Rom. 3:22-26 - An ‘atonement’ in his blood

Posted Sat, 21/04/2007 - 12:40 by andrew

22b For there is no difference,

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

25 whom God put forward as an ‘atonement’, through faith, in his blood. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.


My translation

Israel is condemned by the law because of its rebelliousness, but on the ‘day of wrath’ it will be possible for the community to make an alternative appeal to Christ’s act of ‘faithfulness’, which Paul interprets as the ‘sacrifice’ by which atonement is made for Israel’s sins. This is the concrete means by which, at this present moment of eschatological crisis, the people of God will be rescued from destruction and the integrity of the God of Abraham preserved.

22b-24 Again Paul insists that all have sinned: Israel cannot suppose itself to be exempt from judgment. If anyone is to be justified on the coming ‘day of wrath’, it will be through God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption (apolutrōseōs) that is in Christ Jesus. The theme of Isaiah 51 is still playing in the background. The God who brought rescued and redeemed (lelutrōmenois) Israel from Egypt will bring back his people to Zion; the sorrow of oppression will be replaced by ‘praise and joy’ (51:10-11 LXX; the sentence structure is rather different in the Hebrew).

25a The redemption of a people again under oppression – and with that the vindication of the God of Abraham – has come about through an act of atonement (hilastērion). In the LXX this word mostly refers to the ‘mercy seat’ that covered the ark of the covenant (see Ex. 25:17-22). In Paul’s argument the association with Christ’s ‘blood’ or death suggests that the ritual on the day of atonement is in view: Aaron is instructed to take the blood of the ‘goat of the sin offering that is for the people’ and sprinkle it on and in front of the mercy seat; in this way he made ‘atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins’ (Lev. 16:15-16). He uses an idea, therefore, that is intimately associated with an act of atonement for Israel’s sins. Jesus’ faithful obedience culminating in his death at the hands of Israel’s enemies was in some sense equivalent to, or analogous to, the action on the day of atonement by which Israel was cleansed of its sins.

Jewish atonement theology has provided Paul with the terminology here, but a number of other texts reinforce the thought that what is at issue here is specifically the redemption of Israel and not some more universalized notion of salvation.

1. The narrowing of the scope of the sacrificial argument, the emphasis on the connection with the salvation of first century Israel, is supported by the Theodotion text of Daniel 9:24, where the cognate verb exilaskomai is used for the atonement of the sins that have been responsible for Israel’s state of protracted exile:

Seventy weeks were determined for your people and for your holy city for sin to be completed and to seal up sins and to expunge lawlessness and to make atonement for wrong-doings (tou exilasasthai adikias) and to bring in righteousness of the age and to seal a vision and a prophet and to anoint the holy of holies.

2. We have to recognize that in some manner Paul’s argument is anticipated by the martyrdom theology of the Maccabean literature. The most important passage is 4 Maccabees 17:20-22 (RSV):

These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified - they having become, as it were, a ransom (antipsuchon) for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice (tou hilastēriou tou thanatou autōn), divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.

The death of the faithful martyrs (Eleazar, the seven brothers and their mother) at the hands of Israel’s enemy resulted in the liberation of Israel from tyranny, the punishment of the tyrant Antiochus, and the cleansing of the nation (cf. Lev. 16:19): the language of the atonement is used to express the redemptive effect of their deaths for the nation at a time of political and religious crisis.

2 Maccabees 7:37-38 reinforces the connection between the sacrificial death of the martyrs, who suffer because of Israel’s sins (7:33), and the theme of the wrath of God against Israel:

I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our fathers, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by afflictions and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty which has justly fallen on our whole nation. (2 Macc. 7:37-38)

This barely differs from Paul’s argument in Romans: by his righteous death Christ justifies sinful Israel, averts the wrath of God which is justly directed against the nation.

3. As Wright points out, it is difficult not to hear echoes of the description of the suffering servant in Paul’s argument in Romans 3-4 (Wright, Romans, 475-476 ). But the servant suffers punishment (Is. 53:5) not for the sake of the world but because Israel sinned: ‘stricken for the transgression of my people’ (53:8). This is not personal sin, it is not a universal atonement. It is the sin of the nation that brought the judgment of God upon it - exile, and the devastation of Jerusalem. At least, we must place the personal transgressions, the sins of individual Jews, within this story. In his suffering the servant experiences the judgment of God against Israel; through his suffering many in Israel are accounted righteous; he bears their sins (53:10-12).

25b-26 It has already been noted that the argument of 3:25 parallels the argument of 3:21-22a: God’s righteousness (that is, the integrity of his commitment to his people under extreme historical circumstances) is revealed or shown through Jesus’ faithful obedience to the point of a sacrificial death, which is to be received through faith. Paul is acutely aware of the eschatological moment. Both Israel and the pagan world have been allowed to continue in their sins unchecked, until the present time. Now, however, God’s patience has run out; a day of wrath will soon come upon both Jews and Greeks, from which a people will be saved on the basis of Christ’s act of faithfulness. The community that associates itself with Christ will not be judged unrighteous on that day and will, therefore, escape destruction.

See also: