One In Jesus

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Zechariah’s prophecy as example [NTW/JFG]

Remember: When Wright puts “forgiveness of sins” in quotation marks, he is not being ironic. That is, he’s not saying that sins aren’t really being forgiven. Rather, he is saying that this term is being used in a special sense. For example, in Luke, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, prophesies — Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

At this point in our study, I’m shifting away from background and more toward the actual book itself.

“Forgiveness of sins”

The end of Exile is connected with the forgiveness of sins. Wright argues that Second Temple Jews often referred to the end of the Exile in terms of “forgiveness of sins.” (He uses quotation marks to distinguish forgiveness of sins in the special end-of-exile sense from the ordinary sense of the phrase.) Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

The Exile of Second Temple Jews

Going back many books and many years, Wright has argued that for Second Temple period Jews, the exile that began with the Babylonian Captivity (“Exile,” to distinguish from many other exiles) was not ended when Ezra and Nehemiah led a group of Jews to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple and the city walls.

Daniel prophesied that although Jeremiah has prophesied an exile of 70 years (Dan 9:2), which is the time from the conquest of Jerusalem to Ezra and Nehemiah, the exile would in fact continue for 70 “weeks,” that is, 7 x 70 or 490 years (Dan 9:24), which approximate the time until Jesus. (There are plenty of commentaries that attempt all sorts of calculations. The approximate time is good enough for our purposes.) Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Why sacrifice? Continued [NTW’s argument but expanded by JFG]

To tie the Levitical sacrificial system to the death of Jesus on the cross, we need to think in terms of a expiatory [sin forgiveness] sacrifice, Passover offering, and the scapegoat of the Day of Atonement. These are three very different “sacrifices,” and all are applied to Jesus by various NT authors.

The expiatory offering

Passages such as —

(Eph. 5:2 ESV)  2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

— sound like Paul has an expiatory offering in mind. In the case of general expiatory offering, the sin of the sinner is not transferred to the sacrifice and God doesn’t accept the life of the sacrifice in place of the life or other penalty owed by the sinner. Rather, the sinner is cleansed through confession and washing in water (which sounds quite a lot like baptism, does it not?), and the sacrifice — Jesus on the cross — cleanses the tabernacle/Temple of the stain of sin so that God does not depart from his Temple — which, in this case, is the church. Jesus cleanses the church, as a body or nation or kingdom, so that God can continue to dwell in the church. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Sacrifice [JFG]

We can’t discuss the crucifixion without discussing the theology of sacrifice. The Jewish system of sacrifice is very different from the pagan system. For example,

A. L. Oppenheim succinctly characterized Mesopotamian religion as “the care and feeding of the god.” We owe Israel’s priesthood for eviscerating every trace of this notion from the sacrificial system. Pagans regularly set food and drink on their god’s table, but the [Jewish] Priestly legists [experts in the law] banned all food rites inside the shrine. … Thus all food gifts brought as sacrifices are conspicuously removed from the tent, YHWH’s purported domicile, thereby erasing any suspicion that Israel’s God consumed the sacrifices (see Psalm 50).

Jacob Milgrom, A Continental Commentary: Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), 21. (Wright mentions Milgrom as a source in his Pepperdine lectures on The Day the Revolution Began.)

If the point of animal sacrifice wasn’t to feed a hungry god, what was the point? The Christian assumption has long been that the sacrifice is a substitute for the person making the sacrifice. That is, if I offer a sheep for my sin, then I’m asking God to impose on the sheep the penalty that I deserve. This assumption underlies much atonement theology. But its just not how the sacrificial system in Leviticus worked. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Kings and Queens [JFG/NTW]

There is this odd passage in Ephesians —

(Eph 2:4-7 ESV)  4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,  7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

V. 6 says that God “raised us up with [Jesus] and seated us with him in the heavenly places.” “Raised … up” translates a word used for raising the dead. In baptism, we died to Christ and were raised to sit in heaven on Jesus’ throne with him. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

We are all priests

It’s subtle — almost invisible in the English — but in Gen 1 and 2, God ordains Adam and Eve as priests in his cosmic temple.

(Gen. 2:15 ESV)  15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

The words translated “work” and “keep” are used in the Law of Moses to describe the work of the priests. Continue reading →