoughts of expiation of sin, so it is not surprising that the blood shed at Passover should share in this aspect of sacrifice.
But the note of deliverance is much more prominent. There are many references to the Passover as redeeming or delivering Israel from Egypt. Thus 'On account of two kinds of blood were Israel redeemed from Egypt - the blood of the Passover and the blood of circumcision' (Exodus Rabbah xvii.3). The paschal victim is here seen as a ransom; it was the payment of a price that set the people free. This produced a mood of exultation:
Therefore are we bound to give thanks, to praise, to glorify, to honour, to exalt, to extol, and to bless him who wrought all these wonders for our fathers and for us. He brought us out from bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to a Festival-day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption; so let us say before him the Hallelujah (Pesahim 10:5).
Such a note of joy is common and it is probably true to say that it is the most frequent note struck in rabbinic references to the Passover. This festival commemorated the greatest deliverance in the nation's history and accordingly the emphasis was on the fact that everyone should rejoice before the Lord. But we should not overlook those other aspects of forgiveness and redemption.
Passover was a time when the idea of community was very prominent. Jews gathered from all the world to keep the feast, a fact which was significant in itself. Passover was not a purely individual affair to be observed according to individual taste. While the most important part of the celebration took place in homes with small companies of people, the occasion was corporate, not individual. The Mishnah forbids the slaughtering of the sacrifice for one person (Pesahim 8:7). There is, it is true, an alternative opinion that permits it, but according to the Talmud this is allowable only if the man can eat it all (Pesahim 91a). As a lamb or a kid is in question this effectively prohibits it. Josephus, too, says that feasting alone is not permitted.3 Passover was a time for the collective joy of the nation, not the private happiness of individuals.
At the first Passover, that in Egypt, the company was a family or a group of families, but in later times a family grouping was not regarded as necessary. But there must be a company, and often it is held that ten persons was the minimum. Josephus, for example, says this,' but there are references to companies of five (e.g. Mishnah, Pesahim 9:10), though such small groups were probably exceptional. Ten was a more acceptable figure. It is sometimes said that the maximum number was twenty, but the Mishnah can speak of a company of a hundred (Pesahim 8:7). However, as the feast took place for the most part in private houses, twenty would have been a much more usual figure. It is interesting that even when the people no longer met in families the groups remained small. Probably the circumstances of the original Passover were better kept in mind with small numbers.
The gathering at the temple when the sacrifice was offered gave the necessary emphasis to national unity. This was important, for, as we have seen, the Passover marked the birth of the nation. This comes out in passages like that in a Jewish exposition of the book of Numbers, called Sifre Numbers, which tells us that the people were redeemed in order that they might belong to God (on Nu. 15:37-41). When God gave them commandments in the wilderness, the writer says, the Israelites complained. But God replied that they were his slaves: 'For this reason have I redeemed you, that I might give decrees and you should keep them.' Here the thought is plainly expressed that Israel was not redeemed for the people's own personal convenience but in order that they might be the servants of God. The redemption from Egypt was the redemption of a community which was to be in a unique sense bound to God as the people of God.
Active participation in the observance was important. On many occasions we read of the requirement that everyone must eat at least an olive's bulk of the sacrifice. Participation must also be an intelligent participation, as is shown by the explanation the father gives his son early in the celebration: 'according to the understanding of the son his father instructs him' (Pesahim 10:4). There is also something of an identification with the original generation, for'In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself out of Egypt', a requirement backed up with a reference to Exodus 13:8 (Pesahim 10:5; though we should notice that the words are absent from some manuscripts).
Passover was certainly a time when the Jews looked back. They looked back to the deliverance from Egypt and in due time the idea appeared that many of the great events recorded in the Old Testament took place at Passover time. Thus it is not surprising that the celebration came to take on a Messianic aspect. Jews looked forward to the time when God would send his Messiah and what more natural than that this should be especially looked for at Passover? The idea that Elijah would come at Passover certainly appeared in due course, as also the view that the Messiah would come at this feast. This view is attested in the Jewish exposition called Exodus Rabbah (section xviii. 12) and the writer is so sure of it that he says that if anyone appears at a time other than Passover and claims that he is the Messiah, he is to be rejected. The time of his appearance is a sufficient refutation of his claim. How much of this goes back to New Testament times is uncertain. But none of it is out of harmony with the ideas of the Jews of that period and in particular the very nature of the feast was such as almost to compel Messianic ideas among those who looked for the Redeemer.
THE PASSOVER IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
There are several references to the Passover in the New Testament which are not relevant to our inquiry. They simply tell us that such and such a happening took place near Passover or the like. They do not relate to Christ's atoning work nor to the way Christians should live. But there are certainly some that are relevant.
We begin with the fact that there are links between the Passover and the Holy Communion, that meal which centres on Christ's death. The Last Supper is called a Passover meal in all three Synoptic Gospels (Mt. 26:17-18; Mk. 14:14-16; Lk. 22:11-15). There is a problem in that John's Gospel places the death of Jesus at the time the Passover victims were being slain. No explanation has won universal acceptance, but the most probable solution is that there were different calendars in use at the time. Jesus and his disciples apparently followed an unofficial calendar and held their Passover meal on the day before that appointed in the official calendar. That would explain why there is no mention of a lamb or kid, the central feature in the Passover meal, in the account of the Last Supper. The temple authorities would not have allowed the offering of a Passover sacrifice on what they held to be the wrong day. John's account goes along with the official calendar. Both link Jesus' death in one way or another with the Passover.
This is reinforced by the fact that in all the Gospels it is clear that Jesus chose the time of his death. John tells us that Jesus said, 'I lay down my life - only to take it up again. No-one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord' (Jn. 10:17-18). Jesus need not have gone to Jerusalem at the time. He need not have allowed Judas's treachery to reach its consummation; he could have disclosed it to the other disciples and they could have prevented Judas from going to the high priests just then. He need not have gone to the Garden of Gethsemane at the time he did. It is plain that he chose to die at just this time, with the Passover in everyone's mind. He does not give the reason for this. But the principal themes of Passover were very well known.
On the last night of his life Jesus inaugurated a service, the Holy Communion, which we may profitably compare with the Passover. There are of course significant differences. The central feature of the Passover, the sacrificed animal, is quite absent from the Christian service. Three of the four cups of wine are likewise missing and the one that is there is shared. The Passover was no ordinary occasion, but a great annual festival when worshippers gathered from all over the world to the one central place. Holy Communion from the first seems to have been the normal weekly service of believers in their local assemblies; it was not a gathering of the world-wide church. Again, the Passover commemorated a past deliverance. The Lord's Supper certainly does this, but it does more. The very title 'Holy Communion' points to a present activity (cf. the Book of Common Prayer, 'feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving'), while the words 'you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes' (1 Cor. 11:26) are forward-looking.
But there are important resemblances. In both there is the solemn liturgical use of bread and wine. In both there is the solemn commemoration of the past. In both there is a living hope for the future. We may fairly say that the institution of the Holy Communion, in the way in which it was done at Passover time, directs our attention to certain important aspects of our Lord's saving work. It has us looking back to God's great act at Calvary and it has us looking forward to the time when Christ will come again to bring his saving work to its consummation. And it brings out something of the communal nature of the Christian way, for it is a service which looks for the participation of the whole local group of believers.
Some have seen a reference to the Passover in the words of John the Baptist, 'Look, the Lamb of God!' (Jn. 1:29, 36), but this seems unlikely. Nor should we put much emphasis on the expression, 'the Jewish Passover Feast' (Jn. 6:4), as do some who suggest that the words imply a contrast with a'Christian Passover Feast'. But this is surely to read too much into the expression. Are we to think that'the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles' Un. 7:2) implies a Christian Feast of Tabernacles? And where does the process stop? The early Christians were not slavish imitators of the Jews and they did not pattern their observances on the Jewish liturgical year. Such allusions appear to exist only in the minds of those who put them forward. There is no real evidence.
More significant is the fact that John puts the death of Jesus at the time the Passover victims were being slain in the temple. This is no more than approximate, but we must bear in mind that people did not normally estimate time in those days as precisely as we do. John tells us that Pilate sat on the judgment seat to sentence Jesus at 'about the sixth hour' (Jn. 19:14). The evening sacrifice was offered in the temple on the day the Passover victims were killed at half after the eighth hour or, if it was the eve of a Sabbath, at half after the seventh hour. Allowing for the time it would take to get Jesus from the Praetorium to Golgotha it seems that John is saying that Jesus was hanging on the cross at the time the sacrificial victims were being killed in the temple.
This is supported by the fact that John sees a fulfilment of Scripture in that no bone of Jesus was broken. This is really quite surprising. In the first place the legs of the two who were crucified with Jesus were broken and if that happened to them, it would have been expected that it would happen to him. Then in the second place, his side was pierced with a spear, a most unusual procedure On. 19:31-36). To have Jesus' bones unbroken through both happenings is quite unexpected. John does not say which Old Testament passage or passages he had in mind, but most agree that he was thinking of the requirement that no bone of the Passover sacrifice was to be broken (Ex. 12:46; Nu. 9:12; some think of Ps. 34:20, but this seems much less suitable). In as theological a writer as John it is difficult to escape the impression that the truth that is being conveyed is that in his death Jesus fulfilled all that the Jews looked for, but did not find, in the Passover. Jesus' death gave what the Passover pointed to but could not give. The Passover foreshadowed the great deliverance that God would bring about and for which his deliverance in ancient times formed the model. In Jesus, and specifically in his death, that great deliverance was accomplished.
Paul specifically identifies Christ's sacrifice with the Passover when he writes 'Christ, our Passover' (1 Cor. 5:7; Niv adds 'lamb', but this is not in the Greek and is misleading: there is no lamb imagery here). Paul has been rebuking the Corinthians for their failure to discipline erring members. Specifically they had not taken decisive action in the case of a church member who had been guilty of a repulsive kind of immorality (1 Cor. 5:1-2). Paul insists that immorality is not to be tolerated in a Christian community. 'Don't you know', he asks, 'that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?' He firmly instructs them, 'Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast - as you really are' (verses 6-7).
This leads on to the thought that Christ, our Passover, has already been sacrificed. Paul is taking yeast as a symbol of evil. It will be recalled that in the Jewish Passover observance there was a ceremonial search for yeast to ensure that it was all destroyed well before the sacrifice was offered. Paul's point is that for Christians the Passover sacrifice is the sacrifice of Christ, a sacrifice which is already past. Believers should long since have abandoned evil. It is a vivid reminder that Christ's death to deliver us means among other things that we put all evil away with decision. The death of Christ for sinners means their death to sin: they have been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20), they are to reckon themselves as dead to sin (Rom. 6:11). The believer is forgiven, but not only this: he has victory over evil. The Passover with its emphasis on deliverance is an apt symbol for this aspect of atonement and the Christian way.
The original Passover delivered the Israelites from destruction and introduced them into a new life in which things Egyptian had no place. They were no longer slaves to the oppressor. They were free. So with the Christians. The death of Christ was the decisive intervention which delivered them from destruction and from sin and introduced them to a new way of life. And in that new way they were free from the slavery to sin that had hitherto characterized them, as it does all people.
