Why Did Jesus Have to Die Continued - Page 2

23. What does the cross reveal about God?

Consider how these passages fit together:

• John 3:16: God's love is the reason He gives His Son.
• Romans 5:8: Christ dies for us while we are still sinners.
• 2 Corinthians 5:19: God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
• Acts 2:23: Jesus' death is within God's purpose, yet human beings crucify Him through wicked actions.
• Hebrews 10:5–10: Christ comes to do God's will, and His self-offering accomplishes what repeated sacrifices could not.
• Isaiah 53: The servant's suffering is connected with God's purpose and with the healing of sinners.

Together, these passages make it difficult to reduce the cross to a simple story in which an angry God needs to punish somebody before He can love us.

But they also prevent us from claiming that Jesus' death was merely an accidental tragedy that God had no purpose in.

The deeper question is whether God's purpose was to inflict death as a requirement of justice, or to overcome sin and death by giving Himself to humanity, even when humanity responded with violence.

We should examine one more set of passages: Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36, where Jesus teaches His followers to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and imitate the Father's generosity.

Then we can ask a very direct question: If Jesus tells human beings to forgive without demanding suffering from their enemies, would God Himself operate by a fundamentally different rule — requiring punishment before He can forgive?

That is not a rhetorical question with an automatic answer. It is a test of whether our understanding of the cross is consistent with Jesus' revelation of His Father.

And I think it is one of the most important questions we can ask.

Does the way Jesus tells us to treat our enemies reflect the way God Himself treats His enemies?

If Jesus really reveals the Father's character, as He says in John 14:9, then His teaching about forgiveness should help us understand the cross, too.

24. Jesus tells us to love our enemies

Read Matthew 5:43–48.

Jesus tells His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. His reason is remarkable: the Father makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Jesus does not say that God withholds all goodness from sinners until somebody suffers in their place. God continues to give them life and blessings even while they do wrong.

Jesus then says that His followers are to become like their heavenly Father.

That gives us a principle: God's goodness is not simply a reward paid to people who have first made themselves worthy of it.

If God commands His children to love their enemies, could He be less forgiving than He asks them to be? If we must refuse revenge and seek the restoration of those who wrong us, would God require revenge before He can forgive?

That is a serious challenge to any explanation of the cross that makes punishment a prerequisite for God to show mercy.

But one qualification is necessary: loving an enemy does not mean pretending that wrongdoing is harmless, or that justice never matters. The question is whether justice necessarily requires someone to suffer a penalty before forgiveness can be offered.

25. Luke 6:27–36: “Be Ye Therefore Merciful”

Luke records the same teaching in a particularly revealing way. Jesus tells His followers to love their enemies, do good, lend without expecting repayment, and be merciful.

Then He says:

“Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” — Luke 6:36, KJV

Notice that Jesus uses the Father's mercy as the model for human conduct.

He doesn't tell us to become more merciful than God. He tells us to imitate God's mercy.

This supports the idea that we should understand God's character through the mercy Jesus teaches and demonstrates. It does not, by itself, prove that God never requires judgment or that sacrifice was only a human expectation. But it gives us a standard against which to test our theories about the cross.

26. The Prodigal Son: A Picture of the Father’s Mercy

Let's return to this story, because it may be one of Jesus' clearest pictures of reconciliation.

The younger son has deeply wronged his father. He wastes his inheritance, becomes destitute, and finally decides to return. He plans to confess his sin and ask to be treated as a hired servant.

But the father sees him while he is still a long way off. He runs to him, embraces him, and orders a celebration.

The father does not require a sacrifice before welcoming his son home.

The son has not paid back the inheritance. He has not suffered a punishment imposed by his father. He returns, confesses his wrongdoing, and is welcomed.

There is an important nuance: the son has already suffered the consequences of his choices, and the relationship still needs to be restored. The father does not declare that the son's actions were harmless. Instead, he rejoices that the son who was lost has returned.

If this parable reveals something about God's heart, it is difficult to argue that God is fundamentally unwilling to forgive until someone has been punished.

The parable does not explain every aspect of Christ's death, but it does challenge the assumption that punishment must come before the Father can welcome a repentant sinner.

27. What About Justice? The Unforgiving Servant

Here is a passage that helps us avoid an oversimplified conclusion.

A king has a servant who owes him an enormous debt. The servant cannot repay it and begs for patience. The king has compassion and forgives the debt.

The servant then finds someone who owes him a much smaller amount. Instead of showing the same mercy, he demands payment and has the man imprisoned.

The king condemns the servant's behaviour because he received mercy but refused to extend it.

The central lesson is that the king's mercy should have transformed the servant's own treatment of others. The story does not portray forgiveness as something the king can offer only after the debt has been paid.

