Justification by Faith: Lost in Translation, Distorted Over Time
What does “justice” and “justification” really mean?
Most every pagan religion had a rite of human sacrifice at some time and in some capacity during its development. It was not a demand from God. It was a requirement of humanity. God had created us with human needs to be met by our families and tribes, needs for security, empathy, relationship, and autonomy, needs that constituted our emotional human rights. Justice required that those rights be respected and our human needs be met.
But we lived in primitive tribal communities threatened by wild animals, natural disasters, and hostile conquering tribes, and inevitably we were harmed. When we are harmed, we are angry, if not overtly, then covertly. Primitive societies directed that anger and achieved justice in religious rites involving helpless war captives, an enemy upon which we could vent our rage. “They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’” (Rev 6:10).
The other motivation for human sacrifice was overwhelming guilt. We knew guilt the moment we became human; when consciousness was imparted to us by God, we necessarily received enough self-awareness to know our inadequacy. With self-consciousness came conscience, an inner inventory, a moral expectation that we habitually fail to achieve.
No mere animal suffers pangs of guilt. It may learn that punishment follows pooping on the rug, conditioning, but it does not think any less of itself for having pooped on the rug. It may even admire the magnificence of its poop until the door opens and its owner comes home. Then it scurries under the table. It is not plagued with guilt, only fear.
We humans know the inner reality of guilt, a far more powerful and painful emotion. When confronted with it we often experience suicidal thoughts or impulses. We wish we could just disappear, cease to exist; the burden is just too heavy. To restore justice between us and our holy God requires death, the death of a conscious human.
Early in our development we eased the agony of our crushing guilt by the ritual death of our “self” in the form of our child, that extension of ourselves that lives outside ourselves. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). The death of the child was the source of our life, our rebirth. Child sacrifice, especially of the firstborn, was our way to manage guilt by killing ourselves without actually killing ourselves. Our residual horror of abortion, even of birth control, stems from our primeval memory of child sacrifice. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees” (Deut 16:12).
“And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven” (Deut 4:19). Cast out of the Garden of Eden, we heathen were awash in pagan idolatries. The gods we revered were the spirits and demons assigned to us as keepers. “You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones” (Ezek 28:14).
The spirits taught us rituals and rites that would curdle your blood. The divine soul breathed into us by God was dead, “In the day you eat of it you will die,” and we were left with the animal soul of the inner behemoth, lusts and cravings, motivated by power and pleasure. Every drought or plague was perceived as cosmic punishment for our pervasive and continuous sin. All of us knew guilt because all of us had a conscience, implanted into us by the real God, the God of Israel. “Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Mic 6:7). The earliest archeologic evidence of human civilization includes burial sites and signs of human sacrifice, blood to salve our guilty conscience and avert the disaster that threatened us.
In time, the human sacrifice for guilt was supplanted by animal sacrifice justifying us to our Creator. But our natural rage as victims still required an occasional human sacrifice, one that did not necessarily represent us or our tribe but instead represented the hostile tribe or person who threatened us. This victim was not an image of ourselves, but an image of our attacker, a living effigy. We kept alive some of our war captives for this purpose, preserving them in captivity until the proper time for a suitably horrific human sacrifice.
Depending on the level of abuse and victimization in the tribal community it may be few and seldom, or it may be often and involve many thousands. The agonizing torture and death of the conscious human captive would absorb our rage and permit us human dignity as our grievance was heard by our god and satisfied. The offense was justified, corrected, and peace could again exist between our tribes.
Jesus’ cross met that need for us, that universal horrific cry for justice, barely admitted but always present, and couched in terms of a million mythologies. The death of the victim was the source of our life. In our pagan cultures, the victim was always naked. The shame of the sexual abuse victim demanded it. The torture was prolonged and agonizing. The rage of the slave locked in an iron collar and lashed to an ox required it.
The anger of survivors of a gruesome battle, those who had witnessed the butchery of their friends and relatives, craved cosmic justice and procured it by the ritual slaying of a human victim. The ritual humanized the event, applying it to the whole tribe, not just a vengeance murder.
Blood was required by every tribal religion. Some societies painted themselves in that blood; others drank it. After thousands of years of these brutal human sacrifices, we found a religion that offered us the peace and healing satisfaction of a human sacrifice without the annual bloodshed. We called it Christianity. The death of Jesus became the source of justice for us.
The word goy, nation, has as its root g’viya meaning dead body, corpse. [1] We were entirely dead to God, lost in a sea of pagan idolatry, divorced from our origin in the Creator of all. Abraham was charged with being a blessing to us, the goyim, the dead ones. “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him” (Gen 18:18).