It is possible that we should see another reference to the Passover in the description of Christ as 'a lamb without blemish or defect' (1 Pet. 1:19), following, as it does, a reference to redemption in the previous verse. But the Passover victim might as easily be a kid as a lamb and, further, lambs were offered in sacrifice other than that at Passover time. The connection cannot be said to have been established. The most we can say is that the Passover would fit the words. We cannot say with assurance that it is this that is in mind. In any case the passage scarcely adds to what we have seen elsewhere. It underlines the thought of deliverance by the blood of Jesus, a major thought in the use of Passover imagery.
From all this it is plain that the New Testament writers do not make the Passover their major category when they are interpreting the death of Jesus. There is no getting around Paul's reference in 1 Corinthians 5:7, but some maintain that all the other passages could be explained otherwise than as pointing to the Passover. Possibly. But it is more than doubtful whether they should be so explained and whether we can neglect the Passover when we try to understand the new and living way of the Christians. Apart from Paul's specific reference we should bear in mind at least these three things:
1. Jesus chose to die at Passover time.
2. The Synoptists place Jesus' death after he and the Twelve had eaten the Passover, but they link that Passover meal with the Holy Communion, an ongoing remembrance of Jesus' saving death.
3. John chose to write in such a way as to bring out the truth that Jesus' death took place at the time the Passover victims were being killed in the temple. This surely means that he saw the death of Jesus as the true Passover sacrifice.
At the time Jesus died attention in Jerusalem was concentrated on the Passover and it is more than difficult to contend that this had no significance for the Christians.
Passover may not be the leading New Testament category by which to interpret the atonement, but it is certainly one of the subordinate strands in New Testament thinking. What the Passover sacrifice signified for the Jews, that and more Christ's sacrifice has done for the Christians. It emphasizes the thought of deliverance, deliverance from a powerful enemy. Because Jesus died as a Passover sacrifice those who trust in him are no longer subject to the forces of evil. They have been delivered. They are free.
And Passover reminds us that we are members one of another. Passover was a corporate observance, a feast to be celebrated in the company of others. Both in the Old Testament and in contemporary Judaism the Passover was to be observed in companies. The observance stressed the truth that God's salvation is not a purely individual experience. The deliverance from Egypt marked the birth of a nation, the emergence of the people of God. The deliverance on the cross marked the emergence of the true Israel, the people of God in more than a merely national sense. Now the people of God are plainly seen as all those who have been delivered by Christ, from whatever nation they may come. They are no longer slaves to sin. They belong to God and to one another in the fellowship of the redeemed people of God, for 'Christ our passover is sacrificed for us' (1 Cor. 5:7, AV).
For further study
1. Outline the principal features of the original Passover observance. What do they tell us about God's deliverance of his people?
2. Among the Jews the Passover was not a private observance, but a community occasion. Are there similar community occasions in Christianity?
3. What do you see as the central meaning of the Passover
(a) in its original observance;
(b) for the Rabbis;
(c) for the modern Christian?
One of the notes that runs through the New Testament is that of freedom. It meant a good deal to those who first espoused the Christian way that it brought them liberation. In this it speaks to our generation, for we should like to be free. We are constantly reminded that there are limitations on our freedom. Our psychologists often give the impression that we are all trapped in an intricate web of complexes and inhibitions, so that freedom is an illusion. Others, more sociologically minded, see us as the slaves of our class, upbringing, physical constitution, and generally the circumstances of life. The structures of society are held to spell injustice and to limit our freedom. While all nations these days give lip-service to the importance of human rights, yet in a depressingly large number of states freedom is a fragile thing and apt to be terminated by the physical imprisonment of those who do not conform. Freedom is elusive. But it is a subject of continuing interest and importance.
Not least is this the case for Christians. Conventional Christianity tends to settle down into a rigidly defined way of life. Anyone who trangresses accepted taboos is apt to be looked on as no more than nominally Christian. Hard and fast patterns tend to be laid down. Even the radically minded are not immune. They tend to see their 'free' way as the only Christian way and they are highly critical of stuffy conservatives. It is easy for all of us to prate of our freedom while we settle into a restricted existence which is really a slavery of our own manufacture.
It is all the more interesting that first-century Christians, who knew what literal slavery was and some of whom were literally slaves, insisted that in Christ people are free. 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,' Paul wrote (Gal. 5:1) and the early church appears to have exulted in living out the implications of such words.
One of the ways the Christians spoke of freedom was to use the concept of redemption. This is a concept we may easily misinterpret, partly at any rate because it has become such an important religious term. Indeed, for us it is almost entirely a religious word, but for the people of the first century it was not so. We use the term now and then in non-religious contexts, as when we speak of the redemption of a bond or the like. But this is comparatively rare. Almost always when we hear the word 'redemption' we understand the speaker to be expounding some religious theme. 'Redeemer' means 'Jesus Christ'. The whole word-family is at home in a religious setting.
But for the New Testament writers the important thing was that the whole word-group was not religious. It was secular. A man did not have to be a devotee of any particular religion to pick up what was meant when he heard someone using the terminology. Redemption was part of the language of ordinary people in their ordinary everyday life. Christians could use it knowing that it was a vivid picture-word, a word which everyone could understand and which, properly used, conveyed forcefully one important aspect of Christian teaching. It was the fact that it was not a religious word which gave it its usefulness and its wide intelligibility.
A further point is that we tend to use the word in a more general sense than did the people of antiquity. In a good deal of modem writing redemption means much the same as 'deliverance'. It does not matter greatly how the deliverance is effected. But in antiquity the word was specific. It meant not simply deliverance, but deliverance in a particular way. We shall see this if we look at the way the term was used.
THE GREEK BACKGROUND
The term as used in the all-pervasive Greek culture of antiquity had its origin in the practices of warfare. When people went to war in ancient times they lacked the refinements of our modern civilization. They had no atom bombs, no poison gas, no germ warfare. But in their own humble way they did what they could to make life uncomfortable for one another. One of their happy little customs was that, when battle was over, the victors some times rode round the battlefield rounding up as many of the vanquished as they could. Then they took them off as slaves. It meant a tidy profit and an increase in the spoils of war, though I guess the new slaves did not like it much.
Anyway, when they got them back home and looked them over, they sometimes found there were important people included in their haul. These were men of rank, men who counted for a good deal in their own country, but whose upbringing and manner of life made them not particularly suitable for hard menial labour and the kind of work that was the common lot of slaves. But if they were not much good as slaves, they were valued in their own homeland.
Then the victors let it be known back in the land of the vanquished that they were ready to release such-and-such captives, always, of course, on receipt of a consideration. The home folk would pass round the helmet (or whatever other way they had of raising funds) and, when they had the required amount, send it over to the land of the victors and buy back their brothers. This is the process that the ancients called 'redemption'. They used the verb 'redeem' of it and anyone who carried it out was a 'redeemer'. The sum of money was called the'ransom'.
You see the meaning? There were people whose rightful place was back there-in-the homeland, alongside their brothers. But by a cruel accident of war they had fallen into the power of a strong enemy. They could not break free. Left to themselves they would remain in captivity for the rest of their lives. If they were to be set free, money must be paid. For them to be restored to the place where they belonged they must be bought out of their captivity.
This buying of prisoners of war out of their captivity was the basic idea in redemption. But the redemption words came to be used of other forms of freeing people. They were sometimes used, for example, of setting slaves free. We usually think of slaves as slaves for life, and so, of course, most of them were. But it was possible for a slave to be set free. Sometimes his master would set him free, simply because he liked him and wanted to do him good. Or a well-wisher might buy him and let him go. But there was one process which was specially significant for our purpose. Scholars call it sacral manumission. It worked like this.
A slave who desperately wanted to be free could save the price of his freedom. It would be a long and difficult process, because by definition his labour belonged to his owner. But if he was determined he could save up the odd coins that came his way and steadily build up his little hoard until he had the sum that was needed.
Then he would go to the temple of some god and pay the money into the temple treasury. His owner would come along and go through the solemn rigmarole of selling him to the god, the money, of course, being the slave's own hard-earned savings. Usually there would be the inclusion of some words such as 'for freedom' in the document setting out the details, and this would make it quite clear that the slave was being set free and not being bought by the temple authorities as a menial drudge to do the lowly services required to keep the temple going. They would carve into the wall an account of proceedings. And if anyone at any time questioned the former slave's right to be regarded as a free man, he could take him along to the temple and point to the inscription that for all time set forth the fact that he was free. Quite a few such inscriptions survive which, of course, is what enables us to know what went on. Here is an example of such an inscription, dated 200-100 BC:
Nicaea had saved the three and a half minae of silver that was her price, paid it into the treasury of the god Apollo, and had been 'sold' to the god 'for freedom'. Technically she now belonged to Apollo and there may have been a few pious obligations laid on her to remind her of the fact. But as far as men were concerned she was free. The price had been paid. She was no longer a slave.
Perhaps we should notice one more thing about the Greek background. While the New Testament writers are clearly making use of a well-known concept and for the most part using the common vocabulary, there is a slight difference in the word for 'redemption'. Where Greek speakers generally used the word lytrosis, the New Testament writers tend to use the compound apolytrosis. It is not easy to see a difference in meaning between the two terms. In this general period there seems to have been a liking for compound words. People loved to use longer, more sonorous terms instead of simple, ordinary words. It may be the use of apolytrosis by the New Testament writers is no more than another example of this tendency. But it may be more. They use apolytrosis ten times altogether and all the other words from the root a total of nine times. Now I cannot claim to have read all the extant Greek literature by a long way, but with the resources open to me I have been able to find only ten examples of apolytrosis in all the Greek writings. It is a rare word, so that the New Testament usage stands out. It seems to me that the New Testament writers chose to use an unusual and distinctive word because they wanted to bring out the truth that the redemption Christ brought about in dying for sinners was no ordinary redemption, not just one more redemption among others. It was sufficiently like other redemptions for the word to be very suitable, but sufficiently different for the distinctive word to be appropriate.
THE JEWISH BACKGROUND
But the early Christians were not Greeks (though they used the Greek language for their writings), but Jews. They had our Old Testament for their sacred Scripture and they read about redemption there. The presumption is that they used the term in much the same way as they found it in their Bible. At least we should study it there. They tended to use the translation of the Old Testament into Greek, the translation called the Septuagint. A comparison of this translation with the original Hebrew shows that the redemption words translate words from three different word-groups in the Hebrew. It will repay us to look at the way these word-groups were used.
The first of these Hebrew roots is g'l. This has to do with the family and it is a broad term to cover all sorts of things that help to further the life and fortunes of the family. It points to the things people do when they are acting in the interests of those to whom they are related. C. Ryder Smith thought it a pity that English does not have a verb like 'to kinsman', for that would give an excellent equivalent of the verb from this word-group. Since we do not have such a word we must make do with other terms. But whichever one we choose, the basic idea is that of promoting the interests, the welfare of the family.
