Appendix F

The Lord's Supper, Passover, and the Atoning Significance of Christ's Death

Responding to Andrew Remington Rillera, Lamb of the Free, Chapter 5

Introduction

In chapter 5 of Lamb of the Free, Andrew Rillera makes a case that the Lord's Supper derives "exclusively" from the non-atoning well-being sacrifices of Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony of Exodus 24. He argues that because these sacrifices are non-atoning — because the participants eat from them, and only non-atoning sacrifices are eaten by their beneficiaries — no atoning significance can properly be attached to Jesus' death as it is interpreted through the Lord's Supper. He goes further, contending that the phrase "forgiveness of sins" in Matthew 26:28 has nothing to do with sacrificial atonement (what he calls kipper) and everything to do with the prophetic hope for moral purification through divine water-washing and the Spirit. In his view, the entire framework of substitution, penalty, and sacrificial atonement is foreign to the earliest Christian understanding of Jesus' death.

I want to begin by saying clearly: Rillera gets several things right in this chapter, and we should acknowledge his genuine contributions before engaging his errors. He is correct that the Lord's Supper is set within a Passover meal context and invokes the covenant-inauguration ceremony. He is correct that both Passover and the Sinai covenant sacrifice are non-atoning well-being offerings that are eaten by the participants. These are important observations that too many popular treatments of the atonement overlook.

But here is where Rillera goes wrong — and it is a serious wrong turn. He takes a valid observation about the liturgical setting of the Lord's Supper and turns it into an absolute theological barrier. Because the Lord's Supper draws on non-atoning sacrifices, he concludes that no atoning significance can be attributed to Jesus' death in any New Testament text associated with the meal. This is a false dichotomy — a forced either/or that the New Testament itself refuses to sustain. The multi-faceted nature of Jesus' death allows the same event to be understood through multiple sacrificial (and non-sacrificial) lenses at the same time. As I have argued throughout this book, penal substitutionary atonement stands at the center of a multi-faceted reality, surrounded by complementary dimensions including Passover liberation, covenant inauguration, and participatory union with Christ. Rillera sees the surrounding dimensions clearly but refuses to acknowledge the center.

1. What Rillera Gets Right About the Lord's Supper

Fairness demands that we begin by acknowledging where Rillera is genuinely helpful. In chapter 5 of Lamb of the Free, he makes several observations that deserve serious consideration — and in some cases, open agreement.

First, Rillera is correct that the Lord's Supper is set within a Passover meal context and that Jesus' words at the Last Supper invoke the covenant-inauguration ceremony of Exodus 24. This is plain from the Synoptic accounts. The disciples asked Jesus where they should prepare to "eat the Passover" (Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–8), and Jesus himself referred to the meal as "this Passover" (Luke 22:15). When Jesus spoke of "the blood of the covenant" (Mark 14:24; Matthew 26:28) or "the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25), he was clearly echoing Moses' words at the Sinai covenant ceremony: "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words" (Exodus 24:8).¹ Rillera is right to draw attention to these two non-atoning well-being sacrifices as the primary liturgical background of the Supper.

Second, his observation that both the Passover and the covenant sacrifice are non-atoning well-being offerings (Hebrew shelamim) that are eaten by the participants is both accurate and important. The criterion he borrows from Milgrom — that if the laity eat from a sacrifice, it cannot be an atoning sacrifice — is a valid liturgical distinction within the Levitical system.² Atoning sacrifices (the ḥaṭṭa't or purgation offering) could not be eaten by their beneficiaries; only certain portions could be eaten by the priests. Well-being offerings, by contrast, were shared meals — eaten by the worshiper, the worshiper's family, and the priests together. This distinction matters, and popular treatments that collapse all sacrifices into a single "atoning death" category do miss something real.

Third, Rillera's emphasis on the connection between the Passover and the exodus liberation theme is significant and should not be minimized. The Passover was first and foremost a commemoration of God's mighty act of deliverance — rescuing Israel from slavery in Egypt. When Paul calls Christ "our Passover lamb" who "has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7), the liberation theme is undeniably part of what he means. Jesus is the lamb of a new exodus, a cosmic liberation. I affirm this wholeheartedly.

Fourth, Rillera's concept of the Lord's Supper as a "sacrificialized" commemorative meal is a helpful framework. The idea that the bread and wine of a literal Passover meal were further ritualized by Jesus into a thanksgiving well-being sacrifice that functions as both a Passover celebration and a covenant-inauguration meta-ritual meal captures something genuine about what Jesus was doing in the Upper Room. The memorial function — "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25) — aligns beautifully with the memorial function of well-being sacrifices in the Torah (Numbers 10:10).

