Heaven's Perspective on the Cross: Sacrifice - by John MacArthur

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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Dr. MacArthur wants to correct a misconception about Jesus' sacrificial death. Apparently this is a grave doctrinal situation. He makes a big deal out of the distinction between Christ's death for us and what His death meant regarding the Father. 

But he commits several crucial errors. He never tells us why the distinction is important. He misrepresents the OT sacrifices. He selectively quotes Scripture, leaving out parts of verses that contradict him.

This is unfortunate considering his reputation as a stellar Bible teacher.

The question we always consider when reading a Bible teaching is, what is the relevance to the Christian walk? If a teaching has little or no bearing on holiness, service, worship, maturity of faith, fellowship, or generosity, then it is simply an empty intellectual exercise. 

That is the case for this article. Ordinarily we would deem such a thing "bad Bible teaching," but we think that "irrelevant Bible teaching" is more applicable.

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The following blog post was originally published in September, 2013. —ed.

One of the most frequently perverted and abused aspects of the life of Christ is His death. (Ironically, we would agree. Apparently this serious problem is going to be fixed with this article.)

The world can tolerate Him as a human martyr, but that view undermines and ignores the real significance of His death.

Even in the church, we often tend to think of the cross only in terms of what it accomplished for us. We begin to see ourselves as the focus of Jesus’ death, assuming He died for our salvation and our eternal glory—to rescue us from judgment and hell. (The Bible actually tells us why Jesus died:

Ro. 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 

1Co. 15:3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures... 

1Th. 5:10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

Clearly, Jesus' death was for us. However, if Dr. MacArthur has additional biblical information which would document his claim that there are more important reasons that He died, we would like to see it.)

And while all of that is accomplished by the death of Christ, it’s only a by-product. It’s all secondary to the fact that in the end, Christ died for God. (So the issue is "Christ died for God." Why is this critically important? Well, we will never find out.)

And to understand the full meaning and purpose of Christ’s death, we need to look at His cross from heaven’s perspective. ("Heaven's perspective." Ok, we look forward to the Bible verses that describe this.)

To begin with, Christ’s death was a sacrifice. (Agreed.)

A look at the Old Testament (Where in the OT?)

reveals the specific system of sacrifices the Lord put in place to deal with the sins of His people. In those sacrifices, God provided a way through which the sinner could come before Him and temporarily have his sin dealt with. (Hmm. This description is about the benefit to the sinner. We thought we were going to get heaven's perspective.)

The guilty party would bring an animal to the priest at the tabernacle, and later, the temple. The sinner would lay his hands on the animal (No, this is incorrect:

Le. 4:14-15 When they become aware of the sin they committed, the assembly must bring a young bull as a sin offering and present it before the Tent of Meeting. 15 The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull’s head before the LORD, and the bull shall be slaughtered before the LORD.

Le. 16:20-22 When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites — all their sins — and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.

Nu. 8:12 “After the Levites lay their hands on the heads of the bulls, use the one for a sin offering to the LORD and the other for a burnt offering, to make atonement for the Levites.

Regarding the sacrifice, it was always the priestly duty to lay hands on the animal.)

as a symbol of transferring his sin and guilt onto the animal. (Whoa, Nellie. This is false. There is no Scripture that tells us sin was transferred to the sacrificial animal. Rather, it was the spilled blood of the animal that atoned for sin: 

He. 9:22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.  

There is no Scripture that ever tells us that sin gets transferred. This is a pernicious false teaching.)

The animal would then be killed and its blood poured out over the altar.

The purpose of the sacrificial system was to emphasize that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and that God’s wrath can be satisfied through a sacrifice (Hebrews 9:22). (!!! So Dr. MacArthur is aware of this Scripture we previously quoted. But he completely misuses its application. There is no mention of God's wrath here. 

Further, the sacrifice does not "satisfy God's wrath." Atonement" [Le. 1:4] covers sin, and propitiation, which was Jesus' work, turns away God's wrath [Ro. 3:25].)

But animal sacrifices only provided temporary covering for sin (Hebrews 10:4), (Again Dr. MacArthur swerves into the truth, if only for a moment.

But he's still talking about the benefit to the sinner, not "heaven's perspective.")

so they had to be repeated again and again. Instead of providing permanent forgiveness, the sacrificial system pointed forward to God’s final sacrifice: His Son. (Correct.)

Christ was the only completely acceptable sacrifice to God, (Correct.)

the only truly spotless Lamb who could be offered for the cleansing of sins. (Correct.)

The author of Hebrews points out that Christ served as both sacrifice and priest in His death.

For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. (Hebrews 7:26-27)

And unlike all the ineffective and incomplete sacrifices that preceded Him, Christ was able to fully satisfy the wrath of God. (Hmmm. Dr. MacArthur's use of language is troubling. If Jesus' sacrifice fully satisfied God's wrath, then why does His wrath still burn against sinners? Why did that satisfied wrath need to be transferred to Jesus?

This is why we prefer Thayer's definition, that His wrath was instead turned away. That is, those who believe and receive forgiveness and new life have had God's wrath turned away from them. 

But for those who do not believe, God's wrath has not been turned away: 

Jn. 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.

There is something concerning in Dr. Macarthur's teaching thus far. These errors could lead us quite far astray.)

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. (Hebrews 9:26-28)

And to whom was Christ offered? Hebrews 9:14 tells us the answer. It says Christ “offered Himself without blemish to God” (emphasis added).

It’s true that we reap the eternal benefits of Jesus’ sacrifice, but (We have now arrived at the last sentence of this article, and Dr. MacArthur has finally turned to the reason he wrote. But he isn't even going to discuss it, he merely asserts it. Astonishing.)

it was ultimately a sacrifice to God. (Dr. MacArthur's original claim was "Christ died for God." His claim is now that Jesus was "a sacrifice to God." The two claims are not the same.

Given the term switching, we now question Dr. MacArthur's competence. The proof text he uses for his central point, Hebrews 9:14, he only quoted part of it. Here's the whole verse:

He. 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Oh, my. The writer of Hebrews tells us Jesus offered Himself to God for the very purpose of cleansing us. 

It seems to us there are certain integral parts to this equation:

• We who sinned [Ro. 3:23]
• The Father, whose desire is to reconcile us [2Co. 5:19]
• The Son, who offered himself to accomplish this [He. 9:14]

Without man's sin the sacrifice was unnecessary. This means that Jesus' death was all about the redemption of mankind. 

So in actual fact, It's about us, it's about Jesus, and it's about the Father. And let's not forget about the Holy Spirit, who quickened us to new life.)

We can’t mistake the death of Christ for something less.