Since a family does many things, this covers a wide range of activities. An interesting use is that in the book of Ruth, where it is used of the duty a kinsman had of looking after the family fortunes when a man died without children. It was regarded as a terrible thing that a man should have no-one to carry on his family name, and the Law provided that the brother of the dead man should marry the widow and that the first child of this marriage should be regarded as the child of the dead man. In this way his name would be carried on and would not die out from Israel (Dt. 25:5-6). If there was no brother the duty fell to the next of kin. Ruth was a childless widow who came under the provisions of this law. Boaz recognized her need and he was quite prepared to carry out the duty of a relation. But he pointed out that there was in fact a closer relative than he. That man had the first claim on the woman and it was not until he waived that claim that Boaz could go ahead and marry Ruth (Ru. 4:1-12).
But this was not the only duty that might fall to the lot of a kinsman. When a murder took place the whole family of the murdered man was injured. The next of kin was required to put this right. He was to take the initiative and execute the murderer, in which capacity he was'the avenger of blood' (Nu. 35:19, etc.). The shed blood defiled the land and it was only when the'avenger of blood' executed the murderer that the land was cleansed. Now in English 'avenger of blood' does not seem to have much to do with 'kinsman', nor does either expression have much in common with 'redeemer', but they are all translations of the one Hebrew word. It denotes a man who acted in any one of a number of ways to forward the welfare of the family.
The Old Testament mentions some of the other ways. A member of a family might become very poor and sell himself into slavery as a means of settling his debt (Lv. 25:47). But the purchaser did not have the right to hold such a slave for life. That slave was entitled to be redeemed (Lv. 25:48-49). The new owner could not refuse to sell him to his next of kin, as he could refuse to sell him to someone from the general public. There was a right of redemption. One of the man's brothers, or his uncle, or his cousin or anyone from the family could put up the money and the slave must be redeemed. Indeed, if he himself could raise the price he was entitled to redeem himself.
But, of course, if a man became poor and needed money, the last thing he would sell was himself. He would sell his property first. If matters subsequently improved he had, generally speaking, the right to redeem. There were some limitations to be kept in mind. For example, a house in a walled city must be redeemed within a year (Lv. 25:29-30). This restriction did not apply to a house in a village, a settlement with no walls about it. For purposes of redemption such a situation was reckoned as being like a field and there was no time-limit (Lv. 25:31). But apart from a few such restrictions the impoverished person had the right to redeem. The former owner, or for that matter some other member of his family, could come up with the money and the property must be sold to him. It was important that each family retain its basic property from generation to generation and the process of redemption provided a means whereby times of temporary financial stringency would not have permanent consequences in the loss of land and homes.
There is an example of the exercise of this right in the time of Jeremiah. The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah and told him to buy his cousin's field in Anathoth, 'because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it' (Je. 32:7; the Hebrew means more exactly'the right of redemption is yours'). Jeremiah obeyed the direction and he goes on to tell us how he weighed out the money, signed the deed, sealed it and generally complied with the legal requirements (Je. 32:9-12).
For our purpose the interesting thing about all this is that, while g'1 might denote all sorts of activities in the interests of the family, when the Old Testament was being translated into Greek the redemption words were used only when it was a question of paying money to secure release. This might be release of persons or of property. But the price-paying idea was fundamental. If no price was paid then the translators used some other word. We see this, for example, in their treatment of the 'avenger of blood' in Numbers 35. No money was paid; the kinsman simply executed the murderer. This is not redemption. It came within the wide-ranging scope of the Hebrew term, but it did not fit into the Greek category of redemption. That meant the paying of a price to secure release. As this was not involved the translators did not use any of the redemption words for the 'avenger of blood'.
THE LORD, THE REDEEMER
Sometimes God is said to redeem and this presents us with a little problem, for it is unthinkable that God should make a payment to anyone in all his creation. Until now, every use of the redemption words we have looked at has conveyed the thought that a release is secured and that by the method of making a payment. But we also read that God said to the oppressed Israelites in Egypt: 'I will free you from being slaves to them and will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment' (Ex. 6:6). Then when the deliverance in question has been accomplished we find Moses and the Israelites singing: 'In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed' (Ex. 15:13).
Clearly God made no payment to the Egyptians to secure the deliverance of his people. But we should not overlook the reference to the 'outstretched arm' (Ex. 6:6) or the words, 'You stretched out your right hand' (Ex. 15:12). By contrast, there are passages in which God is seen as so great and the people of the earth as so little that the greatest of men are as nothing before God. Thus we read, 'Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust' (Is. 40:15). One drop does not count for much in a bucket. The dust which a trader does not bother to wipe off his scales before weighing is very fine dust indeed. In this way the prophet brings out the greatness of God and the impossibility of any power on earth resisting his will.
But this kind of language is not used when the idea of redemption is in mind. Then it is rather the 'stretched out arm' that is emphasized. Thus the Psalmist can sing, 'You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. With your mighty arm you redeemed your people. ..' (Ps. 77:1415). And among the proverbs we read, 'Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless, for their Defender [more exactly, 'Redeemer'] is strong' (Pr. 23:1011). Jeremiah speaks of a time when 'The people of Israel are oppressed, and the people of Judah as well. All their captors hold them fast, refusing to let them go.' The situation is hopeless. The enemy is too strong. But then, 'Yet their Redeemer is strong; the LORD Almighty is his name. He will vigorously defend their cause so that he may bring rest to their land, but unrest to those who live in Babylon' (Je. 50:33-34).
In passages like these there is an emphasis on the power of God, a power that he puts forward on behalf of his people. Being as great as he is, he could rescue them with effortless ease. But because he loves his people he puts forth his power. He saves them at cost. It is this that gives the use of the redemption terminology its point. Bishop Westcott could write: 'It cannot be said that God paid to the Egyptian oppressor any price for the redemption of His people. On the other hand the idea of the exertion of a mighty force, the idea that the "redemption" costs much, is everywhere present. The force may be represented by Divine might, or love, or self-sacrifice, which become finally identical." The term may be used metaphorically but the metaphor retains its point. The idea of price-paying is not out of mind.
REDEMPTION AND GRACE
The second Hebrew word-group translated in the Septuagint by the redemption words is pdh. Here there is no element of family obligation as in g'l, or indeed of any obligation at all. Where this root is used people may redeem or not, at least in most cases. In other words there is an element of grace involved. The person or thing might be left in the state of captivity. But the other chooses to redeem.
We see something of its force in its application to the animals of the domestic herd. The principle is laid down in Exodus 13:12: 'you are to give over to the LORD the first offspring of every womb. All the first-born males of your livestock belong to the LORD.' That meant that the first-born offspring of all the domestic animals should be offered in sacrifice. But there were some animals which were not deemed suitable for use in sacrifice, the donkey for example. The first-born donkey according to this law belonged to God, not to the human owner. But it could not be offered on the altar. Such an animal must be redeemed or destroyed; the human owner must not benefit from it. 'Redeem with a lamb every first-born donkey,' ran the regulation, 'but if you do not redeem it, break its neck' (Ex. 13:13). Human sacrifice was also forbidden, but in this case there was no alternative to redemption. The passage goes on to give the firm instruction, 'Redeem every firstborn among your sons.'
This had an interesting application when the Israelites were delivered from the land of Egypt. In their captivity in that land there seems no doubt that such regulations, if they existed, could not be carried out. And, of course, in the form in which we have them, the regulations were given only after the Israelites had been brought out of the land of their captivity. There were then a great number of Israelite first-born sons who had never been redeemed. What was to be done about them? 'The LORD said to Moses, "Count all the firstborn Israelite males who are a month old or more and make a list of their names. Take the Levites for me in place of all the firstborn of the Israelites, and the livestock of the Levites in place of all the firstborn of the livestock of the Israelites"' (Nu. 3:40-41). The Levites were to belong to the LORD. They were to do his service in the sanctuary and elsewhere and in this way they became the ransom price, the price that delivered the first-born throughout the nation. Actually the number of first-born came to 22,273 (Nu. 3:43) and the total of the Levites was only 22,000 (verse 39). To provide for the excess a price was paid in money, five shekels for each first-born over and above the number of Levites. This amount was paid over to Aaron and his sons (verses 46-48), presumably to be used in the service of God in some way.
It is explicitly provided that 'you must not redeem the firstborn of an ox, a sheep or a goat; they are holy' (Nu. 18:17). They are animals required for sacrifice on the altar. The worshipper had no choice there. Nor had he with human offspring. As we have seen, the first-born of men must be redeemed (cf. also Nu. 18:15). The same applied to the first offspring of unclean animals. They could not be offered on the altar, but they did not belong to the human 'owner', so they must be redeemed (Nu. 18:15). This had its relevance to the situation in which a man might make a vow that he would offer an animal in sacrifice to the LORD. He could not in this way dedicate the first-born of the cow or the sheep, because these animals already belonged to the LORD (Lv. 27:26). But he could dedicate other sacrificial animals (Lv. 27:9). The practice of redemption gave him a way of making an offering out of one of the unclean animals. He could not offer it in sacrifice, but he could dedicate it to the LORD, then redeem it at its set value plus one fifth (Lv. 27:11-13). 'If he does not redeem it, it is to be sold at its set value' (Lv. 27:27). Presumably the money was then put into the temple treasury.
With this verb, as with g'l, passages occur in which God is said to redeem Israel. And again, as with g'l, there is often the thought of the exertion of a mighty power which God puts forth because he loves his people. Nehemiah could pray about Israel, 'They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand' (Ne. 1:10). Similarly the Psalmist refers to'the day he redeemed them from the oppressor, the day he displayed his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders in the region of Zoan' (Ps. 78:42-43; he proceeds to dwell on some of those powerful signs). And there is that passage in David's prayer in which the king asks, 'And who is like your people Israel - the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt?' (2 Sa. 7:23). As with the other wordgroup, it is plain from such passages that the basic idea of cost is present. God puts forth a mighty effort to save those he loves. His deliverance is at cost.
The other thing we must notice when this word-group is used is that there is no thought of obligation. I suppose that we cannot say that even the use of g'1 means that God has no freedom. The Old Testament writers always think of God as omnipotent and free. He does what he wills. But g'1 has the notion of family about it, and it might be expected that God, the mighty Father, the great Kinsman, would act for his own. Not so with pdh. Where this verb is used there is no suspicion of obligation of any sort. It brings out the other thought that God's deliverance is always a matter of grace. Sinners can never say, 'God must save me. He is obliged to do something for me.' There is no necessity laid upon God. He saves freely. He saves because he is a loving God. Where this word-group is used, grace and redemption go together.
RANSOM
The third word-group is that connected with the root kpr. This differs from the others in that in them the verb is the most prominent member of the word-group (though nouns do occur), whereas with this one we find the noun 'ransom' (kopher) characteristically. It means the money that anyone pays to be delivered.
