Substitutionary Blood Atonement

From Lesson 131 of the Biblical Framework Series

Charles Clough

 

Justice in the Bible means this godly order has to be restored, so there’s a restitutionary component to Biblical justice. 

The next thing we learned last time is that in the case of our sin, what do we do for restitution?  The question is: what is the source of the restitution? Last week we looked at Gen. 3, the first animal to be slaughtered, and slaughtering of animals is a modern issue, the animal rights movement.  And there are some things about the animal rights movement that are absolutely weird, silly and stupid, but there are also some things about the movement that are true.  The Bible is very humane toward animals. 

In Genesis 3:21, God “made garments of skin for Adam and his wife,” how do you get skin except by killing an animal?  Here’s the first blood sacrifice.  So God says, Adam and Eve, you’ve sinned, you’ve ruined the life that I gave you; that life is cursed now.  Now you owe Me.  But how do they pay?  They can’t, because they don’t have the assets.  So where’s the source of the restitution?  This leads to a practice that God kept in motion for century after century after century of time throughout the Scripture, and that is animal sacrifice.  Let’s think about why He did this. 

The first thing to notice is that the animals are giving their life for man.  There’s a substitution of sorts in which the animal life is traded for man’s life.  So there’s a substitutionary aspect to this.  That’s Gen. 3:21 and the whole thing.  Why are animals picked instead of plants?  Cain thought he could come to God with plants.  Abel thought he could come to God with blood sacrifice of animals.  What’s the difference between plant and animal in creation account?  Nephesh, the Hebrew word for life is true and labeled only of animals, not of plants.  Adam and Eve could eat plants before the fall and that did not cause the death of the plant, the plant didn’t die in the nephesh sense.  Plants and animals are distinguished.  So animals become, because of the nephesh principle, the animals are used as medium so that Adam and Eve start to learn that for their nephesh other nephesh have to be substituted.  Jesus Christ wasn’t around, the incarnation hadn’t happened yet, so this is preparatory to the incarnation.  Animals have nephesh, plants do not, animals therefore are selected to give their nephesh for human nephesh. 

What is another illustration in the Old Testament that God used to communicate to us the pain that is caused by sacrificial death, it came very close to human sacrifice?  An event in Genesis, Abraham and Isaac.  Remember one of the titles of Jesus is “the only begotten,” monogenes.  Do you know where that term first occurs?  God says to Abraham, take your monogenes, take your “only begotten son” and slit his throat for Me.  So in that scene of Abraham and Isaac, God comes yet closer.  See, each step God reveals more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ.  They didn’t consciously think of it in terms of, perhaps a human Messiah at the time, but man was being led to this end. 

Another passage of the Old Testament that shows this is what happened when Israel was freed from Egypt? What was the climactic moment that is commemorated to this day by Orthodox Jewish families, all across the world?  The Passover.  [blank spot] … it wasn’t their blood, it was a lamb that had to be sacrificed.  Now we’re specifying the kinds of animals.  Certain kinds of animals are picked out as sacrifices.  Why is that?  Because zoologically there’s something about sheep that God wants us to see.  There’s something about that animal and to kill that particular animal, and go through this experience is teaching us something about the cross of Christ. 

Now, we want to move on to the Messiah and how we start in the Bible discussion in the progressive revelation, we see now that the Messiah comes in.  So we have Messiah, He comes and He has something, all the details aren’t quite clear, but Messiah is going to somehow be associated with a substitutionary blood atonement.  They couldn’t make this link until they understood the necessity of a substitutionary blood atonement.  This lesson had to be learned first; it took a long time to learn this.  Then after we learn that God’s justice demands restitution for my sin, and I don’t like this, I mean, the idea of having to kill an animal must have created the thought in people’s minds, look at the consequences of my sin.  When I fall from before a holy God, look at what it takes to restore fellowship, look at the damage it’s done here.  Now the Messiah becomes linked to that. 

We want to look at passages where the blood atonement and the Messiah come together.  I’ve already said that the Passover was one of these.  Turn to Gen. 3:15, just above the passage where God killed the animal, God already revealed the first truth about Messiah.  This is called by theologians, there’s a term for this if you read a serious commentator, there’s a Latin word that’s used, “protoevangelium,” the first—“proto” gospel announcement and it’s Gen. 3:15.  That’s the protoevangelium.  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed,” notice the different wounds that are made, “he shall bruise you on the head,” that’s a mortal wound, “and you shall bruise him on the heel,” that’s a wound from which he will recover. 

Two things about that verse, notice in the third clause of Gen. 3:15 there’s a word there that should have… should have grabbed the attention of every Jewish reader, or every reader of the Bible, that’s the word “seed.”  It’s the word for sperm.  What is unusual about the word usage in Gen. 3:15?  Women don’t have sperm.  Why is that word associated with a woman there?  The text doesn’t say, but it’s a very odd construction.  Something is not right.  We read this, we get so used to it, we just go through it 35 mph and don’t even read the signs.  But there’s something screwy about that statement, and it’s deliberately put in there by the Holy Spirit hoping that somebody is going to read that and say hey, what does this mean, the sperm of the woman?  What’s going on here?  Of course we know historically what that is, and that is a reference to the virgin birth.  The woman created a seed; it was the Holy Spirit that brought about the conception. 

