Why Did Messiah Die?

By Daniel Gregg —

The sections are as follows:

Preamble

I find it necessary to write fresh on this topic again; several reasons come to mind. It needs to be organized topically. Also, I have looked over some of my previous work. And the Good News of Messiah notes are actually more up to date than any of my website articles. The Good News of Messiah is free on this website. So this topic needs to be caught up; the GNM notes are not a good place for a systematic discussion of one topic. There are some flaws in my writing that have since been corrected besides the need for pedantic clarity.

Messiah died for sin — for cleansing our sin

What is meant by for sin? The word "for" expresses the purpose. His blood purges our sins; it cleanses our sins. The sin offering in Temple times was for purifying the sinner from the sin they had committed. So following this pattern, Messiah is a much greater purification from sin, because the Temple offerings dealt with sins of ignorance and fraud, while omitting restoration for personal sins of rebellion.

The offerings were for purification. An offering was not a transaction— that is, the payment of a debt—nor were they to appease the wrath of God. The wrath disappeared when the sinner repented and the Most High forgave the sin. The offering is to purify and purge the sinner from the contamination that remains from the sin.

If we say "for sin", we mean he died for cleansing sin. If Western Christianity—following the theology of Anselm—says "for sin," they mean it is to satisfy a debt of honor imposed on the sinner, which could be satisfied by positive merit (honor) or, if not, then the sinner paying the punitive debt in Hell; he considered it sufficient to claim Christ paid the positive debt of honor. No mechanism was offered by Anselm for Christ to pay the punitive debt in a substitutionary manner. I say Western Christianity, because the Eastern Orthodox have not gone down this road, and this divergence should serve as a warning to Western Christianity that they have evolved a novel view—one that was not part of the original Good News. After Anselm (AD 1098), the Protestants added punitive compensation to Anselm's theory (AD 1536—1559).

An example of the correct sense of "for" is illustrated here: "Take this medicine for your cough." "For" here means to counteract or resolve a negative condition. Thus, a sin purification offering is "for sin" meaning "to deal with sin," to purge or cleanse it. In the 17th century, the word "for" also had the common meaning "because of" denoting a direct consequence. For example, "The battle was lost for lack of ammunition." Here the sense is "because of." "Because of" can also cite the reason for a need; "because of sin" can mean because of the need to deal with sin; in the same way, "take this medicine because of your cough" means to deal with it. The English word "for" used to cover both ideas, but in our current English, the sense of "because of" has dropped away in usage. So I recommend using "because of" except in places where the correct linguistic defense of "for" is explained.

"...because I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that the Anointed died because of our sins according to the writings...." (1 Cor. 15:3, GNM). Both the idea that sin caused his death, and that he died because of the need to purify us fit this context.

"Because the Anointed also suffered because of sins at one time, the just on behalf of the unjust..." (1 Peter 3:18, GNM). Both ideas work here.

"...who gave himself because of our sins..." (Gal. 1:4, GNM). Because of the need to purify us is the principal interpretation here.

"For the death he died, because of sin he died, at one time..." (Romans 6:10, GNM). Both the idea that sin caused his death and that he died because of the need to purify us fit this context.

"[But] the Almighty, having sent his own Son, in the form of sinful flesh, and for a sin purification sacrifice, has judged against sin in the flesh, so that the righteousness of the Law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:3-4, GNM). Here the translation "for" is fine since the sin offering is mentioned right after.

In none of these texts is it necessary to read a compensatory exchange into the text (Anselm) or a punitive exchange (the Reformers). Both ideas are legalistic. The only correct views are that our collective sin is the direct cause of his death, and also because he needed to cleanse us from sin. The latter idea to purge and cleanse us from sin is where the theological and instructive emphasis must be placed.

The Blood of Messiah — Divine Life

"Because the life of the flesh is through the blood." "Because the blood—it—through the life makes being purged" (Lev. 17:11). The life in the animal sacrifice was sufficient to purge the edge of the conscience from a sin of ignorance or fraud (upon restitution). But the life in Messiah's offering—through his blood—is sufficient to make being purged the entire soul to its very core were the sin of rebellion contaminated. This is because Messiah's life is of a higher nature than animal or even mortal human life. It was the divine life in Messiah that purges us. This divine life united with his blood in the incarnation. At the cross it was shed in his blood. Afterward it was raised to life, and acts to cleanse us from sin.

The life of Messiah is extended to us through space and time. When we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Because it is the mission of Messiah to "save us from our sins." The power of everlasting life, which dwelled in the flesh of Messiah, in the blood animating his body—this everlasting life extends to cleanse us from sin. It needs no priest or sacrament to apply it. But it is applied by the Spirit of the Most High to cleanse us. It is continuously available if we should discover a sin has contaminated us. If we confess our sins, then he cleanses us. There is only one "if" here. No priest needs to hear the confession. Only God in heaven needs to hear it. No Church hierarchy holds control over dispensing the grace of divine cleansing.

Who Planned To Murder The Messiah? — Genesis 3:15

When man sinned the Almighties must have had a discussion like this. "Who among us will rescue mankind from sin?" And the Almighty Son said, "I will go among them to show them what we are like by becoming a human, and to show the way back to everlasting life" (Exodus 23:20). The Father said, "Yes, if you go and do that many will eventually listen and be persuaded of our love for them, and will listen to your voice. But the devil that deceived them will raise up those who do not want to listen, and they will kill you as a human" (Genesis 3:15). Then the Son said, "But if they kill me, then you will raise me back to life, and then more will be convinced that I hold the power to give everlasting life." So Satan is the one who put humankind up to killing the Messiah. Genesis 3:15 says it is the serpent that strikes the chosen seed in the heel. It is not the Almighty who strikes the Son.

Someone may ask why every detail of the crucifixion came out like the prophets said, if God had not arranged to murder Messiah. Let us consider a similar situation. A captain told his general that he would go and rescue the prisoners from the enemy by leading the enemy forces away from the prison camp. The general said, "You will succeed, but the plan will cost you your life." The captain volunteered to do it anyway, and so the general sent him and he was able to rescue the prisoners, and he lost his life. Is the general responsible for killing the captain? If not then the Father is not responsible for murdering the Messiah.

But how did the words of the prophets come true so precisely? Since Satan was going to kill the Son anyway, the Father arranged events so that it would happen at the time, place, and in a manner that would get the most good benefit possible out of Satan's evil action. The Father allowed the Son to suffer, and the Son knew it was the loving decision. The Son volunteered for the mission. Sin causes the innocent to suffer. Therefore, no magic spell or illusion was cast to prevent the Son from suffering. The Son said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself." By saying this he was noting the value of martyrdom. And His Father saw to it that Satan was only allowed to do it exactly as the prophets had predicted. If the enemy was going to murder Messiah by stepping to the left, the Father made them sovereignly step to the right when they killed him.

Could God have rescued man by another method? Yes, but another way chosen would have been less loving, because it would have gotten fewer genuine results among men. It would not have demonstrated divine power over death. Because death is mankind's disease and the only treatment for death is the resurrection of the righteous. And so another way was not chosen, because God is love. He chose the way he did because it was the wisest and best way to love, because it would result in the greatest number repenting of their sins and receiving the resurrection of life.

Probably one of the most important things that the Father arranged was that Messiah's death would be explained as a sin offering, or the highest form of a sin offering, the guilt offering. That's what he called it. The rules of the sin offering are the same as the guilt offering (Lev. 7:7). And the sin offering is "for sin," which in Leviticus means for purifying the sinner from sin. The key PIEL verb is לְחַטֵּא, "to make being purified." By etymology this is "to make being missed" with the idea to cause the contamination to miss the sinner, i.e. the same as purging or purifying the sinner.

Therefore, the responsibility for striking the Messiah belongs to Satan, but the way it was done was constrained by God. "Sword, Awake against My Shepherd and against my associate — the one at My right hand." The text describes the Shepherd as the Almighty's amith (עָמִית)—His intimate companion, associate, or the one who stands directly "at His right hand" (Zechariah 13:7). In biblical terms, the right hand is the seat of shared authority and perfect unity, not the target of judicial execution. By striking the Shepherd, human rebellion was not watching God punish a legal substitute; they were striking the very companion of the Most High, whose divine life was uniquely unified with the Father. Indeed, Satan entered into Judas, and Yeshua said to him to accomplish his deed quickly. Judas was sent to wake up the sword.

We Thought He was Smitten by God—Isaiah 53:4

Both the House of Israel and the House of Judah think that the Messiah was smitten by God. But Israel has thought wrong. He was not smitten by God. He was smitten by our transgressions. And he was not just smitten in the flesh by our inquities. He was also smitten in the Spirit beginning with the fall of man. The crucifixion was a tangible window on the much larger reality of the divine suffering. Perverting this matter is the classic psychology of guilt. The woman thou gave me made me do it. And the woman said the devil tempted her. What would Satan say about the crucifixion? He would say God did it. But God says the devil and our sins did it!

