Christ, Our Sacrifice
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the November 16, 2013
Sabbath School Lesson
“The high priest carries the blood of
animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned
outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the
people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp,
bearing the disgrace he bore.” Hebrews 13:11-13, NIV
For
thousands of years, from the sacrifice offered by Abel until the destruction of
the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D., rivers of blood flowed from thousands and
thousands of animals. Why? Because of an event recorded in Genesis, popularly
referred to as “The Fall,”[i]
the gory stream began to run. That fall brought death to mankind, but it was
not enough that mankind began to experience death. By man’s hand, death was
visited on the animal creation as well. There is no apparent command in
Scripture to be found for what Abel did in slaying a lamb and placing it on an
altar for sacrifice. We are left to wonder whether God somehow instructed him
in this ritual or if it was Adam’s idea. Was he simply slaying the lamb for
clothing as may have been done for his parent’s?[ii]
Perhaps placing the lamb on the altar was an acknowledgment that all things,
even clothing, come from the Creator.
We see this
idea of gratitude when Noah offered sacrifice after the flood.[iii]
He and his family had been spared from the catastrophe that had cleansed the
whole earth of life. Understandably, he would be thankful after such a
salvation. Generations later, we still see an attitude of thankfulness during
the time of Abraham. However, a new association appears to have developed.
We are told
in the Bible that starting with the generation of Adam and Eve’s grandchildren,
people began to call upon the name of the Lord. What is meant by this is not
defined in Scripture, but some have understood it to mean prayer. Apparently, whatever
it meant, it was not originally associated with the sacrificial altar since
that began a generation before with Abel. Only when we get to the time of
Abraham do we see the two ideas being linked to one another.[iv]
Whereas, before we saw the sacrifice as an expression of thanksgiving, perhaps
for a fertile flock or abundant harvest, it now became a means for attracting
God’s attention. We can speculate on whether this transition took place due to
the ideas introduced through idol worship that the godly line of believers was
exposed to in Mesopotamia,[v]
but the Bible does not say why this took place. We simply jump in the narrative
from one form of worship to the next. Whether this was a diminishing or
strengthening of man’s understanding of God can be debated, but it seems to
place God at mankind’s beck and call. If a man performs ritual “A” then God is
expected to give response “B.”
Perhaps when
we consider that men manufactured the images used in idol worship, this concept
becomes more understandable. After all if a man can make the image of a god,
shouldn’t he also have some power through that image over the god? Also, since
the biblical narrative indicates that God was pleased with sacrifices of
thanksgiving offered in earlier times, and it would be easier to call upon a well-disposed
deity, altars might then have come to be associated with attempting to summon a
benevolent action from a god.
Another
interesting transition that took place is one from a populist approach to
worship where everyone may offer sacrifice on an altar to one involving a
patriarchal form of worship where the head of the family is the one who offers sacrifice
on the altar. Thus begins a form of hierarchical worship where one favored
individual stands between God and the rest of the worshippers. By the time of
the sojourn in Egypt, this individual who may still be a patriarch but may
simply be an individual in service to a king or equivalent ruler, has come to
be known as a priest.[vi]
These priests would often receive some sort of an ordination ceremony from
whoever was ruling to set them aside for such service. Once this system was
instituted, any possibility of an individual directly approaching God was
derailed and anyone claiming to have such a direct relationship with God who
was not an ordained priest might be determined to be heretical and perhaps even
worthy of capital punishment.[vii]
In the case of the Israelites, this transition did not occur smoothly. Some
objected to this monopoly on God.[viii]
The Bible indicates that some forfeited their lives for doing so. Whatever the
outcome, they did not prevail.
Perhaps
Moses favored the priestly caste system due to his being raised in Pharaoh’s
court.[ix]
This might account for his astonishment at being spoken to directly by God at
the burning bush.[x] In
any event, according to the Bible, God called Moses because He felt he had the
qualifications necessary to deliver the Israelites. Perhaps it was precisely
because he had been educated by the Egyptians that God chose him. The
establishment of a priestly caste with special rights for the priests to be
sustained from the assets and property obtained from the rest of the people,[xi]
as well as the design of the tabernacle with a courtyard, a holy place, and a
most holy place are parallels to what the people had experienced in Egypt.[xii]
This
priestly system remained much the same until the time of Jesus. Interestingly,
Jesus chose to operate outside of that system. While there is record of Joseph
and Mary making sacrificial offerings at the temple, there is not record of
Jesus doing so. He is also described as referring to the washings required by
that system as being “commandments of men” as opposed to being God’s
requirements.[xiii]
This was echoed by Paul in his epistles.[xiv]
Perhaps it is a natural part of a hierarchical form of worship, which restricts
direct access to God, to also restrict the many activities of day-to-day
living. We see extreme examples of this in some modern cults where the leaders,
who claim sole understanding of God’s will demand that their male followers
give up even their wives and daughters to them as in the case of Michael Travesser,
who left the Seventh-day Adventist church to found a cult in the desert of the
Southwestern United States.[xv]
Jesus was a
historical turning point for the hierarchical system of worship. Eventually, in
70 A.D., the system of sacrificial worship at the temple came to an end anyway
courtesy of the Roman Empire. But several decades before that, Jesus laid the
foundations for a relationship with God that would supplant the previous
system. In the new system, Jesus, who claimed to be one with God, the Father,
became the new high priest, not after the order of Aaron but of that of
Melchizedek.[xvi]
Unlike, Aaron and his descendants, Melchizedek, like God, had no genealogy, and
the book of Hebrews actually equates the original Melchizedek who met Abraham
with the Son of God.[xvii]
Why is this significant? Because when a priestly caste is not based on birth,
it can be freely conferred on anyone. According to the Bible, that is exactly
what has happened. As many as choose to follow this Melchizedekian High Priest
are also priests of that order.[xviii]
In other
words, now anyone who comes to God is a member of the priestly order of
Melchizedek with the ability to petition God directly. Also, they are not only
priests, but royal priests as the name Melchizedek means “my king is the
righteous one.” Jesus is not only high priest, but king of righteousness as
well. Eventually, we have come to understand that with everyone having direct
access to God, mercy and not sacrifice became the order of the day.[xix]
The river of blood from the sacrificial system came to an end. Those who had
bled the life out of countless animals finally bled the life from Jesus, and
with that, they sealed the fate of the system that had enriched them and gave
them power over the people. People were set free to live in direct relationship
with their Creator.[xx]
Sadly, there
are those who lament the loss of the power of the priesthood and have worked to
keep it alive through the centuries. They restrict access to power and control
in the churches through nepotism and gender and racial exclusion, but as the
Holy Spirit illumines minds to the truth,[xxi]
their power is waning. The Holy Spirit is given to each of us.[xxii]
The Spirit is not imparted to some priest or other religious leader to dole out
to us by dribs and drabs from a homily each week. Religion that is about that
kind of power and control met its end on the cross, religion that is about compassion
and self-sacrifice instead rose early on the following Sunday from an empty
tomb.
