Understanding Sacrifice.
SECOND QUARTER 2025
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #6
MAY 10, 2025
Our lesson this week is one of the most crucial to understand, not only for this quarter, but for any quarter! “Why?”, you may ask. Because how we understand the sacrifice of Christ has everything to do with how we view the character of God, how we understand the nature and purpose of salvation, and how we will relate to God in heart and mind. This topic defines whether we see God through a pagan, demonic-inspired, though Christian-labelled lens, OR, through a true gospel (good news) lens.
If there is one truth to be understood from the study of Scripture, it is that the purpose and method of salvation is God attempting to change our hearts, minds and attitude toward Him and towards sin. And Satan’s counterfeit gospel is an attempt to have us view salvation as an attempt by us, or others, including Jesus, to change God’s heart, attitude, and mind towards us. There really are only two fundamental ways to understand salvation. God is working to change us – or we—or others on behalf of us—are working to change God.
Notice these verses and see where the truth is:
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
“Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
“When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10).
Notice that in each of these verses (and we could quote many more), the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was to change us and our relation to God. We were the ones who needed to be reconciled—not God. We were the ones who needed to be brought to God—not God to us. We were the ones who were enemies of God. God was not our enemy!
So the sacrifice of Christ did not improve, mollify, or change God’s stance or attitude towards us! The death of Christ was and is to change our attitude towards God! At the fall of Adam and Eve, there was no change in God’s heart towards them. God continued to pursue and care and love them. By contrast, they feared and hid and lied to Him!
Salvation is all about changing us, leading us back to love and trust and honor God. Notice how Ellen White articulates this:
“But this great sacrifice was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, not to make Him willing to save. No, no! “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.” John 3:16. The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us. Christ was the medium through which He could pour out His infinite love upon a fallen world. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” 2 Corinthians 5:19. God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of Infinite Love paid the price of our redemption.”—Steps to Christ, p. 13.
Notice, the sacrifice of Christ didn’t activate or trigger or allow love in God’s heart. The sacrifice manifested what always was in God’s heart already! So the purpose of the sacrifice was to activate, trigger and create love in our heart towards God, as well as to reveal to us the nature and inherent results of sin.
At the cross we see four vital truths. Remember Simeon’s words to Mary and Joseph at Jesus’ dedication. Simeon said that Jesus life would reveal, “the thoughts of many hearts.” So at Calvary, we see four truths:
- God’s heart towards us—selfless love.
- Satan’s heart towards God in Christ—unreasonable hatred.
- Our heart towards God—we killed Him.
- What sin truly is and does—sin is a destroyer.
This is the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice! Not to create a love in God’s heart towards us, but to activate in our hearts a love for Him! These same four truths were meant to be communicated in the Old Testament sanctuary service. Every time an Israelite slew an innocent lamb, they were meant to see and understand God’s love for them in the sacrifice, and that sin is the killer and destroyer, not God. They were to see their hand in the killing of God. And the Day of Atonement sacrifices were to show them the role of the Azazel, Satan, in being responsible for sin.
But, you might ask, what about verses like Hebrews 9:22?
“Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.”
There are two ways to read this. One, without God seeing some blood, He is unwilling to forgive us. In other words, without the shedding of blood, He is unable to forgive us because unfortunately, when He wrote the law, He made it so someone or something has to die before He is enabled to forgive us. So the law is a barrier to His willingness to forgive us, therefore a sacrifice needs to be made to satisfy the law, and then He can forgive us.
The proper understanding of this verse is to see that we are the ones who need to see the shedding of blood. And when we see the shedding of blood—the death of Jesus on Calvary—we then see both God’s love and the destructiveness of sin. And when we see those truths, then we voluntarily “remit” or turn away from sin. Without the shedding of blood, by Jesus on the Cross, we would not see the heinous character of sin, nor the love of God in giving Jesus, and thus we would not have the motivational strength to turn from sin towards God. It is the sacrifice of Christ that motivates us and informs us and constrains us (2 Corinthians 5:14) to hate sin and love God.
Notice E. J. Waggoner’s solid grasp of these truths:
“We have left the matter of reconciliation just where the Scriptures have put it; and while they have much to say about the necessity for man to be reconciled to God, they never once hint of such a thing as the necessity for God to be reconciled to man. To intimate the necessity for such a thing is to bring a grave charge against the character of God. The idea has come into the Christian Church from the Papacy, which in turn brought it from Paganism, in which the only idea of God was of a being whose wrath must be appeased by a sacrifice....
Again: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John iii. 16. Surely, they who say that the death of Christ reconciled God to men, have forgotten this blessed text. They would separate the Father and the Son, making the former the enemy, and the latter the friend, of man. But God's heart was so overflowing with love to fallen man, that He "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all;" and in so doing He gave Himself, for "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." The Apostle Paul speaks of "the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." Acts xx. 28. This effectually disposes of the idea that there was any enmity toward man on the part of God, so that He needed to be reconciled. The death of Christ was the expression of God's wonderful love for sinners.
Consider further what reconciliation means. It means a change on the part of the one reconciled. If one has enmity in His heart towards another, a radical change must take place in him before he is reconciled. This is the case with man. "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. v. 17, 18. But to speak of the necessity for God to be reconciled to man, is not only to say that He cherished enmity in His heart, but to say that God was partially in the wrong, and that a change had to take place in Him as well as in man. If it were not in the innocence of ignorance that men talked about God's having been reconciled to men, it would be blasphemy. That is one of the "great things and blasphemies" that the Papacy has spoken against God. Let us not echo it....
Why have we dwelt so long upon the fact that man must be reconciled to God, and not God to man? Because in that alone is man's hope. If God ever had any enmity in His heart against men, there would always arise the torturing thought, "Perhaps He is not yet sufficiently appeased to accept Me; surely He cannot love so guilty a being as I am." And the more one realised his guilt, the greater would be his doubt. But when we know that God never had any enmity towards us, but that He has loved us with an everlasting love, and that He has loved us so much that He gave Himself for us, that we might be reconciled to Him, we can joyfully exclaim, "If God be for us, who can be against us?”—Present Truth UK, September 21, 1893, emphasis supplied.
We see the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, and the 1888 messengers, all aligned. Let us see the sacrifice of Christ as it truly is – not a pagan attempt to satisfy or change God’s heart, but as it is, a monumental and eternal gift on the part of the Godhead to win and educate us regarding their love for us, and the dangers inherent in stepping outside the boundaries of God’s law of love. May we never articulate a gospel of paganism, but only the gospel of truth.
~ Robert Hunsaker