Bible Dictionaries
Sacrifice

　　1. Sources.-The sacrificial ideas found in the teaching of the Apostolic Church cast their roots so deeply in the soil of OT ideas and practice that careful reference to the sacrificial system inherited by apostolic writers from Jewish sources is essential. Even more closely than in other subjects, the apostolic literature assumes the genetic connexion of Christianity with Judaism in its doctrine of sacrifice. The OT thought-world is everywhere regarded as the basis for expounding the ultimate and more spiritual exhibitions of the sacrificial principle characteristic of apostolic interpretation. To make accurately and sympathetically the fine adjustments necessary between these transformed and spiritualized sacrificial values and their pre-Christian forms is of first importance. This task is the more difficult because the Jewish sources are themselves in turn inherited from primitive Semitic usages of which the meaning and origin are at present under investigation and the subject of keen discussion. Possibly reminiscences of each of the main theories advocated respecting the origin of sacrifice may be traced in the terms that illustrate apostolic teaching-e.g. the Gift theory (Philippians 4:18), the Homage theory (Romans 12:1), the Common Meal theory (1 Corinthians 10:14-22); the Expiatory theory is too obvious to need references. The one constant element in primitive sacrifice persisting to apostolic times that modern research, both anthropological and psychological, seems to warrant is that sacrifice appears to have pleased the object of worship and secured the favour of the deity-i.e., it was ‘propitiatory’ in the broadest sense. The most reliable expert opinion of different schools of anthropologists regards sacrifice as devised by man as an institution by which he might indicate and satisfy the instincts of his religious nature, and therefore only indirectly Divine in its origin. Sacrifice thus originated in primitive childlike ideas of God, and developed, through the primary religious instinct of pleasing Him by giving or sharing a meal with Him, into later rites regarded as of expiatory value as the moral consciousness of the race deepened. Some such long course of development lies behind the appearance of sacrifice in the OT.

　　(a) Early Israel.-Here sacrifice is regarded as a familiar custom at the beginning of human history; it originated in the first family; it was patriarchal. It meets us early in the OT as the comparatively complete and elaborated cultus mirrored in the J document, but no light is thrown upon its origin. Its chief occasions were times of meeting with God; it marked the intimate relationship between the god and his worshippers; the prevailing conception of its significance was that it was a present to God in sign of homage, thanksgiving, desire for communion or Divine gifts. The indications here of the stricter motive of expiation are very slight, although awe of the Divine Presence finds early and constant expression; and there is little doubt that Israel in all ages believed in the effectiveness of sacrifice to preserve or restore the favour of Jahweh. In view of apostolic teaching the early significance of the Covenant Sacrifice should be noted. Its specific object was to make a covenant sure and binding by the interchange of blood between the parties to it; half the animal victim’s blood was poured upon the altar for God and half sprinkled upon the people (cf. Exodus 24:6-8, Hebrews 8:6 ff; Hebrews 9:15-22). The religious efficacy of sacrifice was interpreted according to the degree of ethical and spiritual enlightenment of the offerers. The popular idea of a union cemented by blood in its physical and literal character was beginning to be challenged in the early monarchy; the higher theology of the age was already excluding the idea of God as a fellow-guest, and offerings were regarded as worthless without obedience (cf. 1 Samuel 15:22). God was disposed favourably by sacrifices, but we are not able to say in what manner they were supposed to influence Him. Neither these nor the older Semitic sacrifices were strictly expiatory, as has often been assumed; even where the animal may have been regarded as the offerer’s substitute, it may not necessarily have been as expiation for sin. Human sacrifices were unquestionably offered in the earlier stages of the Hebrew transition from the prehistoric to the historic development of the doctrine. They were common in Palestinian religion.

