Part Two: Legalism vs. Relationship

In Part One we looked at the biblical concept of justice as "making things right", and how it contrasts with the perspective of Satisfaction-Doctrine which sees justice in conflict with mercy. In this section we will be exploring the purpose of the law and the sacrificial system from a first-century perspective (that of the Apostles and Church Fathers) and contrasting it with the medieval perspective of the Satisfaction-Doctrine.

In Satisfaction-Doctrine love is not central, but viewed with suspicion. It is something that needs to be watched closely, lest it infringe on the demands of justice. In contrast to this, the book of Romans talks about the "double sidedness" of the law: it is something fundamentally good (Rom 7:7,12), but when it is outside of love the law can become a tyrant (Gal 3:23; Col 2:14), that "brings death" (Rom 7:8-11). Throughout the New Testament, it is love and not law that is central to how we understand God. Grace is the foundation of our faith, not law (Rom 6:14) Love is the essential quality that defines who God is - God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16). Both Paul and Jesus say that to love is the summation of the entire law and the prophets (Gal 5:14, Rom 13:9, Mt 22:36-40). Love is the greatest of all virtues, (1 Cor 13:13). It is the mark that God is truly in our lives (1 Jn 4:8), the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). If love is absent, all other virtues such as wisdom, faith, sacrifice, miracles, obedience, you name it, become meaningless and worthless (1 Cor 13:1-5), but if we have God's love for us, then nothing - not Hell or sword or trouble or sickness - nothing can pull us away (Rom 8:31-39). So it is love that needs to govern the law , not the other way around. It is love that needs to rule in our lives and societies.

In contrast to this, Satisfaction-Doctrine makes the law central. God is seen as the lawgiver-judge seeking the "perfect law-keeper". "The judge" in this view is not concerned here with relationship, but with obedience. Transgress the law at any point, and you are condemned and given the death sentence ("for the wages of sin is death"). If you have ever read an evangelistic tract, you have most likely heard this view expressed. The Chick tracts are a classic example of this, where in comic book form the characters always end up having a conversation similar to this one:

Tell a lie, steal a cookie, and you are condemned to Hell. Since no one can keep this kind of law, since "all have sinned", their theory continues, God requires that Jesus comes and lives a perfect life so as to be an acceptable sacrifice to God. That is a classic Satisfaction-Doctrine in its popular culture form. And it is allegedly based on the writings of the Apostle Paul. The problem is that Paul does not base his gospel in law, but in grace. And thus these Bible quotes are taken out of context to support something that Paul never would have - the creation of a new law.  Paul says this in no uncertain terms:

Satisfaction-Doctrine

It is absurd to say that Paul advocates Satisfaction-Doctrine because if there is one thing that Paul stressed it is that God never wanted us to come to him through performance and law.

begins with the assumption that God demands a performance of perfection. Paul in contrast says we can't come to God through law but only through faith. It is therefore absurd to say that Paul supports or advocates the Satisfaction-Doctrine because if there is one thing that Paul stressed over and over it is that God never wanted us to come to him through performance and works and law, but always from day one wanted to be in a relationship with us. When Paul speaks of "atonement", he simply means our reconciliation seen in relational terms, not legal ones. Similarly, Paul does not see sin in a legal framework as a "transgression", but in relational terms as "separation" (Eph 4:18), and "alienation" (Col 1:21). Sin means being estranged from a relationship with God, and salvation entails being restored into that relationship.

Paul does indeed say that all of us, including himself, have sinned. We are all in need, all flawed.  Paul even characterizes himself as the greatest of all sinners (1 Tim 1:15), but he never claims that we are incapable of keeping the law. In fact, Paul claims that he kept it. He describes himself as "as far as legalistic righteousness - faultless" (Phil 3:6). Yet he goes on to say that he considers this accomplishment to be "rubbish" (v. 8). compared to being in a relationship with God in Christ through grace, and he does not try to encourage people to follow the way of law , but to enter into the freedom of the way of grace though the Spirit. Why? Because Paul knew from his own life that his zealous, flawless keeping of the letter of the law led him to be, in his own words, 

His former religious legalism led him to being hateful and abusive. It "produced death" in him, he says, and "alienated" him from Life. Paul knew first hand the severe damage legalistic fanaticism could do in one's own life and in the lives of others, which is why he was so opposed to legalism later (cf. the entire book of Galatians which is a treatise on the dangers of legalism replacing grace). It took an encounter with the risen Jesus and a community that loved its enemies to turn him around, but once he (literally) saw the light, he became an outspoken champion of the way of grace over law.

