Closely connected to Christ’s obedience, though bringing out the meaning of his death in its own distinctive way, is the category of sacrifice.

Space doesn’t allow detailed treatment of Old Testament sacrifices here.¹For this, see Richard Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ in DNTUOT, 727-30; Morris, Atonement, 43-62; Also T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 677-684; Richard S. Briggs, ‘The Historical Books,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 543-46. Our focus falls on Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament — which nonetheless draws its meaning directly from that earlier pattern.²Morris, Atonement, 62-67.

Only by sacrificial bloodshed could our sins be forgiven and true fellowship with God be restored. It is God’s way.

Four Applications

Richard Averbeck suggests that the New Testament’s use of Old Testament sacrificial concepts, applied to Jesus Christ, yields four principal applications:

1. Jesus as our Passover sacrifice
2. Jesus as our burnt and peace offering
3. Jesus as our sin offering
4. Jesus as our guilt offering³Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727-730.

This sacrificial logic isn’t left merely implicit. It’s named with precise vocabulary.

Specific atonement terminology appears six times in the New Testament: the verb hilaskomai in Luke 18:13 and Hebrews 2:17; the noun hilasmos in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10; and hilastērion in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5.⁴Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727. See Matthew D. Jensen, ‘John’s Letters,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 581-84; David M. Moffit, ‘Hebrews,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 533-36.

The Pivotal Text

Of these, Romans 3:25 is pivotal. In the ESV: ‘God put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over former sins.’

There’s debate over whether hilastērion should be rendered ‘propitiation,’ ‘sacrifice of atonement,’ or ‘mercy seat.’⁵For example, ‘Reconciliation, Restoration, Propitiation, Atonement,’ in NIDNT, ed. Brown, 3:145-176; Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 98; Hammett and Quarles, Work, 241-243; Morris, Atonement, 151-176. For present purposes, the term’s Old Testament background points the way:

‘… the combined offerings in the OT accomplished both propitiation [the aversion and placation of God’s wrath] and expiation [making amends or reparation for and removal of our guilt]. The same is true for Christ’s work of atonement in the NT. The noun hilasmos (propitiation, atoning sacrifice) in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 captures the picture as a whole, without breaking it down into parts. Jesus is the “atoning sacrifice for our sins,” making propitiation and expiation. The corresponding verb “to make atonement” (hilaskomai) appears in Heb 2:17 and likewise captures the whole idea: Jesus became “fully human in every way, in order that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”’⁶Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 730.

Two things at once, then. God’s wrath turned away, and our guilt removed — the single word holds both. John stresses the full embrace of this propitiation: ‘He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 2:2).

Not Silver or Gold

Paul makes the connection directly: ‘Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph 5:2).

Peter draws out the same logic in terms of ransom and blood, tracing it back to God’s eternal purpose:

‘knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefather, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God’ (1 Pet 1:18-21).⁷See David Nienhuis, ‘1-2 Peter,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 685-58.

What Peter States, John Sees

In the throne-room vision of Revelation, the slain Lamb is worshipped precisely because his sacrificial blood has ransomed a people for God:

‘And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth”’ (Rev 5:9-10).⁸See Joseph Mangina, ‘Revelation (Book of),’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 719.

What does describing Jesus’ death as a ‘ransom’ mean?

It means we as individual sinners have been released from slavery to sin, death and devil. We are no longer condemned prisoners or debtors before God (Mark 10:45; Titus 2:14; Rev 5:9).⁹Charles E. Hill, ‘Atonement in the Old and New Testaments,’ in Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James, The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives (Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 30.

Why It Had to Be Blood

Scripture states the necessity of Jesus’ blood sacrifice explicitly, leaving no room for a bloodless alternative. He permitted himself to be killed; he sacrificed himself to God, for us.

That he did so was necessary because of the nature of God’s character — a necessity which helps us appreciate the sinfulness of sin. It is very sinful.

Only by sacrificial bloodshed could our sins be forgiven and true fellowship with God, and with one another, be restored. It is God’s way.¹⁰See Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ‘Blood,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 403-06. Blood represents the very life of a creature. The wages of sin is death. The blood of a sacrificial animal, an innocent victim, makes atonement for guilty human persons (Lev 17:11).

Once Made, Never Repeated

This same conviction — that Christ’s death was a single, sufficient, unrepeatable offering — is written into the historic formularies of the Anglican tradition, where the language of oblation recurs at every turn. The Thirty-Nine Articles state it in Article 31, ‘Of the One Oblation of Christ Finished upon the Cross’:

‘The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of [Roman Catholic] Masses, in which it is commonly said, that the priest offers Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, are blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.’¹¹Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 128.

The Book of Common Prayer takes up the same vocabulary and extends it two ways.

First, oblation describes Christ’s own once-for-all self-offering, commemorated rather than repeated in the Eucharist. In the 1549 and 1662 rites alike, the Prayer of Consecration speaks of Christ’s ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.’

Second, the Prayer Book applies the same word to the believer’s response. The offertory rubrics speak of ‘alms and oblations,’ and later prayers call the worshipper to present ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice’ — an oblation of a different order, made possible only because Christ’s own has already been finished.

Which Direction It Moves

The pattern is worth pausing on.

Anglican liturgy does not ask the church to offer Christ again, nor even to add to what he has done. It asks the church to receive what was ‘once made,’ and, in receiving it, to offer itself.

Oblation, in other words, moves in only one direction at the cross — from Christ to us — before it can rightly move in the other, from us back to God.¹²See Geoffrey J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (Palgrave MacMillan, 1982); Scott Harrower, ‘Thomas Cranmer,’ and ‘Eucharist,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 437-440, and 479—84; Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford University Press, 2000); Bryan D. Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (SCM Press, 2013); Peter Toon, The Gospel According to Cranmer and God’s Company 1500–1640 [no publisher, date].

—

• 1
  For this, see Richard Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ in DNTUOT, 727-30; Morris, Atonement, 43-62; Also T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 677-684; Richard S. Briggs, ‘The Historical Books,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 543-46. ↩︎
• 2
  Morris, Atonement, 62-67. ↩︎
• 3
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727-730. ↩︎
• 4
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727. See Matthew D. Jensen, ‘John’s Letters,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 581-84; David M. Moffit, ‘Hebrews,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 533-36. ↩︎
• 5
  For example, ‘Reconciliation, Restoration, Propitiation, Atonement,’ in NIDNT, ed. Brown, 3:145-176; Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 98; Hammett and Quarles, Work, 241-243; Morris, Atonement, 151-176. ↩︎
• 6
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 730. ↩︎
• 7
  See David Nienhuis, ‘1-2 Peter,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 685-58. ↩︎
• 8
  See Joseph Mangina, ‘Revelation (Book of),’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 719. ↩︎
• 9
  Charles E. Hill, ‘Atonement in the Old and New Testaments,’ in Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James, The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives (Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 30. ↩︎
• 10
  See Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ‘Blood,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 403-06. ↩︎
• 11
  Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 128. ↩︎
• 12
  See Geoffrey J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (Palgrave MacMillan, 1982); Scott Harrower, ‘Thomas Cranmer,’ and ‘Eucharist,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 437-440, and 479—84; Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford University Press, 2000); Bryan D. Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (SCM Press, 2013); Peter Toon, The Gospel According to Cranmer and God’s Company 1500–1640 [no publisher, date]. ↩︎