What is An Atonement For Sin

In the past couple of years I have been approached by well meaning people who have wanted the local Church to change its teaching about the symbolism of the two goats described in the day of Atonement ceremony found in Leviticus 16. I believe it is worth addressing since it undermines the Church’s teachings about how we address sin. Not only do we want a remedy for the consequences of sin, we want to root out the cause of sin. (concentration while fasting).

The first thing the Church and its representatives ask,    is that a person with some new teaching “show us how the present teaching of the Church wrong”. On the matter of interpreting Leviticus 16 I think the response goes like this:

Only Christ can provide atonement for sin. Therefore, since Leviticus 16:10 says “the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.”… the 2nd goat should be understood as a symbol (foreshadow) of Christ.

Premise A - only Christ can provide atonement for sin

Premise B - the goat sent into the wilderness provides atonement

Conclusion - the goat sent into the wilderness must symbolize Christ

The conclusion seems logical. But, a logical formula is only true if the premise’s used to draw the conclusion are correct.  A + B = C only provides a true conclusion if both A and B are themselves true. I am going to question the statement “only Christ can provide atonement for sin”.

This bold statement is not actually found in scripture. It is a bit of Orthodox Catholic dogma developed over many centuries but eventually written as a definitive formula by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. While not explicit Aquinas considered it implicit in scripture. Aquinas uses this premise to build his own interpretation of the goat sent into the wilderness symbolizing Christ. You find that In his in the Summa Theologica.  From there it has filtered down into many Catholic and Protestant commentaries and resource works.

Like many faulty premises its sounds OK on the surface but its kind of fuzzy. If you clarify the statement to say something like “only Christ can provide the substitutionary sacrifice needed to pay the death penalty for human sin” I think you are getting closer to a  premise built from scriptural revelation.

My challenge to the premise begins with discussing what the word Atonement means.

In the OT when we encounter the word atonement we are usually dealing with the underlying Hebrew word kafar… meaning the act of covering. It is first seen in scripture when Noah covers the ark with tar to keep it watertight. The word used in kafar.

With the presentation of the law through Moses the word kafar was used as part of the process of dealing with sin, transgression, and uncleanness. Think of it this way; a certain action or process (for example, sacrifice) would provide atonement, to cover over it, to remove it from sight:

The process is not the same as the result: if I wash my car to make it clean, the act of washing is not the same thing as the final state of cleanness. I wash the car (which is the process), then it becomes clean (which is the result of the process).

What is the point of all these examples? To show that atonement in the OT is not limited only to applications of the sacrificial system. To demonstrate that atonement is not synonymous with sacrifice for sin. A car is washed so that it might be clean, a sacrifice is made so that sin is addressed and removed from God's sight. But, there are other examples of actions that can be taken to provide the end result of covering, or atonement.

Are all these ways of bringing about kafar (covering, atonement, etc) pictures or symbols of the work of Christ? I suppose its possible, but I also  think interpreting each in such a way would stretch the creative imagination.

Here is my point: when we encounter the word atonement in the OT (the typical translation of kafar) it is not necessary that it point directly to the work of Christ provided by His sacrificial death. It often is just that, but not always... even when the thing being covered over is sin, trespass, rebellion, treachery, hatred, etc.

Therefore, if UCG understands the atonement spoken of in Leviticus 16:10 as applying to the banishment of Satan, rather than the work of Christ. We are not violating of biblical precedent or principle. So, the United Church of God's interpretation of Leviticus 16 cannot be said to be wrong. But, then we must ask, is it right?

Understanding the atonement provide by the sacrificial death of the first goat as a prophetic picture of Christ's sacrificial death makes total sense. However, the atonement provided by the second goat has many features attached to it that indicate it is most likely not prophetically picturing the work of Christ.

Christ addresses sin through His death and blood. He does not address sin by soaking it all up unto himself and carrying it off into a far away place never to return.

The living goat of Leviticus 16 carries the burden of sin on its head and takes it into the wilderness. That blame for instigating sin stays upon the goat. Whereas, the living Christ is holy and without sin. He does not retain sin on His head or anything like that. Yes, the scriptures say He bore our sins, but the penalty for sin died with Him on the cross. Sin does not remain on the living Christ. The bearing of sins by a living goat does not accurately picture the work of Christ.

I discussed this feature of the second goat… “the bearing of sin” in a message I gave in December - The Removal of Sin. That removing the cause of sin is a biblically sound part of how we address sin. Christ death removes the consequences of sin. Casting out or binding Satan removes one of the roots of sin. If you hand or your eye causes you to sin… cut it out, cut it off.

If we only deal with the consequences of sin an not the cause of sin we simply enter into an endless loop of sin-->redemption-->more sin-->more redemption… so on and so on. God wants to eliminate sin not just cope with sin. One way to do this is to cut out the root.

Contact with the second goat of Leviticus 16 defiles and makes unclean, therefore:

Contact with Christ does not make us unclean. This is yet another way the second goat of Leviticus 16 seems to depict something other that Christ.

The United Church of God teaches that "something else" is the banishment of Satan which takes place after the return of Christ.

In the early early centuries interpretations of Leviticus 16 were mixed... some saying this some saying that. But, I don't think the teachings of the Sabbath keeping church of those early centuries are part of the discussion. God’s church was off the grid by then. Hunted and pursued into the wilderness.

The Orthodox and Catholic church eventually settled upon an interpretation of Leviticus 16 that saw both goats as symbols of Christ (they kind of saw everything and an allegory or symbol of Christ, so its not a surprise). In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas wrote what became the authoritative interpretation of Leviticus 16. He argued that both goats must be Christ because they provide atonement for sin.

Aquinas believed the premise that “only Christ can provide atonement for sin”. I think his statement imprecise and leads to faulty conclusions especially about the interpretation of Leviticus 16:10.

Prominent protestant teachers like John Calvin, Matthew Henry, and Charles Hodge carried on with the Orthodox and Catholic traditional interpretation. All of them published a lot of commentary on the scriptures. Much of which is free and made readily available to modern readers.

This argument about the second goat creeps back into the Church of God from time to time. Possibly through the use of mainstream commentaries by people in The Church of God community.