Our divine soul, nephesh elohit, had died, “For when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen 2:17). We were reduced to physical life, nephesh behemit, animal life, spiritually dead, walking corpses. We were destined to be blessed with life, connection to the God who created us through Abraham. “You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6). Jews alone had divine life in them, imparted to them at Sinai. We would be brought to spiritual life through Israel, their example, their teachings, and their son Jesus, our Christ.
Jesus was our Universal Human Sacrifice, our justifying sacrifice, reconciling us with God and with each other. He offered us something no pagan god had ever offered, an intimate and loving relationship with God, the Sovereign Creator and King, no matter our wealth or power. Rabbi Jesus gave us human dignity, the power to pray to our Creator and be heard. Of course, that was incomprehensible to us. The God of Israel in general was incomprehensible to us, and to speak to the Uncreated Infinite without an intermediary was impossible. So, we prayed in the name of the Rabbi who justified us to the Ternal Infinite.
Justification (Eng) / Dikaios (Grk) / Tzaddik (Heb)
Modern usage of these terms, justify, faith, and righteousness, have been distorted over the centuries and multiple language barriers. The result is a series of misunderstandings and doctrinal assertions that have lost their original meanings.
We speak of justification in church as if it were a verdict of innocence when we were obviously guilty. It is much more than that. Justification in God’s language doesn’t start with forgiveness. It starts with repentance. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matt 4:17). And it ends with a change in character, “Follow me” (John 21:19).
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). The word “justify” has been corrupted in our time. Justified as used in Scripture meant adjusted to fit or meet the specifications of a designated setting. We justified broken bones so they would heal properly. A gear that was slipping needed to be justified. A ship that was off course was justified by its rudder. The wrong is corrected; the failure made right.
In today’s usage, it means to talk someone into believing we are correct when we are manifestly wrong. We justify our answers to a professor or justify our ideas in an editorial in the newspaper. We don’t change our opinion; we convince others that it is the right opinion and talk them into agreeing with us.
Christian theology has substituted the Greek concept of justify dikaios meaning “acquitted, judged right before others” to replace the Hebrew tzaddik (rhymes with “leak”) meaning intrinsic goodness and correctness. The Greek verb dikaios (justify) meaning to exonerate, to excuse a fault, replaced the Hebrew verb form of tzaddik meaning to correct a fault.
The Hebrew word for justify, vat-tzaddik is a derivative of the primary term for righteousness tzaddik. To be justified is to become righteous, not excused. “Then if you have anything to say, answer me; speak, for I desire to justify (tzaddik) you” (Job 33:32 ESV), make you righteous, correct your errors and faults.
As for Paul, a native speaker of Hebrew, his meaning is distorted in translation. “And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified (vat-tzaddik, made righteous); those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom 8:30 AENT). God does not glorify poor excuses for rebellion; He glorifies the righteous.
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith (emunah, meaning faithfulness). He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies (corrects) those who have faith in (are faithful to) Jesus” (Rom 3:25-26).
God the Infinite Eternal Consciousness presented Christ, the manifestation in time and space of his Perfect Goodness in a finite Jewish life. As the Suffering Servant foretold through the ages to every pagan culture on earth, Jesus enacted the dying and rising deity, the myth of the centuries, in his life and death and resurrection, atoning for all repentant sinners everywhere.
He did it in that way, as a human sacrifice, totally foreign to Judaism, but familiar to the rest of the world, so as to be righteous, tzaddik, bringing mercy to the repentant of all nations and every culture. And it is to the glory of our One Eternal God that He is the one who makes righteous, tzaddik, all the people He created.
Our modern concept of “to justify” is a repugnant distortion of biblical justification. We justify our foul mouth against a co-worker because he or she swiped our pencil case. We justify ourselves by being stringent in obedience to one law, but profligate in our violation of other equally important laws, as if our refusal to steal postage stamps from our employer justifies sleeping around on our spouse!
That doesn’t work with God. He wants to justify us the old-fashioned way, straighten the rudder, set the broken bone so it heals. “For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified” (Rom 2:13 ESV).
“You who are trying to be justified by the law have been severed from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5:4). In Christ, we have received the divine soul, the spirit of holiness that was snuffed out in Eden, and restored at the cross. Without the Spirit of God, His neshamah at our core, the law was powerless to correct us, justify us in the Biblical sense.
Had we adopted Torah in our old animal state of mind it would have become another magic spell, a ritual incantation powerless to change our lives. Substituting the Torah for our pagan superstitions does not change our hearts, only the quality of our rain dance. Working by brute strength, sheer will power, to be good and righteous does not bring us to the heart of God. It distances us from Him.
Yielding to the Spirit of God in humble awareness of our weakness and ignorance opens us to His power and wisdom, giving Him latitude to be Holy and Righteous within us, with beauty and grace. By breathing in God’s neshamah elohit, divine soul, our broken glass is restored and we are made a vessel of God the Glassblower. “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the hope of righteousness” (Gal 5:5).
