A fragment on sacrifice
The cross is not a new way for God to relate to his creation. The cross is the historical revelation that God cannot relate to sinners in any other way.
This is why Peter says Christ was ordained before the world began (1
Peter 1:19) and why John said he was the Lamb that was slain from the
foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).
This is less a matter of the philosophy of sacrifice than it is the
recognition of how the Bible develops the subject for us. If God is a
holy lover of his creation (including the human family) then the cross
was inevitable. It wasn’t some “deep structure” necessity that was
imposed on God. It is an eternally free choice by God; but it is an
eternally free choice that is inevitable because of his nature and
character.
(I say a free choice because God lives rather than merely exists. He
doesn’t just “happen” to be a holy lover, his holiness and love is his
will. A block of ice doesn’t “will” to be cold. God eternally wills to
be holy and loving.)
In the Old Testament God provided the sacrifices (Leviticus
17:11). They were provided to maintain the relationship God had chosen
to have with sinful Israel. God established the sacrificial system—not
Israel. In doing this and in providing the means of at-one-ment God was
saying, “I cannot live among you except I pay the price.” It isn’t that
he pays the price “to” someone. The phrase is metaphorical and makes the
point that it costs the Holy Father to live with his wayward
children. It stresses not his irritation at, or his reluctance to be the
Father of, children that sin. The sacrificial system stresses the
reality of their sin and the fact that God takes it seriously. He takes
it seriously not because he is sulking with wounded pride. Philippians
2:5-7 makes it clear that along with the truth that he has no identity
crisis (he loves whom and what he is)—he has no identity crisis but he
has no vanity. So little does he care about his reputation (in that
non-vain sense) that he gladly and freely went to the cross and as the
KJV would have it, he "made himself of no reputation."
The sacrificial system did not rise from humans who were trying to
placate a God who threatened to destroy them every time they sinned. The
sacrifices were not ways in which the sinners bought mercy and grace
from the Holy Father. The whole enterprise was an exercise of God’s holy
grace that enabled the people to live with him in peace and he with
them. It “covered” their sins.
The Hebrew writer had a specific thrust in mind. He wanted to compare
favourably Christ’s sacrifice with the Mosaic sacrifices. In the course
of it he showed that due to the work of Christ animal sacrifices were
no longer relevant to divine-human relations (so Gunton). But he did
make it clear that Christ’s sacrifice is an eternal one, that is, its
inevitability and effects are eternal even while, historically, it is a
once-for-all offering. By one offering he has perfected forever those he
makes holy (see Hebrews 9:12 and Hebrews 10:10,12,14). In addition, as
Paul insists in Romans 6:3-4 that death can still be accessed by faith.
We don’t normally think of accessing an historical act (how is such a
thing possible?) but Christ’s sacrificial death can be savingly accessed
to this day by accessing its meaning.
Justification or cleansing by faith in the blood of Christ is not
justification as a result of the mere act of his physically dying.
Christ’s mere biological dying has no saving effect but then he didn’t merely
die. He died “for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). The power of his
death is in whom he is and what he meant to do in the dying. And while
all that he was and meant to do comes to focus in his historical
life-consummating death, we continue to relate to God on the basis of
what that dying means. It’s a past event but we experience life with God
even now and in an ongoing relationship based on that event (1 John
1:7).
But the cross of Christ was an eternal act, an act that revealed not
only how we relate to God since the cross, but also how God has always
related to us from the beginning (compare Hebrews 9:15). The cross tells
us not only what God did in Christ but in Christ the cross tells us
what God is like, and what he is eternally like. All that being true we
are to understand that for sinners like us, unbroken life with God is
possible only on the basis of sacrifice. However we work that out, that
is, however we understand the Bible’s rationale for that teaching it is
nevertheless the teaching of scripture. Why is it the case that we can
only live with God on the basis of sacrifice? Because when the Holy
Father wishes to dwell with unholy people it costs him. [Can we now see a
pale illustration of that in the lives of saintly parents who live in
love with a thoroughly wicked child?]
So the sacrificial system and especially the sacrifice of Christ is
less about how our problem with God is "fixed", it’s less about how the
gulf is spanned than it is about God’s will to fix the problem and span
the gulf while he maintains his commitment to us to bring us to fullness
of life with himself.