Fifth, Rillera's broader emphasis on how popular caricatures of sacrifice distort the biblical data is a genuine service. Too many Christians assume that every sacrifice in the Old Testament works the same way — that the animal always "dies in the place of" the worshiper as a substitute. This is an oversimplification. The sacrificial system was complex and multi-dimensional, and Rillera does a real service in highlighting its variety. I have no quarrel with him on this point.

These are real contributions. If Rillera had stopped at arguing that the Lord's Supper draws primarily on non-atoning well-being sacrifices and that this dimension is often overlooked, I would largely agree. But he does not stop there. He insists that because the Lord's Supper draws on non-atoning sacrifices, no atoning significance can be attached to Jesus' death in the texts associated with the meal. And here he takes a wrong turn that the rest of this appendix will address.

2. The False Dichotomy: Why Multiple Sacrificial Lenses Can Apply to One Event

The central methodological error in Rillera's chapter 5 is his insistence that because the Lord's Supper draws on non-atoning sacrifices, no atoning significance can be attributed to Jesus' death in any New Testament text associated with the meal. This is a false dichotomy — one of the most consequential false dichotomies in the entire book. Let me explain why.

Rillera's argument depends on treating the Lord's Supper as the only valid sacrificial lens for Jesus' death. If the Supper draws on Passover and covenant inauguration, and if these are non-atoning, then — so Rillera concludes — Jesus' death cannot be atoning in any sacrificial sense. But the New Testament authors simply do not operate this way. They use multiple sacrificial and non-sacrificial images for Christ's death, often in the same letter or even the same passage. This is not confusion on their part. It is the multi-faceted reality of the cross.

Consider Paul as our first example. In 1 Corinthians 5:7, he writes: "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival." Here Christ's death is viewed through the lens of the Passover — a non-atoning well-being sacrifice. But in Romans 3:25, the same apostle writes that God "put forward" Christ Jesus "as a hilastērion [ἱλαστήριον] by his blood." The word hilastērion — which means either "propitiation," "mercy seat," or "place of atonement" — is deeply atoning language. It is the word the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) uses for the kapporet, the golden lid of the ark of the covenant where atonement blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:2, 13–15). As I argued extensively in Chapter 8 of this book, hilastērion carries genuine propitiatory significance — pointing to the satisfaction of divine justice through Christ's sacrificial blood.³

Now here is the crucial question: Does Paul contradict himself? Is the apostle confused when he calls Christ a "Passover lamb" in one letter and a hilastērion in another? Of course not. Paul is applying different sacrificial lenses to the same event — the death of Jesus — because that event is rich enough to fulfill and transcend multiple Old Testament types at the same time. Christ's death is both a Passover liberation (freedom from bondage) and a propitiatory sacrifice (dealing with the judicial consequences of sin). These are not competing categories. They are different facets of the same diamond.

The author of Hebrews does the same thing — and even more strikingly, within the same sustained argument. In Hebrews 9:11–14, Jesus' death is interpreted through the lens of the Day of Atonement: Christ entered "the greater and more perfect tent" and "through his own blood" secured "an eternal redemption." The blood of goats and bulls purified the flesh, but "how much more will the blood of Christ ... purify our conscience from dead works" (9:13–14). This is atoning, kipper-type language — the very language Rillera insists cannot apply to the Lord's Supper or to the earliest Christian understanding of Jesus' death. Yet just a few verses later, in Hebrews 9:18–22, the same author shifts to the covenant-inauguration ceremony of Exodus 24. He quotes Moses' words: "This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you" (9:20, echoing Exodus 24:8). The author of Hebrews sees absolutely no tension between the Day of Atonement lens and the covenant-inauguration lens. Both apply to the same event. Both are fulfilled in Christ.⁴

Rillera's response to this evidence is essentially to say that the Lord's Supper itself — as a ritual — is exclusively indexed to non-atoning sacrifices, and that any atoning interpretation represents a foreign intrusion. He writes that "to smuggle in an atoning function to this eaten ritual would introduce a fundamental incompatibility in practice since the atoning sacrifices cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries."⁵ But this argument confuses the liturgical form of the ritual with the theological content of the event it commemorates. Yes, the Lord's Supper as a meal functions like a well-being offering — it is eaten by the participants. But the event it commemorates — the death of Jesus — is interpreted by the New Testament authors through multiple lenses, including atoning ones.