"But our malignacies he will have carried. And our sorrows—he will have been laden with them. And we, we will have considered him being smitten, being struck by the Almighty, and being made to be afflicted" (Isa. 53:4, GNM). Malignancies, or sicknesses is a metonymy for the spiritual disease called sin. The verb נָשָׂ֔א here does not just mean "carried" in the sense of to bear with or to support a burden. This same verb נָשָׂ֔א also means "he will have forgiven our sins," because our sins are our spiritual dieseases. It can also mean "he will have borne with our malignancies" in the the sense of endured them spiritually, and taken them upon himself to heal them. A person can be burdened (laden with) with the cares and maladies of another person. It does not mean the person laden with sorrows is suffering a judicial punishment. The Messiah is so concerned with our condition that he suffers from our condition. It can also mean that he is laden with the malignancies and sorrows of humanity. I mean not vicarously suffering from trying to heal someone else, but simply enduring the same things we all have to endure: persecutions, insults, unjust treatments, cuts and bruises, and even injuries. He suffered hatreds, dislikes, tiredness, and hunger. It was too the point that people began to think, "no righteous man can suffer that much unless he is on the wrong side of God." It says, "we will have considered him being smitten, being struck by the Almighty, and being made to be afflicted." Now this word "considered" is the verb "to think" in Hebrew. "We will have thought him being smitten, being struck by the Almighty" is a perfectly good translation. It implies that if we think this, then we are mistaken. But it is also a prophecy of mistakenness. The Jews believed he was smitten by God, even cursed by God, and so in their eyes be became accursed. And then the Church taught the same thing for a different reason. But was he accursed by God? God forbid. He was not. But he was only thought to be accursed by God. He became a curse for us. But it was the curse of men and the curse of Satan that he went under. It was not the curse of God. It was only the curse of the world system. He bears our sin for purging and cleansing the sin—not because the wrath of God put a punishment on him.

Consider this: "malignancies" and "sorrows" speak of bad things themselves, and not punishments for evil. Only "smitten" and "struck by the Almighty" could have a legal sense here of punishment for a crime, yet these exceptional words are qualified by "we thought." For this reason the text implies that what we thought is actually false. And the text does go on to say that he was innocent. Normal people would see the point. On the one hand, those who hate the Messiah flip the script. On the other, those who profess Messiah and love their sin also flip the script. They want the Father to strike Messiah to pay for their sin instead of getting cleansing for their sin, or if they do not bend so low as to say the Father struck the Son, then they want the Father and Son to do a compensatory transaction with each other for our sin called the satisfaction theory.

Isaiah 53:5 — Pierced from vs. Pierced for

"But he is being made to be pierced from our transgressions, being made to be crushed from our iniquities. The instruction of our peace is upon him. And through his stripes will have been healing for us.

What does the Greek text say in Isaiah 53:5? It says, "αὐτὸς δὲ ἐτραυματίσθη διὰ τὰς ἀνομίας ἡμῶν," "And he was wounded because of our lawlessness." The NETS, cited above, reads, "But he was wounded because of our acts of lawlessness." Why does it say "because of" instead of "he was pierced for our transgressions." Who or what is the agent or subject doing the piercing? If it says, "for" then the agent is presumably God who is doing the piercing. But if it says "because of" then the agent doing the piercing is "our lawlessness." Is the peircing blamed on God or blamed on lawlessness? And if it is blamed on God then it surely looks like he is piercing the Messiah as a punishment for our transgressions.

Even Jerome does not manage to mess this one up, "Ipse autem vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras" "But he was wounded because of our iniquities." "Propter" means "because of" in Latin, and cannot mean "for." In 1611, the word "for" in English meant "because of." For example, "But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife" (Genesis 20:3). And this was the usual sense of "for" then.

In the 17th century, the meaning of "for" as an exchange began to creep into the word more and more. And preachers, such as John Owen, went out of their way to place this interpretation on this passage as an additional sense that belonged to the text. But the 18th and 19th centuries "for" was losing its causal sense. Preachers like Spurgeon presented only one sense of the text, "in exchange for." Around 1836 the phrase "substitutionary atonement" was coined in English print for the first time. Once this happened the older causal meaning was erased in the popular Christian mind.

When we go back to the Hebrew text, it says, "And he is made being pierced from our transgressions, being made crushed from our iniquities; the instruction of our wellness is upon Him; and through his stripes will have been healing for us." The active blame is placed on our transgressions, מִפְּשָׁעֵנוּ. This word has a preposition on it מִ, which means from. The piercing finds its point of origin "from our transgressions." The transgressions are the cause. The text is not stating that God pierced him for our transgressions. But the agent is our sin, and the one who focused our sin onto Messiah, was Satan. I have translated מוּסַר as instruction here. However, the standard translations incorrectly use the word "punishment." But the word "correction," "discipline" or "chastisement" might be ok, but only if we realize that it is not the Messiah getting corrected, disciplined, or chastised. What makes shalom, שָׁלוֹם, between the Most High and us is when we get corrected, disciplined, and chastised. Since Messiah is the sin purification offering, it is his life having come through his blood that purifies, purges, corrects, disciplines, and chastises us! But the Church has trained Christians to read a simple construct/genitive relations, "the correction of our peace is upon him" as the correction coming on Messiah. But this is not what "upon him" means. "Upon him (עָלָיו) means that it is his responsibility to do the cleansing in conjunction with our faithfulness. His responsibility can be summed up with the words, "he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If confessed sins are placed upon a sin offering, it is put there so that the sin offering can purge the sin from the sinner. The offering is not bearing punishment. The offering can suffer while purging, but this suffering is not legal punishment. He is merely the cost of purging the sinner, because sin exacts the cost.

Isaiah 53:5 appears in Hebrew parallelism. The first two clauses duplicate the first idea: our sin caused his suffering; The second two clauses duplicate the advantage that can be brought out of it. Instruction or correction of our peace (wellness) is another way of saying purging from sin. When a person is cleansed, he is also spiritually healed, and made well.

Isaiah 53:6 — Meet With vs. Laid Upon

"All of us like sheep we have strayed, each may to his way we have turned. And Yahweh has made meet with him the iniquity of all of us."

The authorized version has, "the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Some Bibles render "has punished him;" The Good News of Messiah translates, "And Yahweh has made meet with him the iniquity of all of us." The key Hebrew word here is הִפְגִּיע. The Hiphil infinitive, לְהִפְגִּיעַ, means "to cause to meet with." In the Qal it is simply "to meet with" (לִפְגֹּעַ). For example, וַיִּפְגְּעוּ־בוֹ מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים, "Then the messengers of the Almighty met with him" (Gen. 32:1). A broader word study reinforces this. The correct sense returns in Isaiah 53:12, "And for transgressors he makes a meeting." Messiah meets with our sins to purge them away, to cleanse them from us. His Spirit through his blood transcends time and space to meet with the sin in our hearts and to cleanse it. This may be dynamically explained as interceding for us concerning our sins. He brings the cleansing power to our souls. Nowhere else is the mistranslation "laid upon" used. It is tailor made to force penal substitution into the text. But the meeting is caused by Yahweh so that Messiah can deal with our sins and purify us from them. Because that is the function of the guilt offering, and the rules are the same as with the sin purification offering.

Isaiah 53:8 — From Transgressions vs. For Transgressions?

"By force of restraint, and from justice he will have been taken away, and among his generation who protests when he has been cut off from the land of the living? From the transgressions of My people he was made being stricken to death.

The authorized version reads, "For the transgression of my people was he stricken" (Isa. 53:8). But the Hebrew text does not say "for"! It says, "From the transgression of my people"; the Hebrew is: מִפֶּשַׁע, "From the transgression of...." So the text does not read "For" which would suggest PSA. The Greek Septuagint says, "From the lawlessness's of my people he was led to death" (ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνομιῶν τοῦ λαοῦ μου ἤχθη εἰς θάνατον). So the same word "from" is in the LXX (ἀπὸ). Besides the first word being corrupted by the English versions, the last word of the verse is textually corrupt in the Masoretic Text. The MT has לָמוֹ, which strictly speaking means "to them." The Rabbis argue that לָמוֹ refers to Israel. However, this is a departure from the earliest Hebrew text, which reads, "From the transgression of My people he was made being stricken to death" (נֻגַּע לַמָּוֶת; see LXX: εἰς θάνατον; 1QIsaᵃ: נוגע). The last word here has to be recovered from the LXX. The Masoretic text type lost a tav at the end of the line.

The Greek Septuagint has been accused of paraphrasing in some parts of Isaiah 53. However, it appears to be evident where it is paraphrasing, based on the same consonantal Hebrew text as the Masoretic Text, and where it departs because its actual Hebrew source is different. Isaiah 53:8 is one of those cases. In 53:4, the LXX substitutes the word "sins" for "sicknesses"; this is not a text departure, but an allowable interpretation. Sin is easily considered a sickness. I already suggested that bearing sin to cleanse it also means forgiving sin at the outset. In 53:10 the LXX is accused of paraphrasing, yet I have demonstrated that it also lies closer to the actual Hebrew text than the vowel pointing of the MT. I am confident that the other cases can be shown to derive from the standard consonantal text. For this reason, the nonsensical meaning of the final clause of verse 8, "a blow to them" is justly corrected by the LXX as "unto death," which fits the context of the suffering servant much better.