It is used, for example, in the case of a man who owned a dangerous bull. If the animal gored someone and the person died, the animal must be killed. But if the owner knew that the bull 'has had the habit of goring', and if he has been warned about this, he is responsible for seeing to it that the dangerous bull is kept locked up. Then if he is careless and lets the animal get out and it gores someone so that that person dies, the owner is in trouble: 'the bull must be stoned and the owner also must be put to death' (Ex. 21:28-29). The man knew that the animal was dangerous. He knew that he was responsible for keeping it penned up. He had not done this, and someone had died. That was his fault. He must pay the penalty.
But this might be thought a trifle hard. It is quite a different case from wilful murder. There is no malice aforethought. The man has been guilty of carelessness, criminal carelessness if you like, but he is not a murderer. So it is provided that, 'if payment [more literally, ransom] is demanded of him, he may redeem his life by paying whatever is demanded' (verse 30). He pays the ransom and he goes free. The death sentence no longer hangs over him.
The word is used also of what happens at the census: 'When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the LORD a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them' (Ex. 30:12). Unless Yahweh's command was obeyed there would be plague among the people. The ransom is paid in the place of the life that would otherwise be forfeit.
In another place the term is used in a prayer that a man be saved from death: 'Spare him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him' (Jb. 33:24). Or, as the proverb has it, 'A man's riches may ransom his life' (Pr. 13:8). On all such occasions it is clear that the term conveys the idea of payment for deliverance. Sometimes the word is used metaphorically, but the basic idea is clear. The kopher is a sum of money paid for release.
Once the word is used of God's activity, when he says, 'I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honoured in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life' (Is. 43:3-4). Clearly there is a metaphorical element here but equally clearly the term conveys the thought of price. God's people are delivered at cost.
Our study of the use of the redemption terminology in the Old Testament then leads us to the conclusion that it is concerned with release on payment of a price. It is not used of simple release. For that other terms were available and were in use. The idea of the payment of a price (the 'ransom') is basic to all the redemption words. Now and then there is a metaphorical use and, especially when the words are used of God's activity, the actual price paid cannot be stressed. But there is always the thought of deliverance at cost. Sometimes it is deliverance from slavery and sometimes from a sentence of death. But both inside and outside the Bible that is the usage. As far as I am able I have searched the literature of antiquity and my conclusion is that redemption, apart from some metaphorical uses which depend on the normal usage, always denotes deliverance from a state of captivity (the prisoner of war), or from slavery, or from a death sentence. And always it is deliverance in a particular way, by the payment of a price. The idea of the payment of a price is fundamental to redemption.
Now and then we see something of the original flavour of the word in the way we use the term in modern times. The usage of the pawnshop is an example. I must confess that I have no first-hand knowledge of the subject, but some of my friends who have been unfortunate tell me that the process goes something like this. You take along your treasured possession and 'uncle' decides what he will let you have for it. The possession is handed over and the cash goes in the reverse direction, together with a pawn-ticket.
Then a most interesting situation develops. The keeper of the pawnshop cannot dispose of what you have left with him. It is yours, not his, and he is required to keep it safely. Of course, if you do nothing about it, in time you forfeit your right to it and he may legitimately sell it. I am not talking about its ultimate fate, but about the intermediate period. During that time it is yours. He cannot dispose of it. But for all the good it is to you it might well be his. For you to have beneficial possession of what you own you must go along to the shop with your pawn-ticket, the money you borrowed and the interest on it, and buy back - redeem - your possession. It is yours. But to benefit from it you must buy it back.
We see something of the original meaning also in our descriptions of sporting practices. Perhaps there is a cricketer who is having a lean time. His bat will no longer do wonders and there is every chance that he will be dropped from the team. Then, just when everyone is beginning to think, 'He is past it; his day is done' he comes to light with a brilliant century and all the sports writers chorus, 'Jones redeemed himself with his magnificent display!' Notice the way they use our verb. They do not use it of a player who in his first test-match does well. He had no reputation to lose and thus had nothing to redeem. Nor do they use it of one at the height of his career who simply adds another to his long list of successes. His place is secure and he needs no redemption. No; they apply it to one who is in a bad way. His reputation is as good as gone. Then, so to speak, he buys it back with his unexpected success.
SLAVES OF SIN
How does all this help when all we want to do is to understand the New Testament? To answer that we must go back to the very beginning of the Bible. We read in Genesis 1 of God's creation of all that there is, mankind included. That means that we all belong to God. We are his by right of creation. He made us in his own image, made us for himself. And nothing we ever do can alter that. We may turn away from God, we may live our lives in selfish concern for our own interests, we may deny that God even exists. But we cannot alter the fact that because he made us we are his.
Then in Genesis 2 we read of life in the Garden of Eden. Our first parents lived there in fellowship with God, their Maker. But into that picture there came sin, and that meant a radical alteration of a lot of things. To get its basic significance I think it is easiest to turn to John 8. There we read of Jesus having a discussion with some Jews. 'If you hold to my teaching,' he said, 'you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free' Un. 8:31-32). That last word seems to have riled them. You know how it is. Sometimes when you are in a discussion your opponent's use of a particular word rouses you and you find it difficult to attend to the main thrust of the argument for resentment at the word that has been thrown at you. I think it was something like that with these Jews. 'Free,' they might have been saying to themselves, 'free. Whatever is the man talking about?' Then with a superb disregard for the realities of life, as shown by the Roman soldiers in their very midst, they exclaimed, 'We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?' Jesus' answer was, 'I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin' (or as some manuscripts have it, 'everyone who sins is a slave'; Jn. 8:33-34).
And that is all too terribly true. Sin makes slaves of all of us. Take, for example, the person who has a temper (and which of us is guiltless?). He finds that his outbursts cause trouble and unhappiness to all sorts of people and more particularly to those he cares for most in life. So he repents. He decides that he will control himself and not say those harsh words. And if he is a strong person, perhaps he succeeds -for a time. But then one day along comes the provocation and before he knows what is happening he has burst out in those angry words and deeds which bring so much unhappiness to others and deep sorrow to him. Do you see what is happening? He is not free. As far as this thing is concerned he is a slave.
And in greater or less measure the same is true of every sin. Perhaps you can remember the first time you committed a particular sin. It was quite a struggle. You resisted the temptation, but in the end you lost. Next time there was not the same struggle. And later there was less still. In time you came to do the wrong thing almost easily and naturally. Do you see that the evil made a slave of you?
The trouble is that we are still in this situation. Sin is simply too strong for us. I know that from time to time we can chalk up a victory. Every one of us knows what it is to overcome a bad habit at some time or other. It is not easy, but it can be done. What cannot be done is to break all our bad habits, so that there is no evil at all that we do. And because we cannot do this it becomes clear what Jesus means. To sin is to become the slave of sin.
CHRIST THE REDEEMER
Now let us see what all this amounts to. God created man, created him to be his own. Man belongs to God. God set him in Eden to live in fellowship with him. But man sinned. Man became the slave of evil. He cannot break free. This is precisely the situation that the ancient world saw as calling for an act of redemption. We who belong to God have gotten into the power of a strong enemy from which we cannot break free. If I can say it reverently, God, if he wants us back, must pay the price.
And the great teaching of the New Testament is that God has paid the price. He has redeemed us. Christ has become our Redeemer. Jesus told us himself that this was the reason for his coming to earth: 'For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mk. 10:45). His word 'ransom' is the technical term used of the money paid to release a prisoner of war or a slave. To release the slaves of sin he paid the price. We were in captivity. We were in the strong grip of evil. We could not break free. But the price was paid and the result is that we go free. 'Sin shall not be your master' (Rom. 6:14).
Paul can use the redemption terminology in a slightly different way. 'Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,' he writes, 'for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"' (Gal. 3:13). He is referring to the law which says of a man executed in this manner for a capital offence: 'anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse' (Dt. 21:23). Paul is saying that Christ's death on the cross meant that he bore the curse that would otherwise have rested on us. He suffered in our stead. He took what was coming to us. He bore the curse that sinners incurred and this is viewed as a paying of the price, an act of redemption.
The thought that Christ's death was a redemption, a setting of sinners free by payment of a price, is found elsewhere. Thus Paul writes to the Romans of 'the redemption that came by Christ Jesus' (Rom. 3:24) and in the next verse goes on to refer to his blood. In another place we read: 'In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins' (Eph. 1:7). The writer to the Hebrews speaks of Christ's work as 'eternal redemption' (Heb. 9:12), which brings out not only the element of cost, but also the permanent consequences of the payment of this price. In passing we might notice that, while this author does not often use the redemption terminology, the idea that Christ saves at cost runs through his epistle. He speaks of him in these terms: 'During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation...' (Heb. 5:7-9). This passage makes it clear that our redemption was not purchased cheaply, and the same is implied in other passages which speak of the sufferings Jesus endured (e.g. Heb. 2:10,18; 12:2-3; 13:12, etc,). The basic idea in redemption may be there even when the precise terminology is not used. It is certainly present in some passages where verbs like 'purchase' are used, as in Paul's speech at Miletus in which he exhorted the elders of the Ephesian church, 'Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood' (Acts 20:28).
There is a very important passage in which the writer to the Hebrews assures his readers that Christ'has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant' (Heb. 9:15). The significant teaching here is that it was the cross of Christ that provided the way in which people who lived in the centuries before he came were redeemed from their sins. They had their sacrifices and the like, but these were not the means of putting away their sins: 'it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins' (Heb. 10:4). In the providence of God the one act of redemption provided the means of saving people in all ages. People do not have to live after Calvary in order to be saved. The death of Jesus is the sufficient ransom for all the redeemed, in whatever age they may live.
REDEMPTION AND THE FUTURE
Furthermore, if redemption reaches back into the past like this, it also reaches forward to the consummation of all things. Jesus spoke of the coming of the Son of man 'in a cloud with power and great glory' and went on to say, 'hen these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near' (Lk. 21:27-28). There is a sense in which our redemption was perfectly and completely accomplished on the cross. The price was paid in full. Nothing more remains to be done. But here and now we see no more than the beginning of what redemption means. It is only when Christ comes again that we shall know it in all its fullness.
This is in mind also when Paul writes, 'we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies' (Rom. 8:23). The New Testament insists that bodily values will not be lost in the new state of things when our Saviour returns to set up his kingdom. The Christian idea of life in the world to come is not that of the immortality of the soul (an idea that was held by certain pagan Greeks), but that of the resurrection of the body. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that bodies like ours cannot go straight into God's kingdom. Those who are alive when Christ comes will be changed before they can enter the final state. But that does not mean that the body is disposed of. What values it has will be retained in some way and in the passage of which we are thinking Paul connects this with redemption. Redemption means more than that our sins are put away. It is not a negative concept. It means that when Christ comes we shall take our changed bodies into the kingdom. Redemption looks forward to the life of the world to come and nothing appropriate to that life is beyond the scope of our redemption. Or to put the same thing in another way, redemption is so great and vast that its full potential cannot be realized here and now. For that we must await the coming kingdom.
