It is significant that the New Testament authors apply words and images from Israelite worship to Jesus Christ. In so doing, they show how the church sought to interpret Jesus, whom it recognized to be the Christ.
Jesus Christ, in his appearance as the incarnate Word of God, displayed a personal presence and power that moved people to an awed and worshipful response. When Jesus directed the Galilean fishermen to a miraculous catch, Peter fell at his feet, crying, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). As a woman suffering from a hemorrhage touched the hem of his garment and was healed, Jesus sensed that power had gone out from him; in fear and trembling the woman fell down before him (Mark 5:25–34). The soldiers who came to arrest Jesus “drew back and fell to the ground” when he spoke (John 18:6). The resurrection of Christ further verified his identity as the one appointed by God to fulfill his purpose in the redemption of his people. This left the apostles with the task of explaining the crucifixion as a part of the divine plan. To do this, they drew on the work of the prophets of Israel, especially the portrait of the “servant” of the Lord found in the later chapters of Isaiah; they also drew on the imagery and terminology associated with the festal and sacrificial cultus of the Hebrew sanctuary, including the concept of atonement.
Atonement Terminology
The idea of atonement relates to the need to be shielded from the wrath of a holy God, yet not in the moral sense alone (that God is good and man is evil); rather it is because God is God, the Creator, and the worshiper is a finite creature that the gap between them must be bridged by some atoning act. The Creator is of surpassing worth; in contrast, the worshiper is as nothing before him. Atonement is a “covering” (the basic meaning of the Hebrew kafar) that provides a cleansing or consecration for the worshiper, enabling him or her to enter the presence of God and to have fellowship with him. Thus, by sacrifice atonement is made for priests, the people, and even for the sanctuary and the altar (for example, Lev. 16) that the profane might venture to approach the sacred and serve God’s purposes. In another connection, a leper who is cleansed must have atonement made through the slaughter of a male lamb (Lev. 14:1–20). The concept of atonement defies rational explanation but belongs to the realm of the “numinous,” or suprarational, intuitively experienced aspects of the holy.
The word atonement is not found in the New Testament, although a suggestion of its basic meaning is found in Peter’s statement that “love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). But the concept of atonement underlies the apostolic proclamation that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3), and the New Testament theologians approach the mystery of the atonement using symbols drawn from Israelite worship. In this respect the apostles were following the example of Jesus himself, who had told them that the Son of Man had come “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The term lutron, “ransom,” relates to the Israelite concept of the redemption of the firstborn. The firstborn of clean animals were to be offered on the altar (Num. 18:17), but the firstborn of humans and of unclean animals were to be redeemed by a payment (Num. 18:15–16). As understood by the early Christians, however, the concept of ransom goes deeper, as a symbol interpreting the atonement of Christ.
Thus, in the New Testament, Christ’s death is called an offering or sacrifice; Hebrews calls his death “for all time one sacrifice [thusia] for sins” (Heb. 10:12), and Paul says that Christ “gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering [prosphora, something brought forward or presented] and sacrifice [thusia] to God” (Eph. 5:2), introducing also symbolism from the incense offerings of the Hebrew sanctuary. Paul’s declaration that God made Christ “who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21) also relates to the sacrificial rites; as applied to Christ, the word sin (hamartia) should be understood as “sin offering,” equivalent to the Hebrew ḥatta’t, the sacrifice that rehabilitates the worshiper after transgression. Hebrews elaborates on the concept of sacrifice as applied to the obedient death (under the figure of the “blood”) of Christ (Heb. 10:1–22) and also refers to our sanctification “through the offering [prosphora] of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10 nasb); Christ is not only the sacrifice, but also the High Priest who offers it (Heb. 7:26–27).
The furnishings of the sanctuary also provide an image used to interpret the atoning death of Christ. In Romans 3:25, Paul refers to the redemption in Christ Jesus, “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (nasb). The word translated “propitiation” or “means of expiation” is hilastērion; the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) uses this term for the lid of the ark of the covenant (Exod. 25:16–22), on which the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:14). The apostle John employs a related term in declaring that if anyone sins, Jesus Christ, our Advocate with the Father, is himself “the propitiation [hilasmos] for our sins” (1 John 2:2; 4:10 nasb); the Septuagint uses this word in the sense of “sin offering” or “atonement” (Num. 5:8; Ezek. 44:27).
