Marcus J. Borg Quote

To affirm Jesus is the sacrifice for sin was to deny the temple’s claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God. It was an antitemple statement. Using the metaphor of sacrifice, it subverted the sacrificial system. It meant: God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God; you have access to God apart from the temple and its system of sacrifice. It is a metaphor of radical grace, of amazing grace. Thus Jesus died for our sins was originally a subversive metaphor, not a literal description of either God’s purpose or Jesus’ vocation. It was a metaphorical proclamation of radical grace; and properly understood, it still is. It is therefore ironic to realize that the religion that formed around Jesus would within four hundred years begin to claim for itself an institutional monopoly on grace and access to God. Because the sacrificial metaphor has often been taken quite literally, we in the church have often domesticated the death of Jesus—by speaking of it as the foreordained will of God, as something that had to happen, as a dying for the sins of the world.