There is something of the same thought when we read, 'do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption' (Eph. 4:30). There is no reference here to the body, but clearly the words are forward-looking. Christians have received the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Spirit has 'sealed' them. In antiquity many people could not read. There was accordingly no point in writing one's name on one's property. To cope with this situation people used seals. A man would adopt a certain device as his own, say a stag or a triangle. He would have a seal made which enabled him to stamp his chosen symbol into soft material like clay or wax, material which retained the impress when it hardened. It then showed whose the object was on which the seal had been affixed. Paul is saying that the presence of the Holy Spirit is the 'seal', the mark that shows God's ownership. Those who have this seal belong to God. But there is also the thought here that this is not the final state of affairs. Believers have the Spirit now, but on the day of redemption, the day when Christ comes back at the end of the age, they will enter into all that their redemption means. The presence of the Spirit now is wonderful, but it is no more than a foretaste. There are greater things to come.
Another of the passages which look forward is of great interest, all the more in that it is not easy to see its full meaning in most English translations. It occurs in Hebrews 11 where the writer is summing up his discussion of faith with some generalized references to classes of people who had exercised faith. 'Women received back their dead,' he writes, 'raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection' (Heb. 11:35). The words translated 'refused to be released' mean more exactly 'not having accepted the redemption'. The point is that these people were not offered simple release, but release on conditions. Most commentators agree that the sort of thing the author has in mind is a situation that could arise in times of persecution.
Thus we read in 2 Maccabees of the deaths of seven brothers in a persecution initiated by Antiochus Epiphanes, each death taking place after the man had refused life on condition of apostasy. It is possible that the writer to the Hebrews had specially in mind the account of the death of the youngest of the brothers. After six of the young men had been executed for remaining steadfast in their allegiance to God, the persecuting king tried hard at least to secure the seventh. He promised him riches and high position if he would apostatize. Then he called on the young man's mother to help persuade him. She agreed, but when she spoke to her son she urged him to stand firm. She ended her appeal to him with these words: 'Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers' (2 Macc. 7:29). This is surely refusing release at a price with a view to a better resurrection. In the end both son and mother were killed, both standing firm in their allegiance to God.
If the writer to the Hebrews had this kind of thing in mind it is clear that his use of the word 'redemption' is very apt. He was not referring to unconditional release, but release at a cost which a religious man could only regard as a very heavy price indeed. The use of the expression in this passage in Hebrews lends no support to the view of those who see redemption as meaning no more than 'deliverance'. In the New Testament redemption is deliverance on payment of a price and when men's salvation is concerned that price is the death of the Son of God.
NOT A TRUISM
There is an important passage in which Christians are exhorted in these terms: 'Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect' (1 Pet. 1:17-19). The expression 'reverent fear' seems curious. Surely we might expect 'live your lives in joy, for you were redeemed. . . .' But no. The writer urges his readers to reverent fear on account of the way they were redeemed.
I think he may be drawing attention the fact that redemption is something miraculous. It is a blessing that we could never have expected. Our sin had brought us into a hopeless position and we had no right to think that we could ever be delivered from it. We might be helped in our understanding of the passage if we go back to the thoughts of a godly man who lived on the other side of the cross. In Psalm 49 we have the meditation of a saintly man of old as he reflected on the limited power that wealth gives to wealthy men. He is thinking mostly of the impotence of even the rich in the face of death and he writes, 'No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him - the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough' (Ps. 49:7-8). That is the position before Christ came. Of course, the Psalmist had in mind basically life here and now, but the principle is of wider application. If even the richest of us cannot ransom anyone from physical death, how much less from that death that is the wages of sin?
It seems that Peter has something like this in mind. 'Your sin', he seems to be saying, 'is a very serious matter. It set you in opposition to God and handed you over to eternal condemnation. From that situation there was no escape. You were hopelessly, irrevocably lost. There is no ransom from such a situation. And then, incredibly, unbelievably, a ransom was found. It meant a heavy price, the price of the death of the wonderful Son of God. But that price was paid and you have been redeemed. Never take your redemption for granted. Never count it a common, ordinary thing. It is the most incredible thing that has ever happened. But it did happen. Accept it, then, with gratitude and with awe. Live your life in reverent fear.'
And that is the attitude that we too should have. There is nothing automatic or axiomatic about redemption. Sinners have no reason for expecting that they can ever be delivered from their sin and its eternal consequences. That Christ died for them is so wonderful that it is always to be received with awe and wonder. We, too, should pass our time in reverent fear, for our redemption is not a matter of silver or gold or the like, but of 'the precious blood of Christ'.
CHRIST'S FREE PEOPLE
'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,' wrote Paul. 'Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery' (Gal. 5:1). His 'for freedom' is the formula of the documents of manumission at which we were looking earlier. The slave was purchased by the god, not to be a temple drudge but 'for freedom'. So the Christian is bought by Christ, not in order that he may enter some new form of slavery but in order that he may be free. Many of the manumission documents go on to affirm that the person set free shall never be made a slave again, and some of them attach heavy penalties to any attempt at enslaving the freed person. Freedom is precious and must not be lost. In the same way the believer is to live in freedom. He is not to 'be burdened again by a yoke of slavery'.
It is one of the curious things in life that Christians have all too often neglected this. Purchased at such great cost, they have promptly looked for some new servitude. Even in the early church it was not long before some people began to speak of Christianity as 'the new law' and to subject themselves to a legalism every bit as trying as that of which the New Testament writers complained in Judaism. And this has continued in the history of the church. Again and again it is not liberty in Christ which has characterized believers, but strict conformity to some new rule they have made or found. This may involve a rigorous asceticism or the firm conviction that the way forward is by observance of some sacramental discipline or the like. At the other extreme it may be by conformity to a new licence, so that all who prefer an ordered way are held to be false to true Christianity. Mankind has a fiendish ingenuity in discovering ways of bringing itself into bondage. Paul's words are far from being out of date.
The Christian way is never a way of rigid conformity to a system. This does not mean that rules are never helpful. Most Christians find it very helpful to have some rules, for example about the way they pray and read the Bible day by day and about regular attendance at worship. Many adopt a 'rule of life' which points them to useful paths of Christian service. I am not objecting to any of this. I am simply saying that believers can never take any such rule as sacrosanct. They cannot subject themselves to regulations as though they were of the essence of the Christian life. They are no more than subordinate helps. Believers are redeemed 'for freedom' and it is in freedom that they must live.
CHRIST'S SLAVES
This we must understand in connection with other sayings which paradoxically regard believers as slaves. Thus Paul writes, 'Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body' (1 Cor. 6:19-20). There is a sense in which the Christian is free. He owes no allegiance to a system, to any device of men. There is another sense in which he is not free. He has been bought by Christ and belongs to him. The very name 'Christian' is a reminder that he is 'Christ's one'. He is to live his life in conformity with his new status. Paul can point out that the person who is a slave when called by Christ need not worry unduly about his status, for he is the Lord's freedman, while the person who is free when called must always bear in mind that he is the Lord's slave (1 Cor. 7:22). In this context Paul can go on to say, 'You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men' (verse 23).
Perhaps we should connect this with the fact that, before they were redeemed, believers were the slaves of sin (Jn. 8:34). They often try to disguise the fact with systems and rules of their own, but the basic thing about them is their bondage to sin. When Christ redeems, however, sin is no longer dominant. This may be spoken of in terms of freedom or described as slavery to Christ. Either way of putting it reminds us that sin has been defeated in the believer's life. He belongs to Christ. He is free.
The last book of the Bible contains the words of a 'new song' addressed to Christ: 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open the seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth' (Rev. 5:9-10). This brings out the greatness of the price. He who is the object of the worship of heaven'was slain' and with his blood he bought people for God. But in buying them he did not simply transfer them from one slavery to another. While in a sense they are his slaves, in another they are free. This is brought out with the affirmation that they are 'a kingdom' and 'priests' and that 'they will reign'. They have a royal state and are thus as far from being menials as can be conceived. They are priests and therefore have no need of priestly mediation. The death that bought them is all that is needed. And they will reign. They are not in bondage but on the contrary in a place of rule. The purchase that set them free from sin brought them into a glorious inheritance.
Redemption is a picturesque way of looking at what Christ did on the cross. Vividly it brought before first-century men some important aspects of the salvation Christ died to bring. Specifically it emphasizes three truths.
1. People are by nature slaves to sin
This means more than that they occasionally do evil things. In the state of the modern world it cannot be denied that there is a good deal of evil in the way people live. But it may be held, and it is held by some humanists and others, that this evil is not an insuperable object in the way of human progress. Man can do good. There is that deep down within him to which appeal may be made and when he responds he can rise above his lesser self and do deeds of altruism. In that lies the future of the human race, they say.
When Christians speak of redemption they are emphatically rejecting this whole position (though they do not, of course, deny that people sometimes act altruistically). They are saying that the evil that people do is simply the outworking of the evil that is part of their nature. Jesus put it this way: 'What comes out of a man is what makes him "unclean." For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man "unclean"' (Mk. 7:20-23). The evil we do is not accidental and occasional. It arises out of what we are. And being what we are, we can never break free. Our victories are always comparatively small and incomplete; our defeats are always with us and their effects may be calamitous. Redemption reminds us to face the facts of life realistically.
2. Christ paid the price of freedom
We see, then, that breaking the hold of evil is not easy. But with people firmly under the control of evil we have the kind of situation that the ancient world saw as calling for redemption. It demanded a high price. Obviously the price is always proportionate to the redemption required. To ransom a lord would require a higher price than to ransom a common soldier. And when it is a question of the whole race of mankind, the price is very high indeed. But the price was paid. Christ's death was the price that made it possible for all mankind to be set free.
Sometimes in the history of the church the question has been asked, 'To whom was the price paid?' The early church Fathers tended to answer, 'To Satan.' Some of them worked out quite a theory of the way redemption works. They held that because of our sin we were all destined for hell. Sinners belong to Satan. In that situation God, in effect, offered to do a deal with Satan. He would give his Son in exchange for sinners. Satan realized that he would be making a fine profit on this transaction and was happy to accept the offer. The death of Jesus on the cross represented the handing of the Son over to Satan. But when Satan got Jesus down into hell he found (in the modern elegant idiom) that he had bitten off more than he could chew. On the third day Christ rose triumphant and Satan was left lamenting, having lost both the sinners he previously had and him whom he had accepted in exchange for them.
It did not take a profound intellect to work it out that God must have foreseen this. The theory means that he deceived Satan. But, bless you, that did not worry the Fathers. Indeed some of them gloried in it. It simply showed that God is wiser than Satan as well as stronger than he. Some of them worked out an illustration of the process along the lines of a fishing expedition. The flesh of Christ was the bait, the deity the fish-hook. Satan gulped down the bait and like any poor fish was caught on the hook of deity and destroyed.
Such theories do no more than amuse us these days. We cannot take them seriously when we are trying to work out what God has done for us in Christ. But they remind us that in the New Testament there is never any hint of a recipient of the ransom. In other words we must understand redemption as a useful metaphor which enables us to see some aspects of Christ's great saving work with clarity but which is not an exact description of the whole process of salvation. We must not press it beyond what the New Testament tells us about it. To look for a recipient of the ransom is illegitimate. We have no reason for pressing every detail. We must use the metaphor in the way the New Testament writers did or we fall into error.