Isaiah 53:10 — Overturning The Verdict vs. Doubling Down On The Verdict

A faithful rendering overturns the verdict:

But Yahweh will have been pleased declaring his being crushed the sickness when his soul makes an offense-purification offering. He will see seed. He will have length of days. And the pleasure of Yahweh will prosper in his hand.

To declare "his being crushed the sickness" means the court of appeals (run by Yahweh) called the punishment of Messiah "the sickness." A guilty man is the sickness that must be destroyed. The Law demands the evil in Israel be destroyed. But if the court destroys and innocent man, the the sickness is the action of the human court itself. "His being crushed [by the Sanhedrin] is the sickness; Yahweh declares his being crushed the sickness."

But the "authorized version" (KJV) doubles down on the verdict: "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief...." This translation, and many others like it, make the LORD the perpetrator of the crucifixion. But this rendition is dependent on vowel points put into the text not earlier than AD 600 by Jewish Scribes who rejected the Messiah (הֶחֱלִי). These Scribes knew what Christians believed about this text. As early as Jerome, the Rabbis were using a consonantal text that they read to him substantially according to the first clause (AD 392—410). They were supplying the vowels and the interpretation of the infinitive construct (דַּכְּאוֹ). If there was one place they would want to deceive the Church, it was here.

Probably their rendition had been in their oral circles for quite some time as a polemic against the less severe Greek version the Church used. The reasoning would have evolved like this: since the LXX has Yahweh vindicating the Messiah, we (the Rabbis) should steer the interpretation to make Yahweh the perpetrator of the bruising. So they sabotaged their own text in order to get the Church to swallow a straw man, or perhaps to cause their own people to believe that the Most High had landed the blow on the suffering servant, i.e. "we thought he was smitten by God." In light of Genesis 3:15, this is exactly what Satan wanted. He wanted to shift the blame for the bruising blow away from himself onto God.

The Church of Jerome's day did not slide into the abyss right away: They rejected his translation from the Hebrew. Jerome's contemporary, Augustine, considered the Septuagint the inspired version, and accused Jerome of Judaizing. In the case of Isaiah 53:10, Augustine was right. The "synagogue of Satan" was trying to push the Church along the path to Hell with it.

Jerome did Judaize unwittingly, but it was not the same as the usual charge of keeping Sabbath. Rather, he bent the words to the will of the Rabbis. Augustine recounts a story of a time when a bishop was reading Jerome's version in a church from the book of Jonah. The congregation heard the bishop read that Jonah had been sheltering under an "ivy" plant (hedera). But they were used to hearing that he sheltered under a "gourd" (cucurbita). The congregation was so shocked that they shouted down the bishop and accused the text of being false. To restore order, the bishop was forced to abandon Jerome's version and to return to the Greek text.

In Isaiah 53:10, the LXX reads: "And the Lord wishes to cleanse him of the plague; if you give for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed. And the Lord wishes to lift [him] up."

Let me cite here a version that is independent of my own authority, the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), "And the Lord desires to cleanse him from his blow. If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived offspring. And the Lord wishes to take away from the pain of his soul..." Observe here that the Lord does not cause the attack on Messiah. If the plague is the attack, then he cleanses him from it. That could almost read as if he meant to clear him of the crime he was accused of. In the next clause, the Messiah is addressed as "you." It appears that only a condition is stated "if" he (addressed as you) volunteers to be a sin offering, then many will be cleansed—a reality which he will witness after his resurrection. So again Yahweh is not the perpetrator of the attack. He is sovereignly managing Satan's attack forcing the adversary to do it in a way to transform the Messiah's martyrdom into the ultimate, victorious purification offering.

It should be plain, then, why the Eastern Orthodox Church, which still uses the Septuagint, has never acknowledged the doctrine of Penal Substitution. Their Bible simply does not say that the Father perpetrated the crucifixion. If you tell them that the Hebrew text says differently, they would tell you the Jewish scribes changed it. And they would be right—a reality this study will now conclusively prove.

By the time of Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033—1109) the Western Church had fully adopted Jerome's Latin translation from the Hebrew, and had abandoned the Septuagint. And so now their Bibles made God the perpetrator of the crucifixion, "Dominus voluit conterere eum in infirmitate" ("The Lord willed to crush him in infirmity"). Everywhere in the west the Latin had displaced the Greek. And the Eastern Church was about to be cut off from the west:

Just as Anselm was entering his early twenties, the Pope sent an excommunication decree, by the hand of Cardinal Humbert, who slammed it onto the altar of Hagia Sophia. This was the high point of the Great Schism, because the Roman Church excommunicated the Eastern Church. One of the issues was that the Eastern Church, out of respect for the seventh day Sabbath, refused to fast on that day. But Rome demanded fasting on the Sabbath. The Eastern Church allowed fasting only on the Sabbath before Easter, but forbade it on any other Sabbath because the Sabbath was a day of joy and memorial of creation.

Before the papal excommunication decree, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, actively condemned the Romans for their Saturday fasting. In retaliation, the Papal Bull of 1054 formally attacked the Greeks for their customs, throwing a bizarre accusatory label at them: calling them "Nazarenes" for keeping Jewish-style Sabbath practices. Indeed, forbidding fasting on the Sabbath was exactly what the Judean sages taught. Mourning on a festival day was not permitted, because the Torah teaches that the appointed times are seasons of rejoicing before Yahweh. In this case the Rabbis were right because that is what the Torah teaches. The Sabbath is a day of joy, because on it Messiah Yeshua rose from the dead to provide us with the purging and cleansing power of his blood. The real meaning of the cross does truly connect with the Sabbath day. The Orthodox defense of Sabbath joy was a tenacious faithful act when the truth was fading away in Christendom.

After the Great Schism, the theological landscape of the Eastern Church was cleared away for Anselm. He could now publish his honor satisfaction theory without opposition from Constantinople. He did receive opposition, but it did not legally or civil impact him. The Eastern Church opposed Anselm's theory because it was transactional. They continued to argue for the original restorative model, which was explained at the outset of this essay.

Anselm's novel theory worked like this. If a noble in Europe harmed a commoner, then the satisfaction was a relatively small fine for the Noble. But if a commoner harmed a noble, the satisfacton was a severe fine, beyond the actual damage with a premium added. This was because the commoner had not just offended an equal. The commoner had also offended the noble's honor. Therefore, the commoner had to make satisfaction for the offended honor of the noble. Consequently, the monetary compensation was more severe. This was just like the Amorite code of Hammurabi!

I allow the AI to reinforce the point here: "With the Eastern Church cut off and silenced by the Schism, Anslem could now formulate and publish his landmark Satisfaction Theory of Atonement without any theological opposition from the Greek world. His model operated on a purely medieval, feudal logic. If a European noble harmed a commoner, the legal satisfaction was mere base-value restitution, as no high-ranking dignity had been violated.; however, if a commoner dared to offend a noble, the sastisfaction demanded an immense, added-value premium to restore the noble’s violated honor. This discrepancy existed because the commoner had not merely caused material damage—he had insulted an aristocratic status. Therefore, the offender was legally required to make "satisfaction" to restore that broken aristocratic status. Anselm took this transactional, class-based feudal mindset and superimposed it onto heaven, effectively turning the Almighty into a supreme medieval king whose cosmic honor demanded a superabundant, positive compensation. This structure perfectly mirrored the ancient, unequal mechanics of the Code of Hammurabi, where symmetric restitution only operated between equals, while any offense against a superior required a vastly disproportionate financial reparation to buy off the threat of punishment. Anselm actually had great difficulty with Jerome's altered Latin text—which explicitly claimed that God willed to crush the Servant—because his theory was strictly based on a positive, voluntary asset transfer of Christ's merit rather than a divine execution. Yet, by forcing the cross into this feudal ledger of aristocratic honor, Anselm successfully codified a system of divine justice that looked less like the grace of the Gospel and more like a celestial enforcement of class-based property law."

Anselm reasoned that the honor of the Father was infinitely great; therefore, an offense against the honor of the Father must be satisfied by an infinite satisfaction. Consequently, Anselm taught that the Son's voluntary surrender of His un-owed life—rather than His physical suffering itself—satisfied the honor-debt owed to the Father.

In Anselm's system Christ surrenders his positive merit to compensate for the infinite dishonor of humanity. But since Christ's divine nature surrendered a multi-dimensionality of infinite value, only a finite subspace of those infinite dimensions is required to fully neutralize humanity’s offense. The Father is legally bound to return the principal life-asset three days later in the Resurrection. Upon receiving the return value, his original infinite value is not diminished because a multi-valent infinity cannot be diminished even when subtracting a lower-dimensional infinity from it to credit humanity's ledger.

Anselm's contemporaries were forced to struggle with the ticking time bomb in Isaiah 53:10 in Jerome's Vulgate text. They tried to defuse the dilemma in the Vulgate by shifting the meaning of "was pleased" or "delighted in" to the passive idea of "allowed" or "permitted"—watering down the text to save God from looking like a penal executioner. While this semantic shift was a step in the right direction, it was not the actual solution; they cut the wrong wire and the clock went into automatic countdown mode. The true, active meaning of the text had been stolen by the Rabbis before Jerome translated the Hebrew, leaving the original non-punitive layout preserved only in the Greek Septuagint. Ultimately, the actual solution is only recovered in the Hebrew by outflanking the polemical vowel points of the Masoretic Text and restoring the original consonantal grammar. But Anselm's contemporaries did not have the answer anymore; the clock counted down to zero when Martin Luther and John Calvin detonated it.

