Continued from part 1.

Somehow, God taught the Israelites, the blood of another (even an animal) can atone for my sin. At first, that seems to be a nonsensical notion. How could the death of John Doe (or his Holstein) make up for my wrongdoings?

Really, though, substitutionary sacrifice is not such a radical concept. It's just that our modern minds have lost their grasp on community responsibility.

We catch a glimpse of the idea in Acts 16, in a passage that we American Evangelicals consider very strange. Paul had been unjustly locked in prison, but in the middle of the night, God decided to release him. So the Lord sent an earthquake. All the prison doors flew open, and the jailer was so astounded by the miracle that he immediately asked Paul, "What must I do to be saved?"

Paul replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" — now here comes the strange part — "you and your household."¹

I don't think Paul's theology was so muddled by jail time that he was promising 10 salvations for the faith of one. Other parts of the Bible make it clear that when I stand before God, I'll be judged by my trust in Jesus, not somebody else's.

Nonetheless, Paul was saying something very important here; something we tend to discount in individualized America. This jailer was capable of having a radical impact on the people in his community — so radical that he could bring them to faith. The company that his family kept was about to transform their lives.

Community responsibility was also a key part of Old Testament Israel — for better and for worse. The kings in particular left a gigantic footprint on their nation. In fact, the decisions made by a few people in power — say, when they worshiped idols — could have repercussions on everyone else. The nation was judged, even though only some of them turned away from God. Justice was meted out a community, not an individual, basis. Chances are good that some idol-worshippers escaped, and innocent people were carried off into exile or killed in their place.

It was, on one level, horribly unfair. But on the other hand, no one claimed unfairness when a good king, like David, brought blessings to Israel.

War

Let's look at a more contemporary example of community responsibility and sacrifice. The pundits say that war is what happens when one nation imposes its will on another with a lot of killing. If the conflict is a just war — say, preventing the Nazis from overrunning Europe — the killing is done in the name of high ideals. After all, shooting German soldiers on the battlefield ended the Holocaust and released whole nations from tyrannical rule.

But here's the problem: Many of the Germans who died never worked in a concentration camp, never supported Hitler, never even volunteered for duty (but were drafted instead). Yet the Allies still tried to shoot anyone wearing a German uniform. It was the only way to win the war.

It was horribly unfair: perishing for something you don't believe in may be the most ignoble of deaths. Yet in some sense, Germany itself, a nation made up of millions of people, was responsible for all of the Holocaust's evil. So ordinary citizens, people who'd done nothing wrong, died for the sins of Adolf Hitler.² And why were Americans shooting machine guns and dropping bombs on these innocents? Ironically, because we believed in justice — that a penalty had to be paid to restore freedom to the world.

So what if this same principle of righteousness applies to the whole fallen creation as it cries out for redemption? What if everything on earth must bear the brunt of sin, just as surely as German soldiers bore the punishment for Hitler's depravity? What if the animals who died on the altar of ancient Israel shared the communal responsibility of their owners? What if sacrifices were the only way to balance the scales of justice?

Look at it this way. If Hitler couldn't have influence over others — if he couldn't bend others to his desires — "free will" would be an empty phrase. If the Allies could have defeated Germany's evil without sacrificing blood, we would rightly suspect that God had created robots instead of people. And if "absolution" or "forgiveness" were granted without so much as a sacrifice, the words would cease to have meaning. Hitler and his nation would have been free — free to continue murdering Jews at Auschwitz.

When God demands blood for blood; sacrifice for sin; we dare not see it as the bloodlust of an angry Deity. It's the law of fallen nature that demands the death of one to give life to another. The immutable principles of justice exist as surely as the cow had to die to bring us nourishment to our plates.

In short: If we want God's standard of morality, we must also accept God's standard of punishment. Yes, His standard is death — the lamb on the altar who accepts the guilt for its community's life-destroying evil. But the alternative would seem to be either anarchy, or losing our ability to choose.

The Guillotine

Still, my heart is not completely satisfied with this explanation. "Isn't there some other way?" I want to ask. "Isn't there a solution to sin besides rivers of blood?"

Perhaps not: Bloodshed seems to be inherent in the nature of justice, founded in the nature of God. But it's possible that an infinite God had other options. After all, He prefers repentance to sacrificial blood, according to David the Psalmist (who should have known, since he'd shed Uriah's innocent blood just before repenting).³ Perhaps God could somehow have avoided the rivers of red life pouring from altars.

Unfortunately, I don't think we would ever understand the heights of God's love if it didn't involve sacrifice. Sometimes, the grisly magnificence of suffering is the only thing that can get through to us.

Charles Dickens set his greatest novel, A Tale of Two Cities, at the time of the French Revolution. Sidney Carton was a successful young lawyer; Lucy Manette, the daughter of a physician. From the moment he saw her while defending a case in court, Sidney was hopelessly infatuated with Lucy.

He longed for the infatuation to blossom into love, so he began to visit her family. He became a fixture at her house; a consistent caller — yet Lucy never developed any romantic inklings for him. He became a respected friend, but never a prospective husband.

That honor was reserved for another man, Charles Darnay. This French aristocrat looked much the same as Sidney (in fact, strangers had trouble telling them apart), but they were very different beneath the shared face. Sidney was lazy drunkard who wanted more for his life, but was fundamentally unwilling to mend his ways. Charles was a nobleman who was truly noble; one who stood up against injustice and worked hard to lead a significant life.

