Simple Truths: New Covenant? Substitutionary sacrifice not allowed!

Here’s a strange piece of biblical text.

(28) In those days they won’t say anymore: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ (29) But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man that eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. {S} (30) Look! the days come, says the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; (31) not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I was a lord over them, says the LORD. (32) But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people;” (Jeremiah 31:28-32)

So what is strange about this text? Well I guess it’s not so much the text that is weird but how it is used by christians and that it is used by christians at all.

First, remember the basis of christianity: Jesus, the man, took upon himself all the sins of humanity and he died for us. He is supposed to have died for your sins and for mine. He took our punishment … supposedly. And by doing this he is supposed to have brought in the very same new covenant spoken of by Jeremiah.

But a person who actually reads the Jewish Bible should at once notice two points, amongst many others, in the context and text of this “new covenant” passage that utterly refutes such a notion, another both in the same way.

Firstly, you see clearly, at the beginning of the text, that there was a myth, a saying, within Israel that the fathers do wrong and the children get the punishment (compare with Ezekiel 18). But this prophecy says that days are coming when that view will be corrected and it will be seen that one person will not die for another person or be punished for another person’s sins. Every person will be responsible for their actions and get the consequences. Doesn’t sound much like Jesus’ death at all!

Secondly, it says that God’s law will be written on their hearts. But which law is this? There is only one body of law overtly given by God in scripture and that the Law He gave to Moses to give to Israel during their trek in the wilderness. And there is a certain law within that which, again, stabs at the heart of the christian teaching that Jesus’ death was him taking on our sins and the punishment we should have gotten.

… every man shall be put to death for his own sin. (Deuteronomy 24:16b)

So this will be amongst the laws written on the heart of Israel and Judah. But wait there! Every man dying for his own sin? Again, that’s totally against the christian doctrine about Jesus’ death. Based on God’s law and his teachings, Jesus could only have died for his own sin and no one else’s.

The unified message of these two points is that substitutionary death, vicarious atonement, where one man takes on the sin and/or punishment of another, and is illegal according to God’s Law, and against God’s teaching in the Jewish Bible which states that each person is responsible for their own action, their own sin, and thus get their own punishment.

It’s ironic and contradictory that the very text upon which christians base their claim that Jesus ushered in this new covenant by his dying for us makes his dying for us illegal and dead wrong! The very same text invalidates the christian premise!!!

It would be funny … if it wasn’t so sad!