One of the triggering things, I expect, over the last few posts has been the constant references to punishment and divine chastisement. The high-handed sinner must “bear the guilt” of their sin, and that means enduring a season of suffering. David experiences this penalty, and so does Israel. That said, both stories end in restoration and resurrection. A sinner “bearing the guilt” is not a terminal situation. Hope is not extinguished. Dead bones can live again.
Still, the notion of God inflicting pain and suffering raises some issues, even if that punishment has a restorative and hopeful outcome. So what do we do with that concern?
Let me return to my brief reflections on space at the end of the last post.
Again, in Numbers 15 the high-handed sinner is excluded from sacrificial remedy. There is no cultic solution, no offering that can repair the breach. The sinner is “cut off” from the community and must “bear the guilt.” The consequence here is exposure. To be cut off is to stand unprotected, to exist outside the covenantal haven where life is sustained.
This spatial logic runs deep in the biblical imagination. Inside the camp is order, mediation, remedies for sin, and life. Outside the camp is danger, curse, and death. Sacrifice presupposes presence within the camp. Once exclusion occurs, sacrifice cannot help. All this is vividly illustrated by the scapegoat, who is expelled from the camp into the surrounding demon-infested wasteland.
The camp of Israel in relation to the surrounding desert is a mirror of the cosmos. In Adam, humanity is expelled from the garden. Separated from God, the cosmos is exposed to finitude and futility. Acting to rescue the cosmos, God creates another zone of protection, a haven of safety. That space is made visible and available to the cosmos in the life of Israel, “the camp” in the midst of the wasteland. Israel’s vocation was to draw the cosmos into this space. But due to her high-handed sin, Israel finds herself cut off from the land of the living. As Israel’s representative, Jesus goes “outside the camp,” into the demonic wasteland, to suffer the consequences of Israel’s separation, which is death. Jesus steps away from divine protection and suffers that death. Properly speaking, this is not cultic atonement. Jesus is not providing decontamination from within the camp. Jesus is outside the camp, bearing the guilt, bringing the term of Israel’s penalty to its completion. By dying, Jesus exhausts the judgment.
Having returned Israel to the camp and restored relationship with God, Jesus’ blood provides perpetual decontamination for the sinful community. As in Leviticus, atonement maintains relationship with and proximity to God. We can draw near with boldness.
Okay, the furniture here has been slightly rearranged. I have labored to make a distinction in the work of Christ: atonement made for those within the camp (cultic decontamination to maintain relationship) versus going outside the camp to “bear the guilt” in suffering death. Is this a contrast that does not make much of a difference? Or does it open up new pathways of insight?
Minimally, it opens the possibility that high-handed sin can be forgiven and that high-handed sinners who have been cut off from God can be restored. Jesus extends a mercy that the Levitical system does not imagine. The dead coming back to life.
This seems to be one fruitful insight from this line of speculation. When we reduce Jesus’ death on the cross to “atonement,” we miss the radical implication of Christ dying “outside of the camp.” We are beholding a grace that transcends atonement.
I also think these reflections make clear that atonement does not have, and never had, forensic and penal aspects. The issue with atonement was ritual decontamination, not the resurrection of the dead (those cut off from the land of the living).
That said, does not Jesus “bearing the guilt” outside the camp pull forensic and penal images back in? Yes and no. Yes, in that one is exposed to death outside the camp. A consequence of sin is experienced. Guilt brings about this eventuality. But also no, in that death is the natural consequence of separation from God, life outside the camp. That is life in the demonic wasteland. And the high-handed sinner chooses that life. They remove themselves from the camp. They contemptuously throw off the yoke of the Torah. So while there are “consequences” and “penalties” here, in the vision of Numbers 15 these are self-selected. This is the life we have chosen for ourselves.
Lastly, to return to the point above, in the lives of David and Israel we see sinners bearing their own guilt leading to eventual restoration. Witness the trajectory of the sinner in Psalm 51. The punishment we find in that psalm, mirroring the life of David, is not retributive but restorative. David bears his guilt, suffers the consequences, and is embraced by mercy on the far side. We see a similar pattern in Isaiah 40, where God declares that Israel has finished the term of her punishment. Even death, as seen in Ezekiel 37, is limited. And it is here where I will get really speculative. Can the high-handed sinner experience mercy after a term of bearing their own guilt? And might a part of that guilt-bearing be their death?
Let me put it this way. You don’t need to leave the camp. And if you remain, the sacrificial remedies protect you from bearing the natural consequences of your sin, life outside of divine protection. But if you do leave the camp, you will “bear the guilt” of that rebellion to experience the consequences of an unprotected life, life “cut off from the land of living.” But here’s the critical move: That term of punishment, even for the high-handed sinner, can come to an end. As Isaiah 40 puts it, the sinner’s “hard service” can be “completed” which “pays for” his sin. This is a grimmer and darker path compared to life inside the camp, but the prophets dared to imagine that restoration was possible at the end of this journey.
To illustrate what I am talking about, think about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The older son never leaves the camp. He is never cut off and never dies. The younger son does die. He chooses to leave the camp. And outside the camp he bears his own guilt. He suffers the consequences of his sin in a far country. And those experiences bring the high-handed sinner to a Psalm 51 conversion, a state of contrition and repentance. The son returns to the father, who exclaims, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again.”
Might every high-handed sinner who dies, who finds themselves in the demon-haunted wasteland, come to that same moment of conversion? A salvation that comes after their death? We know such a thing is possible.
It has happened before.