In Anselm's theory, satisfaction, by restitution and compensation, was something that was paid in an out-of-court settlement. In court, this would be called a bribe. In Anselm's theory, the object was to avoid the court altogether. The restitution was an out-of-court forgiveness that was transactional. However, Luther and Calvin presented the divine Law as demanding the execution of the penalty. They took grace out of the Law entirely (cf. Ezekiel 18 where grace is in the Law; and Exodus 20:6). They moved both the satisfaction into court to make the merits of Christ a legal demand in the compensation, and then they added to it the suffering of Christ as a legal punitive demand. For this reason, this part of the Reformation wasn't reformation at all. It was a further corruption of Scripture.

The Original Isaiah 53:10

The Good News of Messiah (GNM) supplies a complete translation of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 on page 421, available on this website for free. I have therein translated Isaiah 53:10, "And Yahweh will have been pleased to make his being crushed the malignancy, when his soul makes an offense offering. He will see seed. He will make long his days. And the pleasure of Yahweh in his hand will prosper."

Please note that it does not say he was pleased "to make him being crushed." But it says he was pleased "making his being crushed the malignancy." His being crushed is presented as a given; it is presented as a situation that Yahweh has to deal with, not as something he perpetrated. Now, Yahweh will redeem it, bringing a supreme good out of the crisis. Also notice that "when his soul makes an offense offering" presents Messiah's soul as the agent. He volunteered to let Satan strike him with the blow, with the plague, with the malignancy, with the bruising of the heel. Now "soul" (נֶפֶשׁ) means "life", which was in Messiah's blood, and the guilt offering means an offense purification offering. So what was Yahweh pleased to do? He was pleased to connect the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 that Satan would bruise the Messiah to the malignancy that crushed Messiah's heel. The KJV does adopt the gloss "bruise" here, as in Gen. 3:15—a connection that is well-founded, as He was pleased to redefine what Satan did as a purification offering, that is to purge us from sin. Because the divine life was in Messiah's blood, the Most High turns the tables on Satan and now allows the life of his Son to purify us from sin.

The basis for this translation is the consonantal Hebrew text of Isaiah 53:10. The first correction I will make, however, accepts the vowel points of the Hebrew word דַּכְּאוֹ. But the interpretation is based on a well-known ambiguity of the Hebrew infinitive construct. The pronoun suffix on this infinitive verb may be interpreted in two different ways, as an object pronoun "him" or as a possessive pronoun "his". The difference is this, "he has been pleased making his being bruised (crushed) the malignancy" vs. "he has been pleased making him being bruised (crushed)." This exact same kind of ambiguity is displayed in verse 11, "by knowing him" which also translates as "by his knowing." "By knowing him" is more correct according to 1 John 2:3-4.

The next correction involves vowel points. The Masoretic texts turns the next word into another verb: הֶחֱלִי (he has made weak, or sick, or ill). However, the word is a noun with the definite article: הַחֳלִי (ha-choli). The AI breaks this down, "1. The Definite Article (הַ): The leading Hē takes a Patach (הַ). When a definite article precedes a guttural letter like Chet (ח) that carries a Chateph-Kamatz vowel, the Hē retains its short Patach vowel sound without requiring a doubling Dagesh in the next letter. 2. The Base Noun (חֳלִי): The noun for "sickness" or "disease" in Biblical Hebrew is חֳלִי (choli), utilizing a Chateph-Kamatz under the Chet and a Chirik-Yod at the end. By re-pointing the text as הַחֳלִי, the word seamlessly transitions from a severe verbal action perpetrated by an outside force ("he made him sick / put him to grief") into a direct nominal object: "the malignancy" or "the disease." This perfectly supports your translation layout in The Good News of Messiah, grammatically stabilizing the phrase as: "And Yahweh will have been pleased to make his being crushed the malignancy..."

It should be noted that the Greek Septuagint attests to the exact same definite article and noun combination: τῆς πληγῆς (the plague, tēs plēgēs). Because it only differs from the medieval Masoretic Text in its vowel points, the LXX rendering is legitimate. "The plague" is the true object of the possessive infinitive. No consonants of the text have been altered.

Yahweh will have delighted in making (declaring) his being crushed: the plague (malignancy). This is because the plague of sin was the secondary agent that struck the blow. The primary agent that focused the plague of sin on the Messiah was Satan. The Father declares the Satan-focused sin plague the malignancy. The Son makes his life a sin purification offering to meet it. We will see that the malignancy, the plague, transcends the moment on the cross. That was just a climactic point. But Messiah's sin purging life also transcends the cross, crossing time and space through his resurrection to heal us.

The final point I would like to make is that if Anselm's proto-PSA theory is so orthodox, then why did we have to wait to the 11th century to learn about it? Why did we have to wait for Hodge and Sproul to refine it? This theory presents itself much like the immaculate conception for the virgin Mary. And why was it so easy at the end for me to deconstruct Isaiah 53:10 so that the result agrees with the Hebrew consonantal text? (Believe me, finding the answer was not easy.) And why does medieval Europe look so much like the kingdom of the Amorite Babylonians under Hammurabi? It really looks to me like the Most High has himself set up this false doctrine for a mighty fall.

Let's return to Greek Septuagint. The text of Isaiah 53:10 reads, "καὶ κύριος βούλεται καθαρίσαι αὐτὸν τῆς πληγῆς"—"And YHWH desires to cleanse him of the plague." This text has been accused of paraphrasing the Hebrew too loosely or even disregarding it entirely. However, if we immerse ourselves in the Greek religious and legal context we can see exactly how the terms function. When a person was accused of a notorious capital crime, whether they were innocent or guilty, a social miasma attached to them. They became contaminated in the eyes of the community, branded as an unclean person; a capital charge alone was enough to attach this spiritual stigma. Consequently, when a court met and found the person innocent, they did not merely issue an acquittal. But also they would formally declare him cleansed from the miasma. The words "the plague" (τῆς πληγῆς) stand here in the text as representative metaphor of the sickness or malignancy or spiritual and social miasma that was attached to the person by the charges. It is even worse if an innocent person is at first found guilty and then sentenced. When the verdict must be overturned, then a very great miasma has to be cleansed so that the person is clean in the eyes of the community. The original consonantal Hebrew text, I translated, "And Yahweh will have been pleased making his being crushed the malignancy." The idea is that YHWH is now pleased to declare his punishment the miasma. He has overturned the miasma by a truthful finding. That is the social contamination is not him. The plague (miasma) is now shifted to the act of crushing him. By charging the prosecutors with being the plague and the spiritual illness, the Most High has overturned the verdict and what the people "thought", i.e. that he was "stricken by God." For this reason, the Greek Septuagint brilliantly captures the precise theological and forensic reality of the passage. It is neither translating a wild Hebrew text variant, or being carelessly loose with the meaning of the known consonantal text; it is getting straight to the effective meaning for a Greek audience.

Genesis 15:6 — Righteousness of Fathfulness

You must not fear Abram; I am a shield for you, thy exceedingly great reward....And he had been holding faithful through Yahweh. And he had been intending it for him to be righteousness.

Prior to the reformation, this verse, and the one's like it in Paul were not interpreted as a righteousness transfer in the legal ledger. Indeed, Martin Luther and John Calvin are responsible for transforming Anselm's theory into the courtroom, and then teaching that the Law requires both positive legal satisfaction (compensation) and negative legal satisfaction (punishment). If Genesis 15:6 is to be interpreted as a dispensation of both negative justice and positive righteousness in a courtroom context, then they would be right. But they are not.

Abraham "had been holding faithful through Yahweh; and he had been intending it for him to be righteousness." Yahweh had told Abram that he was his "shield" (Gen. 15:1): "I am a shield to you—your exceedingly great reward." In Ephesians 6:16, Paul says to put on the "shield of faithfulness" as the armor of God. Now David was offered to put on the armor of Saul, which was transactional, but David opted for the shield of Yahweh (1 Samuel 17:45; Psalm 18:2, 35; Psalm 3:3). David held faithful through Yahweh, and Paul writes that salvation is from "faithfulness unto faithfulness," because the "righteous one shall live by [his] faithfulness" (Hab. 2:4). Faithfulness and righteousness both refer to the same thing, the righteousness of God, which we may take hold of through our faithfulness. So the whole of the biblical teaching in Torah is one of practical synergism between divine faithfulness and our responsive holding faithful.

Genesis 15:6 is explaining what the shield/reward is: "And he had been intending it for him to be righteousness." But our English translations unjustly translate the verb לַחֲשֹׁב, "to think," "to consider," "to intend," or "to plan" into a legal accounting term, "to reckon" or "to account." Our text here is only explaining what Yahweh intended the reward to be. It is explaining his thinking in Genesis 15:1. When he says, "I am your shield," he is thinking, more specifically, that he will give his righteous faithfulness to Abraham, a cleansing infusion of his nature. And this is no more complicated that what Scripture says elsewhere, namely that we should circumcise our hearts, and that he will circumcise our hearts. And in 1 John, it is stated that Yeshua cleanses us from all unrighteousness. And then again, we are commanded to purify ourselves, just as he is pure. And again, we are commanded to hide his word in our hearts to keep us from sin. And on the other hand, it says he will write his word on our hearts.