Someone might argue that the king absorbs the financial loss himself. That is a reasonable observation: forgiveness does not make the debt or its consequences magically disappear. But the parable does not say the king needs to punish an innocent third party to make forgiveness possible.

That gives us a useful distinction:

• Forgiveness can involve bearing a loss rather than demanding repayment.
• Forgiveness is not the same as saying that no wrong occurred.
• Restoring a relationship may require repentance and change, but that is different from saying that God must first punish someone before He can love or forgive them.

This is not a complete theory of atonement. It is a picture of forgiveness that Jesus gives us, and it deserves a place in our understanding of God's character.

28. Bringing the Question Back to the Cross

We have a picture of the Father who gives good things to the undeserving, welcomes the returning sinner, and forgives debts. But Jesus also says He came to give His life as a ransom.

In Mark 10:42–45, Jesus contrasts the rulers who dominate others with His own mission:

“For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” — Mark 10:45, KJV

That word ransom matters. Jesus presents His life as being given for others' freedom. But the verse does not explicitly say to whom the ransom is paid, or that the Father requires a death to satisfy His anger.

Christian traditions interpret the ransom in different ways. Some emphasise that Christ bears the penalty of sin; others that He liberates humanity from bondage to sin, death, and the powers of evil. The verse itself establishes the self-giving purpose of Jesus' life, without spelling out every detail of the mechanism.

Now compare this with John 8:34–36, where Jesus says that whoever commits sin is a slave to sin, but the Son can make people free.

That gives us another biblical possibility to investigate: perhaps the central problem is not that God needs to be paid, but that humanity needs to be freed.

29. A question we must answer honestly

There is a real challenge here. The New Testament doesn't merely say that Jesus died because people were violent. It also says He gave His life for us, bore sins, redeemed us, and reconciled us to God.

So we should not reduce the cross to “people killed Jesus, and God made the best of it.” That would leave too much of the New Testament unexplained.

But neither should we assume that words such as ransom, sacrifice, and atonement automatically mean God required the death of an innocent victim before He could forgive.

Those terms need to be understood in their biblical contexts.

The distinction we are investigating is between God requiring a death in order to become willing to forgive and God giving Himself in Christ to rescue humanity from sin and death, even at the cost of His own life.

The second possibility takes seriously the biblical portrayal of God's prior love and Christ's voluntary self-giving. Whether it best accounts for every passage is the question we must continue to test.

30. Passages that most directly address sacrifice and atonement

The next step is to examine the sacrificial language in Romans 3:21–26 and Hebrews 9:11–28 in more detail.

Those passages are among the strongest biblical foundations for the view that Christ's death deals with sin through sacrifice. We should ask:

• Do they say that God needs to be appeased?
• Do they say that justice requires punishment before God can forgive?
• Or do they describe Christ as God's provision for a problem that sin has created in humanity?

We may find that some passages are more explicit than others, and we should acknowledge that rather than forcing a single answer onto every text.

Let's now examine the passages that most directly connect Christ's death with sacrifice and atonement. This is where our investigation needs to be especially careful, because we must distinguish what the Bible actually says from the explanations people build around it.

31. Romans 3:21–26: What Does Christ's Sacrifice Accomplish?

Paul says that all have sinned, yet people are justified freely by God's grace through the redemption found in Christ Jesus. He then describes God as presenting Christ as a means of atonement through His blood.

There are three important observations.

First, God is the one who provides the solution. Paul does not picture humanity persuading a reluctant God to show mercy. God's grace is already the source of justification.

Second, the passage connects Christ's death with the problem of sin. We cannot reduce it to an example of human cruelty, because Paul gives it a central role in God's work of redemption.

Third, Paul connects this act with God's righteousness. He says that God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, so that God might be just and the justifier of the person who has faith in Jesus.

That final statement is central to the traditional penal-substitution interpretation: God remains just because sin is dealt with through Christ's death. But other interpretations understand God's righteousness here as His faithfulness to save, His action to put things right, or His demonstration that He is both righteous and merciful.

The passage requires us to explain how God deals with sin. It does not, by itself, settle every question about whether justice requires God to punish an innocent substitute.

32. Hebrews 9:22: “Without Shedding of Blood Is No Remission”

This verse is often treated as decisive proof that God cannot forgive sin without a death.

But let's read its context. Hebrews 9 discusses the sanctuary, its ceremonies, the use of blood in covenant inauguration and purification, and the contrast between the earthly sanctuary and Christ's heavenly ministry.

Verse 22 says:

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” — Hebrews 9:22, KJV

We should take this seriously. The writer connects forgiveness or remission with the shedding of blood. But the question remains: why is blood necessary?

E. J. Waggoner argues from Leviticus 17:11 that the life is in the blood. He interprets the blood of Christ as representing Christ's life, which He imparts to humanity to cleanse people from sin.