John Stott makes this point beautifully when he observes that Jesus "was giving an advance dramatization of his death before it took place and giving his own authoritative explanation of its meaning and purpose." Stott argues that the Passover context further enforces the significance of what Jesus was doing: "In the original Passover in Egypt each paschal lamb died instead of the family's firstborn son, and the firstborn was spared only if a lamb was slain in his place."⁶ The Passover itself, as Stott notes, already carries a protective-substitutionary logic, even if it does not involve kipper in the Levitical sense. And Jesus, by identifying himself with both the Passover lamb and the covenant blood, was claiming to fulfill and transcend the entire sacrificial system — atoning and non-atoning alike.

As William Lane Craig observes, the New Testament authors were not simply mapping Levitical regulations onto Jesus in a mechanical, one-to-one correspondence. They saw Jesus as the fulfillment that transcended the system. The writer of Hebrews makes this explicit: "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves" (Hebrews 10:1). The sacrificial categories of the Old Testament were pointers, not prisons. The reality to which they pointed — the death of Christ — was greater than any single category could contain.⁷ The fact that Jesus' death can be both a Passover lamb (non-atoning) and a sin offering or propitiation (atoning) is not a contradiction. It is precisely the multi-faceted reality that this entire book has been arguing for (see Chapter 24 for the full integration of these facets).

We should also consider 1 Corinthians 10:16–21, where Paul explicitly discusses the Lord's Supper in sacrificial terms that go beyond the non-atoning categories Rillera allows. Paul writes: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (10:16). He then compares this participation to Israel's participation in the altar through their sacrificial meals (10:18) and, strikingly, to pagan participation with demons through idol-feasts (10:20–21). Paul's logic here is that eating a sacrificial meal creates a real participation with the one to whom the sacrifice is offered. The Lord's Supper, for Paul, is not merely a commemorative meal with no sacrificial content beyond Passover and covenant inauguration. It is a genuine participation in the blood and body of Christ — the very Christ who is both our Passover lamb (5:7) and our hilastērion (Romans 3:25). Paul does not restrict the Lord's Supper to non-atoning categories. He presents it as a participation in the full reality of Christ's sacrificial death — atoning and non-atoning dimensions together.

The Gospel of John provides yet another angle on this multi-faceted reality. In John's chronology, Jesus dies on the cross at the very time the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the temple (John 19:14, 31, 36). John clearly identifies Jesus as the Passover lamb. Yet the same Gospel also presents Jesus as the one who "takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) — language that, as I. Howard Marshall notes, carries atoning overtones that go beyond the Passover's non-atoning function.²³ And in John 6:51, Jesus says, "The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" — connecting the eucharistic meal directly with a death that accomplishes salvation for the world. John, like Paul and the author of Hebrews, holds together the Passover lens and the atoning lens without any sense of contradiction.

Rillera's eaten/non-eaten criterion for distinguishing atoning from non-atoning sacrifices is a valid liturgical distinction within the Levitical system. But he commits a category error when he treats it as an absolute theological barrier that prevents any New Testament author from viewing Christ's death through an atoning lens while simultaneously celebrating it in a meal. The Lord's Supper is a meal — yes. And the death it commemorates includes atoning dimensions — also yes. These two facts are not in tension. The meal commemorates the multi-faceted event; it does not restrict the event's meaning to a single dimension.

3. "Forgiveness of Sins": Rillera's Artificial Restriction

One of Rillera's most significant arguments in chapter 5 concerns the phrase "forgiveness of sins" (aphesis hamartiōn). He contends that "forgiveness of sins" in the New Testament is exclusively about moral purification on the prophetic model — divine water-washing, Spirit-immersion, cleansing from the moral impurities that sent Israel into exile — and has nothing to do with sacrificial kipper. He argues that "any interpretations or theologies that trade on the premise that 'forgiveness of sins' necessarily evokes the concepts of 'sacrifice' let alone 'atonement' are not only reductive and simplistic, they are also incorrect because the premise itself is unwarranted."⁸

Now, I want to say clearly: Rillera is correct that the prophetic tradition envisions forgiveness as moral purification. Ezekiel 36:25–27 speaks of God sprinkling clean water on Israel and giving them a new heart and a new Spirit. Jeremiah 31:31–34 promises a new covenant in which God will "forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." These are genuine dimensions of the biblical understanding of forgiveness, and Rillera is right to highlight them. The prophets do envision a forgiveness that transcends the sacrificial kipper system — a forgiveness that addresses the moral impurities the sacrificial system could not touch.