　　(b) Prophetic teaching.-Before touching upon the priestly or Levitical sacrificial system, from which it is evident apostolic teaching chiefly drew its thought-forms and its sacrificial terminology, reference must be made to the attitude taken towards sacrifice by the OT prophets, especially by those of the 8th century. From these the primitive Christian Church drew much of the substance of its teaching on sacrifice as it came to be interpreted in ethical and spiritual values. These two types-prophetic and priestly-dominate the structure of our OT sources; they existed side by side and acted and reacted upon each other. If not distinctly rival systems in the religious thought and practice of Israel, they represent different ideals concerning that which is an acceptable offering to the Lord. To recognize that both of them deeply influenced apostolic views of sacrifice is important. It is not probable that the prophets actually proposed the abolition of sacrifice, as some scholars have maintained. They assumed its legitimacy; they denied its necessity. Their protest was against the exaggerated importance of sacrifice (cf. Amos 5:25, Jeremiah 7:21 f.); it was not essential to forgiveness. The Levitical cultus provided sacrifice as the chief vehicle of God’s grace; forgiveness is mediated through it. The insistent iterance of the prophetic word is that sacrifice is not essential; God requires obedience, not sacrifice. Because He is a righteous God, He can accept nothing in place of righteousness. Righteousness is fundamental religion (Micah 6:6-8); without it sacrifice was an insult to God; He was weary of it; it provoked Him. Whilst they did not demand a religion without a cultus, i.e. a purely spiritual worship, the prophets denied that sacrifice in itself has efficacy with God, and that He has appointed it as essential to the ministry of His grace. In thus setting character before cultus the Psalmists join the prophets, emphasizing at the same time the abiding value in the sight of God of penitential feeling (cf. Psalms 40:6-9; Psalms 51:16 f.). With the great prophet of the Exile there rises also the commanding figure of the Suffering Servant of the Lord. Out of His personal afflictions for His people grows the vision of a voluntary and personal sacrificial offering of Himself. This transcends in its perfect ethical and spiritual value all lower ideas associated with the offering of animal victims (Isaiah 53). The extent to which this presentation of the Suffering Servant and the prophetic attitude of bare tolerance towards the sacrificial system influenced the apostolic teaching on sacrifice has not been fully appreciated.