In Romans 4:11, Paul mentions the "righteousness of faithfulness" (GNM) which Abraham had while uncircumcised. In verse 13 he calls it "faithful righteousness" (GNM). In Ephesians 6 Paul makes an armor analogy. It is the shield of faithfulness and the breastplate of righteousness.

Romans 5:1 — Being Administered Righteousness

Romans 5:1 states, "Therefore, being administered righteousness based on faithfulness..." (GNM). Righteousness is administered as a spiritual medicine aimed at cleansing sin from the life of the faithful. This is the correct translation of "being justified by faith"; which in the English versons has only a ghost of a reflection of the orginal text and meaning. Paul is only saying here what I explained in the previous section.

But Luther and Calvin made the text into a courtoom procedure, whereby faith alone activates a ledger substitution of Christ's righteousness.

Purging and At-one-ment

"And he is the purging concerning our sins, and not concerning our only, but also concerning the whole world" (1 John 2:1, GNM). "In this is love, not that we had been loving the Almighty, but that he loved us and sent his Son—to be—a purging for our sins" (1 John 4:10, GNM), "whom the Almighty set forth as a purging" (Rom. 3:25, GNM).

The biblical teaching is entirely focused on the concept of removing sin from the sinner after it has been confessed and forgiven, "When we may be confessing our sins, he is faithful and righteous, so that he shall have forgiven us our sins and he shall have cleansed us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9, GNM). However, false teachers have introduced pagan ideas into the Assembly, transforming the promise of restoration through the good news into a transaction with God to compensate him for forgiveness. A transaction is not loving or relational. It is commercial, and is based on what God is owed to purchase his love. This pagan idea is legalistic at its core, and is not the merciful God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The transactional idea is added to key words by shifting their original meanings, or by reading the meaning into the text alongside the word. This is called eisegesis.

Let us begin with the word "propitiate." This is actually a Latin-derived word. It means to make someone's disposition favorable. It is quite ok for God's disposition to be made favorable to us. But the Latin word does not include "how" that happens in the meaning of the word. The biblical "how" is to remove the sin from the sinner, by cleansing it, by purging it. When the sin is gone from the sinner, then the Most High has no reason to be wrathful; he is now made favorable in disposition because that which caused the disfavor, sin, is out of the picture (cf. Ezekiel 18). The Eastern Orthodox Church has always viewed matters this way. But in AD 1054, the Western Church and the Eastern Church parted ways. Anselm's theology defined the "how" for the Western Church, to be "satisfaction" in AD 1098. Satisfaction was a gift of compensatory merit from the infinite merit of Christ paid to the Father. Christ's merit was surrendered through death to the Father. Since it was overpayment, Christ's life was returned to him. Infinite merit cannot be diminished even when taking away an infinite part to make the satisfaction payment. So through Anselm, the "how" became transactional. The next stage of adding to the "how" came at the Reformation. Calvin (AD 1536) and Luther added the idea of negative punishment to Anslem's satisfaction. Now the "how" included a punitive payment to the Father. The Church of Rome refused to take this additional step. They remained with the positive merit for satisfaction. Furthermore, Anselm's view was entirely out of court, so as to avoid the court by making outside compensation. The Reformers moved it into the courtroom and made the entire process legalistic. By this process, the "how" of propitiation came to mean the sacrifice of innocent blood to pay the penalty of the guilty sinner. This concept is the same as the pagan use of innocent victims to assuage the wrath of the angry god. It is in fact the worst form of pagan practice as not all pagan sacrifice was this blasphemous.

Let us move on to the word "atonement." Originally, this word meant "at-one-ment," which means to create harmony between two parties, to bring them into a state of being "at one" with each other. The word does not specify "how" this is done. Biblically we are reconciled with God through the removal of sin. When sin is purged and cleansed, then the Almighty has no more reason to be wrathful. The offering of life is not to make compensation. It is for the purpose of cleansing. So when we confess our sins, he first forgives them, which is legal cancellation of the debt, but then this is followed by the necessary purging from the sin itself. The good news is not fulfilled until the purging happens.

While at-one-ment would have originally been useful to describe the outcome of the good news, it is a dynamic equivalent just like propitiation. It describes a result and is disconnected from the effective action. Furthermore, the word has changed meaning under the influence of Anselm's "how" and Calvin's "how". In the Hebrew, the word means "purgation" and is a synonym of "cleansing." When sin is the object, then the how becomes evident. The how is sin removal, and not any of the transactional theories. The word "atonement" took yet another wrong turn. In 1828 Wilhelm Gesenius provided a false etymology of kipper based on the Arabic word kafara, whence is derived Kafir as one who covers up the truth, i.e. infidel or heretic. This is literally what happened. This false derivation covered up the meaning of the term. It was adopted by high-Calvinist Princeton theologians William G.T. Shedd (1820–1894) and Charles Hodge. After this the word "atonement" was explained as meaning the sacrifice covered the view of the sin from the eye of God. As a result, it came to be totally disconnected from the original sense of purging the sin, and left the sin unaffected. This view never made it into the translations, and the explanation suffered a serious setback when the Akkadian word kappuru, "to wipe away" was discovered.

The word "expiation" originally meant the thing that makes complete purification, from the Latin expiatio. This is derived from the verb expiāre, "to make complete purification." The terms are composed of two elements; the first is "ex," meaning "out of," "away," used intensively to mean "completely"; and the second is piāre, meaning "to make pure," or "to cleanse." This original sense almost perfectly aligns with the Hebrew verb le-kippēr "to make being purged." Purged is an intensification of cleansed.

However, "expiation" in the Church of Rome has been integrated into the Catholic understanding of "how" this is done. The base idea of purgation is retained, but the mechanism is made transactional. Christ's deposit of positive merit is combined in the Catholic understanding of the term. Furthermore, expiation is extended to personal penance. The positive merit of assigned penances is considered to expiate the debt of sin. Again, this is not satisfaction of punishment, but an out-of-court satisfaction of merit in place of punishment.

The Hebrew — Make Being Purged

When we turn to the Hebrew verb, le-kippēr, several nuances appear that can clarify the correct theology. And, in fact, these clarifications completely destroy the later corruptions. The Hebrew Piel verb is causative and stative/progressive. The best way to explain this in English is with the gloss, "to make being purged." There is one more sense we need to be aware of, and that is the declarative Piel. For example, when a priest pronounces someone clean, a Piel is used, "to make being cleansed," (Lev. 13:6, 23, 34) only the causative is used legally, where "make" becomes a pronouncement, as in "make it so." A literal sense would be "to declare [him] being cleansed." It must be understood that the priest does not declare someone being cleansed unless he is actually being cleansed. There is no legal fiction going on. It is just official recognition of a state that exists. As a result, the Scripture says, "the priest will have declared being purged for him from his sin. Also it has been forgiven him." (Lev. 4:26).

We need to notice several things. First, it is left open by the Piel whether the state of "being purged" is completed or not. It could be a continuative state. In fact, the state, spiritually speaking, could be a continuative state that started when the sin was confessed before the offering was brought for purgation. So the priest's pronouncement does not have to just be regarded as stating a fact about the life in the blood of the offering. It could combine with divine purging before the offering. It is just like when a priest declares someone being cleansed. The cleansing itself was earlier before he came to the priest. The Hebrew Piel allows for the Spirit of the Most High to work his cleansing behind the scenes, making it unclear how much of the purgation is contributed by the animal blood. But the sacrificial process is designed to give divine assurance, and certainly a significant part of the purgation is by virtue of the life in the blood of the animal, for the sins of ignorance. The Piel also allows for aspects of purgation to continue after the offering. It should be noted that the final statement, "And it will have been forgiven for him" is simply a gnomic assurance. Most of those who brought offerings knew they were forgiven when they confessed, and they were seeking cleansing by the prescribed method. So the forgiveness statement is not a result of the offering. It is taking notice of something that is already true.

Ransomed From the Curse — Gal. 3:13

"The Anointed ransomed us from the curse—the customary norm, having become a curse over us" (Gal. 3:13). And "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Deut. 21:23). The Jewish people had a social belief that anyone who was hanged on a tree was "accursed of God." It did not matter if a person was innocent or guilty, this was the street-level belief of the am-ha'aretz. It was a superstition like the other superstition that if a man's bones were burned then there was no resurrection from the dead for him. Thus it was a visceral fear of the people that Israel's enemies would use these forms of punishment against the innocent. If a man were to die and be hanged on a tree, then they would regard him as accursed of God. But if he came back to life three days later, then what? It would overturn the superstition for that one man. Paul uses the superstition to ransom the captive mind from an even greater curse of the unwitting. The curse from the law.