This does not mean that we should water down the meaning of redemption. It is necessary for us to see the main thrust of the metaphor. This way of looking at the cross brings out the magnitude of the price paid for our salvation. It shows us that the death of Christ was meaningful. It was more than the martyrdom of a good man who was not strong enough to resist the machinations of evil people. Rather it was the outworking of the love of God. It was God's costly way of overcoming evil. Looked at in this way Christ's death was the effective payment that removed our bondage to evil.
3. The redeemed are free
Christians agree that evil is strong and that they cannot break free from it by themselves. But the wonderful thing about the Christian way is that it is the way of freedom. The evil that is part of human nature has been defeated in Christ. Believers live in freedom. Since the price has been paid the bondage is ended. They are no longer to live in slavery.
The Bible teaching on redemption then is a continuing call to Christians to live in all that freedom means. But freedom is demanding and too often we settle for some form of bondage. This may arise from excess of zeal as we give ourselves over to following some rigorous rule for living the Christian life. Or it may be the consequence of lack of zeal as we acquiesce in the power of evil and make no real attempt to do anything other than go along with it. Either way we are denying the fundamental freedom of the people of God. Neither is the way for those who have been redeemed at the cost of Christ's death. 'For freedom did Christ free us.'
For further study
1. What may we learn about redemption from the way the Greeks used the term?
2. How does the Old Testament usage of the word help us see the meaning of redemption?
3. In what ways does the Bible bring out the truth that people are naturally slaves to sin? (In a good concordance, look up words like 'redeem', 'redemption', 'slave', 'sin'.)
4. How does the 'redemption' picture help us to understand the meaning of the cross?
5. How can you preserve the freedom that Christ won for you?
Paul tells us that God 'reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sin against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us - we implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God' (2 Cor. 5:18-20). The concept of reconciliation is taken by some scholars to be the best way of understanding the atonement. If this line is taken, it must be because reconciliation is seen as the thrust of many New Testament passages rather than from the specific use of the concept. The term 'reconciliation' is found in no more than a handful of passages, all of them in Paul, though certainly these few are important. But we should bear in mind that reconciliation is implied in places where it is not mentioned in set terms.
Reconciliation is a term we use quite commonly and in much the same way as people used it in Bible days. It means 'restore to friendship', 'make up after a quarrel'.
It is not a word to describe good relations in general. It means good relations which follow when an enmity has been overcome. Imagine that I were visiting you in your home and while I was there your friend Mr Brown dropped in. If your Mr Brown and I got along well you would not say to your other friends next day, 'Last night Mr Brown and Dr Morris were reconciled at my home."Reconciled' would be quite the wrong word. This is the first time that your Mr Brown and I have met. It is impossible for us to be 'reconciled'. Of course, if this was not in fact our first meeting, if we had known one another in the past and had had a thundering great row and if you were able to bring us to be of one mind, then reconciliation would be exactly the right word. That is the way we use the term. It means bringing people into a state of friendship after they have been at loggerheads. It means turning people from being enemies into being friends. It means replacing enmity with friendship. It means ending a quarrel.
If we use the word strictly, mindful of the 're-' with which it begins, it implies three states: first friendship, then a quarrel, then friendship again. We do not always insist that there be these three states before we use the term; if there are people who have quarrelled on sight and have subsequently been brought to agreement we use the term 'reconcile' quite happily. But in strictness 'reconciliation' means more than 'conciliation'.
Let us see how the Bible writers use this concept. We begin, as we did with redemption, right at the beginning of the Bible. When God created our first parents he created them to be in fellowship with himself. He put them in the Garden of Eden and the picture of bliss which results shows us how things ought to be. God and man were in complete harmony with nothing to spoil the picture. Nothing until sin came.
ENMITY
Fellowship is a wonderful thing. It is one of the enriching experiences of life and we are all indebted to it at some time or other. It enlarges our horizons and brings us well-being. But fellowship is a fragile thing. It must be looked after carefully or we lose it. For example, if you and I are getting along well and then for no apparent reason I call you a nasty name and punch you on the nose, it is difficult to see how a state of fellowship can continue. Of course, if that were to happen you would react like a good Christian (I certainly hope you would) and say to yourself: 'Poor fellow. He probably knows no better. I guess they are always doing that kind of thing where he comes from!' But your forgiving spirit would not mean that there was a state of friendship. It would mean only that from your side there was no obstacle. But for fellowship to exist there must be a right attitude on both sides. Without that we may have a kind of armed truce, a refraining from open conflict. But fellowship is more than that. It means warmth and goodwill on both sides. A one-sided kindliness is not fellowship.
But when fellowship does exist it can be ended. And there is no surer way of ending it than by one person thwarting the purposes of the other. Let us imagine that you are sitting in the park one day at peace with the world. A man and his little boy come strolling past. The little chap (let us say he is no more than two or three years old) sees a beautiful water-lily out there in the middle of the pond and he wants to go and get it. Dad says, 'No.' That does not suit the boy at all. He insists. So does Dad. The boy gets angry. He stamps on the ground. He screams and generally puts on quite a performance. A decided, though we trust temporary, coolness develops between father and son.
What we see, naked and unashamed, in the case of the small boy, we see in one form or another throughout life. We all like our equivalent of the pretty water-lily and are incensed when we are not allowed to have it. Whenever anyone stops us from doing something we want to do, or from getting something we want to have, we are always tempted to be angry. And if we have set our heart on that thing our anger can be terrible to behold.
In the illustration I used we should say that the father was quite right. He could not allow the little boy to jump into the lily-pond. The boy was wrong. It was necessary that his will be opposed because his desire was not a good one. But it is just as true that we destroy fellowship and develop anger if it is a good desire that is thwarted. Thus a social reformer may come across a situation in which rich or influential people are making money out of other people's misery, perhaps landlords refusing to do the right thing by their tenants and condemning them to live in hovels while they themselves flourish. The reformer sets himself to alter this state of affairs and immediately he meets strong opposition. He gets angry. We would not think him a better man but a worse one if he did not. Indeed we often do not call his emotion anger at all, but righteous indignation. There can be strong and praiseworthy opposition to evil.
OBSTRUCTING GOD'S PURPOSES
God's purposes are always righteous. God's purpose is that people have rich and full lives. But sinful man, because he is sinful man, sets himself against those purposes. The result is the dreadful thing the Bible speaks of as 'the wrath of God'. God is angry when his righteous purposes are obstructed. We should be clear that sin always obstructs those purposes of God in some way.
First, sin obstructs God's purposes in the sinner. Sin always makes us less as people. If I tell a lie I become a liar - and God does not mean me to become a liar. If I steal something I become a thief - and God has better purposes for me than to become a thief. And so through all the range of evil. Every sin pulls me down and makes me less of a person. This is true of what we see as great sins, like murder, and what we see as smaller sins, like cheating or gossiping. Sin makes us proud and self-centred. Whatever the sin it cuts us down; it prevents us from being the best that we can be. We must not think that God does not mind this. He does. The Bible makes it clear that God 'expresses his wrath every day' (Ps. 7:11). For God it is important that we be the best that we can be, and when we make ourselves into lesser people we arouse his wrath and destroy all hope of fellowship with him.
Secondly, we bring about the same consequence when we sin against others, for our sin is harming them in some way and affecting God's purposes for them. I think of a very lazy man I once knew. Where I come from there is a proverb, 'Laziness is no good unless it is properly carried out.' Don't believe it. I have seen a thoroughly lazy man only once and it is not an attractive sight. This man lived in a very isolated place. It was seven miles away from the railway line and another ten miles along the line to the nearest town. He was not on a road that led to any place, so that people did not drop in in passing. Callers were few. The man lived on a farm and was supposed to be a farmer, but when I shook hands with him the first time I called I was intrigued to find that his hand was softer than mine. I subsequently found out that, though he called himself a farmer, he did practically no work on his farm. He had discovered that there were government subsidies, allowances and handouts of various kinds. There were relief agencies whose object was to help people in need. He had found out that by diligent application and the proper methods of approaching the various authorities he could get by practically without doing any work. In a way it was a remarkable feat.
But what made all this matter so much was the fact that the man had taken to himself a wife and they had a large family. These children were growing up in that isolated place where they rarely saw any visitor. They were all too strongly influenced by the example of their father. He was the man they saw more than anybody. In fact they rarely saw any other man at all. It was natural for them to think from their earliest days that the way their father lived was the normal and right way to live. Cleverness for them meant working out ways of sponging on the government or on other people - anything but work. It is the one time that I have seen little children growing up without ideals and it is not a pretty sight.
Now I cannot think that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ looks on such a man with equanimity. I know that God often overrules evil and brings good out of unpromising situations. I acknowledge that it is possible for children to react against the evil they see in their parents, so that from such a home as the one to which I refer there may emerge hard-working citizens with clear aims and strong characters. But when I make full allowance for all such possibilities I cannot believe that our God does not mind those little children having their outlook warped, their lives influenced for evil. The sin of the father all too often has its results in the lives of the children. And God is angry.
Much of our sin has its effects on other people. This is obvious in sins against the person, robbery, violence and the like. But whether we see it or not it is there. 'No man is an island.' It is impossible for us to live to ourselves in such a way that the evil we do harms no-one but ourselves. Our lives affect other people for good or for evil. When we affect them for evil we are obstructing God's purposes in them and arousing God's wrath against ourselves. We are making ourselves into the enemies of God.
ENEMIES OF GOD
James tells us that 'friendship of the world is enmity towards God' Qas. 4:4; NIV translates 'hatred towards God', but the Greek word is echthra which means 'enmity', 'hostility'). From the standpoint of the saved Paul looks back and says, 'For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!' (Rom. 5:10). So he writes to the Colossians, 'Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you...' (Col. 1:21-22).
It is thus plain that the New Testament speaks of God and sinners as enemies. Now an enemy is not simply someone who falls a little short of being a good and faithful friend. He belongs in the opposite camp. He is opposed to what one is doing. Sinners are putting their effort into the opposite direction to that of God. We should be clear on this. The sin we do inevitably arouses the hostility of God.
Sometimes people emphasize the fact that when the language of reconciliation is used the New Testament writers always speak of man as being reconciled, never God. They argue accordingly that we should not think of any attitude of God as needing to be modified. God is love and he is always ready for men to return to him. The hostility arises in our own minds and the moment we get rid of it all is well.
There is truth here, for God is love and he is always ready to receive repentant sinners. But there is also error, for it is the demand of God that causes the hostility. In this connection it is not always taken into account that man has no conscious hostility to God. Sinful man is always ready to let bygones be bygones. He is not greatly concerned by those small sins he perceives in himself and he cannot imagine why God should be. He is quite ready to let the past remain in the past and simply be friends with God in the present. There is nothing from his side that demands that there be enmity.
Now if here on earth among men we find a situation in which Jones says, 'Smith is my enemy' while Smith says, 'No, no. I am not hostile. I am quite ready to let the past rest so that we can be friends', it is not easy to see how it can be contended that all the hostility comes from Smith. It is Jones, not Smith, who speaks of enmity. Clearly it is he who sees an obstacle to friendly relations. It is his attitude, not primarily that of Smith, that must be dealt with if there is to be reconciliation.
