Q&R: “And can it be?” & the blood of Jesus – Brad Jersak

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Question:

So many hymns speak of salvation coming from the shed blood of Jesus. But many deconstructed Christians find this view disturbing and disgusting that God required His Son to die ‘for us.’ I’m really struggling with this also.

For example, how should we now regard a hymn like “And Can It Be?” which says,

  • And can it be that I should gain
  • An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
  • Died He for me, who caused His pain?
  • For me, who Him to death pursued?
  • Amazing love! how can it be
  • That Thou, my God, should die for me?

It does seem in Scripture that our sins needed atonement, and that we receive that through the suffering and blood of Christ.

Response:

Thanks for your email and for taking me down memory lane to hymns I sang from my childhood in the 1960s and 70s.

Let’s review “the blood of Jesus” together … not just for a wholesome theology, but also as an act of worship. You began…

So many hymns speak of salvation coming from the shed blood of Jesus. But many deconstructed Christians find this view disturbing and disgusting that God required His Son to die ‘for us.’ I’m really struggling with this also.

There are a couple of key phrases there: “the shed blood of Jesus” and that Jesus “died for us.” In a moment, we’ll think together of how the apostolic witnesses understood these phrases, but first, take note of how other ideas so easily slip into the conversation. For example, what does it mean that “God required” his son to die for us?

 The disturbing and disgusting answer to that (my early training, for sure) framed it as if God were so angry about our sin that he could not simply forgive it. God’s own sense of eye-for-an-eye justice demanded that sin be punished. The demands of God’s own wrath (defined as violent anger) needed to be ‘satisfied’ and that only by the violent punishment of an innocent victim. So, it is alleged (often with strange glee), God sent his Son to die in our place, as our substitute as the Father poured out all his wrath on him. 

Yes. That’s disturbing. And it’s also pagan (with apologies to my pagan friends who are just as horrified by such a God). In a book from the 2000s, one author even described this conception of the Cross as “cosmic child abuse,” and arguably rightly so. 

BUT that is a LOT of theological rubbish to load into those phrases, “the shed blood of Jesus” or “Jesus died for us.”

Let’s take those in turn.

JESUS’ SHED BLOOD

Was Jesus’ blood shed? Yes. On the Cross. By whom? By God? NO. It was shed by those who served the demands of the Sanhedrin and the commands of the Governor to beat, scourge, crucify, and spear him. Stephen, the martyr-deacon of Acts, rightly describes it as a murder. So yes, Jesus’ blood was shed… by humanity in rebellion.

Further, Jesus knew it would happen and, rather than running or resisting, voluntarily underwent the crucifixion. He says in John, “No one takes my life from me. I give my life of my own free will. I have the authority to give my life, and I have the authority to take my life back again” (John 10:18). In that sense, we could say that Jesus also shed his blood. That is, even as wicked men conspired to take his life, Jesus also chose to lay down his life. 

That might sound strange, but isn’t this what first responders do every time they risk their lives to run into a burning building to rescue someone trapped there? And isn’t this what Jesus did by entering the burning world to rescue us, trapped as we are in the carnage associated with the human condition?

FOR US

This is where “for us” comes into the language of the apostles. It has nothing to do with Jesus being punished in our place by a brutal tyrant-god who needs his pound of flesh. Rather, through Jesus’ death, as evil and gruesome as the crucifixion was, Christ subverts humanity’s great crime (Acts 3:14-15) for our benefit. So, “for” does not mean “instead of” at all, but “for our benefit.” How so? 

Let’s walk it through carefully:

The apostles could say, “Christ died on the cross for my sins.”
He died. 
On the Cross.
For our benefit.
In dying, he extends forgiveness to his actual murderers and then to all people, for all time, for all sin.
Christ overthrows and overcomes human evil, flipping it into the occasion for our salvation.

How? By forgiving us. In Christ, God freely, mercifully, graciously forgives. 
In that way, Christ died for us. 
In dying, he takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
How? No mechanical, economic, or legal transaction. 
By forgiving. Just by forgiving. 

Still no divine punishment. 
It’s just that the Cross of Christ transforms human violence into the central occasion in which to reveal God’s radical, universal forgiveness.  