In that understanding, blood is not primarily a substance that satisfies God's demand for suffering. It represents the life God provides to heal the human condition.

That is a coherent interpretation of the relationship between Leviticus 17:11 and Christ's saving work. But we should recognise that it is Waggoner's interpretation of the biblical symbolism, not an uncontested definition of Hebrews 9:22. Other Christian interpreters understand the blood primarily in terms of sacrificial death and the dealing with guilt.

The question is which interpretation best explains the whole range of passages.

33. Does forgiveness require a death, or does sin bring death?

Consider Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” — Romans 6:23, KJV

Notice the contrast. Death is the wages of sin, while eternal life is God's gift.

One way of understanding this is that sin leads to death because it separates humanity from the source of life. Christ rescues us by restoring us to God and giving us life.

Another interpretation is that death is the penalty God justly imposes for sin, which Christ bears on behalf of sinners.

Both interpretations take the verse seriously, but they understand the relationship between sin, death and God's justice differently.

Now compare Romans 5:12, which says that sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin. This places the entrance of death into the human story in direct connection with sin.

And consider John 10:10, where Jesus contrasts the thief who comes to destroy with His own purpose: that people may have life abundantly.

These passages give us good reason to investigate whether Christ saves us by restoring the life sin has destroyed, rather than simply by undergoing a punishment that God needs to inflict.

That does not settle the debate, but it brings the life-giving interpretation into sharper focus.

34. Two Understandings of Christ’s Sacrifice

Let's put the two interpretations side by side.

Question	Penal-substitution emphasis	E. J. Waggoner's emphasis
What is the fundamental problem?	Human guilt and the just penalty of sin	Sin's alienation from God and its death-producing effects
Why does Christ die?	To bear the penalty due to sinners	To give Himself for humanity and provide His life to cleanse and restore us
What does the blood represent?	Christ's sacrificial death and the bearing of sin's penalty	Christ's life given to humanity
What does reconciliation accomplish?	Forgiveness and restored relationship through Christ's satisfaction of justice	The removal of human alienation and the restoration of God's life in us
Does God need to be persuaded to love us?	In careful versions of this view, no; God's love motivates the sacrifice	No; God's love is the source of the sacrifice, and human beings need reconciliation

These are broad summaries, not complete descriptions of every theologian who holds either position. There are variations within both traditions.

The key point is that believing Christ's death was necessary does not automatically tell us why it was necessary. We need to examine what Scripture says the necessity consisted of.

35. Understanding God’s wrath

Our next step should be to examine what the Bible means by God's wrath.

Is God's wrath primarily God inflicting punishment because His justice demands it? Can it also mean God giving people over to the destructive consequences of their rejection of Him? Or does Scripture use the language in more than one way?

Romans 1:18–32, Romans 4:25, and Galatians 3:13 will help us explore those questions.

This is an important next step, because the word wrath is often treated as though its meaning settles the entire question of the cross. But we need to look at how the Bible itself uses it.

Our question is not whether God takes evil seriously. Clearly, He does. It is whether God's wrath necessarily means that He must inflict punishment on someone before He can forgive the guilty.

We'll start with Paul's explanation of what happens when people turn away from God, then examine the passages that appear to connect Christ directly with the penalty of sin.

36. Romans 1:18–32: What Happens When People Reject God?

Paul begins by describing humanity's rejection of what can be known about God. People exchange the truth for a lie and worship created things rather than the Creator.

Then, three times, Paul uses a striking expression:

• Romans 1:24 — “God also gave them up”
• Romans 1:26 — “God gave them up”
• Romans 1:28 — “God gave them over”

The result is a catalogue of destructive behaviour and its consequences.

Notice the sequence. God's wrath is introduced in verse 18, but Paul's description of how it unfolds repeatedly says that God gives people over to the path they have chosen.

This supports an interpretation in which divine wrath can include God allowing people to experience the consequences of rejecting Him, rather than always describing an additional punishment actively imposed by God.

That is an important observation. But it does not prove that wrath always means withdrawal or consequence. Elsewhere, biblical writers also portray God as actively judging evil. We must allow for the full range of the language.

37. Romans 1 also raises a question about the nature of sin

Think about the difference between these two pictures.

Picture A: punishment imposed

A person breaks a law, and a judge imposes a penalty. The suffering follows because the judge sentences the offender.

Picture B: a destructive condition

A person rejects the source of life and chooses a destructive path. The resulting suffering is bound up with that condition, and the person needs rescue and restoration.

Romans 1:18–32 gives us real grounds to consider the second picture. Paul's repeated language of God giving people over suggests that sin has consequences which God allows people to experience.