　　(c) Levitical.-Historically this followed the prophetic period referred to. It did not precede it, as was formerly thought. The elaboration of the Levitical Code and the bewildering details of the priestly legislation respecting sacrifice led to the depreciation of the prophetic criticism of it. Levitical conceptions became characteristic of the Judaism with which early Christianity had such intimate and vital connexion. The transition from the ethical ideals of the prophets to the ceremonial ritual of the Levitical system carries us into a different world of sacrificial ideas; in many respects the change marks reaction; ethically it is on a lower plane, though it may possibly as a hard shell have preserved for future generations the kernel of the prophetic teaching regarding sacrifice. Its marvellous completeness provided a basis for typological analogy. It was almost inevitable, in the circumstances in which Christianity arose, that the primitive Church should extensively use this as a vehicle for teaching its doctrine of redemption. We need not refuse to see in the rich detail of Jewish sacrifices an unconscious illustrative preparation for apostolic forms of teaching. Yet it is difficult to hold that this whole ceremonial system was instituted with a conscious reference to, or binding authority for, the spiritual teaching of the sacrificial principle in Christianity, in which the Jewish sacrificial system was at once fulfilled and abrogated. The chief feature of the Levitical system, as distinguished from the sacrifices of the earlier cultus in Israel, was the greater importance attached to piacular or expiatory sacrifices-the guilt-, sin-, and trespass-offerings. This resulted from the deepened sense of sin which had developed during the Exile. Originally not more important than other offerings, the sin-offering now becomes the sacrifice par excellence. Eventually this type of sacrifice appears to have overshadowed the other great type represented by the peace-offerings, which assumed that the covenant relations with Jahweh were undisturbed. It was the expiatory type that constituted the daily sacrifice-the continual burnt-offering-up to apostolic times; it was regarded as most perfectly embodying, through its vicarious character, the sacrificial idea; it was not connected with any particular transgression, but was maintained as the appropriate means of a sinful people’s approach to a Holy God. Essential features in it were the shedding and sprinkling of blood and the conveyance of the sacrifice entire to God and His ministers; it was also accompanied by the imposition of hands. The utmost importance was attached in this type of sacrifice to the disposition of the victim’s blood: the blood was God’s; it belonged to Him of right; a mysterious potency inhered in it; the life was in it (cf. Leviticus 17:11); safety for the individual and the nation lay in such sacrifices of blood. It is of great importance, however, in view of apostolic conceptions to note that such sacrifices-the highest in value the Levitical system provided-availed only for sins of ignorance, for unwitting transgression of holy things and for the removal of physical uncleanness, which was regarded as implying moral as well as ceremonial disability in drawing near to God (Numbers 15:30). For wilful sins-‘sins with a high hand’-no reconciling sacrifice was provided in Israel; the penalty of such sins was death-‘that soul was cut off from Israel.’ But even such sins were not beyond the reach of forgiveness. That such sinners might through confession and true penitence approach God, and through His grace, apart from sacrifice, meet with His mercy was the evangelical proclamation of the prophets. It was held, however, by later Jewish interpreters that the ‘scapegoat’ on the great Day of Atonement expiated the sins of all Israelites who had not deliberately put themselves outside its effects by forsaking the religion of their people; and this expiation was applied so as to include sins the penalty of which was ‘to be cut off from his people,’ or death (cf. Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 342b; cf. Stevens, Theol. of the NT, p. 409). G. F. Moore holds an opposite opinion: ‘The theory that the victim’s life is put in place of the owner’s is nowhere hinted at, perhaps because the Jewish doctors understood better than our theologians what sin offerings and trespass offerings were, and what they were for’ (Encyclopaedia Biblica Priest) (cf. Hebrews 8:6-13; Hebrews 9:15 ff.). His constitutive function is to offer sacrifice (Hebrews 8:3). Christ offers Himself; the nature and effect of this perfect sacrifice are contrasted with the sacrifices of the Law (Hebrews 8:1 to Hebrews 10:18); the contrast culminates in the parallel between the action of the high priest in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement (Exodus 24:4-8) and Christ entering the heavenly places ‘through his own blood’ (Hebrews 9:11 ff.). The superiority of Christ’s sacrifice is everywhere impressively developed. It was also an offering in close dependence upon the love of God: by the grace of God Christ tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9); it was never spoken of as ‘reconciling God.’

