Human Sacrifices and THE Human Sacrifice

No matter how many times I come across examples in the Old Testament, I am continually shocked at the accounts of people sacrificing their children to deities, often by burning them as offerings to the Ammonite god Molech (see Lev. 18:21; 20:2ff.; 2 Kings 16:3; Jer. 32:35; Ezek. 16:21). In our age of Western "enlightenment," we all see human sacrifice--whether voluntary or not--as an ignorant, if not brutal, act. So when I read that this is still being practiced in many sites around the world, particularly among African tribal peoples, it shocks me.


But should it?


Human sacrifice has been practiced for thousands of years, from the earliest of human times. Though we modern folk deride and decry it--and Christians rightly hate it for the evil, life-desecrating work of Satan that it is--there are innate truths in human sacrifice that perhaps many of us today have forgotten.


Some people sacrifice themselves or another member of their community as an offering of devotion to please their god(s). They rightly see that the greater powers deserve nothing less than all that we can offer to them, and that a life given in their honor is the supreme gift. Do we even think about the fact that we owe our lives to a higher being?


Other cultures sacrifice those who are thought to bear curses. (Here is a sad story of Ethiopians who kill off children who are mingi, or "cursed," and who thereby endanger their communities--and of how Christians' hope in Jesus and love for their neighbors is redeeming this situation.) Only by removing the accursed person can prosperity be restored to the community. In some situations the sacrifice himself isn't considered cursed, but the community as a whole is, and amends can only be made by placating the deity's anger with sacrifices. Do we today feel any sense of guilt before the Divine for our wrongdoing?


Strangely enough, these motives for sacrifice point us to the Gospel, the message about the one true and final human sacrifice: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. He lived an unblemished life and "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21) and willingly "gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:2 NIV). He held back none of himself in perfect submission and devotion to God.

But of this same man it is written, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us [i.e., in our place as a substitute]--for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'--so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:13-14). Jesus' untarnished dedication to God both motivated him and enabled him to become a worthy, once-for-all-time sacrifice who took upon himself our guilt and accursedness as his very own so that we might be absolved and welcomed into the family of God (2 Cor. 5:21).


So while human sacrifices can point people toward the gospel, by themselves they only lead to despair. Such offerings must continually be repeated because they inevitably fall short of the wholehearted consecration God desires and the extent of sacrifice he justly requires--because these can only be fulfilled in the God-man Jesus. But the wonderful truth is that they have been fulfilled! And everywhere this good news spreads--as it did to the Celts--people will begin to joyfully offer up sacrifices of a different kind: praise and thanks to God in Jesus' name and charity and generosity toward mankind (Heb. 13:15-16).

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

"Just watch my servant blossom!

Exalted, tall, head and shoulders above the crowd!

But he didn't begin that way.

At first everyone was appalled.

He didn't even look human--

a ruined face, disfigured past recognition.

Nations all over the world will be in awe, taken aback,

kings shocked into silence when they see him.

For what was unheard of they'll see with their own eyes,

what was unthinkable they'll have right before them."

Who believes what we've heard and seen?

Who would have thought GOD's saving power would look like this?

The servant grew up before God--a scrawny seedling,

a scrubby plant in a parched field.

There was nothing attractive about him,

nothing to cause us to take a second look.

He was looked down on and passed over,

a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.

One look at him and people turned away.

We looked down on him, thought he was scum.

But the fact is, it was our pains he carried--

our disfigurement, all the things wrong with us.

We thought he brought it on himself,

that God was punishing him for his own failures.

But it was our sins that did that to him,

that ripped and tore and crushed him--our sins!

He took the punishment, and that made us whole.

Through his bruises we get healed.

We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost.

We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.

And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong,

on him, on him.

He was beaten, he was tortured,

but he didn't say a word.

Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered

and like a sheep being sheared,

he took it all in silence.

Justice miscarried, and he was led off--

and did anyone really know what was happening?

He died without a thought for his own welfare,

beaten bloody for the sins of my people.

They buried him with the wicked,

threw him in a grave with a rich man,

Even though he'd never hurt a soul

or said one word that wasn't true.

Still, it's what GOD had in mind all along,

to crush him with pain.

The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin

so that he'd see life come from it--life, life, and more life.

And GOD's plan will deeply prosper through him.

Out of that terrible travail of soul,

he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it.

Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,

will make many "righteous ones,"

as he himself carries the burden of their sins.

Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly--

the best of everything, the highest honors--

Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch,

because he embraced the company of the lowest.