But these pictures are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A wrong can both damage the person who commits it and deserve judgment. The question is whether the Bible teaches that God must transfer a punishment to Christ before He can forgive.

38. Romans 4:25: “Delivered for Our Offences”

Paul says that Jesus:

“Was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” — Romans 4:25, KJV

The word for is important, but it does not by itself explain the mechanism of Christ's death.

It can express the relationship between Christ's death and our sins: He was delivered up because of, or on account of, our offences. It does not automatically mean that God inflicted the precise punishment due to us upon Him.

The verse connects Christ's death with our offences and His resurrection with our justification. That pairing deserves attention: Jesus does not remain dead. His resurrection is integral to the saving work Paul describes.

This fits an understanding in which Christ enters the human predicament and overcomes death, rather than merely undergoing a penalty and leaving the story there.

Still, Romans 4:25 alone does not exclude a penal interpretation. We need to examine the more explicit passage in Galatians.

39. Galatians 3:13: Christ Redeems Us from the Curse

This is one of the strongest passages for the traditional understanding of Christ bearing the penalty of sin.

Paul writes:

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” — Galatians 3:13, KJV

We must not minimise those words. Christ is described as becoming a curse for us, and Paul connects this with His crucifixion by quoting Deuteronomy 21:23.

The traditional reading is that Christ bears the curse and penalty that sinners deserve. Other interpretations emphasise that Jesus enters the cursed condition of humanity, bears the consequences of sin and human rejection, and redeems us from that condition.

What does the passage establish beyond dispute?

• Christ's death is connected with the curse associated with the law.
• He does this for our benefit.
• His work brings redemption from that curse.

What does it not explain in detail? Whether the Father must inflict punishment on Christ to satisfy a requirement of justice, or whether Christ bears the curse by entering fully into humanity's plight and overcoming it.

The verse is important evidence for the penal view, but the further claim about what God must do before forgiving is an interpretation of how the verse works.

40. What does “the curse” mean in its original context?

Paul quotes Deuteronomy 21:22–23, which concerns a person executed and hung on a tree. In Galatians, the reference connects Christ's crucifixion with the covenant curse.

Earlier in Galatians 3, Paul discusses the law, the promise to Abraham, and the inability of people to secure the promised blessing through their own works. He then says Christ redeems people from the curse so that Abraham's blessing might come to the Gentiles and that they might receive the promised Spirit (Galatians 3:14).

That ending matters. The outcome is not simply that a punishment has been transferred. It is that people receive the blessing and the Spirit.

This is consistent with the restorative emphasis we have been following: Christ's work frees people from the curse so that they can receive life and God's promised blessing.

But we should keep our conclusion proportionate. Galatians 3:13–14 does not give us a complete theory of atonement in a few sentences. It establishes the curse, Christ's redemptive work, and the blessing that follows.

41. 2 Corinthians 5:21: “Made Him to Be Sin for Us”

Paul writes:

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV

This is another passage we must take seriously.

The traditional interpretation often understands Christ as bearing the liability or penalty of our sin, despite being sinless Himself.

There is a further detail in the context. Verse 19 says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people's trespasses against them. Verse 20 then appeals to people to be reconciled to God.

So the passage begins with God acting to reconcile humanity. That is entirely consistent with the idea that God is not waiting for us to persuade Him to love us.

However, verse 21 also makes a profound connection between Christ's sinlessness, our sin, and our becoming righteous in Him. It is not enough to say that Christ merely demonstrates God's love. Paul says Christ's work actually accomplishes something for us.

The question is what that accomplishment involves: a transfer of punishment, the impartation of righteousness and life, or some relationship between those ideas.

42. What Have We Learned About God's Wrath?

Let's pause and take stock.

Finding	What it means for our investigation
Romans 1 describes God giving people over to destructive choices.	God's wrath can be understood, at least in part, through the consequences of rejecting Him.
Romans 4:25 connects Christ's death with our offences and His resurrection with justification.	Christ's death and resurrection belong together in God's saving work.
Galatians 3:13 says Christ redeems us from the curse.	The curse is real, but the passage's goal is redemption and blessing.
2 Corinthians 5:19–21 says God reconciles humanity through Christ.	God is the initiator of reconciliation, not simply the party waiting to be appeased.

These passages give meaningful support to a view in which God saves humanity from the destructive power and consequences of sin, rather than simply demanding that someone suffer before He can forgive.

But they do not prove that the Bible never portrays God as actively judging. Nor do they eliminate the difficult language about Christ bearing the curse and being made sin for us.

My assessment is that Waggoner's interpretation is a serious biblical position worth testing, but we should not claim the case is settled yet. The traditional penal interpretation also draws on genuine biblical language. The real work is determining which interpretation best accounts for all the passages without making God contradict the character Jesus reveals.