　　Three main truths emerge from the comparison. (i.) The Levitical sacrifices cannot take away sin; they serve rather to bring to mind the sin they cannot expiate (Hebrews 10:3). At its best the Levitical system contemplated the removal of ceremonial faults only, sins of ignorance and infirmity (Hebrews 10:4; Hebrews 10:11); it effected a purification of the body only. The pathetic failure of the whole sacrificial system touches all the writer’s thought; it was morally ineffective because it belonged to the lower, sensible world (Hebrews 9:11, Hebrews 11:3), ‘the visible order’ of Philo and the Alexandrian thinkers. The absoluteness and finality of Christ’s sacrifice is demonstrated by relating it to the heavenly and eternal realm of reality (Hebrews 8:1 f., Hebrews 9:1; Hebrews 9:24, Hebrews 10:1)-the realm which Philo, in the spirit of Plato’s doctrine of archetypal ideas, calls ‘the intelligible world.’ Christ has entered with His sacrifice into heaven itself (Hebrews 9:24) and obtained eternal salvation for us (Hebrews 7:27, Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:15, Hebrews 10:10), having ‘through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God’ (Hebrews 9:14). It was an offering, on our behalf and as our representative, of a pure and spotless life. The solidarity of Christ with mankind is confidently stated: ‘Both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren’ (Hebrews 2:11). The Levitical sacrifices were perpetually repeated, just because they had no real efficacy either objective or subjective (Hebrews 9:6, Hebrews 10:3 f.); Christ’s sacrifice is made once for all, ‘perfecting for ever them that are sanctified’ (Hebrews 7:27, Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:25 f., 28, Hebrews 10:12; Hebrews 10:14). Christ’s sacrifice purged the conscience to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14, Hebrews 10:22), thus dealing with sin ethically and in its deepest seat instead of with its accidental expressions which marked the limits of efficacy in ceremonial sacrifices (Hebrews 9:9, Hebrews 10:3). The sacrifices of the Law opened no way of spiritual access to the holy presence of God (Hebrews 9:8); by the blood of Jesus a new and living way was dedicated by which men could draw near to Him with spiritual confidence (Hebrews 10:19 f.). Everywhere the writer insists upon the truth that only by better sacrifices than those of the Levitical system could the heavenly places and the spiritual realities be cleansed and consecrated (Hebrews 7:25, Hebrews 9:19; Hebrews 9:21-24); insufficiency marks all material elements and outward aspects of sacrifice; indeed, the whole point of the exposition turns upon contrast, not upon congruity. The interpretation of the Epistle which is frequently met with, that because its author expounds the Christian salvation in the terminology of sacrifice its meaning is therefore to be determined throughout by reading it in the light of the Levitical system, misses entirely the main motive of the writer, which is to mark the radical difference between the Christian and the Levitical conception of sacrifice. The most important fact to be observed is that the author, constrained by the estimate of the Christian values of sacrifice, ethicizes the whole meaning of sacrifice, and ascribes to Christ’s offering of Himself a wholly different nature from that which belongs to the Levitical oblations.

　　This is specially seen in the way in which the writer deals with (ii.) the value of the material of Christ’s sacrifice-His blood. In the Levitical system the manipulation of the blood was of supreme importance. Nothing was cleansed without its use (Hebrews 9:21 f.). The vital moment in the culmination of the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement was the entering of the Holy of Holies by the high priest, bearing with him sacrificial blood (Hebrews 9:7). Christ’s sacrificial act was accomplished also when He entered into the heavenly place ‘through his own blood’ (Hebrews 9:11 ff.) ‘to make propitiation for the sins of the people’ (Hebrews 2:17); ‘he offered a sacrifice for sins once for all, when he offered up himself’ (Hebrews 7:27; cf. Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 9:28). It is clear that the writer makes distinct use of the conception of substitution. But it is important to notice the evidence that something deeper than the literal substitution and the idea of legal transfer of sin which had gained currency in the later Jewish period was in the writer’s mind. The value of Christ’s offering is ethical; it resides in His will; His blood is presented not simply as the evidence of His death, but as the offering of His life. It is life, not death, which is the essence of all true sacrifice. Even in the Levitical system the blood constitutes the sacrifice, because ‘the blood is the life’ (Leviticus 17:11). Christ’s offering of Himself includes more than His dying; it is the willing offering of His life in the perfection of ceaseless filial obedience to the will of God. The writer of this Epistle emphasizes this: ‘Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein (the which are offered according to the law), then hath he said, Lo, I am come to do thy will. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (Hebrews 10:8 ff.). This offering with which God was well pleased brought humanity into a new relation to God. It was a positive ethical and religious valuation of Christ’s sacrifice that went beyond its value as merely legal substitution.

