Was Jesus Sacrificed For The Sins Of Man?

Colter · Post by **Colter** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 9:25 am

Man has long found it difficult to except God as a loving and forgiving father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught. It was purely a (human) idea that Jesus must have been a sacrifice to God that saves man from his sins.

All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

Neither do genuine believers trouble themselves so much about the future punishment of sin. The real believer is only concerned about present separation from God. True, wise fathers may chasten their sons, but they do all this in love and for corrective purposes. They do not punish in anger, neither do they chastise in retribution.

Even if God were the stern and legal monarch of a universe in which justice ruled supreme, he certainly would not be satisfied with the childish scheme of substituting an innocent sufferer for a guilty offender.

The great thing about the death of Jesus, as it is related to the enrichment of human experience and the enlargement of the way of salvation, is not the fact of his death but rather the superb manner and the matchless spirit in which he met death.

This entire idea of the ransom of the atonement places salvation upon a plane of unreality; such a concept is purely philosophic. Human salvation is real; it is based on two realities which may be grasped by the creature's faith and thereby become incorporated into individual human experience: the fact of the fatherhood of God and its correlated truth, the brotherhood of man. It is true, after all, that you are to be "forgiven your debts, even as you forgive your debtors."

Primitive man regarded himself as being in debt to the spirits, as standing in need of redemption. As the savages looked at it, in justice the spirits might have visited much more bad luck upon them. As time passed, this concept developed into the doctrine of sin and salvation. The soul was looked upon as coming into the world under forfeit--original sin. The soul must be ransomed; a scapegoat must be provided. The head-hunter, in addition to practicing the cult of skull worship, was able to provide a substitute for his own life, a scapeman.

The savage was early possessed with the notion that spirits derive supreme satisfaction from the sight of human misery, suffering, and humiliation. At first, man was only concerned with sins of commission, but later he became exercised over sins of omission. And the whole subsequent sacrificial system grew up around these two ideas. This new ritual had to do with the observance of the propitiation ceremonies of sacrifice. Primitive man believed that something special must be done to win the favor of the gods; only advanced civilization recognizes a consistently even-tempered and benevolent God. Propitiation was insurance against immediate ill luck rather than investment in future bliss. And the rituals of avoidance, exorcism, coercion, and propitiation all merge into one another.

Moses had taught the Jews that every first-born son belonged to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sacrifice as was the custom among the heathen nations, such a son might live provided his parents would redeem him by the payment of five shekels to any authorized priest. There was also a Mosaic ordinance which directed that a mother, after the passing of a certain period of time, should present herself (or have someone make the proper sacrifice for her) at the temple for purification. It was customary to perform both of these ceremonies at the same time. Accordingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the temple at Jerusalem in person to present Jesus to the priests and effect his redemption and also to make the proper sacrifice to insure Mary's ceremonial purification from the alleged uncleanness of childbirth.

When the Jews had been freed by the Persians, they returned to Palestine only to fall into bondage to their own priest-ridden code of laws, sacrifices, and rituals. And as the Hebrew clans rejected the wonderful story of God presented in the farewell oration of Moses for the rituals of sacrifice and penance, so did these remnants of the Hebrew nation reject the magnificent concept of the second Isaiah for the rules, regulations, and rituals of their growing priesthood.

Hosea followed Amos and his doctrine of a universal God of justice by the resurrection of the Mosaic concept of a God of love. Hosea preached forgiveness through repentance, not by sacrifice. He proclaimed a gospel of loving-kindness and divine mercy, saying: "I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and judgment and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness." "I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away."

"Salvation is the gift of the Father and is revealed by his Sons. Acceptance by faith on your part makes you a partaker of the divine nature, a son or a daughter of God. By faith you are justified; by faith are you saved; and by this same faith are you eternally advanced in the way of progressive and divine perfection. By faith was Abraham justified and made aware of salvation by the teachings of Melchizedek. All down through the ages has this same faith saved the sons of men, but now has a Son come forth from the Father to make salvation more real and acceptable."