There is an example of this use of our terminology in the Old Testament. On one occasion David was serving with Achish of Gath and this service in the Philistine army was questioned: 'how could this fellow reconcile himself to his lord?' they asked (1 Sa. 29:4, RSV). David consistently denies hostility to Saul and his actions back up his words. It was Saul's hostility that must be removed, though 'reconcile himself' is used of David.
It is something like this with God and man. If man is not greatly concerned about the problem then we cannot say, 'All the hostility is on the manward side. All that needs to be done is for man to change.' Clearly it is God's demand that we live holy lives that is the root cause of the problem. As long as he is angry with the selfishness, the disregard of the needs of others and the general attitude of lovelessness that the Bible calls sin, the attitude of God is going to be an important factor, indeed the important factor. We cannot get a glimmering of an understanding of what the New Testament understands by Christ's atoning work unless we see that God is hostile to every evil thing and every evil person. 'One died for all,' Paul writes, 'and therefore all died' (2 Cor. 5:14). But why should all die? The incidental reference to the death of sinners shows us something of God's hostility to evil as well as something of the way he procured forgiveness of sin. If men are to be forgiven, something must be done about this hostility. There can be no fellowship between God and man as long as God is persisting in a demand to which men are indifferent. That is simply to perpetuate the enmity.
Reconciliation takes note of the realities of the situation brought about by sin. When Article Two of the Anglican ThirtyNine Articles says that Christ'truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us...', it is certainly using language that goes beyond that of the New Testament. But it is not giving expression to teaching that is foreign to that of the New Testament. It is taking seriously what the New Testament writers tell us about the hostility of God to all that is evil.
HOW DOES RECONCILIATION TAKE PLACE?
Quarrels and enmities are unfortunately part and parcel of life here and now. We are all familiar with them. But it is also part and parcel of life here and now that quarrels are not necessarily permanent. It is quite possible to become friends again after there has been a quarrel. It is worth looking into the process.
Let us suppose that you have had a quarrel with a friend. In the heat of the moment strong words were spoken and the friendship you have so valued has been strained. Perhaps when you cool down you say to yourself: 'I was a fool to quarrel with him. He is a wonderful person and a valued friend.' Then you think, 'I'd love to be friends again. I'd like to have things as they used to be.' You decide that you will try to repair the damage. You will take the initiative. Then what do you do? You take steps to deal with the root cause of the quarrel. If it was a matter of harsh words spoken you go along to your friend and say, 'I am very sorry about what I said. I apologize sincerely. I withdraw that statement entirely.' As far as you can you remove the cause of the enmity. You take it out of the way. If any action is required you perform that action. If it was a matter of a letter that had to be written you write it. If it was a document to be signed you sign it. If it was money that had to be paid you pay it. You give thought to what the root cause of the trouble was and take it out of the way. It is only when the root cause is identified and dealt with that there can be a genuine reconciliation. Without that it is possible to have no more than an uneasy, patched-up truce. But not peace, not a reconciliation. In passing it is worth noticing that in many of the modern world's trouble-spots this seems to be overlooked. People concentrate on the symptoms and do not get to grips with the deep-seated causes of the trouble. This can never lead to long-lasting peace.
REMOVING SIN
We have seen that the root cause of the enmity between God and man was the sin of man. It is always sin that arouses the wrath of God and that is the barrier in the way of good relations between God and man. If there is to be a reconciliation then that barrier must be done away. God did not adopt half-measures in dealing with the problem. He sent his Son to live among men and show us how we ought to live. He sent him to die on a cross and so put away our sin. Why his death should take away sin this way of looking at the cross does not say. Each of the great picture-words makes its own contribution to the whole story. None is the whole story. What reconciliation is saying is that the root cause has been dealt with; it is not saying how. But the cross means that sin has been taken away. There is no longer any barrier to fellowship between man and man's Creator.
We should perhaps take notice of the fact that the Greek equivalent of 'reconciliation' can be used in a way slightly different from that in which we use the English term. With us it signifies that the quarrel is over and that full harmonious relations have been re-established. But Paul can write to the Romans, 'we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation' (Rom. 5:11). This implies that reconciliation had in some sense been accomplished by what Christ did on the cross and only then was it offered to those who received it. Reconciliation was wrought on the cross before there was anything but evil in the hearts of sinners. It is on the basis of a reconciliation that can be spoken of as already accomplished that an offer can be made to men, who then 'receive' the reconciliation. This means that there is more to the process than man's response (though that response is important, as we shall see a little later). When Paul speaks of reconciliation as something we have received he is clearly referring to more than a change of heart on the part of sinners. In the same context he has referred to Christ as dying for us 'While we were still sinners' (Rom. 5:8). This is true whatever our reaction. It is a statement about what God in Christ has done for the salvation of sinners, not about any human reaction.
Some scholars overlook this and argue that because God is love nothing is required for our salvation other than that we turn from our sin. Nothing is needed from God's side. He is there, simply waiting for us to come to him. Reconciliation is a term that refers to nothing more than a change of attitude on the part of sinful man. One writer equates reconciliation with 'the flooding of human hearts with the love of God, the disappearance of hostility, the joyful acceptance of forgiveness'. Another tells us that in Romans 3:23-26 'as always, it is taken for granted that, if man repents, the "wrath" of God dies'. Yet another explains reconciliation in this way: 'Reconciliation to God may be defined as a recognition of God's gracious relation to us through blessedness in our use of the world, our dealings with our fellow-men and our loyalty to His Kingdom.' Obviously there is some truth in all these statements. If anyone fills his heart with the love of God, accepts forgiveness joyfully and repents of his sin, if he recognizes God's gracious relation to men and makes the appropriate response, nobody is going to quibble about his being reconciled to God.
But it is quite another thing to hold that this is what the New Testament writers have in mind when they refer to reconciliation. All three of the statements quoted find no place for what Christ did. They leave everything to human activity: it is man repenting, man recognizing God's gracious relation and the like.
But to leave Christ out of Christianity is to start a new religion. That is certainly not what the New Testament preachers preached. For them Christ's death on the cross was the central thing. That death dealt effectively with sin so that it no longer features as an obstacle. It is what Christ has done, not what man does in changing his attitudes, that brings about reconciliation. On the view of the scholars we have just noticed, reconciliation is little more than the clearing up of a misunderstanding. People did not realize that God was not hostile to them. They made the discovery that his love is all that matters and so came to understand that all they had to do was to change their own attitude. Nothing more was needed. But Christ has a greater part in the Christian way than merely to point out to men that they have some wrong ideas about God. He is at the very centre of Christianity and his death on the cross is the heart of it all. As Paul put it, 'we preach Christ crucified' (1 Cor. 1:23). The habitual message of Christian preachers, the essence of the gospel, is Christ's death.
MAKING PEACE
Sometimes this is put in terms of making peace. There is a notable discussion of this in Ephesians 2. Here the writer is concerned with two different divisions, that between God and men and that between Jew and Gentile. He tells us that the Gentiles were 'separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world' (Eph. 2:12). But because of what Christ has done, and specifically because of his death, all that is changed. Now'in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ' (verse 13).
Then comes the notable statement, 'For he himself is our peace' (verse 14). So closely is Christ identified with the peacemaking process that he can be identified with peace. We have no peace apart from him. He is our peace.
Peace is an important concept in the Bible, where it has a somewhat different content from that which we give it in contemporary use. We are apt to miss this because the classical education that has shaped so much of our understanding in English has given us a concept different from that in the Bible. We have simply taken over the idea of peace from the ancient Greeks. With them (and consequently with us) it is basically a negative term. It means the absence of war or strife or turmoil. If we do not happen to have a conflict on our hands at any given moment, then we are at peace.
But the Bible understanding of peace is much fuller than that. The New Testament writers took their idea of peace from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. There the Greek word eirene was the regular translation of the Hebrew shalom and it picked up something of the meaning of that Hebrew term. Now shalom is not a negative term at all. It has a positive meaning. It denotes not the absence of war or strife or anything, but the presence of something. It means the presence of God's rich and full blessing. We may see this in the way the word was used as the normal greeting, shalom lekha, 'Peace to you'. When one Hebrew was walking down the street and said to another Hebrew shalom lekha, 'Peace to you', he did not mean, 'I hope you don't get into a fight.' He meant, 'I trust that God's rich blessing will rest on you in all its fullness'; 'I wish you prosperity in the fullest sense.'
There is considerable agreement that the basic idea in shalom is completeness, wholeness, soundness, well-being. It points to the well-rounded life, the life that lacks nothing good. Now and then shalom is used in the Old Testament in much the same way as we use 'peace', for the Hebrews regarded war as an evil and one ingredient in the blessing for which they looked was the absence of war. The Hebrews were unusual in the ancient world in that their great men for the most part were not warriors. David is the exception, but apart from him the great people of the Hebrews were men of peace, like Abraham, Moses and the prophets. The Hebrews did not glorify war but looked for the blessing of peace. The absence of war is no more than one ingredient in a well-rounded peace. But peace is more than that one ingredient. It was that wonderful thing that we speak of as 'the peace of God that passes all understanding'. The absence of war was included, but so were other things like material prosperity. And spiritual prosperity was a necessary ingredient in the well-rounded peace which the Hebrews sought.
When we read that Christ is our peace we are being told that completeness, wholeness, soundness in our lives depend on him. What he has done provides for our deep needs. We were alienated from God, but he has brought us near. He 'has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility' (Eph. 2:14). There has been a good deal of discussion about the meaning of this 'barrier' or 'wall' and a final resolution is not easy. But it is worth noticing that a symbol of the bitterness between Jew and Gentile was the wall in the temple at Jerusalem that separated the court of the Gentiles from the court of the women. The court of the Gentiles was as far as any Gentile could go into the temple, and in the wall separating this from the next court notices were set up to make this plain. The inscription reads:
It would be too much to say that Paul is writing about this wall. But the wall and its inscription allow us to see something of the depth of the division between Jew and Gentile and that is certainly before us in Ephesians 2.
There is a problem in following the thought because, as we have seen, the passage has in mind two divisions, that between Jew and Gentile of which the inscription just noted is so vivid a symbol, and that between God and man which is before us constantly in the New Testament. Both are done away in Christ. His death meant preaching 'peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near' (Eph. 2:17). Christ's death enabled both Jews and Gentiles to draw near to God and as they did so they drew near to each other. Reconciliation with God means also reconciliation with man, as Jesus himself taught. 'If you are offering your gift at the altar', he said, 'and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave the gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift' (Mt. 5:23-24). It is impossible to enter into the reconciliation that Christ died to accomplish and at the same time to nourish grudges against other people. The two reconciliations are closely connected. So it is not surprising that it is difficult to untangle them in Ephesians 2.
That peace has a very different content in the Bible from that which we normally give the term is clear from some words towards the end of Romans. The writer assured his readers that 'The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet' (Rom. 16:20). God is characterized as 'the God of peace' by the very fact that he performs a warlike action! This is strange language to us, but the overthrow of Satan was a necessary ingredient in peace as the men of the New Testament understood it. So it is quite natural for one of them to speak in this way of God as the God of peace as he crushes the evil one. What could more vividly show what'peace' means?