But Rillera is wrong — seriously wrong — to make this the exclusive meaning of "forgiveness of sins" in the New Testament. The New Testament authors themselves connect forgiveness with sacrifice explicitly and repeatedly. Consider two critical texts:

First, Matthew 26:28. At the Last Supper, Jesus says: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Rillera spends considerable effort explaining away this text, arguing that "forgiveness" here must mean only moral purification per the prophets and cannot involve kipper. But his explanation requires him to override the plain sacrificial context of the statement — which occurs as Jesus identifies his blood with the covenant sacrifice. Jesus says his blood is being "poured out" (ekchunnomenon) — language that, as Rillera himself acknowledges, refers to his death. But Jesus ties this death-blood directly to "the forgiveness of sins." The connection between blood, death, covenant, and forgiveness is made by Jesus himself in a sacrificial context. To insist that "forgiveness" here has nothing to do with sacrifice requires Rillera to deny the plain force of Jesus' own words spoken over the cup.

Second, and even more devastating for Rillera's position, is Hebrews 9:22: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." This is as explicit a connection between sacrifice and forgiveness as one could ask for. Rillera acknowledges this text but tries to limit its scope, noting that the author of Hebrews hedges with the word "nearly" (schedon) and that the statement is restricted to "the law" and to the purging of the dwelling place and its holy objects. But even granting this qualification, the author of Hebrews goes on in the very next verses to apply this principle directly to Christ: "Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf" (9:23–24). And a few verses later: "So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him" (9:28).⁹

The author of Hebrews saw no incompatibility between the prophetic promise of forgiveness in the new covenant and the sacrificial means by which that forgiveness was accomplished. This is the critical point Rillera misses. He is right that the prophets promised forgiveness as moral purification. He is right that this forgiveness transcends the kipper system. But the author of Hebrews explicitly connects Jeremiah's new covenant promise — including its promise of forgiveness — with Jesus' sacrificial blood. In Hebrews 9:15, the author writes that Christ "is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant." Then in Hebrews 10:16–18, the author quotes Jeremiah 31:33–34 — the very "new covenant" and "forgiveness" passage Rillera relies on — and concludes: "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin." The logic is explicit: Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice accomplished the very forgiveness Jeremiah promised. The prophetic promise and the sacrificial fulfillment are not in tension. They are two sides of the same coin.¹⁰

Rillera also argues that Hebrews' kipper theology is "advanced teaching" beyond the basic gospel (citing Hebrews 5:12–6:2) and is therefore disconnected from the Lord's Supper. But this argument does not work at all. The fact that Hebrews presents high-priestly Christology as advanced teaching does not mean it contradicts the basic gospel. It deepens it. When a university physics professor explains quantum mechanics, she is not contradicting what high school students learned about Newton's laws. She is going deeper into the same reality. Similarly, when Hebrews explains Jesus' high-priestly sacrifice in atoning terms, it is going deeper into the same event the Lord's Supper commemorates. The advanced teaching does not cancel the basic; it reveals additional dimensions of it.

Beyond Hebrews and Matthew, consider the Pauline and deutero-Pauline literature, which repeatedly connects forgiveness with Christ's blood in language that assumes a sacrificial framework. In Ephesians 1:7, Paul writes: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace." Colossians 1:14 echoes: "in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Romans 5:9 declares: "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." In each of these texts, forgiveness and justification are explicitly connected to Christ's blood — his sacrificial death. These are not isolated proof-texts. They represent a pervasive pattern across the New Testament: forgiveness comes through blood, through sacrifice, through the cross. Rillera's attempt to sever the connection between forgiveness and sacrifice requires him to treat all of these texts as something other than what they plainly say.

Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach make this point effectively in their treatment of the biblical foundations of penal substitution. The connection between forgiveness and sacrifice runs throughout the biblical witness — from the Levitical system to the prophets to the New Testament — and any attempt to sever this connection must do violence to the texts themselves.¹¹ William Lane Craig similarly argues that the concept of divine justice demands that forgiveness not be "cheap grace" — that there must be a basis upon which God justly forgives, and that basis is the sacrificial death of Christ.¹² Rillera, in effect, wants forgiveness without a sacrificial basis — forgiveness by divine fiat alone. But this is precisely what the New Testament refuses to give us. The good news is not merely that God decides to forgive. The good news is that God has provided the basis for forgiveness in the blood of his Son.

