Appendix F
Responding to Rillera on the Passover, the Lord's Supper, and Non-Atoning Sacrifices

Introduction

In the previous appendix, we examined Andrew Rillera's arguments about Old Testament sacrifice and found that, while he raises some genuinely helpful correctives to popular-level misunderstandings, his sweeping denial of any substitutionary dimension in the Levitical system overstates the evidence. In this appendix, we turn to another central pillar of his argument: his treatment of the Passover, the Lord's Supper, and what he calls the "non-atoning sacrifices." Rillera devotes significant energy in Chapters 2 and 5 of Lamb of the Free to arguing that Jesus's death is primarily interpreted through non-atoning sacrificial categories — specifically the Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony — and that the Lord's Supper categorically excludes any atoning significance.¹

I want to be clear at the outset: Rillera is right about several things. He is correct that the Passover and the covenant-inauguration ceremony are important backgrounds for the Lord's Supper. He is correct that these are, in the Levitical system, non-atoning sacrifices. He is correct that this distinction — between atoning and non-atoning sacrifices — is real, significant, and too often overlooked. And he is correct that the New Testament authors identify Jesus with the Passover lamb and with the blood of the new covenant. These are genuine contributions, and I am grateful for them.

Where I disagree with Rillera is in his conclusion: that these non-atoning backgrounds categorically exclude any atoning dimension from the Lord's Supper and from the New Testament's broader interpretation of Jesus's death. Rillera's framework creates a rigid either/or — non-atoning sacrifices or atoning sacrifices, but never both applied to the same event — that the New Testament texts themselves do not respect. The NT authors freely layer multiple sacrificial categories onto the single event of the cross, and there is no reason why a meal rooted in Passover and covenant-inauguration cannot also point to the atoning significance of the death it commemorates. The problem is not what Rillera affirms; it is what he denies.

Section 1: Rillera's Argument Summarized Fairly

Before responding, let me present Rillera's case with the force it deserves. His argument is careful and multi-layered, and it would be unfair to reduce it to a caricature.

Rillera's first major claim is that the Passover is a non-atoning well-being sacrifice (šĕlāmîm). He argues this on several grounds. The Passover is eaten by the people, and in the Levitical system, sacrifices eaten by their beneficiaries are categorically non-atoning — since those who benefit from an atoning sacrifice are never permitted to eat from it.² The word kipper (atonement) is never used in connection with the Passover. The Passover is best understood as a unique type of thanksgiving well-being sacrifice, sharing the one-day expiration and unleavened bread requirements of the thanksgiving offering (tôdâ).³ And the Passover's function is to commemorate a past act of divine deliverance — the exodus — not to make atonement for sin.

Rillera's second major claim is that the covenant-inauguration ceremony of Exodus 24 is likewise non-atoning. The sacrifices offered at the covenant ceremony were burnt offerings and well-being offerings (Exod 24:5), both in the non-atoning category. The blood sprinkled on the people (24:8) functions to index a covenantal bond between God and Israel, not to make atonement. Rillera argues, drawing on William Gilders and others, that the blood-sprinkling ritual marks a "metaphysical transition" — Israel's transition from an ordinary people to a holy nation — rather than any kind of sin-bearing or propitiation.⁴

Rillera's third claim follows from the first two: the Lord's Supper is a "sacrificialized" ritual that combines two non-atoning sacrifices — Passover and a covenant-inauguration ceremony — to explain the significance of Jesus's death. Since participants eat this meal, it categorically cannot have an atoning function. In Rillera's words, it would have been "very confusing" for Jesus at a literal Passover meal to further "sacrificialize" what he wants his disciples to consume as a kipper sacrifice, "let alone one of the purgation sacrifices on the Day of Decontamination, which not even the high priest ate from."⁵

His fourth claim concerns Matthew 26:28, where Jesus says his blood is poured out "for the forgiveness of sins." Rillera argues that this does not introduce kipper into the Lord's Supper. Rather, "forgiveness" here belongs to the prophetic framework of moral purification — the hope for restoration from exile — which the prophets consistently envisioned as happening apart from the sacrificial system (Jer 31:34; Ezek 36:25–27). Since the grave sins that caused the exile (moral impurities like idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality) were always outside the scope of kipper, the promised forgiveness must come by other means — divine fiat, moral purification through the Spirit — not through atoning sacrifice.⁶