Paul has just quoted Deut. 27:26, "Cursed is everyone who does not stand by all the things which have been written in the book of the law, to do them" (Gal. 3:10, GNM). This was the verse that the Pharisees weaponized against the people whenever they should defy their authority or doubt their opinions, saying "But this crowd which knows not the Law is accursed" (John 7:49). They aimed this straight at the crowds, and by implication the Temple guards who would not arrest Yeshua. The thought was, "We are next if we don't arrest him." This makes Paul's line of thinking in Galatians clear. If Messiah is rescued from the curse of God on the cross through the resurrection, then Messiah can ransom Israel from the curse of the law. As the Father overruled cursing Messiah on the cross through the resurrection, so also Messiah can overrule the curse of the law through our faithfulness to him. The mind of the faithful is ransomed through Messiah from both false doctrines, the curse of God on a tree and the curse of the law.

But someone will say, "But you cannot overrule what Scripture says! Anyone who hangs on a tree is accursed by God. And anyone who does not keep the Torah perfectly is accursed also, and goes to hell if faithfulness and obedience to the Torah should play any role in salvation." These arguments joined up in the 16th century AD under John Calvin and Martin Luther, and to this day it is commonly argued when the faithful keep the Torah that the smallest slip up makes them accursed according to Deut. 27:26. And how do the Reformed teachers get themselves out of the curse. They invented substitutionary curse theology. If an innocent man is accursed of God by hanging on a tree, then he can pay for the curse of those breaking the Torah. So they invented the idea of penal-substitutionary atonement (PSA) and double imputation, imputation of the curse to Christ added to imputation of the merits from the previous doctrine of Anselm.

Before untying the knot, I should mention that the Rabbis had an escape hatch for the curse of the law. It worked like the Anselm argument. Only Christ is not the source of the merit. Abraham replaces Christ as the source of the merit. It is fascinating that in Rabbinic theology, Abraham's merit is not a gift from God, despite the fact that Genesis 15:1 and 15:6 say that is exactly what the Most High intended! Abraham did not pay for a superabundance of merit by his good works. Yet, the Rabbis argue that he earned it. By doing so, they or the Pharisees anticipated moving Abraham into the place of Messiah. Yeshua's merit is completely his own. Anyway, like the Church, the Rabbis teach borrowed merit. The mechanism for borrowing it is a Jewish circumcision under the authority of the Rabbis. "Rabbi Levi said: In the World to Come, Abraham will sit at the entrance of Gehenna, and he will not permit any circumcised Israelite to descend into it" (Eruvin 19a; Bereshit Rabbah 48:8). The truth is that Abraham's faithfulness was only sufficient for his own breastplate of righteousness and that Yahweh had at the first been his shield. And that shield was not just his, but it was his seed's faithfulness, the faithfulness of Messiah. The mechanism was not legalistic for the purpose of satisfying a legal demand of Torah. It was rather a real infusion of righteousness according to our growth in faithfulness. Now, let us see about the legal arguments and demands.

When Paul quoted Deut. 21:23, he was careful to leave out the key words, "of God" (ὑπὸ θεοῦ). Paul did not have the ink to explain a grammatical problem. If the LXX is read in context with v. 22, then it is clear that the anyone who is cursed is only the one in whom a sin of death is found. But if the LXX is quoted only in v. 23, then it seems like anyone hanged on a tree is accursed of God, and hence that was the popular opinion, because the street rarely pays attention to context. By the ommission Paul is conceding that Messiah was not ultimately cursed by God, but it also suits him to point out that the community did curse him. From the Hebrew text the technical explanation for כִּי־קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי is "because a curse of God is such a one being hanged"; the passive participle תָּלוּי carries an anaphoric verbal noun "such a one" and refers directly back to וְכִי־יִהְיֶה בְאִישׁ חֵטְא מִשְׁפַּט־מָוֶת in v. 22. "And when will be in a man a sin, a judgment of death, and he has been caused to die, then thou will have hanged him upon a tree....a curse of God is such a one being hanged...." The Rabbis tried to strip out Paul's argument by emphasizing the words קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים as "curse of God", (a curse against God) if the man was innocent, but God's curse is upon him if the man is guilty. This is like the famous ambiguity "love of God," meaning either "love for God" or "God's love." Indeed, by leaving the corpse on the tree, because it was made in the image of God, it could be considered a curse against God, and thus to defile the land by such a display against the divine image was forbidden. So if an innocent man was hung, then the Rabbis would just say his remaining there was "a curse against God" but if a guilty man was there they would support both senses, and selectively apply it to Messiah. By this subterfuge, instead of solving the problem legitimately by letting the participle reference v. 22, the Rabbis have solved it in a way that if Yeshua is innocent in Paul's argument, then he cannot be viewed as a "curse of God" by the community, and therefore resurrection does not overturn the curse. By severing the connection between the tree and the resurrection's overrule, the Rabbis trap the believer right back under the original problem: the curse of failing to keep the whole Law (Deut. 27:26). We will now explore the curse of the Law.

"ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ὃς οὐκ ἐμμενεῖ ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτούς"—"Cursed is any man who does not remain by all the words of this law, to do it." And similarly Paul, "Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά"—"Cursed is everyone who does not stand by in all the things having been getting written in the Book of the Law to do them" (Gal. 3:10, GNM). But Paul has softened the blow according to the Hebrew sense. One must stand by what is written in the law vs. the LXX one must stand by all the words, i.e. "matters." And then "to do them" means that intent matters. So the LXX allowed one to twist the words into a curse upon the ignorant as the Pharisees tried to do in John 7:49. But the Hebrew text and the wording of Paul allowed one to stand by what is written with the intent "to do it." Therefore, if we make a mistake in our observance, then we are not under a curse, but Messiah ransoms us from this kind of curse, because his blood cleanses us from all sin through faithfulness. If we are faithful from the heart, we get the benefit of the ransom. Here is a technical translation of the Hebrew that justifies this fine shade of meaning, "Cursed [is he] who does not cause to stand the words of this Torah to do them" (Deut. 27:26). "Cause to stand" here means to "uphold the Torah", and "to do them" establishes intent. So if one makes a mistake while upholding the Law, while intending to do it, then one is not under this curse.

If the curse does not light upon the faithful who go astray, then the foundation of the argument that Messiah must be accursed of God to pay a penalty is eliminated. The Father is faithful and just to forgive us our sins when we confess them, and Messiah is just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But to let the curse of God fall on Messiah is one and the same thing as saying that God cannot forgive sin.

According to Ezekiel 18, confession and repentance are sufficient for the Most High to change his afterlife verdict from death to life. Through the righteousness which he has done, the wicked man that repents shall live. And none of his former deeds will be remembered against him.

Calvin and Luther wish to twist the curse passage into a blanket curse on all mankind for failure to cross every 't' and dot every 'i' of the Torah. And beyond a few misinterpreted texts like this, there is no blanket statement of condemnation in the hereafter against the faithful who are faithful, but who are imperfect while intending to be faithful. Holding faithful to Messiah means that our imperfections are not counted against us; but they cause a lack of blessing in the covenant, and not damnation.

Because the Torah does not seem to have a pronouncement of damnation past the first death in the case of the faithful, Augustine laid the foundation necessitating a legalistic solution: the doctrine of original sin. This doctrine was invented so that even the faithful would need a legalistic escape. And thus the slide into legalistic or ritualistic salvation began. At first the ritual was baptism. And then Anselm's satisfaction theory was added to it for positive merit to be given to the Father so that he would overlook the sin out-of-court. And then Calvin and Luther dragged the matter back into court and demanded that penal justice be added to the demand for satisfaction. Finally Charles Hodge formulated all the precise legal definitions to completely close the Calvinist trap (AD 1871-73). And thus was born the most heretical, blasphemous, and damnable system of salvation the world has ever seen, a system that did not have its first official brick laid till the fifth century AD (AD 411-431), and then after another half millennium devolved to Anselm (AD 1098), and then almost another half-millennium later devolved to penal satisfaction (AD 1536). If we judge the state of the Church by fidelity to the good news the evangel, then we can conclusively say that there was never a Reformation. The only thing good to come out of it was that people got access to the Bible formerly chained to the pulpit, and the Church of Rome was forced to retreat from its slaughter of the saints. Even so, it was not Calvinists and Lutherans that stopped the slaughter.

The Ransom At-one-ment Theory

There is one and only one at-one-ment theory that meets the biblical definition of at-one-ment. The word at-one-ment is not suitable to define it, because it is a dynamic equivalent translation focused on the result of the foundational verb, "le-kipper." The result kippur (כִּפֻּר / כִּיפּוּר) is described by at-one-ment: harmony between parties; reconciliation between God and man. But the how of the verb is "to make being purged" its object, and the noun refers to a state of purgation. Le-kipper (לְכַפֵּר), "to cause being purged." The word "being" here is used in its English ambiguity to denote either a resultant state or a progressive action. The Piel stem points to a final state acheived by a progressive action. The action of the verb is performed on its object, the sinner or sin contamination, ritual impurity, or corruption. The action is always to remove the contamination. When the sin contamination is removed then the cause of divine displeasure is removed; a state of harmony, termed at-one-ment comes about between the cleansed sinner and the Most High.