Compare that picture of the results of legalism in Paul's life before his personal encounter with God, with the example of Jesus: Unlike Paul, and unlike us, Jesus was without sin. Yet from a legal perspective (unlike the "legally faultless" Paul) Jesus broke the law frequently. And what's more, he broke the law so that he would be without sin: he broke the law in the interest of love. He broke the Sabbath to heal the sick (Lk 6:7-11) the penalty for which is death (Exodus 31:15), he touched the untouchables thereby making himself defiled according to the law (compare Lev 15:19 and Mk 5:25-43), and fellowshipped with sinners (Mk 2:15 Mt 9:10 Lk 5:29 Lk 15:2) thereby getting a reputation as a "friend of sinners" and a sinner himself (Lk 7:34 Lk 7:36-50). When the law required that a woman be stoned to death for committing adultery (Lev 20:10), he forgave her instead (Jn 8:3-11). He forgave people freely even though this was a direct affront to the temple priests (Mk 2:6-7 Mt 21:15, 23) who required a sacrifice to grant God's forgiveness (Heb 5:1-3). Jesus required none. Jesus does not side with the religious authorities but shocks and confronts the religious establishment as he defends the outcast, the rejected, the untouchable. He does not identify with a legal system, he identifies with the lamb, the victim. He is not by any means the model law-keeper, but instead models the perfect relationship with God - Father and Son. He models what it looks like to live by the Spirit of grace. He does not show us a lawgiver God who demands perfect obedience but instead reflects God's heart of compassion towards us, especially those marginalized and rejected by the System.

Understanding the cross from a legal perspective ignores the fact that the eternal model for God's dealing with humanity is relationship. Even the heroes of the Old Testament are not noted for their moral perfection but for their faith - for their trust (cf. Hebrews 11). The covenant promise that God makes with Abraham is not of law but of a trust relationship (Galatians 3:6-9). "The law introduced 430 years later," Paul writes, "does not set aside the covenant previously established with God" (v. 17) "What was then the purpose of the law?" Paul asks (v. 19) He goes on to explain that the law was put there as a "caretaker" or a "tutor" to protect and lead us to Christ (v. 24) Just as a child needs clear rules and borders at first but later as it matures learns to be responsible, so the law by setting borders leads us into maturity and beyond the tutelage of a system of rules into a responsible relationship with God through a life of following the Spirit. The law thus acted as a transitional measure to restrain and curb a people's destructive and hurtful tendencies, and to lead them to maturity as they internalized the love and compassion that the law pointed to. "The entire law is summed up in a single command: "love your neighbor as yourself" (Galatians 5:14)

The law was not an eternal blueprint from God for all time but a specific relational word spoken into the already existing sinful culture of the Hebrews to point them towards God's true way of compassion. As Gilbert Bilezikian explains,

It bears repeating: the law was not an eternal model but was a relational word spoken prescriptively into an existing fallen culture to curb their hurtful and abusive behavior and ultimately point them towards God's way of love in a personal relationship. The law was never intended as a substitute for a relationship with God, for "If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law" (Galatians 3:21) But rather the law points us to faith: "Now that faith has come we are no longer under the supervision of the law" (3:25)

Both Paul and Jesus in their criticism of the law were not attacking Judaism with which they both identified deeply, but how sin had taken that law and turned it into something that caused people to draw lines that kept others away from God and justified self-righteousness. They were speaking out against the deadly spirit of legalism. Paul explains that the law was intended to lead us into relationship, to prepare us for grace, yet for many of us, including Paul, the law led to legalistic "Phariseeism" - a hurtful, self-righteous judgmentalism rooted in law not in love.  Rather than seeing where the law pointed - towards love and a living relationship with God - Paul had mistakenly focused on the law as an absolute system, as an end in itself. By obeying this system, by performing, by doing and believing the right things, he hoped to be able to gain God's favor, but instead ended up with a toxic and abusive faith. "I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring me life actually brought me death" (Romans 7:10). Paul cries out then "Who can save me from this death trap!" (v 24) and the answer he finds is grace.