43. Romans 8:31–39: “He That Spared Not His Own Son”

Let’s now examine Romans 8:31–39 and especially verse 32:

This verse is often used to argue that God deliberately subjected His Son to the punishment required for sin. It deserves that serious consideration.

But Paul uses it to assure believers of God's generosity and unfailing love. The passage concludes that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

Our next question, then, is whether the phrase “delivered him up” means God had to punish His Son to satisfy Himself, or whether it describes God giving His Son over to the mission through which humanity would be rescued, even at the cost of His life.

Paul writes:

“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” — Romans 8:32, KJV

At first glance, that can sound as though God refused to spare Jesus from a punishment that God Himself needed to inflict. But let's look at what Paul is actually arguing.

The passage begins with questions:

• If God is for us, who can be against us?
• Who can lay anything to the charge of God's people?
• Who is the one who condemns?
• Who can separate us from the love of Christ?

And it ends with Paul's confident conclusion that nothing — not death, not life, not any power — can separate us from God's love in Christ.

That context matters. Paul's central emphasis is God's commitment to save us and the certainty of His love. He uses the giving of God's Son as the supreme evidence that God will not abandon us.

The phrase “delivered him up” tells us that Jesus was handed over to death for our sake. But the phrase alone does not explain why His death was necessary or specify a mechanism by which it saves us.

There are at least two ways Christians have understood it:

• Penal-substitution interpretation: God gave Jesus to bear the penalty for sin on humanity's behalf, satisfying the demands of divine justice.
• Waggoner's life-and-reconciliation interpretation: God gave His Son knowing the cost of entering a world alienated from God. Jesus exposed human sin, endured its violence, and gave His life to rescue humanity from sin and death — not to persuade an unwilling Father to love us.

Both interpretations take Jesus' death seriously. The question is which best accounts for the whole biblical picture of God's character, justice, sacrifice, and reconciliation.

One detail is especially important: Paul doesn't say, “God began to love us because He punished His Son.” His argument is the opposite in direction: God's willingness to give His Son demonstrates the depth of His commitment to us.

That fits Romans 5:8, where God's love is shown while we were still sinners. The love comes first; it isn't purchased by the death.

44. Who actually caused Jesus' death?

Now let's put Romans 8 beside Acts 2:23:

“Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” — KJV

Notice how Peter holds two things together:

1. Jesus' death occurred within God's foreknowledge and purpose.
2. Human beings crucified Him, and Peter calls their actions wicked.

This is important because the Bible doesn't require us to choose between God's purpose to save humanity and human responsibility for Jesus' death.

God could know what humanity would do, and choose to enter that situation in Christ, without that automatically meaning God had to inflict the very violence Jesus suffered.

But we should be fair to the other interpretation: someone who believes in penal substitution can also say that God knowingly permitted human beings to crucify Jesus while accomplishing salvation through His death. Acts 2:23, by itself, doesn't settle the argument.

So we need to ask a deeper question: Was the suffering something God needed to inflict, or something God was willing to endure in order to rescue us?

That brings us to another remarkable passage.

45. Jesus reveals what the Father is like

In John 14:9, Jesus tells Philip:

“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” — KJV

Jesus isn't merely a messenger who tells us some things about God. He is presented as the clearest revelation of God's character.

Now think about how Jesus treated people who had done wrong.

• He forgave people who came to Him.
• He welcomed those regarded as sinners.
• He rebuked religious hypocrisy and cruelty.
• He prayed for His executioners.
• He refused to save Himself by retaliating against His attackers.

Does that mean God never judges sin? No. But it does give us a very important test: Any explanation of the cross must fit the character of God revealed by Jesus.

Consider Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. When the son returns, the father runs to meet him, embraces him, and welcomes him home. The father doesn't first demand that someone be punished before he can love his son again.

The parable doesn't explain every aspect of atonement, so we shouldn't use it as though it does. But it certainly shows us a father whose love is already there, even while his son has been far away.

And Jesus tells this story to help us understand God's attitude toward the lost.

46. God Was in Christ, Reconciling the World

Consider 2 Corinthians 5:18–19:

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ ... To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” — KJV

Look at the direction of the action.

It says God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. It doesn't say that Christ was persuading God to begin loving the world. God is the one initiating reconciliation.

This doesn't, on its own, disprove penal substitution; its defenders understand the cross as the means God chose to reconcile sinners justly. But it does challenge any picture in which the Father is fundamentally hostile toward humanity and Jesus must change His mind.

The question becomes whether God's justice requires punishment before forgiveness is possible, or whether God's justice is also expressed in confronting evil, exposing its true character, forgiving the repentant, and actually healing what sin has damaged.

