Moffitt: Rethinking the Atonement
I have now read the fifth of twelve books suggested by FB friends. This one was recommended by Michael Asbell. This is my summary.
David Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2022).
While the term “atonement” is most often used to describe the cross of Jesus as the focus of God’s atoning activity, Moffitt suggests that “atonement” is more inclusive than the cross itself. Rooting his argument in the homily we know as Hebrews, the work of atonement involves not only the cross but Christ’s resurrection and ascension. God reconciled the world through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Messiah. This is a more wholistic picture. I have argued this myself in several places (including in this summary, though I don’t have an emphasis on ascension that belongs in this picture as well).
Moffitt argues that Hebrews, while proclaiming the death of Christ as the sacrificial slaughter for our sins, focuses more attention on the ascension of the resurrected Christ into God’s holy sanctuary to present the blood offering and to take up residence in that holy space as the high priest who presently and continually intercedes for the saints. His point is that in addition to the cross, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus are “themselves fully and robustly salvific” (p. 5). All of these events in the life of Jesus are atoning. God saved us through the death of Christ “but even more by rising, ascending, and now interceding for them at the right hand of the Father” (p. 6).
Hebrews patterns the work of Christ on the model of the Levitical sacrificial system, though Christ is actually the archetype and Leviticus is the type. The sacrifices were slaughtered, the blood was poured at the altar, and then the blood was taken into the most holy place and sprinkled on the ark of the covenant. Through the blood offering, the high priest interceded for the people.
The preacher in Hebrews understands the work of Christ in this way. Jesus is slaughtered on the cross and poured out at that altar, but then the resurrected Jesus ascends to the most holy place (the heavenly sanctuary) to present the offering before God. As high priest, Jesus remains in the presence of God to intercede for the people. Though Jesus could not be a priest on earth because he was from Judah and not Levi, he is a priest in the heavenlies according to the order of Melchizedek continually interceding for the people. In this way, Christ’s atoning work continues in the presence of God, and Christ is present to God as the embodied resurrected Messiah, our high priest. Consequently, the church lives with confident boldness as it journeys through the wilderness of life because it knows that its heavenly high priest stands before God as its intercessor.
Typically, the cross is understood as the singular place where Jesus offered himself as a bloody sacrifice and on the cross presented himself to the Father. Moffitt, based on Hebrews as well as a few other texts, wants to understand those two movements in a sequence. Christ first shed his blood on the cross and thus offered himself as one who bears the sins of the people, and then the resurrected Christ offered himself in the heavenly sanctuary when he ascended to the heavenly sanctuary. Hebrews teaches “Jesus is the one who died as the sacrifice, rose as the sacrifice, and ascended into the heavenly tabernacle to offer himself to God as the sacrifice” (p. 65).
Moffitt rejects claims that Jesus is the object of divine wrath. The function of the shedding of blood is not about turning away God’s wrath. Rather, the sacrifice suffers the covenant curses for the people, and so did Jesus. He suffered as a representative in solidarity and identification with the people. Jesus was the obedient representative of the people who renewed Israel’s covenant with God through the sin-bearing function of his death, and gave this renewed covenant eternal meaning through the presentation of his offering in the heavenly sanctuary as an eternal high priest, the resurrected Jesus, the Son of God.
While the Son came to earth to bear sins (as in bearing them away), he will come again without sin and for full salvation. The work of reconciliation (or atonement) is not done until Christ returns and fully deals with sin in all its consequences.
Through the lens of Hebrews, Moffitt’s book is a welcome acknowledgement that atonement is a fuller concept than simply the work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus is both victim and priest, both sin-bearer and intercessor, both the offering and the offeror.
The atoning, or reconciling, work of God in Christ by the Spirit is the full story of the gospel: incarnation, life, cross, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and return.
June 3rd, 2023 at 10:17 pm
He also makes the point that we conflate Passover and the Day of Atonement into Good Friday.
In Luke 4 Jesus starts his ministry at the synagogue in Nazareth by announcing the Jubilee. This was to be done on the Day of Atonement.
Curious how we can connect Jesus’ atonement actions with the Day of Atonement.
October 4th, 2023 at 7:41 pm
Luke 9: 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of His death
(departure) which He was about to ACCOMPLISH in Jerusalem
Smeaton—The allegation that His priesthood began not on earth, but at His ascension, has only to be placed in the light of this epistle
to be fully refuted. Its entire teaching proves that He acted as a
priest during His whole humiliation, and that His death was a
sacrifice (Ephesians. v. 2 ; Hebrews. ii. 1 7, v. 7).. a. The high
priest under the law was not first constituted a priest when he
entered the holiest of all: he had already, in his capacity as high
priest, slain the sacrifice, the blood of which was carried within the
veil. And, in like manner, Christ was already a priest when He gave
Himself for His people. It was not, and could not be, a new sacrifice
within the veil, when one part, and the principal part of it, was
performed previous to His entry.
b. The passages which make mention of Christ’s one oblation, or of His
offering Himself once, are conclusive as to the fact of His being a
priest on earth; for that word once cannot be understood of what is
done in heaven. It must refer to His death as a historic fact, completed and finished here below. It is against all reason to affirm
that the sacrifice was offered once, if it still continues. Nor does
the epistle stop there: the analogy instituted between the fact that
it was appointed to all men once to die, and the one atoning death of
Christ (ix. 27), leaves us in no doubt that we must view that
sacrifice as completed on the cross.
c. The priestly sacrifice which Christ offered is emphatically
described as coincident with the Lord’s death. The clearest proof of this is furnished in this epistle (Hebrews 9: 26), when it is noticed
that the Lord was under no necessity to offer Himself often, like the
Jewish high priest, who had to offer a new sacrifice with every annual
return of the great day of atonement, and enter with the blood of
others. It declares that to offer Himself often would have been
equivalent to a repeated suffering on the part of Christ; and
therefore there can be no more conclusive proof that Christ was a
priest on earth, and that His sacrifice was consummated by His death
during His humiliation.