In modern life, you rarely hear people talk about atonement. It’s just not an everyday word that rolls off people’s lips. The main exception is at synagogue on the High Holy Days or maybe in some Christian churches.

What Jesus said about atonement came right from the Tanakh. But it also brought something unique and more than a little startling. Namely, that the Messiah himself would bring about atonement through his death, a kind of ultimate Yom Kippur.

Make Teshuvah and Believe the Good News

Some of Jesus’ first words in the New Testament outline the core message he was spreading across Israel. It was a message in which the question of atonement was central.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:15)

“Repent” could be translated by the Hebrew word shuv, a common enough word in the Tanakh. Or as we might say today, “make teshuvah,” or “do repentance.”

“Gospel” seems like a rather goyishe-sounding word, but it too comes from the Tanakh. It means “good news,” or in Hebrew, besorah. It is found, for instance, in Isaiah 52:7, where it is put in parallel with “peace,” “good news of happiness,” and “salvation.” This good news is about God saving his people from oppression and hardship—something that first-century Jews were eagerly hoping for.

When Jesus says, “the time is fulfilled,” he is telling people: this is happening now. But as we’ll see, it happened in a rather unexpected way.

In fact, the prophets of the Tanakh had said that all the nations of the world, not just Israel, would someday be able to be part of God’s Kingdom. So this was not only good news for Jews—it was the start of a world-renewal project.

And what was the key to entering God’s kingdom and finding good news? Repentance (תְּשׁוּבָה, teshuvah). Return, the core meaning of repent. Return to God and put your faith in what God was doing through Messiah Jesus.

But repentance from evil goes hand-in-hand with atonement. In repentance, we turn from our sins back to God. Atonement is the means that makes repentance effective.

“I Have Come to Call Sinners”

Here’s another word that you don’t often hear today: sin—except, once again, in churches or in synagogues on the High Holy Days. The basic idea of sin is that humanity falls short of following God’s rule as the king of the universe. He created us and told us the best way to live, but we forget him or even engage in outright rebellion.

You wouldn’t think God would want those kinds of people in his new kingdom. Many religious leaders in Jesus’ day certainly didn’t. But Jesus told them this:

Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9:13, cf. Hosea 6:6)

Here, Jesus quotes what the prophet Hosea said about sacrifice in the Tanakh. It’s counterintuitive because sacrifice was commanded for atonement in Torah, and mercy was supposed to be its result.

We need a bit of background here to get what Hosea means. Jewish worship before 70 AD, when the Temple was destroyed, involved the sacrifice of animals as the means of atonement. Sin led to consequences, including ultimately death. But the animal would go to death in place of the human, securing atonement and forgiveness when accompanied by genuine repentance.

Jesus came for those who really knew that they needed God’s mercy.

Hosea and Jesus weren’t saying that sacrifice was wrong. It was needed for atonement. But they spoke out against those who went through the motions of atonement without repentant hearts.

Jesus adds that he wasn’t here for the “righteous,” for people who thought they were fine with God because they brought animals to sacrifice and said the right prayers. No, Jesus came for those who really knew that they needed God’s mercy and his forgiveness. Which is really all of us—no human is without sin (Ecclesiastes 7:20, Psalm 130:3, Isaiah 53:6).

As often seems to be the case, the religious leaders tended to imagine themselves into the righteous category and put everyday people into the sinner category. Maybe this is why Jesus challenged, in very strong language, the hypocrites among the Pharisees (see Matthew 23). The Pharisees were a grassroots movement of religious teachers; they were popular with the people and were also the forerunners of the rabbis of post-70 Judaism. The Talmud (compiled a few centuries after the time of Jesus) was also critical of a certain type of Pharisee whom it called “Shechemite” or “shoulder” Pharisees—i.e., Pharisees who performed their good deeds for show.¹

He Came to Give His Life as a Ransom

The most surprising thing about what Jesus said about atonement concerned himself. Jesus said that a key part of his role as Messiah was to be an atoning sacrifice.

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28).

“Son of Man” was a Messianic title drawn from Daniel 7.² And a ransom is a way of buying back the life of someone who has fallen into bondage. Jesus is essentially saying that giving his life will pay for others to be freed from their bondage to the power of evil in the world—just as the sacrificial animals gave their lives to secure atonement.

Jesus did not just pull this out of his kippah,³ so to speak. Isaiah 52:13–53:12 speaks of a “suffering servant” who gives his life for the transgressions of his people. He becomes a sacrifice—by giving his life, he dies in the place of others and secures atonement for them.

The Russian-French Jewish painter Marc Chagall famously painted several pictures of Jesus’ crucifixion, in which Jesus is wrapped in a tallit while shtetl scenes and pogroms fill in the background. For Chagall, Jesus was the symbol of Jewish martyrs who willingly gave their lives for the sake of God. And in a sense, Jesus was a martyr, if by martyr we mean someone who dies for the sake of a cause.

Jesus’ cause was to bring atonement to the world in a way that went beyond the sacrifices portrayed in the Tanakh. For the truth is that since the Temple is no more, those sacrifices are no longer possible—Judaism has substituted repentance (without sacrifice), tzedaka (charity), and fasting. But what if the Messiah’s sacrifice of himself was designed to outlast the Temple’s destruction?

A Most Unusual Passover Seder

The night before his death, Jesus gathered in a room in Jerusalem with twelve of his disciples for a Passover meal. Though it didn’t quite resemble a modern-day seder, we can think of it as Seder version 1.0. And here’s where Jesus had something to say.

Among the items on Jesus’ Passover table, there was matzah and, it seems from the gospel accounts, at least two of today’s four cups. And the ha-motzi and the borei p’ri ha-gafen—or a version of them—were recited over the bread and the wine, as is still done today.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body. “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:27–28)

Once again Jesus says that giving his life—his body, his blood—will secure “the forgiveness of sins.”

The Willing Death

One last word from Jesus—this time about his willingness, even his desire, to give his life for our forgiveness.

I am willing to give up my life, in order that I may receive it back again. No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back. (John 10:17–18, TEV version)

“Receiving it back” is a reference to his future resurrection from the dead. But the point here is that Jesus willingly became a sacrifice that lasted beyond 70 AD, a sacrifice that enables us to receive atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God.

Reflecting on all this, one of Jesus’ followers named Paul, wrote:

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Messiah died for us. (Romans 5:7–8)

An act of love, an act of death, an act even of martyrdom—this is what Jesus did for us.

Endnotes

1 For more perspective on this, see Kaufmann Kohler, “Pharisees,” from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

2 Based on Daniel 7, portraying a human-divine figure, “one like a son of man.

3 Poetic license. Kippot didn’t actually exist until later on.