By John Fulton
God stood before the crowd.
An invisible God had made himself visible by begetting a Son through a virgin. That Son was the exact likeness of the Father, a complete representation of his character whom God had sent as an envoy to explain and show the people in bodily form who he was, what he was about, and what he wanted. This Son had walked among them, healing the sick, restoring movement to the lame, enabling the blind to see and the deaf to hear. He’d sat down with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, and the “worst” of humanity. He’d shared with them spiritual healing, the will of the Father, and done exactly what the Father would have done.
God stood before the crowd and they shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him, …!”
God stood before the crowd, and they in essence shouted, “Die! Die! This God must die!”
The God who had revealed himself and shown his character and will in this teacher, this man of healing, they wanted to die. They did not want this God.
But why? Why must this God who’d walked and talked and eaten and slept among them, why did the people demand his sacrifice? Why must this God die?
It has long been argued that sin must be atoned for with blood. The narrative declares God is an utterly holy, righteous, and just God who cannot be in the presence of sin. Every human is just a sinner covered in sin who can only sin and cannot do good. This sin must be atoned for, and only through the shedding of blood can you be in the presence of God. The origin of this prevalent narrative goes back to the early centuries of the Christian church, and it dominates the pulpits of churches in the west. This narrative about the sinfulness of man and the requirement of blood atonement; Luther, Calvin, Augustine and others say, is why this God must die.
The foundation for this narrative rests primarily upon three principal events: the garden, the giving of the Law at Sinai, and the crucifixion. There is a long history of human theologians who have built up a dogma and theology upon it, but whose narrative is this really? God’s or men’s? Surely it must be God’s, for it has been the unchallenged narrative and teaching of Christendom for forever, and you’ll find it preached everywhere. But is it, and is it truly unchallenged? Or have voices opposed this narrative over the millennia only to be crushed and stamped out by the established hierarchy before it lost its power and control? Much as the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, and Sadducees had to stamp out the message of the God made flesh. What other narrative could explain these three events and the history of God’s relationship to the world? Let’s take a look at these three moments and understand the God Who Didn’t Need to Die but Did Anyway.
Garden of Eden
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve violated the command of God and ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Arguably the most momentous sin in the history of the cosmos, this sin surely required a massive sacrifice and shedding of blood to atone for it before God could be in the presence of Adam and Eve, or so the theologians argue. The problem is the supposed sacrifice occurs at the end of this scene in the Bible where God fashions for Adam and Eve coverings of animal skins. And supposed sacrifice is the right way to phrase it, for this moment is described as the first sacrifice of an animal and the shedding of its blood to atone for sin. But there are several problems with this understanding of events described in the earliest chapters of the Bible.
First, the Bible never says God sacrificed an animal, nor does it say any blood was shed to atone for their sin. This simply isn’t part of the Biblical narrative here. There is no mention of sacrifice, or shedding of blood, or atonement for sin. Why? If this is what was taking place, it’s an extremely important point God forgets to mention.
Second, why would the God who forgives sin “for his name’s sake” (that’s his fundamental character), “who does not desire the blood of bulls and goats,” and “who desires mercy and not sacrifice;” sacrifice an animal and shed its blood to atone for this or, for that matter, any sin? Given that God just got done creating the entire cosmos out of nothing in Genesis chapter 1, it is certainly possible, at least for the moment, to say he didn’t need to sacrifice any, nor was any, animal sacrificed to provide Adam and Eve custom fit, animal skin clothing. The narrative doesn’t describe a sacrifice or shedding of blood, for it never occurred. And if for some reason an animal was actually physically killed by a God who is spirit and who just made an entire universe out of nothing, then it wasn’t a sacrifice to atone for sin. If it was, the Bible would say so, but it doesn’t.
Third, if the shedding of blood was required to atone for the sin and enable Adam and Eve to be in God’s presence, then there is another problem with the Biblical narrative, because the first thing we see God doing after THE sin of all sins occurred, is God walking right up to them and asking what happened. Here we have God in the presence of sin and sinners with no blood shed, no sacrifice, no atonement, engaging in relationship with man. By the established narrative, this cannot be. Adam and Eve should have burst into flames or died or… The important point to never overlook here is the party that broke off relationship with God over sin was not God, but man. Man, fully aware of what he’d done, did not want to be in relationship with God, came up with his own system of taking care of his problems, hid from God, and when sought out by God, blamed everything but his own action for why the relationship was severed.