Finally, Rillera argues that the silence of Hebrews about the Lord's Supper confirms his reading. Hebrews is the New Testament book most explicitly concerned with kipper, yet it makes no mention of the Lord's Supper. If the Lord's Supper had an atoning dimension, the author of Hebrews would surely have drawn on it. The author even acknowledges that the teaching about Jesus's priesthood and heavenly atonement goes beyond "the basic teaching about Christ" (Heb 6:1), which would be inexplicable if kipper theology were embedded in the Lord's Supper from the very beginning.⁷

This is a serious argument, and it deserves a serious response. Let me now explain why I believe it fails.

Section 2: The False Dichotomy Between Atoning and Non-Atoning Significance

The heart of my disagreement with Rillera is this: he treats the Levitical categories of "atoning" and "non-atoning" sacrifices as a rigid classification scheme that the New Testament must follow — such that if a text draws on a non-atoning sacrifice, it cannot also carry atoning significance. But the New Testament authors do not operate within these rigid boundaries. They freely apply multiple sacrificial categories — and non-sacrificial categories — to the single event of Jesus's death, layering imagery in ways that transcend the neat distinctions of Leviticus.

The NT applies multiple sacrificial categories to the same event. Consider just a few examples. Paul identifies Jesus as "our Passover lamb" who has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7) — a non-atoning category, as Rillera correctly observes. But the same Paul speaks of Christ's death in terms that evoke sin-bearing and atonement: God set forth Jesus as a hilastērion through his blood (Rom 3:25); God sent his own Son "concerning sin" or "as a sin offering" (peri hamartias, Rom 8:3); God "made him who knew no sin to be sin for us" (2 Cor 5:21). These are not statements from different theological traditions awkwardly stitched together. They come from a single apostle who sees no contradiction between identifying Jesus as the Passover lamb and interpreting his death through atoning categories.⁸

The author of Hebrews provides an even more striking example. In Hebrews 9:15–22, the author explicitly links Jesus's covenant blood with purification and the forgiveness of transgressions — blending covenant-inauguration and atoning themes in the very combination that Rillera says is impossible. The passage moves seamlessly from "the mediator of a new covenant" (9:15) to "the blood of the covenant" (9:20, quoting Exod 24:8) to "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (9:22). This is not confusion on the author's part. It is a deliberate theological synthesis: the covenant blood that inaugurates the new covenant also accomplishes purification. The same blood does both.⁹ As argued in Chapter 10 of this book, Hebrews sees the cross as a single event that fulfills multiple Old Testament types simultaneously — Yom Kippur, covenant-inauguration, and the perfect self-offering — without being reducible to any one of them.

The "eaten vs. non-eaten" criterion is a Levitical technicality that the NT transcends. Rillera argues that since the Lord's Supper is eaten, and since atoning sacrifices cannot be eaten by their beneficiaries, the Lord's Supper categorically excludes any atoning function. The logic is tight — within the Levitical system. But the Lord's Supper is not a Levitical sacrifice. It is a ritual meal in which Jesus reinterprets existing Passover symbols in light of his own impending death. The question is not whether the meal fits neatly into one Levitical category, but what theological significance Jesus and the New Testament authors attribute to the death the meal signifies.¹⁰

Consider an analogy. A memorial service for a fallen soldier might involve a shared meal — a communal gathering of remembrance and celebration of life. That meal, as a meal, has no military significance. But the death being commemorated has profound military significance: the soldier died in combat, defending others. The ritual category of the meal does not determine or limit the significance of the death. In the same way, the fact that the Lord's Supper draws on non-atoning well-being sacrifice categories does not mean the death it commemorates cannot carry atoning significance. Rillera conflates the vehicle (the meal) with the reality to which the vehicle points (the death of Christ).