That is Paul's story, and the story of many of us as well. The irony is, we cannot perform our way into God's favor because we were never meant to function separated and estranged from God. Outside of a relationship with God we cannot be right-eous. We can only be truly ourselves together with God. The model that Jesus demonstrates for us again and again is not that we  first repent and are then forgiven, but rather that we are first forgiven, and then we repent. We do not have to be good in order to be accepted and loved by God, rather we are accepted and loved by God and then we can be good. There, in that place of acceptance and safety with God, we have the freedom to change. Thus as Paul says, faith does not nullify the law, but rather it enables us to fulfill its purpose (Romans 3:31) . Eugene Peterson, in his brilliant paraphrase of the book of Romans, writes

We now turn to the temple system which was the center of religious life for the Old Testament Jews. Satisfaction-Doctrine traces the need for sacrifice back to the temple sacrifices so it is important to understand them from a Jewish perspective rather than a Pagan one. We will therefore be looking at the concept of temple sacrifice in the Old Testament and the temple as it is understood in the light of the New Testament. The book of Hebrews tell us that the temple was a reflection of the heavenly realms, but the real model is the heavenly one

The cross is the fulfillment of the temple not in the sense of the ratification or sanction of the existing earthly temple system, but in the sense of its being raised to its original purpose which was to point to heavenly things. In the time of Jesus the third temple rebuilt by the infamous Herod the Great had become a corrupted institution. The Sadducees, a religious group of the wealthy, who collaborated with the Romans in order to keep their power base, now controlled the Temple. Bringing a sacrifice became something that could only be done by people who could afford an animal from the merchants. This is the scene where Jesus kicks over the merchant stands and money-changers' tables in the temple area and says "You have made the house of my Father into a den of thieves!" (Mt 21:12-13)

Instead of us bringing a sacrifice to God to appease him, through the cross God brings a sacrifice to us to reconcile us.

The temple which had a monopoly on forgiveness through the required sacrifices had turned communion with God into a franchise shutting out the poor and dooming them to a life as outcasts and untouchables. The temple had strayed from its original purpose, just as all good things can stray from their purpose and become corrupted. Instead of pointing people to heaven and drawing them close to God it shut the door in the face of the poor. Just as with our lives, the restoration of the temple involves at the same time a repentance of where it has become opposed to God's purpose, and a restoration back into that purpose. The book of Hebrews says that the cross means the end of the entire temple sacrificial system which was only a shadow of the real thing (Heb 10:1) and is declared inferior (Heb 8:6-7) and obsolete (Heb 8:13). Now that the real thing had come there was no need for the model. On the cross the temple veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies was torn in two. The dwelling of God was now in the hearts of His people (Eph 2:21-22) Thus the fulfillment of the temple through the cross meant its subversion into God's Kingdom. By making forgiveness available directly through grace, the temple's monopoly claim on franchised forgiveness was subverted. Through Christ's "coup de grace" we now have direct access to the Holy of Holies. 

Moreover, the cross is not a parallel to the earthly temple system where according to Satisfaction-Doctrine we must bring a sacrifice to appease God, but just the opposite. Instead of us bringing a sacrifice to God to appease him, through the cross God brings a sacrifice to us to reconcile us. Jesus led the way for us vicariously in the ultimate sacrifice, taking on the life of a servant, aligning himself with Love, and enduring suffering for the sake of the poor and the captive. Here we have a very different concept of what “offering” means in relation to Jesus - it is not about him offering his life to appease an angry God, but about his entire life being a fragrant offering of selfless servant-love as he cared for the least and the poor. The offering that God gave in Jesus was not just about his dying. The offering God gave the world in Jesus consisted of his entire life , of his example showing us God's way of love, revealing for us God's heart of compassion towards us. The life of Jesus is God’s gift to us in order to draw us close to himself. Jesus' entire life was a sacrifice as he took on the life of a servant caring for the poor and the forgotten. We too are called to bring our lives as a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1) not only "negatively" by renouncing hurtful things in our lives, but also "positively" by living the life of other directed love that Jesus embodied. Jesus death was not the offering, his entire life was. The cross was the culmination of this entire life of "cross bearing" as Jesus stood up for love even to the point of suffering and death