Biblical hope is not, “I hope I win the lottery” but rather a solid expectation of a sure thing, waiting for the fulfillment of a promise from God. Our hope of righteousness is an expectation that His righteousness will show up when we need it, in the used car lots of life when real temptation is bearing down on us. We might refuse it, decide to lie about the mileage on that car anyway, but the power to tell the truth, the righteousness of God will be there when we need it. That is Biblical hope and real justification.
The Justifying Power of the Cross
Human sacrifice died out all over the world after the Christ event in Israel. Something holy had happened, and it satisfied a deep unarticulated craving in our collective pagan soul, the healing of our deep shame, the restoration of our human dignity. I doubt that even Rabbi Jesus knew the depths of our desperate need for a human sacrifice; he only knew that he was called to be the suffering servant of Isaiah. He swallowed deep and did what any and every Jew would do, accepted that call and sanctified the Name as only a Jew could. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Phil 2:8).
We Gentiles flocked to the dying and rising god we had always longed for. Instead of drinking the blood of a slaughtered pig in our pagan temples, we could “take and eat, this is my body, drink, all of you, this is the cup of my blood,” and receive the Spirit of God, the God of Israel, empowering us to real righteousness, genuine justification.
Jesus was our Moses, bringing Torah to Gentiles in a form we understood. Our gods had prepared us for this moment for centuries. The reality and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit within us was undeniable; we called it being “born again.” No one could tell us that our experience with Christ was not true and real.
Under the leadership of Rabbis Peter, James, John, and Paul, we pagans had genuine instruction by qualified rabbis in the Torah of Moses. Wonder of wonders, we learned that marriage was sacred, parents were to be honored, honesty was a virtue, and theft was wrong even when it was possible to get by with it. This was radical stuff, real justification. It changed our lives in a fundamental way.
In the Jewish Rabbi Jesus, we had the suffering servant, the dying and rising God we so desperately needed. Our ancient need for a human sacrifice was met in him. The ancient remnant of that need in Abraham had been expressed and overcome at the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, but we pagans were still chained.
Our crushing guilt over our universal depravity, and our rage against those who enslaved us, raped us, tortured and slaughtered us, required an atonement. Cosmic justice was met in the death of a holy god-man, pure and innocent, voluntarily taking our shame and our agony upon himself, defeating sin and death, and returning to a just and holy God. We’d been practicing for this moment for centuries.
In the Garden of Eden, the first animal sacrifice was performed by God on behalf of all humanity, the first announcement of the Christ of Gentile longing. An innocent animal was killed, its bloody pelt used by God to wash our sin away, cover our nakedness, heal our grief, and restore our lost humanity. Every culture in the world was waiting for this Christ, and we found him in a cradle in Bethlehem. No power on earth could turn us away from him.
For Israel to be a light to the pagan nations, would require a deep dive into the pagan mythologies that surrounded you.
Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; (not a very good translation, but there is no good translation) do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread. He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem, he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured. Bind up this testimony of warning and seal up God’s instruction [Torah] among my disciples. (Is 8:12-17)
The risk was that Jews who already had a secure covenant with the Uncreated Eternal One would see the fulfillment of every pagan hope and longing on earth and trip over it, lose their place in Israel as the light to the Gentiles and become a Gentile. “’Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:2-3). Christianity to Jews would be a trap and a snare, distancing them from Torah. To us it was the key to entering Torah. Israel’s blindness to our Gospel preserved Torah, so that the works of God might be displayed to the whole world.
“The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand’” (Luke 8:10). Jews were not supposed to understand. Jesus was quoting Isaiah:
Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed’ Then I said, ‘For how long, Lord?’ And he answered: ‘Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land’ (Is 6:9-13).
The Gospel was not intended for Jews. Its parable and deeper meanings were concealed from them to preserve them as Jews. Their exile from Israel in 70 CE was not a punishment or a condemnation and certainly not a rejection. They were sent out into the world to uphold Torah in every nation and for all time five hundred years before Christianity even existed.
Even the smallest stump of Judaism was holy and revealed God’s holiness, an incarnation of God. The Hebrew word for exile, galah, is a homonym for the word meaning “to reveal.” To exile Israel is to reveal her to the rest of the world. We Christians were not going to uphold Torah. Only Israel could do that.
The common characteristic of all real Jews and all true Christians is to submit our lives to the will of God knowing it is the will of That Which Is, the Cause of All Being, Uncreated Consciousness, the Infinite Wisdom. The only rational response to the Infinite Uncreated is immediate and complete obedience. That is real justification and real sanctification.
[1] Rabbi Daniel Kohn, Book of Yearning, p. 45.