Because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, our lives will never be the same. This gift that we have been given can never be taken away from us,it will never lose its power, and it will never cease to exist. New life in Christ is the best gift we can ever receive! Hit enter to search or ESC to close. Close Search. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.
While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Why did Jesus die? Last updated Atonement and reconciliation Actors enact the Crucifixion The events leading up to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus are well-told by the Gospel writers, as are stories of the Resurrection.
What is the atonement? New Testament images The New Testament uses a range of images to describe how God achieved reconciliation to the world through the death of Jesus. John Here are some other images used to describe the atonement: a judge and prisoner in a law court a payment of ransom for a slave's freedom a king establishing his power a military victory And here are some examples of how the New Testament explains the death of Jesus: 'For the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many'.
Words attributed to Jesus in Mark Written by Paul in 1 Corinthians Theories of the Atonement Theories of the Atonement Theologians have grouped together theories of the atonement into different types. His four themes are: The cross as sacrifice The cross as a victory The cross and forgiveness The cross as a moral example The cross as sacrifice The image of Jesus' death as a sacrifice is the most popular in the New Testament. St Augustine too wrote on the theme of sacrifice: By his death, which is indeed the one and most true sacrifice offered for us, he purged, abolished and extinguished whatever guilt there was by which the principalities and powers lawfully detained us to pay the penalty.
Augustine - The City of God. Gregory the Great. Peter Abelard. The debate Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, disagrees with the theory of penal substitution and said so in a radio talk given over Lent See also. Religion and Ethics home Interfaith calendar Ethics guides. There are three slightly different reasons why people might offer this sacrifice.
One is that God has done something for them and they want to express their gratitude—maybe for instance they have a new baby in the family. Another is that they had promised to bring an offering in connection with asking God to do something, and God has done it—again, maybe they had prayed for a baby and they now have one.
Another is simply that they want to be able to give something to God—a freewill offering that expression comes from the name of this sacrifice. These first three sacrifices are expressions of worship and fellowship between people and God and one another. After these, Leviticus comes to two other forms of sacrifice that do have to do with solving problems as one might put it.
The purification offering puts one aspect of that problem right. The compensation offering puts the other aspect right, in making some restitution for what they did wrong. In addition, once a year on the Day of Atonement there were special purification offerings to deal with the various ways in which the people might have been affected by uncleanness of which they might be unaware. These special purification offerings made it possible for the community to clean its slate for the new year.
So none of these sacrifices dealt with real sin. Sacrifice was not designed to deal with real sin. You would offer the appropriate purification offering and compensation offering as well, but the more basic resolution of the problem lay in repentance and forgiveness.
As the Old Testament sometimes puts it, you would ask God to make expiation for your wrongdoing. That idea is paradoxical—expiation is, by nature, something an offender is responsible for. But the only person who can put the situation right when you have done wrong is God. It is God who pays the price for keeping the relationship going by being willing to forgive. And this is what God does in Jesus.
The New Testament uses the practice of sacrifice as a metaphor to help people understand what Christ was doing in being willing to sacrifice himself for us, but that is what it is doing—using a metaphor, using the imagery of sacrifice in a way that does not correspond to its original meaning.
But they never bring these two together. Theology of redemption has been mostly focused on us as humans. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us.
We have no such right. As I started thinking about this, I went back to scripture. All throughout are narratives about the love of God for the natural world and its response to God. We know God created everything in the beginning, but then they disappear. Everything is all about us. Somebody somewhere taught very good catechism classes, because everybody knows that Jesus died to save us from our sins. This idea that salvation takes place through the cross to save us and forgive us from sins has a real grip on our collective imagination.
But this seriously reduces the meaning of redemption in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. It is the idea that Jesus had to die a bloody and horrible death on the cross in order to save us from our sins, because God was offended by our sins and had to receive satisfaction, had to get a payback in order to forgive us. Very simply, the way all of us come up with our ideas: from his own experience in his own world.
Anselm lived in a feudal society, where there was no police force nor armies. The word of a lord was law, and this kept the civil order. If you broke a law that disturbed the order of the society in which you lived, you had to pay back something to the lord in order to restore that order.
That payback was called satisfaction. You had to make satisfaction when you broke a law in order to restore the honor of the lord, on which all civic peacefulness rested. Anselm took that political arrangement and made it cosmic. We have to pay something back in order to restore the order of the universe. Nothing infinite can come from us. But humans deserve it because we have sinned. If Jesus had just lived his life of pure obedience to God and then was taken up into heaven without going through death, the debt would not be repaid, because every person owes God obedience and honor.
But no one had to die for God to be merciful. It goes completely against the teaching of Jesus in the gospels. Look at the parable of the prodigal son, where a father welcomes back his son who dishonored him by spending half his fortune. When the son comes back, the father runs out, hugs him, and throws a party.
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