It should be clarified that from a Jewish perspective the purpose of the sacrifices was never to appease God, which is a Pagan concept, but to cleanse us (cf. Heb 9:13-14) and draw us near to God. In Paganism there are many gods: the god of war, the god of harvest, the god of fertility and so on. These gods do not represent the embodiment of goodness (which is a monotheistic view of God) but were more like a heavenly counterpart of earthly kings and dictators - very powerful and just as ruthless, temperamental, and despotic. The Pagans presented offerings to these tyrant gods to appease their wrath so that the gods were kept happy and would not decide to wipe out their crops or send a plague when they are in bad humor. Sadly many people today have adopted a similar image of God as some angry authority figure in the sky who we need to appease lest we be punished. The Jewish concept of monotheism however says that there was only one God who was the embodiment of goodness, justice, and mercy. Yahweh is not a celestial tyrant like these other false gods who present a false image of authority based on oppression. Yahweh does not need a bribe to convince him to be just or merciful because he is the very definition of justice and mercy. God does not need an appeasement to forgive. On the contrary Jesus tells us that Yahweh is our model for loving our enemies:

" But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. " (Math 5:44-45, 48)

God is the initiator of forgiveness. God does not respond to what we do, we respond to what God does. Our repentance is in response to God’s love not the condition for it . The idea of appeasement is based on a pagan concept of god-like power - on a hurtful conception of what power and greatness are. Here, power means being big enough to crush the small. Thus the small need to appease the wrath of the powerful. The biblical conception of god-like power that we see both in Jesus and the prophets however is about justice, which means defending the small. Thus the prophet Isaiah writes

"The multitude of your sacrifices- what are they to me?" says the Lord . "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats… Stop bringing meaningless offerings!... wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow". (Isa 1:11,13,16-17)

The true gift to God is to “wash and make yourselves clean” and to seek justice by defending the oppressed and the broken. The Hebrew word translated as "sacrifice" is korban. The root karev means to "draw close." Sacrifices are to help us draw close to God. The New Testament understanding of sacrifice as an act of self-sacrificing love traces back to this Old Testament understanding of the korban. There is certainly here the concept of vicarious atonement, meaning that through the sacrifice we are reconciled to God, but not understood in the legal context of a requirement or an appeasement but as an act of communion.

Nachum Braverman, a Jewish Rabbi, describes the process

"You rest your hands on its head and you confess the mistake you made. Then you slaughter the cow. It's butchered in front of you. The blood is poured on the altar. The fat is put on the altar to burn. How do you feel? (Don't say disgusted.) I'll tell you how you feel. You feel overwhelmed with emotion, jarred by the confrontation you've just had with death, and grateful to be alive. You've had a catharsis. The cow on the altar was a vicarious offering of yourself"

There is certainly here the concept of vicarious atonement, meaning that through the sacrifice we are reconciled to God, but not understood in the legal context of a requirement or an appeasement but as an act of communion. This was a deeply moving experience for the person bringing the korban, and is very much a parallel to the profound mystical sense of communion with God that one experiences when taking part in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Communion is not something that we understand with our minds but something we experience with our hearts. While most people could hardly articulate what it means to them to partake of the blood and body of Christ, there is an almost universal recognition of it being a profoundly moving experience. It is a communion that goes beyond words. If you have experienced this deep communion of the Eucharist then you have understood the meaning of sacrifice on a heart level. If anything I want to draw our attention here more to the passion of the cross, not lessen it. And the best way to get a hold of this passionate self-sacrificing love is through the language of the heart, through drama and story, through the act of worship in hymns and music, through the sacrament of communion we come in contact with the drama of the radical love of God in a tangible way that engages us on a heart level letting its reality take hold of us, and move and change us.