Imagery of the Lamb
The idea of atonement for sin is only part of the Old Testament worship symbolism the early Christians used to interpret the death of Christ. In the context of a discussion of judgment of immorality within the church, Paul compares Christ to the Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7–8). The Passover lamb was not a sin offering but the meal signifying the Lord’s covenant with the people he was about to deliver in the Exodus from Egypt; the blood of the Passover lamb marks the household of the people of the Lord for their protection during the time of divine judgment (Exod. 12:1–13). Thus, Paul urges the Christian community to separate itself from the “leaven” of unrighteousness, for “Christ our Passover [pascha] also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast [heortazō] … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:7–8 nasb)” the crucified christ is the Lamb whose blood identifies the true covenant community in the face of the wrath about to fall on the unfaithful.
The writings of the apostle John also use the slain lamb of Israelite worship as a symbol interpreting the crucified Christ; uniquely in the Johannine writings, Jesus is directly called “the Lamb.” In the gospel of John, John the Baptizer testifies to Jesus as “the Lamb of God [ho amnos tou theou], who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). However, the concept underlying this phrase does not seem to be atonement and sacrifice. It is noteworthy that in the Old Testament it was not a male lamb, but typically a bull, a ram, or a goat that was offered for sin (or, in the case of the scapegoat, driven away bearing the residual sin of the people, Lev. 16:20–22), yet the New Testament never likens Christ to any of these animals, but only to the lamb. How, then, does he “take away the sin of the world”? The thought seems to be that he does so through his victory over sin, in the utter obedience of his death on the cross. Christ’s obedience “to the point of death” is an important aspect of Paul’s Christology, but in Philippians 2:8 he relates it to Christ’s exaltation as Lord rather than to atonement for sin, just as the author of Hebrews relates Jesus’ endurance of the cross to his exaltation to the right hand of God (Heb. 12:2). In the same manner, the Revelation exclaims: “Worthy is the Lamb [arnion], who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Rev. 5:12). Here Christ appears as the victorious Lamb, reigning with the Father as “KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Rev. 19:16). He takes away sin, not only by his offering of himself, but by his victory and dominion over evil as the “great King” who delivers his covenant people from their enemies. He takes away sin through the power of his life, dwelling as God himself in the midst of his people, the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1–8). He takes away sin through the radiance of his presence, as the temple of the holy city and its light: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple [naos]. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp [luchnos]” (Rev. 21:22–23). Here, through the figure of the Lamb, Christ is compared also to the lamp of the sanctuary.
Light and Glory
Imagery of light or radiance, so familiar from Israel’s worship of the Lord, is applied also to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Jesus is the “light of the world” (to phōs tou kosmou, John 8:12), the “radiance [apaugasma] of God’s glory [doxa]” (Heb. 1:3). The apostles witness Jesus transfigured in brightness like the sun (Matt. 17:2); John beholds his face “like the sun shining in all its brilliance” (Rev. 1:16). New Testament witnesses affirm that in Christ we behold “the light of the knowledge of the glory [doxa] of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6 rsv), that “we have seen his glory [doxa], the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father” (John 1:14). As the glory of God, Christ is also “the image [eikōn] of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15 rsv), the “exact representation [charaktēr] of his being” (Heb. 1:3). This language originates in the festal worship of Israel, which centered in the theophany or manifestation of the Lord, as his glory [kavod] appeared to his people or filled the holy place. In the Sinai covenant, Yahweh descended on the mountain in fire (Exod. 19:18). In Israel’s subsequent worship of the Lord, which was a continual renewal of the covenant, his glory manifested itself, so that “from Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth” (Ps. 50:2). No image could be made of Yahweh, but his “glory,” the radiant envelope of his presence, was understood to be enthroned over the ark of the covenant. This concept further illuminates the application of the term hilastērion, “mercy seat,” to Jesus Christ, for the mercy seat was the place where Yahweh was to meet with his people, speaking to them “from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony” (Exod. 25:22 rsv). As the triumphant Passover Lamb and as the representation of God’s glory, Christ maintains and defends the covenant between the Lord and his faithful people and is the Word (logos) through whom God speaks to his people (John 1:1, 14; 1 John 1:1; Rev. 19:13).