None of this denies the prophetic moral-purification dimension of forgiveness. The Spirit does wash us clean. The new heart is given. But the basis upon which that moral purification becomes possible is the sacrificial death of Christ. As I argued in Chapter 19, the substitutionary accomplishment of the cross is the foundation for every other blessing — including moral transformation, Spirit-indwelling, and new covenant membership. Rillera sees the blessings but refuses to see the foundation. That is why his picture of the gospel, for all its genuine insights, remains incomplete.

4. The Passover Lamb and the Question of Substitution

Rillera devotes considerable space in chapters 2 and 5 to arguing that the Passover is entirely non-atoning and non-substitutionary. He is technically correct that the Passover lamb in Exodus 12 does not involve kipper. The word "atonement" never appears in the Passover texts, and the Passover functions as a commemorative thanksgiving well-being sacrifice, not a purgation offering. On this narrow point, I agree with Rillera.

But Rillera goes much further. He argues that the Passover lamb carries no substitutionary dimension whatsoever — that the lamb's blood is merely a "sign" or "signal" to God that an Israelite household is present, and that reading any protective-substitutionary logic into the blood is "tendentious and unwarranted theological special pleading."¹³ Here I think Rillera overcorrects significantly.

Let us look carefully at what happens in Exodus 12. God announces that at midnight he will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn (Exodus 12:12). There is only one way of escape: each Israelite household must slaughter a lamb, apply its blood to the doorposts and lintel, and remain inside the house. When God sees the blood, he will "pass over" (pasaḥ — which Rillera rightly notes may mean "protect") the house, and the destroyer will not enter (12:13, 23). Without the blood, the firstborn dies. With the blood, the firstborn lives. The lamb's blood is given so that the firstborn does not die. Life is preserved through blood.

Now, Rillera insists this is not substitutionary because (a) the death of the animal has no ritual significance in the Torah, (b) other Passover instructions also carry consequences for non-compliance, and (c) the firstborn still needs to be "redeemed" later through the Levites (Numbers 3:12–13). But consider these responses:

First, while the slaughter of the animal may not be given independent ritual significance in the Priestly texts as a ritual act, the blood of the lamb — which requires the lamb's death — is what saves the firstborn from death. This is a protective function that operates through a death-and-blood sequence. As Stott observes, "in the original Passover in Egypt each paschal lamb died instead of the family's firstborn son, and the firstborn was spared only if a lamb was slain in his place."¹⁴ The protective logic is inherently substitutionary in structure, even if it does not use the technical kipper vocabulary. David Allen likewise identifies the Passover lamb's death as "viewed as a substitute for the firstborn sons of Israel" and notes that "the consecration of the firstborn sons functioned as a reminder to Israel of the first Passover, particularly the substitutionary aspect of it."¹⁵

Second, Rillera's argument that other Passover instructions also carry consequences — and therefore the blood is not uniquely "substitutionary" — proves too much. Yes, failure to eat bitter herbs or to remove leaven also results in being "cut off." But this does not negate the specific protective function of the blood. It simply means the Passover ritual has multiple components, each with its own significance. The blood's specific function is to protect from the destroyer (12:13, 23). This is stated explicitly in the text. Rillera's analogy — that consuming bitter herbs is not "substituting" for the firstborn's death — is true but beside the point. No one is claiming that bitter herbs are substitutionary. The claim is about the blood specifically.

Third, the redemption of the firstborn in Numbers 3 does not negate the substitutionary dimension of the original Passover. Rillera argues that if the Passover lamb truly "substituted" for the firstborn, then there would be no need for the Levites to later substitute for them. But this confuses two different things. The Passover lamb protected the firstborn from death on one specific night — the night of the tenth plague. The Levitical substitution addresses a different matter: God's ongoing claim on the firstborn for sanctuary service. These are related but distinct. The Passover rescue is a one-time deliverance event. The Levitical substitution is an ongoing institutional arrangement. The existence of the latter does not cancel the reality of the former.