I want to also make it clear that when I am criticizing Satisfaction-Doctrine I am doing so solely on the aspect of it portraying the sacrifice as a legal appeasement, and not on it being a vicarious atonement. As we have seen both in the scriptural motifs of sacrifice in the Old Testament and the sacrament of communion in the New, there is definitely an aspect of vicarious atonement found in scripture. That is, we are reconciled to God (at.-one-ment) vicariously through Christ's blood. That means that the cross was costly - our salvation didn’t come cheap. And it was messy - the cross is not tidy and neat. It is a shocking image covered in blood dirt and sweat, but what it shows us is love. Sacrifice in the New Testament speaks of the Divine Romance. "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" Taken in a relational sense instead of a legal one, the image of sacrifice can be something beautiful and moving. Like the passion of a parent who is willing to sacrifice anything to get their child to safety. Or to take a recent example, like the firefighters who sacrificed their lives in the World Trade Center. Self-Sacrificing love is not about "fulfilling the requirements" but is infinitely bigger than that. This model of sacrificial love is what inspired the nonviolent movements of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The model of this kind of devotion, this kind of sacrifice, is God himself. God calls us to die to ourselves, he calls us to serve, but he does this not by demanding it as a king would, but by serving us, bowing down and washing our feet, caring for the weak, giving all that he has, loving us first, and beckoning us to follow.

If you have experienced this deep communion of the Eucharist then you have understood the meaning of sacrifice

As stated above what is significant about the New Covenant is that it is no longer  man-to-God  but God-to-man. Instead of us bringing a part of ourselves as a gift to bring us closer to God, God gave a part of himself as a gift to bring himself closer to us. It is not about us reaching out to God in a legal performance system, nor about the human Jesus performing in that legal system to appease God, but about God reaching out to us in grace. In keeping with Jesus' entire "upside-down kingdom" where the smallest is the greatest, where God values most those which society labels the least, where the greatest is the servant, the entire system of man reaching up to God is reversed as God reaches down to us. Not only is the cross not the upholding of the system, it is the subversion and restoration of the system into God's kingdom of compassion.  Satisfaction-Doctrine has it backwards: it is not God who needs to be reconciled to us, but we who need to be reconciled to God.

We are the ones who have enmity against God. And God's response is to love his enemies

God does not respond to what we do, we respond to what God does. God reconciles us and we have only to open our lives to it and welcome it in.  God is not interested in our sacrifices, he wants our hearts, all of us. He is and always has been seeking a relationship with us.

Thus the sacrifice on the cross is at the same time a subversive and revolutionary affront to the corrupted temple sacrificial system described by the Prophets, as well as a positive example of sacrificial love from a  relational paradigm.  God is not a distant judge in the sky, he is a God who has come searching for those who are lost.  And in searching for us he is willing to break any rule, to endure any sacrifice, pay any price, endure any shame, just to get us back. The sacrifice was for us, not for God. Jesus did not die to appease an angry God; Jesus died for you and me, so we would finally wake up to the fact that God loves us and always has. Now that we have been reconciled to God through the cross, we are called by Jesus to "pick up our cross and follow" (Matthew 16:24) and the context in which this is said is not of us needing to appease God, but to join Jesus in the way of self-sacrificing love. Throughout scripture we are called to join Christ in his sufferings

What is significant here for our purposes is that the "suffering of Christ" referred to is clearly not defined as Satisfaction-Doctrine would say, as an appeasement to God, but as a way of life which we are also to embody. In the light of these passages it is impossible to view the cross in the terms of a legal appeasement. Taking on the "the sufferings and cross of Christ" is to follow the way of self-sacrificing love that we are called to participate in together with Christ.  We do this by taking on the life of service that Jesus exemplified (Phil 2:4-8; 3:10) defending the oppressed and standing up for what is right (1 Pe 2:19; Ma 5:10) . In fact, Jesus told his disciples that if they followed him in his way that it would lead to suffering (Jn 16:1-4) because the way of love is opposed to "the way of the world" (Jn 15:18-19) . In this world we will have trouble, but Jesus tells us that he has overcome the world. In part three we will examine how the way of sacrifice that Jesus exemplified in his life and on the cross overcomes the world.

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