　　(iii.) The doctrine of the New Covenant. The first Covenant was not dedicated without blood (Hebrews 9:18; cf. Exodus 24:6; Exodus 24:8); sacrificial blood was for Israel essentially ‘the blood of the covenant’ (Hebrews 9:20; cf. Matthew 26:28). The sacrifices of the Mosaic Covenant were the sign of the establishment of the Law; the New Covenant in Christ’s blood was the sign of its fulfilment, and therefore ‘unto remission of sins’ (Matthew 26:28; cf. John 6:53-71; John 7:1, 1 John 1:7). The blood divided by sprinkling between the parties to the covenant was the seal of the friendship it established or restored. It was under the shelter of this covenant relation that the whole system of Levitical sacrifices was instituted; they availed only for those within its bonds. This conditioned its permanence; it could not abide. It was the prophetic attitude towards sacrifice that initiated the conception of the necessity of a New Covenant which should be ethical and spiritual and therefore permanent and universal. Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) is the principal link between the sacrifices of the Law and Christ’s fulfilment and consequent abolition of them. This is a covenant under which God lays His laws upon the hearts of men and inscribes them upon their minds, and undertakes no longer to remember their sins and iniquities (Hebrews 10:16 ff., Hebrews 8:8 ff.). ‘Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin’ (Hebrews 10:18). A real remission makes all other sacrifices useless. The sacrifice of Christ, ‘the mediator of a new covenant’ (Hebrews 9:15) by which such a new covenant is established, is the ‘one offering by which he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified’ (Hebrews 10:14). The prophetic idea of the value of the sacrificial sufferings of the Righteous Servant is thus restored in close association with the use of sacrificial ideas which were the current coin of Jewish thought. Henceforth there was no longer room for the sacrifices of the Law (Hebrews 10:18). The only sacrifice that retained its permanence for the future was ‘a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to his name’ (Hebrews 13:15).

　　(d) Johannine.-These writings probably represent apostolic views on sacrifice towards the close of the Apostolic Age and therefore later than the sources hitherto considered. It is a question for discussion, however, whether the ideas they suggest represent a development of the apostolic thought upon this subject or whether they simply reproduce the common positions to which the Church had become accustomed as traditional interpretations. That so little is said of sacrifice itself and so much of the abiding ethical and spiritual results that Christian thought had learned to connect with the sacrificial death of Christ seems to favour the opinion that the apostolic conception had by this time become more completely separated from the Jewish and more perfectly expressed in purely ethical applications; the mystical rather than the legal aspect of sacrifices prevails. But direct sacrificial terms appear at times in the Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypse, and probably quite as frequently, proportionately, as in the Pauline writings. (i.) The references to ‘the Lamb of God’ (John 1:29) predominate. The great saying of John the Baptist, whether critically valid or not, is a good illustration of the Johannine type of reference. This sacrificial symbol is definitely applied to Jesus. Whether the reference is to the Paschal Lamb or to the prophetic sacrificial ideal of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:11) is not certain. But there is no doubt of the expiatory value attached to the symbol; for the Lamb ‘taketh away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29; cf. 1 Peter 1:19). Jesus takes away sin by the sacrificial method. Symbol and expiatory idea occur again several times in the Apocalypse, where ‘the Lamb’ is combined with references to the sacrificial blood; ‘a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain’ (Revelation 5:6; Revelation 5:12); those who have ‘washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ (Revelation 7:14); ‘they overcame because of the blood of the Lamb’ (Revelation 12:11). Salvation is ascribed unto ‘our God which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb’ (Revelation 7:10). These references indicate how easily and naturally sacrificial ideas were associated with the work of Christ and especially with its results. Although textual difficulties attach to ‘the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world’ (Revelation 13:8), it may illustrate how influentially the sacrificial idea applied to Christ persisted in apostolic thought. (ii.) The references of Jesus to ‘eating my flesh, and drinking my blood,’ in John 6 are sacrificial; they are interesting as references in apostolic times to sacrifice as the sharing in a common meal with a view to enriching human life by communion. Here such ideas, though presented in sacrificial symbolism, are intensely ethical and spiritual in value. (iii.) Illustrations of the elevation of the sacrificial idea to the sublime acts of ethical self-sacrifice by which Christ accomplished His redemptive mission may be traced in the references to the laying down of his life in vicarious surrender; ‘the lifting up’ (John 3:14; John 12:32 f.), ‘the good shepherd’ (John 10:11), ‘the prophecy of Caiaphas’ (John 11:50), ‘the corn of wheat’ (John 12:23 ff.). (iv.) And in John 17:19 the work of Christ is paralleled, as in Hebrews, by that of the high priest on the Day of Atonement by the use of a word of sacrificial associations. (v.) In the First Epistle of John words and ideas with direct sacrificial implications are frequently observed; ‘the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7); ‘he is the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 2:2, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 4:10); ‘he was manifested to take away sins’ (1 John 3:5); with these may be read the distinctive saying of the Apocalypse, ‘Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood’ (Revelation 1:5). The contribution these sayings make to the interpretation of the apostolic thought respecting sacrifice is that they everywhere appear as familiar Christian phrases, which suggest how surely the transition had been accomplished in the early Church from the legal and preparatory conception of sacrifice to the permanent Christian view which was ethical and spiritual.