Mercy is simply justice tempered by that wisdom which grows out of perfection of knowledge and the full recognition of the natural weaknesses and environmental handicaps of finite creatures. "Our God is full of compassion, gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy." Therefore "whosoever calls upon the Lord shall be saved," "for he will abundantly pardon." "The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting"; yes, "his mercy endures forever." "I am the Lord who executes loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight." "I do not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men," for I am "the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort."

It is wrong to think of God as being coaxed into loving his children because of the sacrifices of his Sons or the intercession of his subordinate creatures, "for the Father himself loves you." It is in response to this paternal affection that God sends the marvelous Adjusters to indwell the minds of men. God's love is universal; "whosoever will may come." He would "have all men be saved by coming into the knowledge of the truth." He is "not willing that any should perish."

Do you think Jesus was a blood sacrifice to please God and lead him to forgive us our sins?

Amadeus · Post by **Amadeus** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:57 pm

I beg to contest! Christ claimed to be the Messiah spoken of in prophesy. AND THERE ARE PROPHESIES SPEAKING OF THE MESSIAH DYING FOR THE SINS OF HIS PEOPLE. Read Isaiah:

Isaiah 53:5
But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Read it in context as well. Jesus claimed to be the messiah ofJewish prophesy. The Jews believed in blood atonement for sin. THAT is where it casme from. FROM PROPHESY that Christ fulfilled.

Colter · Post by **Colter** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 8:08 pm

Amadeus wrote:I beg to contest! Christ claimed to be the Messiah spoken of in prophesy. AND THERE ARE PROPHESIES SPEAKING OF THE MESSIAH DYING FOR THE SINS OF HIS PEOPLE. Read Isaiah:

Isaiah 53:5
But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Read it in context as well. Jesus claimed to be the messiah ofJewish prophesy. The Jews believed in blood atonement for sin. THAT is where it casme from. FROM PROPHESY that Christ fulfilled.

Hi Amadeus,

So the Pharisees were Just helping us all by fulfilling prophecy and killing Jesus?

snowman · Post by **snowman** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:26 pm

Seventil wrote:

I am not sure what I believe, honestly. I've always thought of the idea of Jesus sacrificing His blood for our sins a bit brutal and a little to "old school". I like the idea of Jesus coming to die to show us the right way to live, and being killed by the people He is trying to save. I could be wrong, however. Either way, I think Jesus came here to die for us, and that's what the important part is.

Colter wrote:

Jesus lived and died for us, no question, but he did not die as some kind of ransom to make God happy again.

Perhaps this is why some cannot accept or understand the gospel message. They view God as an angry diety who only is appeased with spilled blood.

Colter wrote:

Hi Amadeus,

So the Pharisees were Just helping us all by fulfilling prophecy and killing Jesus?

Perhaps I should quote Peter, who was filled with the spirit of God....

Acts 2:23 Him (Jesus) being delivered by the DETERMINATE COUNSEL and foreknowldedge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.

Acts 4:27 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever THY HAND and thy COUNSEL DETERMINED before to be done.

Acts 5:30-31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

MagusYanam · Post by **MagusYanam** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:18 am

Hello all. I'm back.

Anyway, Colter, you are at once both correct and not concerning the genesis of the atonement theory. True, Jesus did not compound the theory - there is much metaphorical language in the Gospel and Old Testament concerning sacrifice, however, and that was given much credence.

As I think I explained earlier, the atonement theory was the work of Anselm, a monk living in the 1000's. He was the one who first presumed a wrathful God prevented from wreaking destruction upon his imperfect creation only by the intervention and atonement of Christ.

As to the pagan roots of the idea, you're likely to have more background knowledge of the area than I (Greek and Roman mythology were never my strong suits - check out some of my other posts, I've made some pretty bad gaffes). And while it is true that the Jews did make ritual sacrifice to God, it was usually an issue of ritual and the meanings and references are usually shrouded in highly figurative language. Therefore, I would caution those who support atonement doctrine against making our interpretations for the rest of us.