What We Have Established So Far

I think we can responsibly say three things so far:

1. God's love precedes the cross. The New Testament repeatedly presents Jesus' death as the expression of God's love, not the event that first makes God loving.
2. The Bible clearly teaches that sacrifice matters, but the reason it matters is debated. The existence of commanded sacrifices doesn't by itself prove that God needs blood in order to forgive.
3. The Bible contains real tensions that must be faced honestly. Some passages speak of God giving His Son, Christ bearing sin, and the Lord's purpose in the Servant's suffering. We shouldn't pretend those passages are easy, nor assume they all require one particular theory of atonement.

And I think the next passage we should examine is especially important: Hebrews 9–10, where the writer discusses blood, forgiveness, and sacrifice, but also quotes God saying that He did not desire sacrifices and offerings.

When God commanded sacrifices, was He requiring blood to satisfy Himself, or using a sacrificial system to teach humanity something about sin, life, and reconciliation?

The honest answer has to take account of both the passages that speak positively about sacrifice and the passages that say God did not ultimately desire it.

47. Hebrews 10: Did God Desire Sacrifice?

Hebrews 10:1–4 explains that the repeated sacrifices of the law could not finally remove sin. Then verses 5–6 quote Psalm 40:

“Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.” — Hebrews 10:5–6, KJV

That's remarkable language. The passage puts words about sacrifice into Christ's mouth as He comes into the world.

If God commanded sacrifices, why does Scripture say He did not desire them and took no pleasure in them?

There are several possible explanations, and we should distinguish them.

First possibility: God never wanted sacrifice in the ultimate sense. The sacrificial system was a temporary arrangement, while God's real aim was obedience, faith, and restored relationship.

Second possibility: God accepted sacrifices as part of the system He established, but they were never sufficient to accomplish what He ultimately wanted. They could teach, symbolize, and anticipate, but they could not themselves transform the human heart.

Third possibility: God did require sacrificial death as part of His justice, but the sacrifices of animals were only a temporary preview of Christ's effective sacrifice. This is a common traditional Christian reading.

Hebrews 10 certainly teaches that the old sacrifices were insufficient and that Christ's offering is decisive. But the statement that God did not desire sacrifice makes us ask what God's ultimate purpose was — and why.

The text does not, by itself, prove that God never intended any sacrifice. It does, however, make it difficult to argue that the repeated killing of animals was God's final desire for humanity.

But Hebrews 9 says blood is necessary

We mustn't stop at Hebrews 10. The previous chapter says:

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” — Hebrews 9:22, KJV

This is one of the strongest statements in the Bible connecting forgiveness with blood. So what does it mean?

E. J. Waggoner takes his cue from Leviticus 17:11, where God explains:

“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.” — KJV

Notice two details in that verse.

• Blood represents life.
• God says, “I have given it to you.”

Waggoner reasons that blood atonement is God's provision for humanity, not a substance God needs to see before He can bring Himself to forgive. He interprets Christ's blood as Christ's life given to humanity, cleansing people from sin and restoring them to God's life.

That gives the passage a different emphasis. Instead of asking, “How much punishment must be inflicted before God can forgive?”, Waggoner asks, “How can people be freed from sin and restored to life?”

There is an important qualification, though. In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was not merely a general symbol for kindness or love. It was part of a ritual system involving life, death, cleansing, and the sanctuary. Hebrews itself connects Christ's death with that system. The question is what those rituals ultimately mean, not whether they mattered.

What does Hebrews mean by “remission”?

The word translated remission means forgiveness or release. It doesn't automatically tell us the mechanism by which forgiveness happens.

Imagine two ways of understanding the problem:

1. A debt or penalty must be discharged: Christ bears the penalty on behalf of sinners, so forgiveness is just.
2. A person must be released from the power and consequences of sin: Christ gives His life to cleanse, restore, and reconcile that person to God.

These aren't perfectly exclusive categories. Some Christian traditions combine them. But they place different emphasis on what the cross accomplishes.

Waggoner's view is that forgiveness is not simply God deciding to overlook evil. God gives His own life in Christ to make people genuinely righteous, rather than merely declaring them righteous while leaving them unchanged. In his discussion of Romans, he argues that God's justifying word makes the believer righteous through the life of Christ.

That is a significant point: the alternative to penal substitution need not be a casual view of sin. It can take sin extremely seriously, because sin is something from which people must actually be healed and liberated.

Then why did God command animal sacrifices?

The Bible does not explicitly say, “I commanded animal sacrifices because human beings believed that gods required blood.” That would go beyond what the text directly tells us.

But we can see several things in the biblical record.

First, sacrifice existed before the detailed laws of Leviticus. Cain and Abel brought offerings in Genesis 4, and Noah offered sacrifices after the flood in Genesis 8. The accounts do not give us a complete explanation of how the practice originated.