The word is defined in Isaiah 6:5, "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" (KJV). The context provides antonyms and parallel synonyms to define the word. First notice the antomyms, "I am undone," "I am a man of unclean lips," "I dwell in the midsts of a people of unclean lips." Why is there no harmony? He has seen Yahweh of Hosts, described as Holy, Holy, Holy, pure and undefiled. What does fire from the altar do: it purges. That is the result of the action "iniquity is taken away," and sin is "purged." The last word here is the key Hebrew verb, conjugated as Pual with a feminine subject: תְּכֻפָּר. The feminine subject is to agree with the word sin (חַטָּאָת). The full phrase (וְחַטָּאתְךָ תְּכֻפָּר) translates: "And thy sin is made being purged."

The very first translation of this phrase into a language other than Hebrew is contained in the Greek Septuagint (LXX): "καὶ τὰς ἁμαρτίας σου περικαθαριεῖ." "And the sin of thee, it will thoroughly cleanse." The key word here is περικαθαριεῖ, and breaks down into two parts: περι and καθαριεῖ. The first word is an intensifier based on the word "around," with the idea being all around, thoroughly or completely. The second word καθαριεῖ is the standard verb conjugation for "it will cleanse." The reason this combination works is that "purge" is a more severe synonym for "cleanse."

The modern versions assiduosly avoid the proper definitions. NIV, ESV: atone for; NLT: are forgiven. So called literal versions are not literal: YLT: is covered; LSV is covered. The Catholic versions are correct. Douay-Rheims: shall be cleansed; New American Bible: your sin purged. Older Protestant versions are more correct, like the Catholic Bibles. NKJV: your sin is purged; Webster: thy sin purged. One can can map the theological battle lines right from these versions. This gives new meaning to Yeshua's words, "Repent therefore, or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth" (Rev. 2:16, GNM). "And take...the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of the Almighty" (Eph. 6:17, GNM). Even more disturbingly, the Catholics and Protestants are like two sisters, Oholibamah and Oholibah. Oholibah saw the wickedness of her sister Oholibamah, and then went and acted twice as wickedly. Oholibamah made purgation ritual and satisfaction. Oholibah erased the whole idea of purgation, and replaced it with penal substitition.

So there is only one theory of at-one-ment. The Ransom represents the cost of eliminating the sin. Ransom is the sacrifice needed to purge the sin contamination. Ransom is the suffering charged by an evil situation in order to defeat the evil, to purge it. Ransom is the cost of purging the contamination. This is the exact opposite of payment and compensation. The work of Messiah is called "a ransom for many," because he is paying the cost to purge them from their sins. A ransom represents the cost charged by evil in order to rescue the victim from evil. The ransom cost is exacted by sin and Satan. But the Church has turned this into payment to God, and compensation to God. The Church has redefined the divine Ransom as a payment to the Father. Scripture says the Father gave is only kindred Son, who is the ransom for many. It does not say the Son gave a ransom to the Father.

In Scripture, the idea of ransom is much broader than the clasic picture of the kidnapper who sends a ransom note promising to kill the daughter if her father does not pay him in gold. Even this image has the direction of the transaction right. It is the evil kidnapper that is taking the payment and the loving father that is sacrificing his fortune to rescue her. A ransom in scripture is any sacrifice needed to save a situation from an evil outcome. A ransom is any sacrificial action taken in an evil situation to rescue what is good from the evil.

The Corruption of the Gospel

The Original Good News: What does the uncorrupted Good News look like? For all who confess and repent from sin, and pledge faithfulness to Messiah Yeshua, to love him, and to keep his law, there is cleansing from sin through his shed blood, in which is the Spirit of Life, which rescues us from bondage to sin, so that we can through faithfulness share in his resurrection from the dead, in the resurrection of the righteous in the age to come. The cross represents the climax of divine sacrifice to rescue us, and is explained by the ransom paradigmn. The word ransom describes the divine cost of our rescue, a cost exacted by the sinful circumstance we must be rescued from.

The Judaism Heresy: The earliest corruption of the Good News was to introduce the false teaching that the customary "works of the law" can make compensation for sin. This heresy was introduced even before the Jerusalem Council in AD 49. This is the idea that good deeds beyond the level considered necessary for legal compliance could supply extra merit usable against sin. A Rabbinic reinterpretation of circumcision was joined with this doctrine by which a convert could draw from the merit of the fathers if he did not have enough merit of his own. Some of the converts in Galatia fell for this false doctrine, thinking they could hold faithful to Messiah on the one hand, and on the other hand think it was necessary to compensate for sin through the acquisition of merit via Rabbinical teaching. The false teaching replaced repentance and forgiveness of sins with a system of compensating God for sin by acquiring merit. Merits to offset the negative side of the ledger were acquired through personal good deeds, and acquiring a Jewish identity through circumcision, or if one was not a male, submission to the teaching of compensatory merit.

The Qumran Baptismal Regeneration: They believed in daily repeated baptism's by which the water purified the flesh, but at the same time they claimed the Holy Spirit purified the soul in association with the baptism. While not a Christian heresy, I mention this because it proves to a key source of later baptismal regeneration heresy.

The Gnosis Heresy: The next corruption of the Good News was to take the Torah out of faithfulness, and to take cleansing from sin away from the life-blood of Messiah. So faithfulenss was reduced to faith and then believing facts; and these facts were commitments to certain doctrines of men concerning Gnosis, doctrines which today are accurately described as a form of Calvinism, particularly the doctrines of meticulous determinism and predestination; assurance of salvation was determined by believing in the teachings of the Gnostic sects, and not in obeying the commandments. The Gnostic sects were all over the map, but some of the most successful ones adapted baptismal regeneration to inward purification of their soul. After this, the baptismal regeneration heresy corrupted the mainstream Church.

The Baptismal Regeneration Heresy: The next error to enter in was to raise the sign of baptism from a public pledge of intent to be faithful to the position of effecting regeneration of the soul. Baptism was changed from a sign to the principal means by which the cleansing blood of Messiah was applied to the person. This error takes advantage of the enormous relief from guilt experienced by a newly faithful convert, and the initial work of the Holy Spirit, to mislead them into trusting the baptism itself. It also leverages the true fact that baptism serves as a public acknowledgement for inclusion in the covenant, and the assurance that comes from this public status to ascribe authority to the clergy administering the baptism. So long as the convert continues under their authority they give them the assurance they feel they need.

Inherited Guilt Heresy: The next heresy to be introduced was called original sin. But this did not simply mean that Adam originally sinned, nor does it only mean that Adam's sin influences us to sin also. It also means that the guilt of Adam is handed down to all men along with a sentence to Hell in the afterlife. This doctrine was introduced by the heretic Augustine, a former Gnostic. He was opposed by Pelagius. Afterward the Church branded Pelagius as a heretic. It was afterwards explained that the previous doctrine of baptismal regeneration also removed the guilt of original sin. The Eastern Church did not adopt the original sin heresy.

The next big step downward was taken by Anselm. Between AD 1094 and AD 1099 he introduced the idea that sin was not simply forgiven upon confession and repentance; rather, it required the positive satisfaction of a sin-debt, which was paid to the Father when Christ surrendered his positive merit in death to the Father. Things got complicated by this time. Original sin was divided into two categories (a) inherited guilt: removed by baptism; (b) inherited corruption: paid by satisfaction from the merit of Christ. Personal sin was also divided into two categories: (a) personal guilt: purged by the sacrament of confession; (b) temporal debt: paid by personal penance, or drawing from the treasury of merit via indulgences. Baptism was now explained to activate the satisfaction theory in the case of inherited guilt; also confession was explained to activate the satisfaction theory for personal guilt. In the case of personal penance, the penitent is in a state of grace while he does the penance. It is therefore plugged into the merit of Christ which makes the penance an acceptable payment.

The "Reformation": The Reformation corrupted the Good News yet another step. This is when the concept of penal substitution was added. Anselm had introduced positive merit from Christ make a compensation for sin. Luther and Calvin added negative punishment, the wrath of the Father, against his Son. "Ransom" and "Redeem" were now redefined to mean penal substitution. "Justification" was redefined to mean a transfer of positive merit to the sinner on the courtroom ledger, and the transfer of demerit to Christ on the cross. The former meaning of "justification", "to make righteous" the sinner was discarded. Biblically, justification means to administer righteousness to the sinner through his or her faithfulness and the righteousness of Messiah so that the faithful person becomes righteous. Think of justification as moral correction. This original sense was discarded for a perfectly legalistic definition, that is, so that it has only a legalistic definition whereby a two way ledger transfer occurs, of perfect merit, and the sinners sin. The merit switches to the sinners side of the ledger, and the sin switches to Christ's side of the ledger.

The transfers exchanging merit for demerit is called "double imputation"; it is said to happen in the divine courtroom to satisfy the assumption that strict penal justice occur, and strict acquittal on the basis of the positive merit transferred into the sinners ledger. Previously this doctrine was unknown to the history of the Church, for the prior 1500 years. It did not even exist with Anselm, because under Anselm satisfaction was an out-of-court settlement that involved compensation for sin, but it was not in-court justice according to the letter of the law. It was still considered then that God did not have to take the faithful to court. He only had to take the unbelievers to the divine court. Anselm's theory was based on a compensation made by Christ and not the idea of perfectly equitable compensation said to take place in the court. The new theory is founded on the idea of perfectly equitable compensation in the court; but it is philosophically flawed. Unless there is a divine undo (ctrl-z) button on the universe, all the negative effects of sin cannot be restituted. Penal-substitutionary "Atonement" presents God as demanding a form of justice that not even the victims of sin may receive.