Furthermore, in Second Temple Judaism, the Passover increasingly took on atoning significance. Jubilees 49:15 connects the Passover with protection from plague in ways that echo the original Passover's protective function. The New Testament authors did not receive the Passover in a theological vacuum. They inherited a tradition in which the Passover was already being read through lenses that went beyond a simple thanksgiving meal. When they identified Jesus as the Passover lamb, they were drawing on this richer tradition — and going even further by seeing in Jesus the fulfillment not only of Passover but of the entire sacrificial system.¹⁶

We should also notice something Rillera downplays: the connection between the Passover lamb typology and Isaiah 53. When Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:32–35, the passage being read is Isaiah 53:7–8: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth." Philip then "told him the good news about Jesus" (8:35). The lamb imagery of Isaiah 53 — the lamb who "was pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities" (53:5), the one on whom "the LORD has laid the iniquity of us all" (53:6), the one who makes his life "an offering for guilt" (53:10) — was read by the earliest Christians as fulfilled in Jesus, the Passover lamb. This means the Passover lamb typology and the substitutionary suffering of Isaiah 53 converge in Jesus. The lamb who liberates is also the lamb who bears sin. Rillera wants to keep these categories separate, but the New Testament authors brought them together in the person of Christ. As Stott puts it with characteristic clarity, the concept of substitution "may be said to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man."³⁰

5. Rillera's Treatment of "Ransom" and Economic Metaphors

In chapter 5, Rillera also addresses the "ransom" (lytron) language associated with Jesus' death. His treatment is among the most instructive in the book — both for what it gets right and for where it overcorrects.

Rillera is correct that ransom language is rooted in exodus and liberation themes. When the New Testament speaks of Jesus "ransoming" or "redeeming" people, the primary background is not a commercial transaction but God's mighty act of deliverance in the exodus. "You will be ransomed without money" (Isaiah 52:3) — this is the prophetic framework, and Rillera is right to emphasize it. He is also correct that crude theories about "payment to the devil" (as in some patristic writers like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa) or rigid "payment to the Father" models are inadequate. The question "To whom was the ransom paid?" is indeed, as Rillera puts it, "an exercise in missing the point" if pressed too far as a literal transaction.¹⁷

But Rillera overcorrects by draining all transactional content from the ransom metaphor. And he does so by sidestepping the most significant piece of evidence: the preposition anti (ἀντί) in Mark 10:45.

Jesus says: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (lytron anti pollōn). The preposition anti is crucial. In Greek, anti carries clear substitutionary force — it means "in place of," "instead of," "in exchange for." As David Allen notes, in the Greek text of this verse the preposition anti "clearly denotes substitution. The intentional sense of this verse is to express the purpose of Christ's dying."¹⁸ Jesus gives his life instead of many. This is the language of substitution — a life given in place of other lives, so that those others are freed from what would otherwise befall them.

Rillera largely sidesteps this preposition. He focuses on arguing that "ransom" is an exodus metaphor (true) and that no literal payee need be identified (also true). But he never adequately addresses the substitutionary force of anti. You can concede everything Rillera says about ransom being rooted in the exodus and still recognize that Jesus is saying something more: he gives his life instead of the many, so that they go free. The exodus metaphor and the substitutionary structure are not in competition. In fact, they work beautifully together: just as the Passover lamb's blood was given so that the firstborn might live, so Jesus' life is given as a ransom so that the many might be freed.

Simon Gathercole's treatment of the anti and hyper prepositions in Paul is decisive here. Gathercole demonstrates that "Christ died for our sins" (1 Corinthians 15:3) — with the preposition hyper ("for" / "on behalf of" / "instead of") — carries genuinely substitutionary force in Paul's theology. Christ died in our place, instead of us. Gathercole defines substitutionary atonement as "Christ's death in our place, instead of us," and shows that this is "in the bloodstream of Pauline theology" from its earliest confessional formulations.¹⁹ When Mark uses anti and Paul uses hyper, they are both expressing the same substitutionary logic from slightly different angles.

We should also notice 1 Timothy 2:5–6, where Paul writes: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (antilytron hyper pantōn). The word antilytron is a compound of anti (instead of) and lytron (ransom) — literally a "substitute-ransom" or "ransom given in exchange." This is not just exodus liberation language. It is specifically substitutionary ransom language — a ransom given in the place of all. Leon Morris's careful lexical study of the ransom terminology in the New Testament demonstrates that these words carry genuine substitutionary content and cannot be reduced to mere metaphorical "liberation" language drained of any exchange or substitution.²³ Rillera never engages Morris on this point — a significant gap in his treatment.