　　(e) Sub-apostolic.-In this period the sacrificial ideas met with in the Apostolic Age continued with but little change; the tendency, judging from post-apostolic development, was, if anything, towards more ceremonial and material views of sacrifice as applied to illustrate or interpret the death of Christ. The Epistle ascribed to Barnabas deals with the subject in its relation to the sacrifices of the Jewish Temple, which are considered to have been abolished in order that ‘the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation’ (ii.).

　　4. Conclusions.-Sacrifice was taken over by the Apostolic Church as a living institution in Judaism; the value of it as a fundamental principle of religious worship was recognized; the retrospect of its history given by the apostolic writers is reverent and appreciative; it was educative. For a time there appears to have been hesitation as to how far its practice should continue in the Christian environment; the primitive Jewish Christians made use of it by worshipping in the Temple at Jerusalem, and in the observance of ritual associated with the sacrificial system elsewhere within the Christian communities. Others with a quicker spiritual instinct reached the conviction that as Christ was the only perfect sacrifice, the material and historical sacrifices were of relative value only, and transient. Vehement controversy arose when the Judaizing party in the Church sought to lay upon Gentile believers the burden of the ceremonial law of Israel. The sharp contentions of the Petrine and Pauline schools (Acts 15:39), the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15), the teaching of the Pauline Epistles, particularly Galatians, and ultimately the masterly argument of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews are witnesses to hesitations and tendencies of thought in apostolic times. Sympathy with the ancient ritual of sacrifice and sanction for its practice appear to have accompanied the emergence of Christianity as a separate institution from the Judaism in which it had its rise. Whilst the great principle that in Christ all preparatory sacrificial institutions were fulfilled found early acceptance, it was only slowly that its many-sided implications were fully acknowledged.

　　(a) Retention of the Jewish sacrificial system as symbolic.-Even when the sacrificial system as a living institution had passed into a condition of obsolescence in the Apostolic Church, it remained permanently influential as an organized system of illustrations for interpreting the spiritual realities of the work of Christ; it became a system of types and symbols which were of service for the teacher and preacher. Whilst the apostles deliberately set aside the belief in the efficacy of Jewish sacrifices, it is evident not only that they could express the work of Christ in no better terms than those associated with sacrificial ritual, but that they found in these terms some real meaning when applied to the shedding of His blood for the remission of sins. Consequently sacrificial terminology came into easy and common usage, and became in fact the most comprehensible and almost necessary medium for the thought-forms which set forth the inward and abiding realities of the Christian redemption. The evidence for this abounds, as we have seen, in the apostolic literature. How close the symbol moved towards the reality in the apostolic teaching respecting the significance of the death of Christ, how far, that is, His death was truly a sacrifice, involves questions that run up into the problems of the grounds on which the efficacy of His death was ultimately based (see Atonement). So far, however, as its efficacy is based on the meaning of sacrifice in the OT, the divergent positions held as satisfying the terms of apostolic teaching may be broadly represented on the one hand by writers who hold that sacrifice in the OT was substitutionary in the sense of providing satisfaction for sin, and, on the other hand, by writers who maintain that such a view ‘rests upon profound misunderstandings of the nature of the OT sacrifices, and entirely ignores Jewish conceptions of the effect and operation of sacrifice’ (Encyclopaedia Biblica