Again, the mythology of the Messiah as understood by the majority of Jesus' contemporaries was not fulfilled by Jesus. Amadeus, please try to be consistent in your definition of Messiah. Taken literally, it means 'anointed one'. The first interpretation of this is 'king'. There were many myths surrounding the Messiah figure, and one was that the Messiah would take the part of the Zealots and deliver Israel from the hands of the Romans (which Jesus did not do). Therefore, our entire notion of who the Messiah is must be drastically different from the classical view if we are to accept Jesus in that role.

Colter · Post by **Colter** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:22 am

When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a substitute and in their stead. The whole idea of ransom and atonement is incompatible with the concept of God as it was taught and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. The infinite love of God is not secondary to anything in the divine nature.

All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

This entire idea of the ransom of the atonement places salvation upon a plane of unreality; such a concept is purely philosophic. Human salvation is real; it is based on two realities which may be grasped by the creature's faith and thereby become incorporated into individual human experience: the fact of the fatherhood of God and its correlated truth, the brotherhood of man. It is true, after all, that you are to be "forgiven your debts, even as you forgive your debtors."
Urantia Book

MagusYanam · Post by **MagusYanam** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:56 am

The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

Amen. Would there were more people who thought this way...

When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a substitute and in their stead. The whole idea of ransom and atonement is incompatible with the concept of God as it was taught and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. The infinite love of God is not secondary to anything in the divine nature.

Yes, this is what I think, even though I haven't read Urantia. An understanding of God's moral, loving nature is necessary for Christianity, yet many Christians contradict this by following an Anselmian worldview. The moral influence theory is the one that makes the most sense, and is the theory which in light of the Gospel would seem to be preferred.

It's high time the atonement theory was done away with in its entirety. Such erroneous metaphysical speculation can only lead to doubt as to the ultimate morality and self-sacrificial love of God.

youngborean · Post by **youngborean** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:11 pm

6) The atonement doctrine did not come from Jesus, it came from the Pagan religion and found it's way into Christianity by Paul's personal religious convictions as well as the Mystery cults of Rome. Old habits are hard to break.

I can't believe the things that are being totally made up in this thread. Jesus came out of a context of OT Judaism, its simple.

Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh [is] in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it [is] the blood [that] maketh an atonement for the soul.

The idea for atonement did not come from anywhere but the context that Jesus was from. Atonement through sacrifice was the reason Jesus traveled to the temple for passover.

It's high time the atonement theory was done away with in its entirety.

Then you would have to get rid of the whole bible as well.

The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

This statement is true but it presupposes "belief". Your statement show's the concern of a believer, but if you are a believer then you believe that Jesus's death and resurrection made attonement for your sins, and then you become concerned with actions. I find it silly to place Urantia over Paul and the rest of the letters of the New Testment because it relavance can't be established. Especially Hebrews which reads:

Hbr 10:14For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
Hbr 10:15 [Whereof] the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,
Hbr 10:16 This [is] the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;
Hbr 10:17 And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
Hbr 10:18 Now where remission of these [is, there is] no more offering for sin.
Hbr 10:19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
Hbr 10:20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;
Hbr 10:21 And [having] an high priest over the house of God;
Hbr 10:22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

URantia was written in 1934 by a misguided Seventh Day Adventist. The revelation of that book almost 2000 years after Christ can hardly be relevant to foundational theories of Christianity. The letters of the New Testament were the closest texts temporally to the supposed life of Jesus. You can choose to make up anything you want about Jesus, but if something is to be considered Christian, it's root should begin with the bible and not from channeling other deities. Urantia is not a Christian text, it is a seperate text aiming to establish a new theology, it has no relavance to the hisortical theology of Jesus or the foundation of Christianity.

Colter · Post by **Colter** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:38 pm

The Sanhedren told Jesus he was misguided as well. These were the people in the best position to know the scriptures yet Jesus' radical teachings didn't jive with their theology so when you don't like the message, just kill the messenger.