Her seed shall now “bruise you on the head, and you will bruise him on the heel,” talking to Satan. 

So the Messiah in the context is spoken of.  The virgin birth is hinted at, and the Messiah is said to engage a battle with Satan and will be wounded.  It’s not explicitly in context linked yet.  Verse 15 and verse 21 aren’t linked together yet, but that’s the first thing.  So let’s watch the progress.  There are four or five of these links that go on between the Messiah that I’m going to point out. 

The first one is in Gen. 3, let’s go to the second one, which we’ve already talked about, that’s the Passover.  Jesus Christ, the night before He was betrayed, He took bread, and He took the wine.  Jesus Christ celebrated the Passover, and He did so because in effect He was acting out the Passover to show His participation.  We’ll get into that in a little bit.  Exodus 12 is the second link between the Messiah and the substitutionary atonement. 

The third link is that every major Biblical covenant in the Scripture, EVERY covenant in the Scripture is inaugurated by a blood sacrifice, starting with the Noahic Covenant.  Noah made a sacrifice, Abraham had a sacrifice, the Sinaitic Covenant was installed by sacrifice, and what was the covenant which was the focus into the future?  The New Covenant, and when the Lord Jesus Christ, in the middle of the first communion, what did He say, as He held up the cup?  This is the blood of the New Covenant; so as the Lord Jesus Christ installed the covenant that night, twenty-four hours later He would pay with His blood, with His life, the installation of the New Covenant.  It all fits together.  He was doing nothing that hadn’t already been done in the Old Testament. 

A fourth link, Isaiah 53, this is the most controversial passage to Jewish people in the Scripture.  This has been a crux, a source of argumentation, for centuries, a very famous portion of the Old Testament.  Knowledgeable Jews will react, I say knowledgeable Jews because there are many Jewish people today who know less about the Bible than Gentiles, but Jews that are knowledge­able about the Scripture are very sensitive to this passage.  In Isaiah 53:2, “For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him. Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.” 

Verse 3, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face.  He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. [4] Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried,” watch verse 4 and 5, because this is what really causes grief to Jewish people who are knowledgeable of the Scriptures who are not Messianic Jews.  “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried, yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. [5] But He was pierced through for our transgressions,” watch it right there, do you see what’s happening in Isaiah 53 that’s exciting?  Isaiah 53 links the Messiah to a substitutionary death.  It’s right here. What does it says, “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. [6] All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD” look at this one, “the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” 

Isaiah 53 is a central passage about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  How do unbelieving Jews handle this? Before Christianity the universal interpretation of this by the Jewish community was that this was the Messiah, no doubt.  Then after Jesus came and the Christian Jews began to say see, right there, there’s Messiah, then they said well gee, let’s take another look at this one.  So things got greasy then, so the interpretation of Isaiah 53 came to be well, maybe that’s the nation Israel there.  In the notes on page 77, “Not until the Middle Ages did the rabbis shift to what is claimed today as ‘the’ Jewish interpretation,” so look at the date.  How many centuries went by between the Middle Ages and the death of Christ?  Nine, ten, so it’s ten centuries later that this interpretation got all greased up.

“Some Gentile Christian scholars, however, insist that first-century Jews did not recognize any vicarious suffering of the Messiah in this passage.”  They say they just didn’t recognize it.  “These scholars are opposed by most Hebrew Christian scholars, who claim the contrary.  Dr. Fruchten­baum, for example, notes” and here’s some evidences for you, I searched these out so those of you who like to capture little evidences, here’s a list for you.  Dr. Fructenbaum, “notes that the Zohar, written about A.D. 110,” that’s after the death of Christ, “preserves an old first-century Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53:4,” and this is what the Zohar says, quote, “‘Were it not that [Messiah] had thus lighted [sickness, pain, chastisement] off Israel and taken them upon himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel’s chastisement for transgression of the law.’ Surely, there is the element of vicarious or substitutionary Messianic suffering in this non-Christian Jewish first-century tradition.  Furthermore, Fruchtenbaum points out, this interpretative tradition of Isaiah 53 continued in Jewish circles well into the Christian era, occurring in remarkable places such as the Yom Kippur Musaf Prayer written around the seventh century A.D.” now we’re up to the seventh century A.D., and here’s what the prayer says, “‘Messiah our Righteousness is departed from us.  … He hath borne the yoke of our iniquities, and our transgressions…. He beareth our sins… that he may find pardon for our iniquities.’  The allusion to Isaiah 53 is unmistakable.” 

What we’ve said tonight is out of this core of justice that we’ve learned in the Scripture, then we moved to the animal sacrifice that was a revelatory preparation for understanding the death of Christ, then the Messiah prophetically was linked into the substitutionary blood atonement.  Next week we’re going to deal with the crucifixion narratives and we’re going to cite certain things that maybe you haven’t seen, hopefully most of us have, but there may be some who are new to the Scripture who haven’t noticed particular ways that the Bible reports the death to have occurred.  There’s a strange thing in this.  So we’ll work with that after we get done with next week’s discussion of how the Bible is true.