I have talked with a lot of people about belief in Jesus over the years. Everyone who knows what he taught about charity and loving our neighbors finds him appealing. But the idea that he came to die as a sacrifice for our sins has the opposite effect—to put it mildly.

People say things like:

• The Jewish Bible teaches “to obey [God] is better than sacrifice.”1
• It’s hard to believe that any “sin” I may have done could possibly deserve the death penalty.
• The whole idea of blood sacrifice is sickening.
• What about personal responsibility? If I did something wrong, I should be the one to make it right.

I agree with all these points, as many of Jesus’ followers do. But there’s more to the story. If we find Jesus to be compelling for the beautiful things he says and does, it makes sense to consider the more challenging—and yes, even offensive—things he also said.

These days, it seems like offending people is the cardinal sin—and it’s easy to assume that anything that offends us must be wrong. But haven’t you ever had someone who really loves you point out something that offended you or hurt your feelings—but on thinking it through, you realized it was true? And because you looked past the way it made you feel, you were able to become more the person you needed and wanted to be?

The hard things that Jesus said are best understood in the context of the relationship God wants to have with us, all of which is richly illustrated throughout the Jewish Bible. That leads to the following question:

Aren’t love and obedience more important than sacrifice?

Yes, the Jewish Bible clearly says that God prefers love and obedience to sacrifice!2 In fact, the New Testament affirms that very point (Mark 12:33). But if we refer to the biblical saying that love and obedience are more important than sacrifice, we need to address the elephant in the room:

How are we doing with our love and obedience?

If that question seems nebulous, here’s a practical picture that might help. A doctor tells a patient, “I’d prefer that you control your blood sugar through diet and lifestyle instead of medication.” But if the patient is unable or unwilling to control her blood sugar, she will need that medication.

So back to the elephant in the room. If God prefers our love and obedience to sacrifice, how much love is he talking about? This much: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). That’s a lot of love. So, should we be worried?

Everything we love is subject to situations beyond our control.

Most people today don’t worry much about whether or not they love God to that (or any) extent. We worry about things like our pay checks, our love lives, and our reputations. It’s pretty normal to be anxious— afraid, even—when everything and everyone we love is subject to situations and circumstances beyond our control. There are countless ways to lose the people and things we look to for meaning and security. These worries may not seem at all related to our feelings about God, but what if they actually are? If we love God more than anything and anyone, we’ll never have to fear losing what we love the most—and we’ll put a lot less pressure on things and people to deliver the security we long for.

Whether or not we see our lack of love for God as the source of anxiety, there’s still the matter of how God sees our failure to love him. If the Bible is true, replacing God with other loves leaves us disconnected from him and spiritually dead.

Jesus said he came to restore our spiritual life and connection to God by giving himself as a sacrifice. Or did he?

Did Jesus describe himself as a sacrifice for sin?

Some have assumed that Jesus’ followers came up with the idea long after he was gone, but a quick look at his teachings shows otherwise. Most of what we know about what Jesus said and did is recorded in the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also called the “Gospels”). These accounts contain all the things people love about Jesus, and they also allow us to “overhear” other things Jesus wanted us to know, including how he was going to die and why.

As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them,

See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man3 will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day…. even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:17–19, 28;4 emphasis added)

The Gospel of John further elaborates:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Jesus did not promise that if we believe in him, our hearts will never stop beating. He promised that we will have an everlasting future with God if we put our trust in him and the sacrifice he came to make on our behalf. This is hard to take when we live in a culture that continually tells us to believe in ourselves and our ability to be whoever we choose to be.

It looks like Jesus is saying that if we want to come alive to God and experience the life he offers, we need a drastic solution that only he can provide.

What about personal responsibility?

God does want us to take personal responsibility. If we have harmed another person and it’s in our power to make restitution, we should.5 The problem is, what if we owe more to God than we can ever make amends for? If he’s our loving creator, we owe him all we have, including first place in our hearts. But none of us is able to give him that. Instead, we spend our love on people or things that we believe will satisfy us more than God can. That’s never going to change if we don’t see it—and even if we do see it, we can’t make ourselves love God more.

In that case, taking personal responsibility means admitting that we don’t have what it takes to live up to our side of a relationship with God. It means admitting that we need his forgiveness, and that we are not entitled to set the terms for that forgiveness.

The Torah spells out God’s terms. He can’t act like sin never happened, and he doesn’t want us to act like it never happened. His forgiveness comes at a cost: the death of an innocent animal in our place. God says,

The life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. (Leviticus 17:11 NIV)

Once the Temple was destroyed, those sacrifices were no longer possible. Jewish tradition has dealt with this major change through teaching that since sacrifice is no longer possible, we should rely on repentance, charity, prayer, and fasting. But there is no indication in the Bible that God provided any replacement for his original system of atonement.6

And no other means of atonement is necessary if we see Jesus’ mission as the fulfillment of the whole system. If you think about it, an animal could not literally be a “stand-in” to pay the price for the sins of humanity. But according to Isaiah 53—written hundreds of years before Jesus was crucified—a certain person who had committed no sin could and would pay the price.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

(Isaiah 53:4–6)

Why Are We Offended?

Why would we be offended by the idea of Jesus dying as a sacrifice for our sin if it was predicted by our own prophets? What exactly is it that’s so offensive?

When I look back on my own feelings, I see that I was offended that God apparently did not share my assessment of myself. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I could not believe I was that bad. Surely I wasn’t bad enough for Jesus to bleed and die in my place.

I realized I had more loving words for my dog than I did for God.

When did I stop being offended? When I realized that I consistently gave my heart, soul, and might to all the good things God had given me—instead of to him. At one point, I realized that I had more loving words for my dog than I did for my God! Even though that horrified me, I could also see that I was powerless to change. That’s when I began to think that maybe God was the one who should be offended.

That’s when I finally could say, “God, I don’t want to treat you like a vending machine. Thank you for promising to love and forgive me. Thank you that all my selfishness and self-centeredness were dealt with on that cross with Jesus. Please help me to love you and trust you and find the life I was meant to live.”

At last, I could let myself be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of love it took for Jesus to suffer, not just willingly—but intentionally—on my behalf. To say that kind of love is appealing would be putting it mildly. It’s a totally transforming love that tells us we’re worth more than we ever dared to imagine. Who could stay offended in the face of that kind of love?

If you are interested in talking with a Jewish follower of Jesus about this, we would be so glad to hear from you. Send us a message or connect with one of us on our site’s livechat.

Endnotes

1 1 Samuel 15:22.

2 1 Samuel 15:22.

3 The “Son of Man” was a messianic title that came from Daniel 7 in the Tanakh. And in the Hebrew Scriptures, a “ransom” is the price to set a sinner or criminal free from guilt in the Hebrew Scriptures; see Exodus 21:30; 30:12–16; Numbers 35:31–32; Job 33:19–28.

4 See also Mark 10:33–34, 45; John 10:18.

5 For example, Exodus 22:7–14.

6 Some Jewish people practice a version of that ritual on Yom Kippur to this day, using chickens.