#782 Does Christ’s Atonement Cover or Expunge My Sin?

Dr. craig’s response

Look again at what I say in Atonement and the Death of Christ about the twin purposes of atonement in chapter 2 on sacrifice. The animal sacrifices prescribed in the Old Testament served the dual purpose of expiating sin and propitiating God. Your question is relevant to the first function, that of the expiation of sin. How should we understand expiation?

It was once thought that Hebrew word for “to make atonement,” kippēr, had the sense of “to cover,” indicating that the blood of the sacrifice covered the sin or impurity of the offerer. But that view has now been abandoned by Old Testament scholars. Rather, as the eminent Jewish commentator Jacob Milgrom explains, the sense of kippēr is “to purge, to cleanse.” Milgrom says, “The meaning here is that the offerer is cleansed of his impurities/sins and becomes reconciled, ‘at one,’ with God.”[i]

The expiatory ritual par excellence in the Old Testament was the annual sacrifices on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), which was performed on behalf of the whole nation and covered a wider range of sins than did the personal sacrifices (Leviticus 16). The totality of sins, expressed by the trifold description “iniquities, transgressions, and sins” (Exodus 34.7) are removed from the people (Leviticus 6.21). This day featured an extraordinary ritual involving the presentation of a pair of goats, one of which was sacrificially killed and the other (the so-called scapegoat) driven out into the desert, bearing away the sins of the people, which had been symbolically laid on the goat through a hand-laying ritual performed by the priest. The description of the Yom Kippur ritual differentiates between “mak[ing] atonement for the sanctuary, and . . . for the tent of meeting and for the altar” and “mak[ing] atonement for the priests and for all the people” (Leviticus 16.33).  Making atonement for inanimate objects is to purge them of ritual uncleanness; making atonement for persons is to expiate their sins.  “For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before the Lord” (16.30).  Thus, the blood of the sacrificial goat atones for the sins of the people, while the driving out of the other goat symbolizes the efficacy of the sacrifice in expiating their sin. According to Milgrom, “In effect, the original purpose of the scapegoat, to eliminate the impurities removed from the sanctuary, has been altered to accommodate a new theological notion–once a year, on the tenth of Tishri, the purgation rites of the sanctuary also remove Israel’s sins.”[ii] Sins are not just covered; they are removed.

In the New Testament Jesus’ death is similarly presented as an atoning sacrifice. With regard to the expiation of sin, the author of Hebrews hammers home the point that in contrast to the Old Testament sacrifices, “that can never take away sins” (10.11), Christ, “having been offered once to bear the sins of many” (9.28), “remove[d] sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9.26), so that “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10.10).  John presents Christ as a Passover lamb whose death is expiatory: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1.29).  Paul uses technical Levitical terminology to refer to Christ as “a sin offering” (peri hamartias) (Romans 8.3), the function of which, as we’ve seen, was expiatory. Those who have believed in Christ, he says, “have been justified by his blood” (Romans 5.9).  Christ’s righteous act of obedience “leads to justification and life for all.  For . . . by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (5.18-19). Through Christ’s blood our guilt has been expunged.

So our sins have not been merely covered up by Christ’s atoning death. They have been removed; they are gone! That is cause for celebration and praise![iii]