The Curse of the Covenant
Understanding the covenantal foundation of Israelite, and Christian, worship sheds light on another expression used by the apostle Paul, who declares, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse [katara] for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’ ” (Gal. 3:13). The biblical covenant is modeled on the ancient treaty, which included both stipulations and sanctions in the form of blessings if the covenant is maintained and curses that take effect if it is broken. In the Bible, the clearest example is Moses’ farewell sermon in Deuteronomy (Paul was quoting from Deut. 21:23 in the Galatians passage), a description of a covenant liturgy that closes with an extended ceremony of blessing and, especially, cursing (Deut. 27–28; 32–33). The curse element in the covenant liturgy was what generated the pronouncements of the prophets of Israel and Judah; in their declarations of judgment against the nation, they were announcing the outworking of the curse of the covenant as the consequence of its violation by an unfaithful people. Paul sees Christ, who died on the “tree,” as having borne this curse so that the covenant, broken by its original grantees, may now be renewed with the new “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16) made up of both Jew and Gentile. Jesus understood his own death in this way, as is clear from his prayer in Gethsemane, when he asks the Father to “take this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). The cup of poison was one of the curses traditionally administered to covenant breakers; in his death, Jesus is to bear this curse on behalf of the unfaithful, that others might be set free to enter the kingdom of God. In the Revelation, John sees that in the new Jerusalem “no longer will there be any curse” (Rev. 22:3), for the Lamb receives the homage of the community of the new covenant.
Imagery Relating to Gentile Inclusion
The inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant, through the death of Christ, is the great “mystery” or now-revealed truth Paul celebrates (Eph. 3:3–7). In explaining this mystery, Paul uses additional terminology drawn from Old Testament worship.“He [Christ] himself is our peace [eirēnē], who has made the two one” (Eph. 2:14). In the Bible, peace (shalom) is that state of blessing and salvation which is the purpose and effect of the covenant, but one gets the impression here that, in speaking of Christ as our “peace,” Paul is thinking specifically of the peace offering (shelem), which in Israelite worship was a sacrifice that restored and maintained fellowship between the worshiper and the Lord. Both Jew and Gentile were condemned as “objects of wrath” under the old covenant (Eph. 2:3), the Gentiles as “foreigners to the covenants of the promise” (Eph. 2:12) and the Jews as disobedient (Eph. 2:3). But Christ in his death has reconciled both groups to God (Eph. 2:16), building them together into “a holy temple [naos],” “a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21–22 nasb). The image of the Israelite sanctuary as emblematic of the union of Jew and Gentile in Christ also occurs in the statement of James during the apostolic council recorded in Acts 15. Here the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God is viewed as the fulfillment of Amos’s prophecy concerning the restoration of the booth, or tent (skēnē), of David (Acts 15:16–17; Amos 9:11); the tabernacle was the original tent that housed the ark after David had it brought to Zion and for which he directed continual prophetic, nonsacrificial worship as reflected throughout the book of Psalms (1 Chron. 15–16).
Sabbath Imagery
The epistle to the Hebrews employs the imagery of the Sabbath in interpreting the event of Jesus Christ. Whereas the disobedient and unbelieving are excluded from entering God’s rest (Heb. 3:18–19), “there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9 rsv). The thought seems to be that by his sacrifice of himself, Jesus the “Great High Priest” has become the Sabbath rest of the believer, who “rests from his own work, just as God did from his” (Heb. 4:10).
Conclusion
The New Testament thus applies much of the worship vocabulary of the Old Testament to its understanding of Jesus Christ and his new covenant community. But there is a new spirituality to the use of these terms; they are employed not to describe external acts or features of worship but as a means of grasping the inward significance of the event of Jesus Christ. As the writer of Hebrews says, “You have not come to a mountain that can be touched … But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God … to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 12:18, 22, 24). The same spirituality that infuses the Christians’ use of the terminology of Hebrew worship is now to transform their worship as well. In Jesus’ words to the woman of Samaria, the Father is to be worshiped “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21) but by genuine worshipers who “will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).