This is a crucial distinction that needs to be pressed. Rillera's argument assumes a one-to-one correspondence between the ritual category of the commemorative meal and the theological significance of the event commemorated. But this assumption is precisely what needs to be proved, not assumed. When Jesus takes the bread and says, "This is my body, which is given for you" (Luke 22:19), and when he takes the cup and says, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt 26:28), he is interpreting his death — not merely the meal. The bread and wine are signs that point beyond themselves to a reality that is larger than any single sacrificial category. The meal is the vehicle; the death is the destination. And the death can carry dimensions of meaning that the vehicle, considered in isolation, does not.³¹

I. Howard Marshall made this point decades ago in his study of the Last Supper. Marshall argued that the significance of the Lord's Supper lies "not in its precise ritual classification but in the theological interpretation Jesus places on his impending death." The meal is a vehicle for the theology of the death, and the death has a significance that goes beyond what either the Passover or the covenant ceremony, taken in isolation, can contain.³² Joshua McNall reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that the NT writers consistently treat the cross as an event that absorbs and fulfills the entire sacrificial economy rather than fitting neatly into any single category within it.³³

It is worth noting that Rillera himself acknowledges a version of this point when he distinguishes between "the meaning of Jesus's death qua death" and "the meaning of Jesus qua sacrifice." He writes that there is a difference between how Jesus's death functions as a death — making contact with the consequences of moral impurity — and how it is interpreted through sacrificial imagery. This is an important distinction, and I agree with it. But it actually undercuts his argument. If the death itself has significance apart from and beyond its sacrificial framing, then the fact that the meal's sacrificial framing is non-atoning does not determine whether the death itself has an atoning dimension. By Rillera's own logic, the death of Jesus — as a death — can carry atoning significance even if the sacrificial meal that commemorates it draws on non-atoning categories.

"Blood of the covenant" is not merely non-atoning. Rillera emphasizes that the Exodus 24 covenant ceremony "says nothing about forgiveness" and is "wholly non-atoning."¹¹ This is true of Exodus 24 in isolation. But the New Testament authors do not read Exodus 24 in isolation. They read it in light of Jeremiah 31's new covenant promise, which explicitly includes forgiveness: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jer 31:34, ESV). Jesus's words of institution fuse the Exodus 24 covenant ceremony with the Jeremianic new covenant, which does involve the removal of sin.

Rillera is aware of this connection, of course. His response is that the "forgiveness" in Jeremiah 31 is prophetic forgiveness — moral purification outside of kipper — not sacrificial atonement. Fair enough. But this concession actually undermines his rigidly categorical argument. If forgiveness can be associated with the new covenant apart from the kipper system, then the Lord's Supper can carry a "forgiveness" dimension even though it draws on non-atoning sacrifices. Rillera is trying to have it both ways: he acknowledges that forgiveness is part of the new covenant promise, but then insists that the Lord's Supper — which celebrates the new covenant — cannot signify forgiveness in any sacrificial sense. The NT authors, however, are more flexible. They see the death of Jesus as the event that simultaneously inaugurates the new covenant and accomplishes the forgiveness that the covenant promises.¹²

Matthew 26:28 and "forgiveness of sins." Rillera dismisses the significance of Matthew's inclusion of "for the forgiveness of sins" (eis aphesin hamartiōn), arguing that this is prophetic forgiveness, not sacrificial atonement. But even granting Rillera's point that the prophetic framework of forgiveness operates outside the kipper system, Matthew's language is striking. Matthew links the "blood poured out" (haima ekchunnomenon) to "forgiveness of sins" — connecting sacrificial blood language with the accomplishment of forgiveness. The question is not whether this forgiveness fits neatly into the Levitical kipper system. The question is whether Jesus's death — the event being commemorated — includes a dimension in which the judicial problem of sin is addressed. And Matthew clearly says it does. Something about Jesus's blood being "poured out for many" is directly connected to the achievement of forgiveness.¹³

I want to acknowledge that Rillera makes an interesting argument about "poured out" (ekchunnō) language. He points out that in the Levitical system, "pouring out" blood at the base of the altar is a disposal action — it describes leftover blood being discarded, not the effective atoning blood manipulation.¹⁴ This is a genuinely helpful observation, and it is one more example of the kind of detailed attention to Levitical ritual that makes Rillera's work valuable. However, as he himself acknowledges, the combination of ekchunnō and haima ("poured out" and "blood") in the New Testament consistently refers to murder — the pouring out of innocent blood (Matt 23:35; Luke 11:50; Acts 22:20). This means that in the Lord's Supper accounts, "poured out" primarily indexes Jesus's death as a murder, not as a Levitical ritual action. But this does not eliminate the atoning dimension. Rather, it means that the same death — Jesus's violent murder — is being interpreted through multiple frameworks simultaneously: it is a murder (innocent blood poured out), a Passover (the lamb is slain), a covenant-inauguration (the blood of the covenant), and an event that accomplishes forgiveness. These are not mutually exclusive.

