Quotes About Sacrifice

Holiness is multidimensional.

Reading backward in the light of the subsequent events, they interpreted the crucifixion as part of the strange, dark divine plan in which the shame and horror were part of the intended meaning. Jesus, they believed, had gone to the lowest point possible for a human being, never mind a Jew, never mind one whose followers had hoped he was the coming king.

we should be in no doubt that, for the gospel writers themselves, there was never a kingdom message without a cross

I think of the Jewish novelist Chaim Potok, whose artistic hero Asher Lev searches for imagery to express the pain of modern Judaism. The only thing he can find that will do—to the predictable horror of his community—is the crucifixion scene, which he paints in fresh and shocking ways. I think of the way in which the first Harry Potter novel ends with the disclosure that Harry had been rescued, as a young child, by the loving self-sacrifice of his mother. We could go on.

All this talk of "victory" means what it means because, as we have seen, on the cross Jesus died for our sins; the blood of the new covenant was shed for the forgiveness of sins. Sins, to say it once more, were the chains by which the dark powers had enslaved the humans who had worshipped them. Once sins were forgiven on the cross, the chains were snapped; victory was won. This opens up several vistas on the church's mission.

Both these elements, sin and death, need to be dealt with on the cross.

This is why too for every theologian who puzzles over abstract definitions of "atonement," there are thousands who will say, with Paul, "The son of God loved me and gave himself for me"—and who will then get on with the job of radiating that same love out into the world.

In most popular Christianity, "heaven" (and "fellowship with God" in the present) is the goal, and "sin" (bad behavior, deserving punishment) is the problem. A Platonized goal and a moralizing diagnosis—and together they lead, as I have been suggesting, to a paganized "solution" in which an angry divinity is pacified by human sacrifice.

Those who choose to live without God will one day find that they have forfeited their likeness to him.

Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and many others speak of dying for the law, for one's country, one's friends, one's family, even for the emperor.

In Christian theology it is God who deals with evil, and he does this on the cross.

Now the thing about Passover – one of the things about Passover! – is that when Israel was enslaved in Egypt nobody ever said it was as a result of their sin.

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook of our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is much, much more.

Like so many other early Christians and in line with Jesus himself, Paul interprets the cross in relation to Passover: a new Passover, a new Exodus.

This is how the cross establishes God's kingdom: by bearing and so removing the weight of sin and death.

In whatever way the New Testament tells the story of the cross, it is always the story of self-giving divine love.

The death of Jesus was the moment when the great gate of human history, bolted with iron bars and overgrown with toxic weeds, burst open so that the Creator's project of reconciliation between heaven and earth could at last be set in powerful motion. The myrtle will at last replace the brier, and the cypress the thorn.

To be baptized was therefore to die and rise with Jesus, to leave behind the old life and to be reborn into the new one.

Because of the cross, the world as a whole is free to give allegiance to the God who made it.

Jesus's way of life is the path of self-giving love

When Jesus calls, he certainly does demand everything, but only because he has already given everything himself, and has plans in store, for us and the world, that we would never have dreamed of.

How, then, can the Temple be cleansed so that humans, with the polluting smell of death upon them, can nevertheless come into God's Presence? The answer supplied by the levitical rituals is that the sacrificial blood is the sign of God-given life, a life more powerful than death, a life therefore that purifies both sanctuary and worshipper.

Jesus died for our sins not so that we could sort out abstract ideas, but so that we, having been put right, could become part of God's plan to put his whole world right. That

James and John have been asking for the places at Jesus's right and left so as to accompany him as he completes the glorious work of bringing in God's kingdom, defeating all the powers that have held the human race captive. But those places are reserved for the two who are crucified alongside him as he hangs there with "King of the Jews" above his head.