Second, God sometimes explicitly challenged the idea that ritual sacrifice was what He most wanted. In Psalm 51:16–17, David says God does not delight in sacrifice as such, and identifies a broken and contrite heart as the sacrifice God will not despise. Isaiah 1:11–17 rejects the people's offerings while they practise injustice and bloodshed. Jeremiah 7:22–23 contrasts burnt offerings with God's command to obey His voice.

Those passages don't mean every sacrifice was forbidden or meaningless. They do show that performing the ritual could never substitute for a changed heart and a life of justice.

Third, God prohibited human sacrifice. Leviticus 18:21 forbids giving children to Molech, and Deuteronomy 12:31 condemns the nations' practice of burning their sons and daughters as offerings. That matters when considering the idea that God simply wanted blood because blood pleased Him.

It doesn't settle every question about Christ's death, but it makes a simplistic picture of God as a deity gratified by blood much harder to maintain.

One last detail in Hebrews 10

The chapter doesn't end by saying Christ has found the perfect kind of victim to keep the sacrificial system going forever. It says Christ's offering accomplishes what the repeated sacrifices could not.

Hebrews 10:10 says believers are sanctified through the offering of Jesus Christ's body “once for all.” Verses 11–14 contrast the priests, who stand offering sacrifices repeatedly, with Christ, whose one offering is described as effective.

That could be read as the final and perfect payment for sin. It can also be read as the decisive, once-for-all act by which God deals with sin and opens the way to restored relationship.

The text establishes the uniqueness and finality of Christ's offering. The exact explanation of why that offering was necessary remains the interpretive question.

48. Did Pagan Ideas Influence Our Understanding of the Cross?

A Summary of E. J. Waggoner’s Critique of Penal Substitution and Papal Tradition

In mainstream Christian theology, the death of Jesus Christ is often explained through the teaching known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement. In this view, sin brings a penalty that God's justice requires, and Jesus takes that penalty upon Himself so that humanity can be forgiven.

However, in his writings published in The Present Truth in 1893 and 1894, E. J. Waggoner challenged this understanding. He argued that the idea of God needing a bloody sacrifice to appease His anger was inherited from paganism and passed into Christianity through the papal system.

Waggoner believed that this view presented a false picture of God's character. Rather than seeing God as someone who must be persuaded to forgive, he understood the sacrifice of Christ as God's own provision to save humanity and bring us back to Himself.

Waggoner expressed his concern in these words:

“Men shudder as they read of the human sacrifices offered by the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and Peru, and by the Druids; but professed (not real) Christianity has its awful list.”

He also wrote:

“It is very difficult for the mind to rid itself of the idea received as a legacy from Paganism, through the Papacy, that God was so angry at man for having sinned, that He could not be mollified without seeing blood flow, but that it made no difference to Him whose blood it was, if only somebody was killed.”

These are strong words, but they raise an important question: Have ideas about appeasing angry gods influenced the way some Christians understand the death of Jesus?

Waggoner's View of the Pagan Understanding of God

According to Waggoner, paganism begins with a misunderstanding of God's character. He believed that Satan's original deception was to lead humanity to see God as stern, exacting and vengeful, rather than as a loving Creator who desires the good of His creatures.

In many ancient religions, sacrifices were offered in the hope of gaining the favour of the gods or turning away their anger. In some cultures, this included human sacrifice and other forms of severe religious suffering.

Waggoner saw a connection between this way of thinking and the belief that God cannot forgive unless someone suffers or pays a penalty first. He also associated this thinking with practices such as self-flagellation, severe bodily deprivation and religious persecution.

His concern was that people could come to believe they were serving God by inflicting suffering, either upon themselves or upon others. In his view, this was a serious departure from the character of the loving God revealed by Jesus.

Waggoner's Critique of the Papal System

Waggoner argued that pagan ideas were carried into Christianity through the papal system rather than being completely abandoned when people became Christians.

One example he challenged was the Roman Catholic teaching concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass. He understood this teaching as reflecting the idea that Christ's sacrifice must be presented continually to satisfy divine justice.

It is important to recognise that Catholic theology understands the Mass as making present the one sacrifice of Christ, not as repeatedly killing Jesus. Nevertheless, Waggoner believed that the wider idea of a sacrifice required to satisfy God's justice could encourage people to think of God as needing to be appeased before He could show mercy.

He also connected this understanding of God with religious penances, self-inflicted suffering and persecution carried out in the name of religion.

His central argument was that when people believe God demands suffering or a victim before He can forgive, their understanding of religion can become centred on punishment, fear and payment rather than love and reconciliation.

This raises a question worth considering: Could some traditional explanations of the cross have been influenced by ideas about divine appeasement that were already present in pagan religion?