Mount Sinai
God’s descent at Mount Sinai to meet with the people is documented in Exodus chapter 19. Following God’s visitation to the people, he immediately launches into giving them the Law. In the Law, many sacrifices are given, and the meaning and purpose of them is varied, but the sin offering and atonement offerings are the key ones used to justify the theology that blood must be shed for the atonement of sin. This moment is a central pillar of support to the idea that God requires sin to be atoned for with blood as the only way for the sinful to be in his presence.
But the moment of Mount Sinai (Horeb) is also described in Deuteronomy chapter 5, and here lies a key interaction between the people and God that is skipped in the Exodus account.
“Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: ‘Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today. The Lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire, while I was standing between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.
He said, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me… You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’
These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire, of the cloud and of the thick gloom, with a great voice, and He added no more. He wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. You said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with man, yet he lives. Now then why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, then we will die. For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go near and hear all that the Lord our God says; then speak to us all that the Lord our God speaks to you, and we will hear and do it.’ The Lord heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have done well in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever! Go, say to them, ‘Return to your tents.’ But as for you, stand here by Me, that I may speak to you all the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which you shall teach them, that they may observe them in the land which I give them to possess.’” (Deuteronomy 5:1-7, 21-31; NASB 1995).
It’s important to break down this interaction to see what is going on and how this relates to why God would stand before a crowd demanding his death.
First, note how in this entire interaction between God and the Israelites, there is not one mention of sacrifice or blood. God did not demand the people sacrifice bulls and goats to atone for their sins before he came down to visit them. Yes, he told them to sanctify themselves in order to meet with him. But if you break down what he told them to do, he essentially told them to take a bath and put on their best cloths. These people would have understood that you clean up and put on your best to meet Pharoah, but they had no clue what the etiquette was for meeting God. So, he told them, “You’re going to enter my throne room and be presented before me; so take a bath, and put on your best.” Again, he didn’t tell them to sacrifice anything or atone for anything, and they most assuredly had plenty of sin to atone for.
In this state, washed and as dressed up as they could get, God descended and gave them the Ten Commandments—ten principles to govern the context of their lives and have direct relationship with him. Ten Principles devoid of any mention of sacrifice or atonement. Here God came into the direct presence of the entire congregation and spoke to them directly and approached them just as He had Adam and Eve. God, the Father, Yahweh, the Almighty—in the direct presence of people whose sin was not atoned for or covered by any blood—interacting directly with them and engaging and desiring relationship with them and giving them the guide posts by how such a direct relationship would work.
And what did the people say?
“Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with man, yet he lives. Now then why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, then we will die. For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go near and hear all that the Lord our God says; then speak to us all that the Lord our God speaks to you, and we will hear and do it.”
In other words, we don’t want a relationship with this God on these terms. We don’t want to speak directly with Him, nor be directly in his presence. Tell him to go away. You go speak to your God and tell us what he wants us to do that doesn’t require direct relationship with him.
And what is God’s response to this direct refusal to His offer to have intimate relationship with His chosen people?
“I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have done well in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever! Go, say to them, ‘Return to your tents.’”
It breaks my heart, and I think you can hear God’s heart breaking as well when he says, “They have done well in all they have spoken.” For in this sense, they had done well: they had left God a means, a path, through which to reach some of them and encourage them into the direct relationship He wanted—a relationship without atonement, blood sacrifice, or sin having any affect whatsoever on a direct face to face relationship. God’s reply is essentially this to their rejection of His offer of relationship: I agree to their terms, for it leave me a door through which to engage with them and encourage them to the relationship I desire and which is best.
Only after this offer of relationship and the rejection of the offer, only then does God start over and give Moses the sacrificial system with all its laws, sacrifices, atonement and blood. God gives them a system they understand and desire.
- A system in which a violation of the relationship (a sin) requires punishment, payment, and restitution.
- A system in which an eye is required for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, vengeance upon the criminal; social justice, etc.
- A system designed for people who do not want a direct and personal relationship with God or to walk in his ways and be in his presence.
Yet in this system God hid spiritual clues as to who he really is for those with the desire and the eyes to see. Man required the blood. God used their requirement to draw the people to the place where he would dwell so they could be in his presence and in so doing, maybe, just maybe, they would come to desire relationship with him.
God Became Flesh
As it is said in Hebrews, after roughly 1500 years or so of proving itself weak and useless (God’s description of the Law), God’s Spirit covered a virgin, and she gave birth to God in the Flesh. For some thirty odd years, God walked among a sinful people but demanded no sacrifice, required no blood. He walked with those sinners and tax collectors, approached and healed leppers, yet never once demanded sacrifice or atonement. Instead, he sat and talked and spent a lot of intimate personal time and contact with those deemed sinners by the Pharisees and Sadducees and did what he’d come to do: to reveal and explain his true character to those willing to hear.