Allen also draws attention to the connection between Mark 10:45 and Mark 14:24. The "ransom saying" and the Last Supper words are connected by the universal service "for the many" — linking Jesus' ransom-giving with his blood "poured out for many." Allen notes that hyper in Mark 14:24 "means 'on behalf of' or 'instead of' — i.e., in a substitutionary sense."²⁰ The Lord's Supper words and the ransom saying are not separate, isolated statements. They are mutually interpreting. Together they reveal a Jesus who understands his death as both a covenant-inaugurating sacrifice and a substitutionary ransom — a life given in place of others.

Rillera also appeals to Jesus' parables of forgiveness, noting that every parable uses the motif of debt remission, not debt satisfaction (e.g., Luke 7:40–50; Matthew 18:21–35). He argues that "the notion that 'Jesus paid my debt' to God or the devil lacks any scriptural basis and contradicts Jesus's own teachings."²¹ But this is a false inference. The parables of forgiveness are designed to teach one lesson — the extravagance and generosity of divine mercy. They are not designed to give a complete theology of the atonement any more than the parable of the prodigal son is designed to deny the existence of the cross. Parables illuminate one facet of truth at a time. The parable of the forgiving king in Matthew 18 teaches the magnitude of divine mercy; it does not negate the ransom saying in Matthew 20:28 or the covenant-blood words in Matthew 26:28. To set parables of forgiveness against the ransom saying is to pit Scripture against Scripture — a move that responsible exegesis should avoid.

6. Rillera's "Murder" Reading of "Poured Out" — A Brief Response

Before concluding, I want to address one more of Rillera's arguments briefly. He contends that the phrase "poured out" (ekchunnomenon) in the Lord's Supper pericopes refers exclusively to murder — not to sacrificial blood-pouring. He notes that the combination of ekchunnō and haima (blood) appears in six New Testament passages: three in the Lord's Supper accounts and three that clearly refer to murder (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:50; Acts 22:20). From this he concludes that "poured out" in the Lord's Supper is making an intentional link between the murder of the prophets and Jesus' death as a murder — not referring to sacrificial blood manipulation.²²

This is a creative argument, but it does not work for several reasons. First, even granting that ekchunnō can refer to violent death, the context of the Lord's Supper is explicitly sacrificial. Jesus identifies his blood as "the blood of the covenant" — an unmistakable reference to the Exodus 24 covenant sacrifice. He is speaking over a Passover meal. He is using sacrificial language ("blood," "covenant," "poured out for many"). In this context, "poured out" most naturally carries sacrificial overtones, even if it also connotes violent death. The two are not mutually exclusive — Jesus' death was both a violent murder and a sacrificial offering. As Peter says in Acts 2:23: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." The "definite plan of God" (sacrifice) and the "hands of lawless men" (murder) are both true of the same event.

Second, Rillera's sample size is too small to draw the conclusion he wants. Six occurrences of ekchunnō + haima — with three in the Lord's Supper accounts that are the very texts in question — hardly constitutes a decisive lexical argument. The word ekchunnō is used frequently in the Septuagint for both sacrificial blood-pouring (e.g., Leviticus 4:12, 18, 25, 30, 34) and for violent bloodshed. Context determines meaning, and in the Lord's Supper the context is clearly sacrificial. More importantly, Rillera's methodology here is selective. He isolates one phrase (ekchunnō + haima) from its surrounding context and uses the non-Lord's-Supper occurrences to determine the meaning of the Lord's Supper occurrences. But the surrounding context of the Lord's Supper — the Passover meal, the "blood of the covenant" language, the "for many" formulation echoing Isaiah 53 — all point toward a sacrificial meaning, not merely a murder-indexing meaning. Good lexical study always lets context determine meaning. And the context here is overwhelmingly sacrificial.

Third, even if "poured out" does carry connotations of murder, this actually strengthens the case for penal substitution rather than weakening it. If Jesus' blood is "poured out" in murder — innocent blood shed unjustly — and this innocent blood is simultaneously "the blood of the covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins," then we have precisely the convergence that penal substitution describes: an innocent one whose violent death accomplishes what no one else's death could accomplish — the forgiveness of sins and the inauguration of the new covenant. The murder is the sacrifice. The injustice done to Jesus is the means by which God's justice is satisfied. This is the heart of the cross as this book has been arguing throughout (see especially Chapters 19 and 20).

As Peter proclaims in Acts 2:23–24: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it." Notice the extraordinary double agency: Jesus was "delivered up according to the definite plan of God" — this is the sacrificial, purposeful, atoning dimension — and "killed by the hands of lawless men" — this is the murder dimension. Peter does not choose between these. Both are true simultaneously. The murder and the sacrifice are the same event, viewed from different angles. Rillera wants to reduce the Lord's Supper references to the murder angle alone. But the New Testament consistently holds both dimensions together, and any reading that eliminates one in favor of the other distorts the full picture.