You've stated a mistruth about the Urantia Book, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you "Googled" some erroneous information. The Pharisees also "googled" some erroneous information about Jesus and told him he got his power from the devil.

Many of the early converts to Christianity were Jewish. The chief perpetrators of persecution towards the gospel teachings were Jews so it should come as no surprise that there was a tendency of compromise among the teachers and writers of the gospels to make Christianity more palatable to Jews, to create a more "seamless" transition from the OT to the NT when in fact the teachings of Jesus were a radical departure from the spiritually stagnant state of Hebrew theology. This compromise didn't help either the Jews or Christianity.

I concede that you can produce evidence of atonement theology from the OT and even among new testament writes but not so with the gospel of Jesus.

This statement is true but it presupposes "belief". Your statement show's the concern of a believer, but if you are a believer then you believe that Jesus's death and resurrection made attonement for your sins, and then you become concerned with actions. I find it silly to place Urantia over Paul and the rest of the letters of the New Testment because it relavance can't be established. Especially Hebrews which reads:

Atonement may be a doctrine of Christianity but it was not in the gospel of Jesus. He taught salvation through grace, by the spirit birth, by excepting God forgiveness as a gift not an accomplishment. Man has always had a difficult time with "something for nothing." It's love, God is love. Jesus left us a new commandment, "Love one another as I have lived you." He spent so much time teaching us ways to understand the loving nature of our father in heaven.

Christianity became a religion about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus. Our Christian forefathers were doing the best they could to comprehend and carry the message as they understood it. Our understanding of the gospel should continue to grow and be restated in each new generation, not crystallized in the thinking of a people that lived 2000 years ago. More will be revealed.

MagusYanam · Post by **MagusYanam** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:19 pm

It's high time the atonement theory was done away with in its entirety.
Then you would have to get rid of the whole bible as well.

Why is that? Just because I have serious issues with one idea that came out of a metaphysical interpretation of the Bible doesn't mean I am discarding the entire Bible. This argument is as ludicrous as if a history professor tells you you typed 1834 instead of 1864 on a draft of a research paper and you responded, 'Well, I guess that's that for the whole paper'.

The moral influence theory is not inconsistent with the teachings of the Gospel. Scratch that. It is more consistent with the teachings of the Gospel (insofar as God's goodness and grace are concerned) than atonement theory, by far, otherwise I wouldn't be so much against it.

The Anselmian worldview presumes on the basis of a philosophical presumption (which is not entirely scriptural) that God is angry with His creatures and wishes to destroy them for being as He created them - i.e. imperfect, and that only a blood sacrifice can save them. The logic can only lead one way. The Anselmian God is, if not a vicious monstrosity, at least extraordinarily petty. I cannot and will not worship an evil or a trifling God. And, both because of my own conscience and the endless array of Biblical arguments to the contrary, I believe God not to be evil, but rather to be of the most perfect good.

That Jesus sacrificed himself to show the world the path to this goodness makes much more sense, and does not contradict the sundry metaphors of Jesus being a sacrifice for our sins.

This is not some radical, unbiblical New Age idea. It was the view most commonly held by the Early Church Fathers (and is the official stance of the Eastern Orthodox Church), and later by the American theologians William E. Channing and Horace Bushnell and their successors. It does not contradict scripture in its entirety by any stretch of the imagination.

youngborean · Post by **youngborean** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:06 pm

It does not contradict scripture in its entirety by any stretch of the imagination.

Then what are the scriptures that support the view that Jesus is not the attonement for our sins? You can't read Hebrews 10, and this:

2 Cr 5:18 And all things [are] of God, who hath reconciled us to himself
by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

2Cr 5:19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

2Cr 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech [you] by us: we pray [you] in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

2Cr 5:21 For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of

And this:

1Jo 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Or this:

Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Rom 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

Rom 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Rom 5:11 And not only [so], but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Not only is the idea unbiblical, it is heretical. Because it diminishes God's grace in our acknowledgement of sin. I will ask again what Jesus meant during the Passover meal when he said that this was the Blood of the New Covenant?