On Facebook I encountered an atheist who said he was familiar with the disputes between non-Messianic Jews and believers in Jesus [i.e. Gentile Christians and Messianic Jews]. He thought the Jewish arguments against Christianity are better than the arguments for Christianity. At one point he asked the following.
//can you point to one verse that God allows human blood for atonement?//
The following was my answer:
1. Jesus isn't a MERE human. Yes, Jesus was truly human, but He was (and is) also truly God. While only the human nature of Jesus died [NOT the Divine nature], the divine PERSON endured the sufferings of death and died substitutionarily for sinners on their behalf. As a Protestant I hold to penal substitutionary atonement [though, that's consistent with being coupled with other subsidiary theories of the atonement]. Being Divine, Jesus' sufferings and death are of more value [infinite] than that of finite creatures and therefore could atone for an infinite amount of creatures if necessary.
2. This is also why it's natural to think that the animal sacrifices weren't the ultimate solution for atonement. How could inferior animals atone for superior humans who ARE moral agents? Whereas animals are not moral agents, and don't even rise to the level of human sentience. To use a poor analogy, that's like accidentally destroying a gold wedding ring and offering to make up for it with a beer can ring tab. The OT predicted the coming of the Messiah, and it makes sense for much of the Mosaic Covenant and its laws to be figurative or symbolic or emblematic of the future Messiah's work.
3a. When God was angry with the people of Israel, Moses offered himself to be punished in their place. So the concept of human substitution wasn't completely foreign to a Semitic mindset.
Exo. 32:32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin --- BUT IF NOT, I pray, BLOT ME OUT OF YOUR BOOK WHICH YOU HAVE WRITTEN."
3b. Even Judah offered himself in the place of Benjamin when there was the threat to arrest Benjamin for allegedly stealing the silver cup. Unbeknownst to them it was their brother Joseph who was testing them. It's interesting that it's JUDAH that offers this exchange/substitution. The Davidic line is from the tribe of Judah. For us Christians, this is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus who is the heir to the Davidic throne.
4. We Christians believe Isaiah 53 clearly teaches the death of the Messiah as an atonement for sin. I understand that Non-Messianic Jews reject this. I've heard their arguments. I think the Christian arguments are better. See Michael Brown's responses, for an example.
5. Daniel 9:24-26 is another passage Christians believe predicts the atoning death of the Messiah. Of course, Jews reject this interpretation, and atheists think that the book of Daniel is riddled with false and failed prophecies. Atheists believe that the ones that were fulfilled were postdictions and that the book itself was written much later than is claimed [e.g. cf. the recent debate at Modern-Day Debate between 2 atheists and 2 theists].
6. In Numbers 25 when the Israelites committed harlotry and idolatry, God commanded the rebellious leaders of the people [who were HUMAN like Jesus] to be executed in order to turn away the anger of the LORD as a kind of atonement. Jesus is the Federal Head of His people similar to how these leaders were representatives of the people. Similar to how they were punished to save the people under them, so Jesus was punished in the place of His people [BTW, as a Calvinist my default position is Limited Atonement, but I'm open to other views as well].
Num. 25:
1 Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab.
2 They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.
3 So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel.
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take all the LEADERS of the people and HANG THE OFFENDERS before the LORD, out in the sun, THAT the FIERCE ANGER of the LORD may TURN AWAY from Israel."
That doesn't just sound like mere expiation [removal of sin or guilt], but surprisingly even the stronger idea of propitiation [i.e. turning away wrath].
7. We Christians believe that the command by God for Abraham to sacrifice of Isaac was emblematic of God's sacrificing His Son in our place. Right before Abraham was going to carry it out the Angel of the LORD [whom many Christians think is the pre-incarnate Jesus] told Abraham to stop and not harm Isaac. Then a ram was found nearby which was evidently provided for by God to be the substitute for Isaac. God had many reasons for commanding the sacrifice of Abraham. Some include
1. To show that Abraham's commitment to his God was no less than other pagans' devotion to their gods.
2. To indicate for all time afterwards that God rejects human sacrifice [we can discuss Jephthah if you like].
3. As a figure of Christ' sacrifice, the unique Son of God, just as Isaac was the unique son of Abraham.
Notice the prophecy in Gen. 22:14
Gen. 22:14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided."
That's the same area in which Jesus was crucified. For the Christian, the crucifixion of Jesus was the place and time when that prophecy was fulfilled and provision of final atonement was provided.
Some after thoughts:
It is true that great relief was provided by the ceremonial law, for provision was there made for obtaining forgiveness. The means for effecting this was the sacrifices— "the life—blood of an irrational creature, itself unconscious of sin, being accepted by God in His character of Redeemer for the life of the sinner. A mode of satisfaction no doubt in itself unsatisfactory, since there was no just correspondence between the merely sensuous life of an unthinking animal and the higher life of a rational and responsible being; in the strict reckoning of justice the one could form no adequate compensation for the other. But in this respect it was not singular; it was part of a scheme of things which bore throughout the marks of relative imperfection" (P. Fairbairn).
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