7. Conclusion: The Lamb Who Liberates and Atones

Where does all of this leave us? Let me summarize the argument of this appendix.

Rillera is right that the Lord's Supper draws on the non-atoning well-being sacrifices of Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony. He is right that these are eaten sacrifices that carry themes of liberation, thanksgiving, covenant-making, and memorial. He is right that popular treatments often oversimplify the sacrificial system by collapsing everything into a single "atoning death" category. These are genuine contributions, and I have acknowledged them throughout.

But Rillera is wrong — profoundly wrong — to insist that because the Lord's Supper draws on non-atoning sacrifices, no atoning significance can be attributed to Jesus' death in any New Testament text associated with the meal. The New Testament authors use multiple sacrificial and non-sacrificial lenses for Christ's death simultaneously. Paul calls Christ both "our Passover lamb" (1 Corinthians 5:7) and a hilastērion (Romans 3:25). Hebrews interprets Jesus' death through both the Day of Atonement (Hebrews 9:11–14) and the covenant inauguration (Hebrews 9:18–22). Matthew connects "the blood of the covenant" with "the forgiveness of sins" (26:28). These are not contradictions or confusions. They are the multi-faceted reality of the cross.

Rillera is also wrong to restrict "forgiveness of sins" exclusively to the prophetic moral-purification model. While the prophetic dimension is real and important, Hebrews 9–10 explicitly connects the prophetic promise of new-covenant forgiveness (Jeremiah 31:31–34) with Jesus' sacrificial blood. The author of Hebrews saw no tension between the prophetic promise and the sacrificial means. Neither should we.

And Rillera is wrong to deny the substitutionary dimension of the Passover and the ransom metaphor. The Passover carries a protective-substitutionary logic — a death-and-blood sequence that preserves life — even if it does not involve kipper in the Levitical sense. And Mark 10:45 uses the preposition anti to express clear substitutionary force: Jesus gives his life instead of the many.

One final point deserves mention. Rillera claims in chapter 5 that Jesus' death is "about solidarity, not substitution" — that Jesus does not die instead of his disciples but ahead of them, as a pioneer who leads through death into resurrection life. He writes that "Jesus is not dying instead of anyone, let alone his disciples, but rather, ahead of them."²⁴ Now, there is something genuinely true here: Jesus is the forerunner, the pioneer (Hebrews 2:10; 12:2), and we are called to follow him through suffering. But Rillera creates a false dichotomy between "pioneer" and "substitute." The New Testament holds both together. Jesus goes ahead of us into death — and also dies in our place. He is both the forerunner who leads and the substitute who bears what we cannot bear. Paul makes this distinction clearly: Christ was "delivered over for our trespasses" (substitutionary death bearing the penalty) "and raised for our justification" (vindication leading to our participation) (Romans 4:25). The death and resurrection have different soteriological functions, and substitution applies specifically to the death-as-penalty, while the resurrection opens the way for our participation and new life.

Fr. Joshua Schooping demonstrates powerfully that the Eastern Orthodox tradition — which Rillera's foreword writer Douglas Campbell explicitly aligns with — has historically held together substitutionary and participatory dimensions without seeing them as incompatible. Schooping shows that penal and substitutionary language is pervasive in Orthodox hymnography, patristic writings, and canonical sources.²⁵ The Orthodox tradition affirms both theosis (participation and deification) and substitutionary language. This is not a "Western" either/or. It is the catholic faith. Rillera's insistence on choosing solidarity over substitution puts him at odds not only with the Western Reformation tradition but also with significant strands of Eastern Orthodoxy.

I want to close with a word of appreciation for Rillera's underlying concern. He is right that the Passover is fundamentally about liberation — about God setting people free. The title of his book, Lamb of the Free, captures something genuinely beautiful about the gospel. Jesus is indeed the lamb who sets the captives free. But I believe the reason Jesus can set us free is precisely because he bore what we could not bear. He is the lamb who liberates because he is the lamb who atones. He is the Passover lamb and the sin offering. He is the blood of the new covenant and the propitiation for our sins. He is the ransom given instead of us and the pioneer who leads us into resurrection life. These are not competing identities. They are the glorious, multi-dimensional reality of the cross — and penal substitution stands at the heart of it all.