He took on his own shoulders the sin of many,

he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

--Isaiah 52:1 - 53:12, The Message

Costly Marriage

Our pastor has been preaching through the Old Testament book of Ruth, a beautifully-spun narrative about how the light of God's active providence and steadfast love dawned upon the darkness of two insignificant widows. In chapter 4, the story comes to a head as the young Moabite widow Ruth finds a husband who is willing to marry her despite the financial burden it will bring upon him in losing part of his inheritance to Ruth's children. (Under Jewish law, a kinsman was to marry his relative's widowed wife and produce children for her. However, the children would be reckoned as belonging to the deceased husband, and they would be required to receive a separate inheritance.) Boaz, Ruth's redeemer and a "man of great wealth" (2:1 NASB), acted out a love that was not only perhaps romantic, but also sought out her good even at his own cost. In binding himself to Ruth all his gain would become hers, her offspring's, and her mother-in-law's--the cure to their poverty--but he would also take on her baggage. He'd lose part of his inheritance. He'd have to deal with the emotional pain of a widowed bride who probably often longed for her previous husband, even if only in memories. As a Moabite, he would have to train her in the faith of Yahweh. He was taking on a lot by binding himself to her and her to himself. Martin Luther reminds us that our Boaz--our redeeming husband--is Jesus Christ, who, "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). At the cost of his own humiliation, scourging, mockery, and agonizing crucifixion he bought us for himself, to make his people, the church, his radiant bride (see Eph. 5:25-32; Rev.19:6-10). (Please bear with this; though lengthy, it's some of Luther's best.)

The . . . incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom [1]. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage--indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage--it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see the inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Here we have a most pleasing vision not only of communion but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption. Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned; his righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride's. As a matter of fact, he makes them his own and acts as if he himself had sinned; he suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all. Now since it was such a one who did all this, and death and hell could not swallow him up, these were necessarily swallowed up by him in a mighty duel; for his righteousness is greater than the sins of all men, his life stronger than death, his salvation more invincible than hell [2]. Thus the believing soul by means of the pledge of its faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ its bridegroom. So he takes to himself a glorious bride, "without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word" [cf. Eph. 5:26-27] of life, that is, by faith in the Word of life, righteousness, and salvation. In this way he marries her in faithfulness, steadfast love, and in mercies, righteousness, and justice, as Hos. 2[:19-20] says.

Who then can fully appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, "If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his," as the bride in the Song of Solomon [2:16] says, "My beloved is mine and I am his." This is what Paul means when he says in 1 Cor. 15[:57], "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," that is, the victory over sin and death, as he also says there, "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law" [1 Cor. 15:56].

-- On Christian Liberty (Augsburg Fortress, 2003), pp. 18-22

____________________ 1. It appears that Luther is using "soul" here as a sort of generic, gender-neutral pronoun. He was no gnostic who saw sin only on a spiritual plane. 2. Notice how Luther relies on the Christus Victor model of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and other church fathers (that by virtue of the Incarnation, Jesus' God-life destroyed and overcame all that afflicted mankind, to whom his deity was united). But he employs this model as part of the way Jesus bore our sins to carry out on a vicarious, substitutionary atonement that bore the condeming wrath of God due to sinners. They are not mutually exclusive perspectives on the atonement.

Good Friday: "A Crescendo of Wonder"

John Witvliet of Calvin College up in the Mitten has written a beautiful (if perhaps over-stuffed) piece about the radical wonder and awe which ought to be brought about through Good Friday's solmenity as we "behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

"A Crescendo of Wonder"

"Making peace through the blood of his cross" is like saying that a nuclear missile has become an olive-branch, that Guantanamo has become a garden of healing, that a sword has been turned into a plowshare, that a tank has been turned into a tractor. The very thought of it leaves us weak in the knees with astonishment. . . .

Our minds wander off trying to imagine what kind of cosmos we live in—where the shameful death of an innocent man can serve as a payment for sin, a ransom for the captive, a conquest of evil, a source of healing, a sacrifice to end all sacrifice (what a gift—all these mutually correcting scriptural images). Imagining that kind of world is enough to make our minds ache, given that we swim in the waters of a culture where debt generates more debt, and violence generates more violence. It takes a remarkable conversion of the imagination to see the world in the Bible's way: a world where justice and mercy do not exist in tension, where "righteousness and peace kiss each other," where the death and resurrection of the Son of God can re-order the moral foundations of the universe.

John 17: Given through the Cross

John 17 is what many call Jesus' "high priestly prayer." In it he prays for himself (vv. 1-5), his present disciples (vv. 6-19), and all who would come to believe through the disciples (vv. 20-26). Throughout this prayer, Jesus refers to believers as those whom God has given to him (vv. 2, 6, 9, 24). It is said that these people belonged to God the Father (v. 9), which is implicit in the fact that he is the one who gives them to Jesus. These people are also given to Jesus "out of the world" (v. 6), that is, not all of the world's people are given to Jesus. We know this because of verse 2: "For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him." We already know that not all people will receive eternal life through Christ, for not all will repent and embrace him as Lord. This is the clear testimony of Scripture. But note also that Jesus, while possessing "authority over all people," only uses his position to give life to "all those you have given him." Being given to Jesus overlaps with receiving eternal life (cf. John 6:35-40; 10:26-29); they are one and the same.

Why are these people given to Jesus? Or how does he obtain them from God?

