What does "for" mean in "Christ died for our sins"?
The atonement up close!
A funny thing about church history is that in the patristic era, the church never sought a level of precision and specificity for its theology of atonement as it did for its doctrine of God and Christ.
There is no Council of Toledo or Council of Smyrna that deals with the nature, extent, and language of the atonement.
The church fathers were largely content to say that Jesus died “for us” or “for our salvation” or “for sinners” without specifying precisely how.
I cover this a fair bit in my book Evangelical Theology (available on Logos and Zondervan).
As it goes, I’m reading through Simon Gathercole’s excellent and informative book The Gospel and the Gospels where he has a good discussion on this very topic. He gives five options for the meaning of “for” (hyper in Greek) in Jesus died “for our sins.”
(1) Removal of sins, in the sense of cleansing, purification, purgation, or transference.
(2) Amends for sins, in the sense of a recompense or payment of a price.
(3) Forgiveness of sins, in the sense of a remission or setting them loose.
(4) A result for sins, in the sense of substitution as one who bears the penalty or at least the consequence for sins.
(5) Protection from sins, in the sense of a covering over, a shield from, an appeasement, so that the future consequences of sin are repelled.
Note, there are more complicating factors, such as whether the Greek preposition hyper (“for”) can also function like the preposition anti (“in place of”). There is the OT background of the atonement in the Passover, the Levitical system of sacrifices, and Greco-Roman views of sacrifices, blood, and ritual. There is a difference between representation (i.e., Jesus died as one of us) and substitution (i.e., Jesus died instead of us). Plus, there is the diverse witness in the NT about Jesus’s death.
On the one hand, Jesus died as one of us (a human being) and we die with him (union with Jesus in his crucifixion). But Jesus suffers and dies for our sins in such a way as to spare believers from the effects and consequences of sin, chiefly, judgment.
In other words, to say that Jesus died “for” our sins is pregnant with a galaxy of meaning that needs quite a lot of unpacking!
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Hi Michael: Upon the provocation of your question, I decided to do a troll through the LXX and I came across this interesting verse in Psalm 138: verse 8:
(ESV) The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands..
So briefly, the LXX states: “ κύριος ἀνταποδώσει ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ … etc “ and the standard Hebrew states “ יְהוָה יִגְמֹר בַּעֲדִי …. etc “ and so the Hebrew verb “ יִגְמֹר “ is translated in the LXX as “ ὑπὲρ “ . But the conjugation of the Hebrew verb is a standard YIQTOL ( because it has the prefix yod ) and which is the imperfect tense and it broadly means “ to complete or finish “ (TWOT 363, pp168) “ and because it is Yiqtol, the verb is usually translated according to context as “ WILL complete or finish “ and so I would translate this as “ Yahweh will complete or finish on my behalf ..etc “ .But notice that the Psalmist makes this “ὑπὲρ“ statement of appeal on the basis of Yahweh’s steadfast love “ יְהוָה חַסְדְּךָ לְעוֹלָם “ ( Yahweh your HESED ( is) everlasting ).. So here is a link between “ὑπὲρ “ and Yahweh’s Hesed – covenantal love (TWOT 698 pp 305) … So Michael please do keep throwing out some more of these provocative questions … blessings ..
Thanks for this. Super helpful. One time I did a sermon series on different models of the atonement, and I know Skye Jethani had a series in his With God Daily devotional about this. I want to keep learning!