Lucy and Charles married, and Sidney continued to come to their house — a persistent and welcome visitor. His infatuation with Lucy had grown into the far deeper love of a treasured friendship.

But not many years into the marriage, tragedy struck. Charles traveled from England to his native France, and was arrested by the revolutionary government. His only crime: being an aristocrat, that hated class that had abused the French peasantry for so many years.

Never mind that Charles stood up for the rights of the common people. Never mind that he'd actually renounced his noble status. His identity was enough to send him to the guillotine.

So the day before Charles was scheduled to die, Sidney conceived a desperate plan — the kind of strategy that could only be occasioned by his deep friendship; his immense love for Lucy and her husband. Sidney Carton resolved to take Charles' place on the guillotine.

Of course, he knew Charles would never agree to let someone die for him voluntarily. But Sidney was determined: He arranged to visit Charles in prison, and took chloroform with him. He held an anesthetic-soaked rag under Charles' nose. When the guards came to carry the unconscious "visitor" out — who they thought had been overcome by the terrible conditions in the prison — they were not bearing away Sidney Carton. Instead, they carried the insensible body of Charles Darnay.

And so the next day, when the open carts rumbled towards the guillotine, as they always did, it was not Lucy's husband who knelt at the block, and whose severed head ended in the bloody straw-filled basket. Instead, it was the man who shared her husband's face, and who loved Charles and Lucy more than life itself — Sidney Carton.⁴

The Passover

Sidney's imperfect love could only atone (and then only in a temporal way) for one man. But the magnificence of his sacrifice is immeasurable. Can you imagine how it would change your outlook on life if someone died in your place?

Of course, Someone did — and thank God, His love is not imperfect.

For thousands of years, the Passover — God's supernatural deliverance of His people from slavery — has been celebrated by Jews around the world. The rituals remind them that God birthed their nation with an impossible rescue.

In the time of Moses, God passed judgment on the Egyptians, taking the life of every firstborn son from the palace to the prison. But the Hebrews were be spared from the judgment — if they obeyed God's directions. So each family was told to slaughter a "perfect" lamb, one without defects, and eat the meat while giving thanks for their deliverance. Even more importantly, they were to sprinkle fresh blood — the precious redness that had kept the lamb alive — over their doorposts. In this way, said Yahweh, the Angel of Death who forced the Egyptians into obedience would bypass the Israelites.

Almost 2000 years later, Jesus celebrated the Passover with His disciples on the eve of His death. But now, He imbued the elements of the meal with new significance. He Himself would be the lamb; the bread His broken body. Meanwhile, the wine became His spilled blood. And unlike in every other sacrifice commanded by God in the Old Testament, His disciples were instructed to drink the spilled blood in a lasting memorial called "communion."

It is a strange commandment — so strange that in the early church, Christians were sometimes accused of cannibalism when they celebrated the Eucharist. It was also a reversal of 2000 years of Mosaic Law — never before had God's people eaten blood. But perhaps this radical departure was designed to make the disciples sit up and take notice that this bloodshed; this giving of life; was more precious than every Passover lamb combined.

When I reflect on the idea of drinking blood, I recoil in horror. How could I participate in consuming someone's very life? But then I'm forced to reckon with the grim fact that my filth occasioned the death of God: In drinking His blood, I'm only finishing the work I started with my sin. I also begin to understand that Christ's love led Him to do for me what Sidney Carton did for Charles Darnay — voluntarily place His head on the block in my place.

As we sit in comfortable pews and sip grape juice from portion-controlled cups in a ceremony that has become a gangly add-on to the worship service, our thoughts rarely reach to the significance of the act. But in communion, we are consuming the most precious fluid in the world, the only remedy for our proud complacent self-righteousness.⁵

So the communion draught reminds me, as surely as if I laid my hand on the head of a slaughtered bull like priests of old, that this sacrifice is given for me. Yet in the cup of Christ, I take the metaphor one step further. Like Abigail in The Crucible, I must actually consume the blood to complete the work.

And so when the hymn writer asks, What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? the answer should be obvious. The only possible response is to undergo the disgusting and shocking — but utterly truthful — communion ritual that shows me responsible not only for killing God, but also for drinking His life in my cup.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Nothing but the shedding of blood could atone for my sin. Nothing but the drinking of it could adequately remind me of my complicity in murdering God. Nothing but death could set me free to new life — life that will one day be based not on blood, but on spirit, and remain forever in the company of the Lamb of God. That's why the old hymn continues:

Oh, precious is the flow,
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.⁶

* * *

1. See Acts 16:25-32.
2. This thought should sober us, as Americans, when we contemplate the decisions being made by our leaders.
3. Psalm 51:16-17. See also Hosea 6:6.
4. This story is taken from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (New York: Bantam Classics, 1981 — originally published in 1859). It's one of my all-time favorite novels, and I highly recommend it.
5. For those familiar with the "communion debates," I am not advocating transubstantiation (the idea that bread and wine are literally transformed into Christ's body and blood). Nor am I suggesting that we are saved from our sins through participation in communion. But don't miss the big idea here: In communion, we are (symbolically) consuming Christ's blood, remembering that it's only through His (literal) blood we can be saved.
6. "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus," by Robert Lowry (public domain).