cheenc03a.pdf

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SAORIFIOE
and scarlet wool and hyssop' (919);' in like manner he
rprinked with blood the tent and all the uter~silr of
worship (cp u. z,) ; according to the law nearly everything
is purified with blood, and without outpouring of
blood no remission (d@es~r) is effected ( 9~1f).~
The writer's conception of the expiatory riles of the
law thus agrm entirely with the teaching of the Jewish
authorities (see above, jr). For him, however, the
system was typical and prophetic of the one real and
all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ. When this had been
made there was no longer rearon or roomefor the
sacrifices of the law (10~8). Henceforth the only
sacrifices are praise to God and goodness to men
(131~ f, alluding to Pr.107n2 11611 HOS. 142 et~.).~
Ihat 'Chrirt died for (brdp) our sins according to
the scriptures' is an article of the common tradition of
6, Death Of the Christian faith which Paul delivered
Christ: Pauline'o his converts a% he had received it
from those who were before him
epistles,
(I Cor. 153). By his death men are
redeemed, justified, forgiven, reconciled to God; see
Rom. 425 58 f 832 z Cor. 5 15 Gal. 14 I Thesr. 510 Col.
I DZJ Eph. 11 Tit. 214 efc The death of Christ, that
is, was expiatory; he ruff-d on the cross. nor for his
own sins but for those of others, and by the expiation
which he thus made they a-ere delivered from the consequences
of their transgressions (see further, below, 5 60).
The idea of expiation is, however, as we have seen,
"lorely arrociated with sacrifice: one great class of
raciificrs, anlong both Jews and Gentiles, war piacular
in motive and intention : and in a looser sense the whole
sacrificial worship war often thought of as atoning (see
abve, 9 45). I' was "atural, therefore. that the death
of Christ should be conceived as a sacrifice, or spoken
of in sncrificid figurer. I" Paul, however, this conception
is not developed as it is in same of the other
NT rvritinra.
rcxt m d the addition of the wordi"in his blood' doer nor
nec&;lrily imply that this means ir thought of as sacrificial.
Cp bl~ncu SEAT, 8 B
Even if we translate Rom. 325 outright ' an expiatory
sarrifice' the crpression would still be only a passing
metaphor in a context of a different tenor-Christ's
denth the demonstration of the righteousness of God.
Christian theologians, indeed, have been so long
accustomed to regard the OT sacrifices fiom the jural
and governmental point of view-that is, in the light of
their construction of the atonine work of Christ Cthat
they hardly feel the reference to an expiatory sacrifice
here as even a change of figure ; but Paul was not n
modcrn theologiall.
So greater emphasis is laid on the idea of sacrifice in
I Cor. 5 ,f. where, in an exhortation to put away evil.
its leaven-like working suggests the scrupulous care with
whim a Jewish house was purged of leaven on the cre
of the Pnsaovrr, and that, again, leads to the thought
for indeed our Passover ir sacrificed. Christ: so let us
keep thr feast not uith the old leaven of malice and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth.'
Evidence of a more pervasive arsociarion of Christ's
SACRIFIOE
death with sacrifice has k n sought in the references to
his blood as the ground of the benefits conferred by his
death 1Rom. 321 - 601 .,:.
the lhoueht of sacrifice is so
constantly associated with his death, it is raid, that the
one word suffices to suggest it. But in view of the
infreouencv. . ,. to sav , the least. of sacrificial meraohors in
the greater epistles. it is doubtft~l whether dlra is not
used merely in allusion to Jesus' violent death. Nor
is the case clearer in Colllo Eph. I, 213 ; the really
note~orthy thing is that the context contains no sug-
gestion of sacrifice either in thought or phrase. The
a-ordr 'for sin' (rrpi ilrrrprlar) in Rom. 83, are often
mechanically translated 'sin offering,' because in
Leviticus this phrase is the common rendering of
hngfath; even dpapiia~, z Cor. 5.,, has been understood
in the same way-the death of Christ specifically a sin
offering. The misconception of the nature of the sin
off~ring which underlies this strained interpretation has
been commented on above (5 28 a).'
In conclusion, if may be noted as an indication that
the idea of expiatory mrr$itire war not prominent in
Paul's thoueht of Christ's death, that he nowhere user
the charac;erirtic terms inseparably associated in the
OT with these sacrifices, iAdonopor, #