The typical response you'll most likely hear revolves around what we call "substitutionary atonement," the notion that God is so angry and wrathful at sin, that he needs a sacrifice to atone for that sin. Given the Old Testament's emphasis on sacrificial laws, it's understandable how so many Christians have adopted this understanding. In the ancient world sacrifice was the way in which you could make the divine have mercy upon you and forgive you.
I've got a problem with that, though.
See, here's the brutal truth: we murdered Jesus. That's a sin, last time I checked. I also think God had some pretty strong feelings regarding the abomination of human sacrifice.
So...why would God demand a HUMAN sacrifice, the most abominable of all sins, in order to forgive us?
Also, as Gerhard Forde points out in his essay, "Caught in the Act" (Word & World, 1983), Jesus went around forgiving people their sins all the time. That's kind of part of what got him in trouble. "Who is this guy that goes around even forgiving sins?!" And if you pay attention and really read the Old Testament, you discover, God forgives sins all the time, too... without sacrifices. In fact, if you pay close attention, you begin to get the idea that God doesn't even LIKE or WANT sacrifices!
Hosea 6: I don't want your sacrifices—I want your love; I don't want your offerings—I want you to know me.
Psalm 51: For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Proverbs 21: To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
Amos 5: Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.”
Matthew 9: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’
Jeremiah 7: For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Micah 6: Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
God doesn't really want our sacrifices. He wants our love, he wants us to change and transform. He wants us to live a life that reflects the Kingdom that Jesus ushers in.
So, if God can forgive us without sacrifice, If God is not the one demanding sacrifices...why did Jesus have to die? If God does not demand the death of Jesus… who does? If God has been forgiving us all this time, if forgiveness is possible WITHOUT Jesus dying on the cross, why is Jesus up in the upper room preparing for his death at the Last Supper? Why does Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane beg God to find another way, and it doesn’t happen? Why is Jesus’ death somehow God’s will?
How does us murdering God's son somehow satisfy God's wrath at sin?
The hard truth here is God is not the one demanding the sacrifice... we are. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Sacrifice isn't what God is demanding, it's what we're demanding. It’s the only thing we can think of to try and “make” God forgive us, because we don't understand forgiveness that isn't somehow transactional.
In fact, I'm going to propose the ENTIRE sacrificial system wasn't even God's idea - it was ours. The first sacrifice that is offered in scripture is done by Cain and Abel. Nowhere in that story does it say God demanded they make this sacrifice. Nowhere does God tell Adam and Eve, "now that you're cast out of the Garden and will die, I demand you make burnt offerings to me so I can forgive your additional transgressions against me and one another." Cain and Abel are likely just doing what all the other tribes around them are doing - making sacrifices to their gods to appease them.
If there's one thing you will notice in scripture, God has this tendency to just kind of go, "Fine, have it your way. Let's see how this works out..." (Hint: It never works out when we do it our way) I hypothesize that the entire sacrificial system and laws surrounding them were God going, "Fine, you want sacrifices - here's how you do sacrifice." They become so complex and difficult to follow - the whole point becomes the insanity of it.
Not God's idea - ours. Because we don't comprehend forgiveness that doesn’t come with strings attached. Without retribution. Without punishment.
Except here's the rub: it isn't really mercy or forgiveness if there's a price tag attached to it. The whole point in forgiving a debt is... you don't actually pay the debt. It simply gets... forgiven. Yes, the person doing the forgiving absorbs the loss (in money terms), they simply don't get re-paid what is owed to them. And they don't punish you for not repaying it.
God is therefore not the obstacle to our forgiveness... we are. Jesus came to forgive us and heal us, to show us a better way to be as humans... and we refused to accept it.
Because here’s the reality - we reject Jesus and the Kingdom of God every day. Even as Christians. We don’t get to lay this rejection at the feet of “the Jews” or even the Romans. We - all of us - reject the world Jesus wants us to live in.
We reject loving our enemies.
We reject forgiving those who have harmed us.
We reject social leveling (tearing down/humbling the rich/powerful, raising up the lowly/poor).
We reject giving up everything and following him.
We reject giving up the way we operate and do things.
Jesus was dangerous because if we do things HIS way - we have to let everything be changed and transformed, and we cling to the way things are because it’s all we know. God's way is not our way, because God's way scares us.
If we were to do it God’s way - it would mean the end of us. The death of us.
The end of how we do things.
The end of our “transactional world” that we know and understand.
The end of our power structures.
The end seeing different groups of people as somehow “other.”
Whether we see them as other through gender, nationality, religion, race, or class.
Everything about how we live and exist… would have to die.
