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atonement, Bribery, God does not change, life changing, natural birth, New birth, Propitiation, sacrificial offering, slaughter ritual
Trying to appease a police officer by offering him or her a gift would be considered bribery. Why is it that so many interpreters of Scripture fail to consider bribery a gift made to God with the intent to obtain favors from Him? Yet, that is exactly what the words propitiation and expiation are meant to be in Christian theology. Christian theology has been negatively impacted by the pagan idea that the only true God can be bribed as were the pagan gods. It is a counterproductive idea that destroys all incentives to draw closer to God in order to learn anything from Him.
From my studies of the subject, it appears that the English language is the only one outside of Hebrew that has a word to express the correct idea of God’s purpose for the rituals of the Temple. Indeed, they were intended to produce the coming close or, at one (atonement), of humans with God’s thinking, not to offer God sacrificial offerings in exchange for forgiveness. God is never reluctant to offer His forgiveness to any sinner at no charge to the sinner. The so-called “sacrificial offerings” were never intended to be offerings made to God, they were always intended to be God’s object lessons involving the slaughter of an animal to help sinners recognize that sin kills even the most innocents among humans.
Let us briefly consider the logic of God as regard the slaughter rituals and compare them with the sacrificial offerings He never requested humans to practice (Jeremiah 7:22 RSV).
1. The slaughter ritual was intended to benefit humans. In other words, they were a gift from God to humans, not the other way around, as were the sacrificial rituals of pagan practices.
2. The slaughter ritual was a graphic and painful experience for the sinner who was reminded that sin is due to lack of love and that lack of love produces inevitable death. This should have led sinners to consider becoming more loving to reduce sin. By contrast a sacrificial offering has always been an attempt to avoid a change of heart by merely paying for sins. Such a payment changes nothing in the heart of the sinner. At best the sinner may avoid sinning to avoid having to pay for them, not to overcome sin.
3. Since God does not change (Hebrews 1:10-12; Isaiah 40:8), He never changed His requirement for salvation. Everything God has done was to encourage humans to overcome sin by becoming more loving. In my book, “Idolatry of Blood,” this is in fact my definition of righteousness (overcoming sin) by faith (a strong persuasion that love is the only solution). This is God’s message that should have been presented to the people in the Israelite Sanctuary, just as it is today His message to the modern followers of Jesus.
4. Considering that baptism needs to happen only once in a person’s lifetime, since God does not change the graphic slaughter of an animal was probably required to be performed only once in a sinner’s life. Like baptism the slaughter ritual was intended to help sinners recognize that we are all born selfish and self-centered from the moment of our natural birth. Thus, like baptism the slaughter ritual was intended to be a public acknowledgement that a change of focus from self to others is the only viable solution, or salvation. Both rituals imply that our natural birth brings with it flaws of self-centeredness that must be replaced with a new birth from God into a new life focused on other-centeredness.
Clearly, the priests of Israel should have understood the principle of new birth in their slaughter rituals that should never have been called sacrificial offerings. Even Nicodemus who recognized Jesus as “a teacher who has come from God” (John 3:2), was taken by surprise when Jesus told him: “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again’” (v. 7). Why should he not have been surprised? Simply because the new birth into other-centeredness had always been God’s teachings through the ages.
A sacrificial offering changes little or nothing in a sinner’s heart. But a slaughter ritual understood as baptism into the birth of a new mindset focused on other-centeredness can be life changing. More on that next week.
Frédéric Zürcher 
Dear Fred,
If it is true that the purpose of them slaughter of animals was to teach use the evilness of sin then why didn’t Christ tell us about this purpose of animal slaughter and obviously we should be continuing this practice today because as you mentioned God does not change?
The only lesson that was taught in the sanctuary rituals was during the events of the “Day of Atonement” where it became obvious that the purpose of animal slaughter or sacrifice was to transfer my sins to an innocent animal and then kill the animal thus ridding myself of my sins forever. This is the same idea that Christianity has that all of the sins of humanity were placed upon Christ as our substitute who by dying on the cross forgave my sins by providing humanity with eternal life.
There is no place in scripture that tells us what the meaning of all of the the tabernacle and temple rituals were all about. Since we are told in Isaiah that no one knows the mind and thinking of God unless we are told directly by God then the obvious purpose of God coming to earth in human form was to teach us the truth about God which had been corrupted by pagan influences.
Thus it is pointless to Philosophize about what has happened unless it is directly revealed in Scripture. Ideas that have come to us through traditional thinking are difficult to change. Not only is Scripture our textbook but li9ke the sciences we must have a laboratory to test all ideas regarding Scripure and Scripture is our laboratory. If our testing of Scripture gives us a null result then discard the idea regarding Scripture. We must remember that we must test all ideas against the teachings and actions of Christ.
Roland Zimmermann
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Dear Roland,
Can you imagine how soon Christ would have been put to death if He had commented directly about the “sacrificial system” in place at the time? This was the main source of revenue for the Temple, the priests, and even the government.
Jesus did not have to comment directly about the slaughter rituals, but He clearly did comment, though indirectly, about all the proceedings that were taking place within the Temple. Interestingly, Jesus was quoting from Jeremiah 7 when He said about His house, “but you are making it a ‘den of robbers'”(v.11 of Jeremiah Mathew 21:13).
Jesus cleansed the temple to make a point we must never forget: The message that was being taught within the walls of the temple were not from God. This also means that the messages applied to the rituals were false and misleading. They used the sacrificial system to rob the people, not to open the door of the kingdom to those who wished to enter therein (See Mathew 23:13).
The new symbolism of baptism introduced by John the Baptist and Jesus was merely a change of symbolism, not a change of message. Indeed, God does not change.
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