The Architecture of Redemption · Christology and Soteriology
Article 4 of 5
The Blood
What actually happened at the cross. Not a demonstration, not a moral influence, not a tragedy God turned to good — a substitution, and a wrath that fell somewhere.
7 min read · 7 passages · 5 sections
In this article · 5 sections
Everyone agrees that Christ died. The disagreement is over what His death accomplished, and the answers on offer differ so widely that they cannot all be describing the same event. Some say it showed us how much God loves us. Some say it exposed the violence of empire. Some say it moves us to repentance by its sheer pathos. Each of these contains something true and all of them are, by themselves, insufficient — because none of them explains why the death was necessary.
If the cross was a demonstration of love, it was a strange way to demonstrate it. A man does not prove his devotion to someone standing safely on the shore by drowning in front of them. He proves it by drowning while pulling them out. The love is in the rescue, and the rescue requires that there was something to be rescued from.
The rule that runs through the Old Testament
Before the cross can be understood, the sacrificial system has to be taken seriously rather than treated as primitive religion the New Testament outgrew. It was a teaching instrument, and it taught one thing relentlessly: sin costs a life.
(KJV)
It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. The reason is stated: the life is in the blood.
(KJV)
Without shedding of blood is no remission. The writer states it as a rule of the whole system, not an occasional feature of it.
Every morning and every evening, for centuries, an animal died at the tabernacle and then the temple. The worshipper laid his hand on its head () — a gesture of transfer, not affection — and the creature died in his place. The system never pretended this was adequate. Its very repetition was the confession of its inadequacy.
(KJV)
Standing daily, offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. Then the contrast: this man, one sacrifice, sat down.
That detail is easily missed. The priest stood, because his work was never finished. Christ sat down, because it was.
The servant who was made a guilt offering
Seven hundred years before the event, Isaiah described it in terms the sacrificial system had made unmistakable.
(KJV)
Wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The preposition carries the whole doctrine: for.
(KJV)
It pleased the LORD to bruise him. This is not an accident that God retrieved; it is a purpose that God executed.
The Exegetical Nexus
אָשָׁם (asham) · H817
The guilt offering — the one sacrifice in the Levitical system specifically concerned with satisfaction and restitution, not merely cleansing. Isaiah does not say the Servant was like a guilt offering. He says his soul was made one. The technical word is chosen deliberately, and it tells the reader in what category to file the death of the Messiah.
More on אָשָׁם · H817 →The word Paul uses
Paul brings the whole matter to a point in a passage that also answers a question few think to ask: how had God been forgiving anyone before the cross at all?
(KJV)
A propitiation, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past — and that God might be just, and the justifier.
That last clause is the hinge of the Christian faith. Not just, and therefore condemning. Not merciful, and therefore lenient. Just and the justifier — both at once, without either being reduced. That combination is impossible unless the penalty went somewhere.
The Exegetical Nexus
ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion) · G2435
The word the Greek Old Testament uses for the mercy seat — the lid of the ark, where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement and where God said He would meet with His people. It carries the sense of that which turns away wrath. Some have wanted it to mean no more than expiation, a cleansing of sin with no anger in view. But wrath is the subject Paul has been building since chapter one (), and a cleansing that leaves the wrath unaddressed answers a question he never asked.
More on ἱλαστήριον · G2435 →The common misreading
A father punishing his son for someone else's crime is not justice. It is cosmic child abuse.
The charge only works if the Son is a third party dragged into it — an unwilling victim of someone else's arrangement. Scripture describes the opposite. The Son lays down His life of Himself, no man taking it from Him (); the will of Father and Son is one will; and the one who bears the penalty is God Himself, in the person of the Son, not a substitute conscripted from outside. This is not a judge punishing a bystander. It is the judge stepping down from the bench and paying the fine in his own person. And notice the alternative: a God who forgives without cost is not more loving, only less serious about the harm done. Any court that waives penalties for the sake of warm feeling has stopped protecting the victims.
What it cost
Peter puts the redemption in commercial terms, and then immediately refuses the commercial scale.
(KJV)
Not with corruptible things, as silver and gold. The most valuable things a first-century reader could name are introduced only to be dismissed as inadequate.
The measure of what you were rescued from is the price that was paid to do it. Look at the cost and you will stop wondering whether your sin was really so serious.
The Altar
Two errors are possible here and they pull in opposite directions. The first is to hold this doctrine as a theory — correct, defensible, and never once applied to your own account. The second is to keep returning to the cross for a forgiveness it has already granted, as though the sacrifice needed topping up.
Against the first: name a specific sin — the one you would least like read aloud — and put it deliberately under this. It was borne. Against the second: notice that He sat down. The work is not being repeated, because it is not unfinished.
If you have never come at all, come now. The blood has been shed already; nothing is waiting except your consent to be included in it.
Scriptures cited
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All quotations are from the King James Version.