Peace means the defeat of evil. Peace means breaking down the barrier between man and God. Peace means the presence of God's rich and abundant blessing. Peace means positiveness; it is not the absence of anything - the barrier that separated us from God or anything else. Peace is presence, the presence of God. Christ'is our peace'.
MAN'S PART IN RECONCILIATION
So far we have been taken up with what God has done to bring about reconciliation. I have been emphasizing the truth that it is the action of God that is important in reconciliation, not that of man. I have rejected the idea of some scholars that it is really a work of man who simply turns from evil and finds himself in fellowship with God. That is not adequate for an account of New Testament teaching, and in particular it does not do justice to the New Testament insistence on the place of the cross. What Christ did is of central significance.
But this does not mean that man is passive in the whole process. Early in this study we noticed that for a state of fellowship to exist there must be good relations from both sides. There is no doubt about God's attitude. He is love and his attitude towards those he has created is always one of love. He sent his Son to die for sinners so that they might be reconciled to him. That is basic. But it is not the whole story. There is also the attitude of man to be considered and if he is set on his own selfish, sinful way reconciliation is not going to be consummated.
Let us go back to the illustration we were using of your quarrel with your friend. We saw that if you want to take the initiative in bringing about reconciliation you face up to the cause of the quarrel and as far as in you lies you take away the cause. Without that there can be no reconciliation. So you put your pride in your pocket and apologize or do whatever else it is that has to be done.
But suppose that, when you eat humble pie in this fashion, your friend will have none of it. Suppose he looks you in the eye and says, 'Look, I've met your sort before. After what you said and did the other day I don't care what you do. I'll never call you friend again.'
What can you do? You have apologized. You have removed the cause of the trouble as far as it is in your power to do so. You have shown clearly that you want to be friends and that from your side there is no barrier. You believe that you have demolished the obstacle that had been keeping you apart. But just as surely as it takes two to quarrel it takes two to make a reconciliation. If your friend will not have it there cannot be a reconciliation. The most you can say is that the way to reconciliation is open wide. There is no barrier. But there is no reconciliation either.
There is an equivalent in this matter of reconciliation with God. God was never in the wrong, but he took the initiative all the same to get the cause of the enmity out of the way. He has dealt with our sin and from that point of view it can be said that the reconciliation is complete.
But from another point of view the story is not ended. Paul can write movingly, 'God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.' Then he continues, 'And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us - we implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God' (2 Cor. 5:19-20). Do you see? The whole thing has been accomplished by Christ. Nothing remains to be done. And yet there is something to be done. This reconciliation has no effect in the life of any individual sinner until he receives it, until he himself is reconciled to God. That Christ has accomplished the reconciliation means that the way is open wide. 'Whoever will, may come.' But come he must if he would be there. It is like the invitation in Revelation 22:17, 'Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.' The word translated 'wishes' means 'wills'; it is the expression of the will that is meant, not some moment of fleeting desire. The passage indicates that the water of life is freely available but also that it must be'taken'. There is not the slightest reason why the sinner should not enter the fullness of the blessing of God. But until he does, he is outside it. Nothing happens for the person who waits passively. So with reconciliation. Paul 'implores' the Corinthians that they 'be reconciled'. Christ has made the way open for them. Let them enter.
People are not like inanimate things or even like dumb cattle. They are thinking, feeling entities. They are not arbitrarily drafted into salvation, though, of course, they are elected into it. There is mystery here, for the New Testament is clear that turning to Christ is never a purely human decision. The saved are those whom God has elected to salvation. Nothing should be said to obscure the importance of the divine initiative. Indeed from the point of view of election it may well be said that our whole salvation is of God.
But our whole salvation is the salvation of thinking, feeling people, people to whom God has given wills of their own. That we must be reconciled brings before us the thought that in the process of salvation those God-given wills must be used aright. When Christ has accomplished the reconciliation we can yet be called on to be reconciled to God.
Each of the ways of looking at salvation brings out something that the others do not. Each gives us particular insights into what Christ has done for us. Reconciliation brings out six thoughts in particular.
1. Sin is the barrier
It is not peculiar to reconciliation that sin is the problem in the relationship between God and man, but reconciliation must begin here. Had man not sinned there would have been no need and no place for reconciliation. But man sinned and men sin. The evil we share with the race and the evil we do ourselves both put up a barrier between us and God. Even among men sin alienates one from another. And sin always alienates us from God. This needs emphasis in a day like our own when people take sin so lightly. It does not worry us and for the life of us we cannot see why it should worry God. But the Bible is clear. Sin forms an impenetrable barrier, shutting off blessing. Sin keeps us away from God.
2. Sin must be dealt with
There is no ignoring reality. A barrier remains a barrier until it is taken away. At the heart of the idea of reconciliation there is the thought that getting people together means dealing effectively with whatever it was that was keeping them apart. This way of looking at the cross then reminds us that there can be no real fellowship between God and men unless and until the barrier of sin has been taken out of the way. It will not go away by wishing. We seem often to act on the assumption that, if we sit quietly and wait, any unpleasant thing will go away. It will not. It does not happen in the ordinary affairs of everyday life and it does not happen in the matter of the sin that separates us from God. Modem man finds this difficult to accept. It is not difficult for us to see that we must change our attitude and turn away from such things as selfishness. But that sin constitutes a very real barrier shutting us off from God, and that it must be effectively dealt with, is not at all obvious to us. But the New Testament keeps telling us that it was the death of Christ that effected reconciliation, that it was the cross that made peace between God and man (and for that matter, between Jew and Gentile).
3. There is a real hostility between God and sinners
Nor should we overlook the fact that sin puts us completely in the wrong with God. When we sin we set ourselves in opposition to him and we invite his wrath against us. We make ourselves into God's enemies. We have seen that the New Testament does not hesitate to speak of sinners as enemies and that it uses terms like 'enmity' to describe the relationship of sinners to God. People today are inclined to accept sin as a normal and not particularly serious aspect of life, but we should not read such an attitude back into the New Testament. The first Christians saw sin as'normal' in the sense that all people do sin. But they did not regard it as the normal thing in a world created by a good God. They saw it as the result of an invasion by an alien power. Sinful people are aligning themselves with that alien power. They are setting themselves in opposition to God.
This is serious, because of what it does to the sinners themselves. It removes them from the simplicity and the love for others for which they were meant. It makes them into people concerned primarily with their own success (however they may understand success). It limits their horizons and makes them less as people. It leads them to produce a world like the one in which we live, where oppression and deception flourish, where the strong prosper at the expense of the weak, where the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, where millions lack necessary food even to the extent that they die of starvation while the nations (incredibly including the poor nations) spend astronomical amounts on armaments. The evil we do is our ruination. It cuts us off from the full and rich life that God would give us. Sin limits us, stops us being the best we could be, prevents us from enjoying life to the full.
And sin is serious because it alienates us from God. For some people this might be more intelligible if I were to say it alienates us from the ground of our being. We are not made to sin. We are made to live in harmony with one another and with God. When we turn to sin, as we do so freely, we alienate ourselves from all that we ought to be and from the God who made us and has given us so much richly to enjoy. There is a deep and very real hostility brought about by the sin of the race.
4. Reconciliation is God's work
There is never the slightest hint in the New Testament that reconciliation can be brought about by what we do. We created the barrier that separates us from God (and from one another), but we cannot break it down. There are theologians who stress the element of human responsibility in such a way as to indicate that man brought about the alienation from God and that man can and should end it. On this view God's attitude was always the same. He has always loved us and he is simply waiting for us to return to him. As soon as we do, reconciliation is effected.
But this is not what the New Testament is saying. The New Testament insists that something must be done about sin. It is not possible simply to ignore it, to count it as something that never happened. It did happen. Its results are with us. It has established a continuing enmity. For reconciliation to take place that enmity must be dealt with. And Paul emphasizes that this is what Christ did. Under this figure it is not said how the death of Christ put away sin, but it is said emphatically that it does. In redemption this is seen by way of paying the price, in justification by the bearing of penalty, and so on. There is no equivalent in reconciliation. But this way of looking at the atonement takes it that whatever had to be done was done. The important thing was the removal of the cause of the enmity and when Christ died on the cross he removed it.
This is something that he alone could do. Man is so immersed in sin that he does not even make the motion of wanting to leave it, let alone do away with it. And even if he wanted to it is so big a task that it is more than he can accomplish. It is beyond him. But it is not beyond Christ. It is the measure of his greatness that he was able to accomplish this great task and he did. 'He is our peace.'
5. Reconciliation proceeds from the love of God
As Paul understands it reconciliation is not simply a work of mighty power or something that we are to connect with the majesty or the holiness of God. It is a work that God accomplishes because he loves us. The love of God is the great fact that undergirds the whole New Testament. God is love and he always acts in love. It is perhaps significant that the first mention of reconciliation in the New Testament comes in a passage in which Paul is emphasizing the love of God and where he sees the cross as a demonstration of that love. Not simply the love of Christ, but the love of God. 'God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son...' (Rom. 5:8-10). The thought of the love of God seen in the cross leads immediately to the thought of justification by Christ's blood and reconciliation through the death of the Son. The love and the reconciliation go together. The reconciliation is the outworking of the love.
This must be insisted upon as it is easy to put too much emphasis on passages which speak of 'enemies' and of 'the wrath of God'. From the preceding discussion it will be obvious that I hold that such passages must be taken with full seriousness. But they must not be understood in such a way as to cast any doubt on the truth that the great, fundamental fact in this universe is the love of God. It is the love of God for us that leads him to be so hostile to our sin. If he loved us less he would not care about it. But he loves us with all the fervour of his holy nature and because he loves us he provided the reconciliation. Love and reconciliation go together and the biblical concept of reconciliation cannot be understood without the love.
6. The reconciliation must be received
This way of looking at the atonement puts some emphasis on the necessity for the human response. That response is, of course, always implied. Without the response we are lost. But the imagery of redemption, for example, puts no great emphasis on it. There the stress is on the payment of the price and the liberation of the captive. Reconciliation, however, is meaningless without a change of attitude. Reconciliation is accomplished by Christ, indeed, but it must be received if it is to be effective. 'Be ye reconciled to God' is an integral part of the process. So the imagery of reconciliation always presents us with a challenge. It calls us away from our contentment with our sin. It reminds us that it takes two to make up after a quarrel. It emphasizes the greatness of what Christ has done to take away the cause of the enmity. It stresses the greatness of the love that impelled him to do this. In the light of that it is an imperative call to respond. 'We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.'
For further study
1. How do people become enemies of God?
2. In what sense can we speak of God as being reconciled to man? Of man as being reconciled to God?
3.What part does the death of Christ play in the processes of reconciliation?
4.What does the Bible mean by making peace? With the help of a concordance, study as many references to peace as you can find in Scripture.
5. What will you say to someone who asks how people become reconciled to God?
6. What does reconciliation mean in your own life?