Waggoner believed they had. How far that historical influence can be demonstrated is a separate question, but his challenge invites us to examine both the history of Christian teaching and the picture of God it presents.

The Biblical Contrast

Waggoner saw a fundamental difference between the pagan understanding of appeasement and what he believed the Bible reveals about God.

In the appeasement view, God is understood as being angry with humanity and requiring a sacrifice or penalty before He can forgive. In Waggoner's understanding, it is humanity that has become alienated from God through sin. God has not ceased to love us, and He provides the sacrifice Himself to bring us back.

Paul writes:

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” (2 Corinthians 5:19, KJV)

Notice that the passage describes God as the One reconciling the world to Himself. Waggoner understood this to mean that God was not waiting for humanity to find a way to appease Him. God was already acting in love to rescue us from sin.

For Waggoner, the death of Christ was not about changing the Father's attitude towards humanity. It was God's self-giving love in action, revealing His character and providing the life through which humanity could be reconciled to Him.

This does not mean that every Christian who believes in penal substitution holds that God is unloving, or that the history of the doctrine can be reduced to a single pagan source. Christians who hold that view also commonly believe that God Himself provided Christ out of love.

The question Waggoner asks us to consider is more specific: Does the cross satisfy a requirement within God before He can forgive us, or does it reveal what God has already done, and is willing to do, to save us from sin?

Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” (John 14:9, KJV)

Whatever understanding of the cross we accept, it is worth asking whether it is consistent with the character of God revealed through the life and teachings of Jesus.

So, Did God Require the Sacrifice?

We began with a simple but important question: When God commanded sacrifices in the Old Testament, was it because God Himself required blood to be shed, or was He working with people who already believed that sacrifices were necessary to approach a deity?

The Bible gives us reasons to take that question seriously.

God repeatedly told His people that sacrifices were not a substitute for obedience, mercy, justice, and a changed heart. The prophets challenged the idea that religious rituals could make people right with God while they continued to mistreat others. Jesus revealed a Father who seeks the lost, welcomes the repentant, and loves humanity before it has done anything to deserve that love.

The New Testament also tells us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. It presents Jesus' death as central to our salvation, but Christians differ over why that death was necessary. Some understand it as the penalty required by divine justice, borne by Christ in our place. Others understand it primarily as God's self-giving act to expose sin, overcome death, and restore humanity to the source of life.

We must also be honest about the difficult passages. Scripture speaks of Christ bearing sin and of the Lord's purpose in His suffering. These texts cannot simply be dismissed. But neither should we assume, without careful examination, that they mean God needed to punish His innocent Son before He could love or forgive us.

Perhaps the most important starting point is this: God's love did not begin at the cross. According to the New Testament, God loved the world and gave His Son. The cross reveals the extraordinary extent of that love.

So, did God command sacrifices because He needed blood, or did He meet people within their understanding of sacrifice while teaching them something greater? The biblical evidence invites us to investigate that possibility, but it does not give us a single explicit statement that settles the question beyond dispute.

What it does give us is a picture of God who desires mercy, reconciliation, faithfulness, and life — and who reveals His character most clearly in Jesus.

That is where I believe the question deserves to end, not with an easy answer imposed on every passage, but with a willingness to keep examining Scripture and to ask whether our understanding of the cross truly reflects the God Jesus came to reveal.

A Final Question Worth Considering

After considering these passages and the different ways Christians have understood them, perhaps one final question is worth considering: What does the death of Jesus reveal about God?

If Jesus came to show us what the Father is like, then His life, His treatment of sinners, His forgiveness of His enemies, and His willingness to lay down His life must all be part of our understanding of the cross.

Could it be that, throughout the history of humanity, God was meeting people where they were, patiently leading them away from their misconceptions and towards a clearer understanding of His character? Could the sacrificial system have been part of that process, preparing people for the coming of Christ, even while their understanding of sacrifice remained incomplete?

These are questions worth examining rather than answering too quickly. They do not remove the difficult passages of Scripture, nor do they diminish the significance of Christ's death. Instead, they invite us to read those passages in the light of the whole biblical story.

E. J. Waggoner was one Christian writer who challenged the idea that God needed to be appeased before He could forgive humanity. His perspective is worth considering, not because one writer settles the question, but because it encourages us to look again at what Scripture actually says.

Jesus declared, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Perhaps that is our most important starting point. Rather than first deciding what God must be like and then interpreting the cross accordingly, we can begin with Jesus and ask what His life and death reveal about the Father.

When we look at the cross, do we see a God who needed to be persuaded to forgive — or a God who was willing to give everything to bring His children home?

That is the question I invite you to consider.

This article was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT. Biblical references and the ideas discussed are presented for readers to examine and consider for themselves.