And what was the reaction of the bulk of the human race to this renewal of the offer in the garden; this renewal of the offer at Sinai; this offer of direct relationship and ability to walk and be intimately in his presence without need of atonement or shedding of blood but just a heart longing to be with him and learn how to walk in his ways?
It was the same reaction it had always been. It was the reaction he knew he would get.
“Die! Die! This God must die! We want a God that will demand vengeance upon those who have hurt us. We want a God that demands blood for every sinful act that violates our sensibilities. We want a God who will kill, not love our enemies; a God who will punish, not love those who, in our eyes, have hurt us. We don’t want this God of relationship who is willing to forget the past and just start new if we but let go of past hurts ourselves. No! No! We hate this God! This God Must Die!”
And what was the response of God to this demand that he die? It was what it had always been.
“What the people say is good. They demand blood, so I will shed my own and leave them without excuse. Every sinful act will be paid in full up front, every violation and hurt covered. And through that blood, I can establish a new covenant with them. Since I will no longer be here in the flesh, I’ll write a copy of myself and who I really am upon their hearts. Many will still hate the kind of God I am and wish that I and those who love me will die, but they will not be able to say I didn’t provide recompense for all they demanded recompense for.”
As so, God died because some, not all, demand that to be in relationship with him or others, every past hurt must be atoned for, every misstep requires punishment for its occurrence. They don’t want to be in relationship with anyone or any God willing to let bygones be bygones. There’s no place in their heart for themselves or others to simply try to do better next time. It is those, for whom the Jews and Romans were a twofold representative and witness—one secular and one of his people—who crucified the God who took on Flesh and brought condemnation down upon themselves.
Now, if you’ve made it this far, the question likely arises as to why I have said, “The God who took on Flesh” or similar phases and have not yet once used the name of Jesus. Well, for two main reasons. First, the Church has turned Jesus into a caricature, little more than the barely clad, extremely muscular and handsome man on the cover of a romance novel. For too many, the name Jesus is so loaded it hides any semblance of who He truly is or what he did. Second, the point is he was God in the Flesh, an exact representation in physical form of who God is with respect to character and persona and will. He WAS God. And it was God, Yahweh, whom the people rejected with his offer of relationship and instruction and companionship.
Jesus, when given the chance to explain why he came, could have said it was to shed his blood as a sacrifice to forgive and atone for sins. But he didn’t say this. In none of his statements on why he came did he say this; but he does say that he came to reveal the Father. Jesus came so that when we look at his life, how he lived, what he did; when he read his words, hear what he said, how he explained the spiritual; we can see and know the Father and walk in like manner and be in relationship with him, as Jesus was in relationship with him. And as we imitate Jesus, we too reveal God to those who look on and provide them a visible representation of an invisible God who uses the entire cosmos to reveal himself and who he really is to those bound in flesh.
God didn’t need to die, but he did anyway:
- in order to destroy any objections we had left to be in relationship with him
- in order to destroy any whispered word of the demons that constantly strive to separate us from him.
He died to provide life to a new and much more intimate covenant in which his spirit literally indwells us.
He died because some men demanded it and what the people said was good so that through the window left open he might have relationship with even more. I say some men, because the disciples didn’t need it, they already wanted relationship with this God and never once did he need blood to be shed to be in relationship with them.
The church fixates on the blood, but the Bible doesn’t.
Read the crucifixion accounts and be amazed at how short and devoid of detail they are. The Bible fixates on the words and life of Jesus. It strives to get one to live and speak as he did, and it has a clear and undeniable underlying premise: YOU CAN! You can lift up the son of man, let Jesus reign in your heart, strive every day to speak and live as he did, but know you will sin. For, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:10, NASB95), and “Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins” (Ecc 7:21 NASB95). Righteous men sin! Those who walk with God, do good, are good, fail from time to time. Because God became flesh, he understands our weakness and frailty and the never ceasing onslaught of the world and demons upon us. But if our heart is toward him and for him, God is right there to walk with us, and we can carry on the mission of Jesus to reveal the Father to the world.
The blood was never needed. God didn’t need to die, but he did anyway to remove any objection that could be raised. There is no excuse left. If we deny him and deny relationship with him, its on us; the blood is on our hands.
But for those who have made it this far, it should not end on this note. Only those longing to truly know the Father and walk in his ways could have made it this far. Be encouraged, you can walk with God, you are good, you are not a sinner, although you do sin. Read the Bible to understand Jesus is working to reveal to you who God is and how you too can walk. And if it helps, know that your sins that were never in the way anyway, are more than dealt with. Rejoice! Glory in the Father! Enjoy being a member of the family. Show others the joy of being in him!
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