The Biblical Ransom — A Sacrifice Made to Accomplish Good

I return here to the original ransom explanation. In the Hebrew language and culture, a ransom is any sacrifice one may have to make in order to defeat evil. The sacrifice is the cost charged by the evil circumstance, or to ward off even a potential evil. For example, the payment of a tax when conducting a census in Israel was called a ransom for your souls. Why is this? Because counting one's population, especially as a military measure of strength, could become an exercise in a lack of trust in the Most High. But if the people and leadership are reminded that God is their strength by making a monetary sacrifice to the treasury, then the evil of pride in one's own power by numbers is defeated. If the ransom (kopher, כֹּפֶר) is not paid to defeat the pride of strength by the half-shekel, then Most High has no recourse but to defeat the pride of strength by divine judgment (Exodus 30:11-16; 2 Samuel 24). The reader should note that the ransom is not a substitute that suffers divine judgment. It is rather a way of avoiding divine judgment. Application: if Messiah provides the purgation from sin necessary to cleanse the faithful by his blood, then there will be no divine judgment for the sin. The sacrifice is the cost of the purgation. When Satan killed the Messiah, the martyrdom was allowed because the cleansing life of Messiah would be released in his blood.

Other Hebrew words are used to communicate the idea of a ransom. For example גּוֹאֵל (Goel or Ga'al), a relative that buys back property on behalf of a poor relative who has come into circumstances where he had to sell it. The evil being avoided by the sacrifice of the relative was to prevent the poor relative from becoming economically enslaved (Leviticus 25; cf. Job 19:25); or if a widow is left without heirs, then a Leverate marriage (Yibbum, יִבּוּם) is mandated to rescue the family name of the dead from extinction in Israel. In the case of Boaz, both rescues came together, because Naomi's land had been sold to another party, perhaps even a foreigner (Ruth 4:3, מָכְרָה נָעֳמִי), and her daughter Ruth had returned a widow with no heir. Someone needs to step in and make a huge sacrifice to buy it for her; at first Boaz only mentions Naomi and his relative assumes that when he buys the land he will have to support Naomi, but that when Naomi dies, the land will pass into his own inheritance; he quickly agrees, showing he can afford it. So Boaz says, "In the day of thy buying the field, from the hand of Naomi AND from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead thou will have bought it, to resurrect the name of the dead upon his inheritance" (Ruth 4:5). And now the nearest גּוֹאֵל (Goel) quickly backs out, because his own sons would not inherit the land, he would have to support Naomi, and he would have to pay for it all receiving no lasting asset. He would not be allowed to profit from the purchase except to recover the original price. [Note: Ruth 4:5 and 4:9, "from the hand of" do not mean that Naomi was paid for the land; it means that she held was the title-holding trustee under God. The current tenant was paid for the remaining crops till the Jubilee by Boaz.]

The Hebrew word pidyon (פִּדְיוֹן), describes a redemption. It is the price of being released from a required service. So the firstborn son belongs to the Most High, and owed priestly service, which he was legally prohibited from doing if he was not a Levite. Therefore, five shekels of silver was paid to release him from this service. If a man were drafted to go to war, he could hire a substitute not subject to the draft, and the hiring price would be the redemption cost, a pidyon. So Messiah Yeshua was a firstborn; his parents paid the redemption cost to compensate for lack of priestly service. In respect to Messiah's redemption, the word has to be taken figuratively in a non legal sense. Messiah pays the cost of our release from slavery to sin. But sin did not have the right to hold us after we repented and received forgiveness. But in another sense it can apply legally. We owe it to God to fight against and defeat our own sin, but since we don't have enough holiness to completely succeed, Messiah goes to meet sin for us and defeat it. It may be considered that our faithfulness to Messiah is our token cost for him to go against sin as our substitute warrior. I should point out that five shekels of silver is a relatively small token cost. It secures the covenant for another to fight on your behalf, or take on a risky duty one cannot do. The Levites did a risky duty (Numbers 18:22-23). Whatever error they might make fell on their heads and not the rest of Israel, for whom they stood in the gap to make sure there was no offense against God's holiness. So applied to Messiah, within the meaning of the word, but obviously as a metaphor, the hiring price is our faithfulness, and then he goes to war for us, and on our behalf. This is as close to any kind of transaction that Scripture comes with the work of Messiah; but, it is a gracious transaction which has nothing to do with penal substitution or meritorious satisfaction to induce God to forgive sin. Rather it is aimed at battling the sin sickness itself. If we are faithful, he will be faithful to us; if we circumcise our hearts, he will circumcise our hearts also; if we purify ourselves, he also will purify us. The Pidyon is to hire a champion, not to pay a fine to a judge or compensation to a king.

Penal substitution tries to turn the ransom into the suffering of a legal penalty on behalf of another. But as we have seen, this is not what the sacrifice is about. "The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom in return for many" (Matthew 20:28). Two brothers asked to sit on Yeshua's right and left hand in his kingdom. He asked them if they could drink the cup that he was drinking, and if they could be immersed in the immersion he was getting immersed with? (Mark 10:38). He asked are you able to drink the cup "I am about to drink"? (Matthew 20:22). He said they will drink it, but the request was not his to grant. Yeshua regarded the sacrifice of the ministry as a "ransom"; because he speaks of service; he also uses tenses in Matthew that suggest a ransom is already being paid; according to his word to the two brothers, they also would make the sacrifice, just as they were sacrificing and leaving all behind to follow him for the sake of the kingdom. So he explains ransom as sacrificial service. Does he then mean the two brothers co-pay a legalistic penal substitution with Him? By no means, but he speaks like Paul rejoiced "to fill up what lacks in the sufferings of the Anointed" (Col. 1:24). Clearly they could not make the sacrifice of divine life in the incarnate Son of God to purge us from our sins, but the same idea of ransom is meant. By their service and sacrifice they will achieve the rescue of many.

This biblical concept of ransom is a heroic frontline rescue, with martial and sacrificial meaning. But over the course of 1600 years the meaning was transformed into a pure legalism. The first step painted the Devil as the chief agent to whom the ransom must be paid, not as a necessary cost of rescue from the devil, but as satisfaction of a legal right assigned to Satan (Irenaeus of Lyons, 2nd Century). Satan was allowed to attack the unfaithful because of their sins, but Satan was never given the right of ownership. When God forgives our sins, even the permission to attack us disappears. The sacrifice and rescue are to tear us away from Satan's hold. Origen of Alexandria interpreted the ransom as Christ buying the devil out of a commercial contract, because Adam and Eve had signed over ownership to him (Mid-3rd Century). In the third stage it had to be explained why Christ was freed from Satan if Satan had the legal right to accept the ransom. Gregory of Nyssa explained it as a "procedural loophole"; Christ's flesh was the bait, but his divinity was hidden underneath. The devil ended up taking more than was his to take, and so Christ was legally rescued via the resurrection. At the fourth step, Augustine of Hippo (early 5th century) came up with his mousetrap theory; the devil forfeited his rights because he was lawless and killed an innocent man. In the 11th century, Anselm realized the payment to the devil paradigm was legally problematic, so he flipped the recipient of the ransom to be the Father, and redefined the ransom as the positive merit of Christ paid to the Father out-of-court so that he would forgive men. In the 16th century, the Reformers further redefined ransom as the idea of punitive satisfaction on top of Anselm's positive satisfaction.

However, there is a way to rescue Augustine and show that Anselm's development was unnecessary. If we suppose that Satan held legal ownership of his human slaves, then by taking a ransom to release them, the Son of God, he fraudulently overcharged for their release when he killed him. This was due to his divinity. As a result of taking more than he was legally entitled to, Satan incurred an infinite debt. He was forced to sell all the slaves back to God to pay it, as well as allowing God to raise the Son of God from death back to life. And still his debt was not satisfied, so Satan effectively ends up in debtors' prison (Hell) for eternity. The problem was in the first place giving Satan legal rights, and taking an unbiblically narrow view of what ransom meant.

Finally, when penal substitution apologists try to explain the ransom idea of the early Church, they always cast it as a straw man argument: the devil is supposed to have legal rights to enslave and kill humanity; the ransom is framed as a legal payment to gain humanity's release; then the theory is rejected on the premise that the devil has no legal rights because he is lawless. That is easy to refute, right? But not so fast. As I pointed out under the Church fathers premises, Satan incurred his own unpayable debt, and would have lost all his assets in the process. This removes the early church's theory from the straw man category. Furthermore, they never present the broad biblical idea of ransom as a sacrifice made to mount a rescue operation; the biblical idea does not acknowledge legal rights for the forces holding humanity. Having left this idea out as a legitimate meaning of ransom, they force their audience to accept their own alternative: penal substitution. And as a final touch, they completely ignore that the correct ransom idea during the first thousand years of Church history stood alongside the narrower view of ransom from the church fathers, and indeed, has been understood in some form during every age of Church history; also it has not lost major representation in Christendom, especially by the Eastern Orthodox.