Acts 20:28 encourages overseers to "be shepherds of the church of God [some manuscripts have of the Lord], which he bought with his own blood." In Revelation we hear worshipers sing of Jesus the Lamb: "With your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation" (5:9; see also 14:4). And Paul instructs the Corinthians that they now belong to Jesus because they were "bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20). So the answer is, Jesus bought the church with his blood shed at the cross. The goal of his death was to receive his bride.

Does this contradict all this talk of being "given" the church in John 6 and 17? No. Rather, having lived a perfectly obedient life for his Father and dying to cleanse the stain of guilt and shame upon the world, Jesus is not only vindicated and given life in his resurrection. He is also given the church as his reward. This is hinted at even in the Old Testament: "Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him [Jesus]; / he has put him to grief; / when his soul makes an offering for guilt / he shall see his offspring . . . . Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied" (Isaiah 53:10, 11 ESV).

This transaction between Jesus and his Father, that Jesus would come to save the elect and win them for himself so that they would glorify God forever, is sometimes called the "covenant of redemption." It is an eternal pact within the Godhead planned before the world existed (2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Peter 1:20; Revelation 13:8 NIV). But for what reasons are we given to Christ? What does that do for us? I'll turn to this in my next post.

Capital Punishment

In just a few minutes, John Allen Muhammad, one of the two "D.C. Snipers" from the 2002 Virginia-Maryland killing spree, will be put to death by lethal injection. His ten-victim murder rampage was the hot topic at lunch today. One of the killing was just fifteen minutes north of Richmond, in Ashland, Virginia; and the killings ran up and down the I-95 corridor. My coworkers recalled how everyone was gripped with fear, refusing even to go out to get gasoline.

It's an eerie, unsettling thing for me to think about actually taking someone's life and what is involved in the whole process. Of course I have to wonder, Is taking Muhammad's life really the best way to make up for his crime? God perplexes me. Would not the One who creates life and upholds it value rather that the criminal live his life in a way that gives life back to those whom he hurt? This is, after all, the ethic of Zaccheus' repentance, and that of Paul as well (Luke 19:8; Ephesians 4:28). But what can a man give in return for ten lives--ten sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers?

Even today I think about what a life really is. This weekend two boys, one of whom was a student at my high school, died from injuries sustained in a house fire. Ashton Black and Aaron Brown were people with names, with histories, with stories. They were people looking for love and who loved others as well. Their loss leaves a real hole. Yesterday I saw it reduce some of the most hard-nosed kids to tears.

Nonetheless, the Lord of Life has apparently decreed that when a life is lost at another's hands, the only fitting recourse is the death of the murderer. When God blessed Noah and his kin and reissued the "creation mandate" after the Flood (in which God himself wiped out men's lives as a consequence for their wickedness), God told Noah this:

"And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man." (Genesis 9:5-6)

God made mankind in his image, and anyone who willfully kills another commits a hate crime against God himself--a crime worthy of death. This was no civil law that was to be embodied for a passing time in the Torah. This was God's establishment of the creation order, of the rules by which man would live in this new post-Fall, post-Flood world. Some say that with this fiat, God established the State--official government--as one of his governing graces in his "left-hand" kingdom. And that seems to hold in the era of the Gospel as well. In Romans 13 Paul says that Christians must submit to all governing authorities, for they have been appointed by God.

"Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." (Romans 13:2-4, emphases mine)

So when governing authorities, be they the Commonwealth of Virginia or, more likely, the State of Texas put a convicted killer to death, they're doing exactly what God has appointed them to do. But that's not to say that God condones zealous vigilantism. I can only imagine that the right spirit is a purposeful, tempered, somber and sorrowful one when a government must put a man to death.

Why is this God's choice? I don't know. Something about this makes God difficult for me. If he would at least wipe out all murderers and evildoers this way cart blanche, then perhaps I would then feel a bit more at rest knowing that all murderers and terrors are being snuffed out. But this life isn't that way. The tension of the psalmists' cries is the very tension of our own lives: "O God, why are you waiting so long to set things right? Your people are harrassed and put to death while the wicked get off Scott-free!" But he doesn't. And I know that he desires to uphold, preserve, and promote life in all its wholeness and fullness. I guess that's a tension I can only rest with for now until its secrets will be revealed in Glory.

Then again, maybe God has instituted capital punishment, a life for a life, precisely because he does value life. One life is being put down so that many others will be spared. As not only citizens of heaven but also citizens of the earth, removing a murderer really is a necessary act of love for our neighbors and fellowmen. (I believe this was the logic of the murder attempt on Adolf Hitler linked to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.) And we all ought to be glad that's the way God works. As Caiaphas prophesied on that fateful day in A.D. 30, "You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish" (John 11:50). Only on the day that criminal was put to death, it wasn't for sins he had committed, nor was it to save him from killing others. When Jesus was sentenced to death and nailed to a tree, he was dying for our sins; it was to save us from killing ourselves in this life and then to save us from being killed by God after that. And because "in our place condemned he stood," we are now free men. Thank God for capital punishment.