DID GOD REQUIRE JESUS’ DEATH?

Did God “require” Jesus’ death? 
The language of “requirement” is problematic in that it suggests appeasement. 
The reality is more like this, according to Athanasius of Alexandria (4th century) in his book, On the Incarnation of the Word:

God sees his beloved world, spiraling down into death and non-being.
And Athanasius asks, rhetorically, “What is God to do?”
What does God see as necessary to rescue us from the burning building of death?
God knows humanity is powerless to save itself from death.
Only God can do it. And Love (God) says, “I MUST do it.” 
But to save us from death, God himself must enter death.
But wait! God can’t die, right? So how will God enter death?

Athanasius explains,

God becomes human so that Jesus Christ, God the Son, can enter death to rescue us from death.
But again, wait! In dying, Jesus Christ is still both fully man and also fully God!
What will happen when the God-man enters the grave? 
Death dies!

The God-man rises and, as Ephesians 4:8 says,  returns “with death’s captives in his train, ” following Jesus out of the tomb like a victory parade!  

AT-ONE-MENT

Okay, back to your fine email…

It does seem in Scripture that our sins needed atonement and that we receive that atonement through the suffering and blood of Christ.

Yes, that’s exactly right. BUT… there’s a HUGE problem with the way English words morph over time. One awful example is how “suffer” used to mean “allow,” but then it later came to mean “hurt.” That’s fine on its own, but then when Mark 10:14 in the KJV said, “Suffer the children to come to me,” (meaning, “allow the children to come to me”), some very abusive spiritual leaders  took it to mean, “Hurt the children.” Just terrible. 

Well, here’s another example: when English-speaking Christians coined the word, “Atonement,” they were describing “at-one-ment.” In other words, they meant nothing other than reconciliation. Yes, we need to be reconciled to God. God doesn’t need to be reconciled to us (because God never turned from us). But like the prodigal son, it was we who turned away from God’s love. In this sense, we need at-one-ment… to be reconciled. To come home. And Jesus says, “Follow me; I will lead you there.”

How? Again, by forgiving us of our turning away. Even and especially right while the world was crucifying Jesus, he is inviting us home to his Father’s table.

As Paul said, on the Cross (where WE crucified him), “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, NOT counting our sins against us” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Now for the bad news. Over the centuries, the word atonement has slipped from meaning reconciliation into something more like “appeasement.” It turns into this violent demand for a blood sacrifice to assuage anger… like throwing a virgin in the volcano to calm down the god who is erupting (and that was what I was actually told in Bible college!). If THAT is atonement, we should renounce it altogether. But I’m still trying to retrieve the word back to its earliest at-one-ment meaning.

AND CAN IT BE

Let’s now look at that hymn together.  

And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me

What does the Savior’s blood represent? 

NOT the violent death of Christ to meet the demands of an angry God.
The Savior’s blood is a symbol of God’s self-giving, radically forgiving love.
Jesus’ blood represents the life that he laid down to invade the grave and rescue us from death itself.
Jesus’ blood is a picture of his love.

“Died he for me?”
YES. 
Instead of me? No. 
For my benefit, for my salvation, for my forgiveness.
For ME, pursuing me all the way into death itself (spiritual and physical). 
There is nowhere the good Shepherd won’t go to find his lost sheep. 

Amazing love! YES.
This story of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection is a story of the most amazing love of all. 

And notice: the thou my GOD died for me. 

It’s not that an angry father-god scourges his victim-human-son to death.
During the crucifixion, where is God?
Is God the Father inflicted the Son with torment?
Is God the Father turning his face away from the Son?

Not at all.

In Zechariah 12, we read that Yahweh (God!) says, “You will look on ME, the one you have pierced.”

On the Cross, we behold God (Father, Son. and Spirit) crucified in the human flesh of God the Incarnate Son because all of the Triune God’s operations in this world are undivided. The Father is in the Son as the Son is in the Father as the Spirit is in their union! God does in this world, God does as the undivided Trinity (even while also sustaining the universe, which is a mindblower).

So, with this in mind, I must say, I love that hymn as it raises our eyes to the One whose blood is a message of God’s life and love.

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