Rillera's argument from the silence of Hebrews. Rillera argues that Hebrews' failure to mention the Lord's Supper confirms that the meal is categorically non-atoning. But this is an argument from silence, and arguments from silence are inherently weak. Hebrews has its own pastoral purposes and literary strategy. Furthermore, as I noted above, Hebrews 9:15–22 explicitly connects Jesus's covenant blood with purification and the forgiveness of transgressions — blending covenant-inauguration and atoning themes. The very combination Rillera says is impossible is precisely what Hebrews does in one of its most important passages.¹⁵

Rillera is right that the author of Hebrews treats the connection between Jesus and kipper as "advanced teaching" beyond the basic gospel message (Heb 5:12; 6:1). This may suggest that the Lord's Supper tradition focused primarily on Passover and covenant themes, with the kipper dimension being a later theological development that the author of Hebrews unfolds. But "later theological development" does not mean "invention." It means the early church, reflecting on the death of Jesus in light of the full Old Testament, came to see atoning dimensions in the cross that were implicit from the beginning but were not the primary focus of the earliest tradition. This is perfectly natural theological reflection — drawing out what was already there — not the imposition of an alien category.

Section 3: The Passover as More Than a Non-Atoning Sacrifice

Rillera argues at length that the Passover is "not a substitutionary death." I examined his arguments about substitution in Appendix E, so I will not repeat that discussion here. But the specific question for this appendix is whether the Passover carries any dimension of vicarious protection — whether the lamb's blood functions in a way that has substitutionary overtones, even if the Passover is not technically a kipper sacrifice.

I want to acknowledge that Rillera is correct on a key point: the Passover is not classified as an atoning sacrifice in the Levitical system. It is a well-being offering. The word kipper is never used in connection with it. He is right about that. The question is whether the narrative logic of Exodus 12 — as distinct from the Levitical classification scheme — includes an element of vicarious protection.

Rillera anticipates this argument and responds. He notes that the text's explicit statements about the blood are limited: it is a "sign" that signals an Israelite household (Exod 12:13, 23). He argues that reading "substitutionary death" into the blood goes beyond what is written and "requires conceptual gap filling."¹⁶ He further argues that the logic of substitution breaks down because the lamb is not itself a firstborn, the same consequences (death, being "cut off") attend the failure to observe any of the Passover instructions (eating bitter herbs, removing leaven), and the firstborn must still be "redeemed" through a completely separate mechanism later in the Torah (Exod 13:11–16; Num 3:12–13).¹⁷

These are thoughtful objections, and they deserve serious engagement. Let me respond to each.

First, regarding the charge of "gap filling": I agree that we should not read more into the text than is there. But Rillera himself engages in extensive "gap filling" throughout his book — he draws on hyssop rituals, metaphysical transition language, and parallels with scale disease purification to explain the Passover blood's function. If Rillera can draw on these broader contexts to enrich his reading, then it is equally legitimate to draw on the broader biblical and New Testament context to observe that the Passover blood functions protectively in a way the NT authors recognized as having substitutionary overtones.

Second, Rillera's argument that the Passover lamb cannot be a substitute because it is not a firstborn and because the firstborn must still be redeemed later misses the forest for the trees. No one claims the Passover lamb is a comprehensive substitute that fulfills every aspect of the firstborn's obligation. The point is narrower: in the specific context of the tenth plague, the lamb dies, its blood is applied, and the household is protected from the destroyer. This is a protective function that has what I would call a "vicarious" dimension — the lamb's death and blood serve as the means by which others are spared. That the Passover lamb does not resolve every other question about firstborn redemption does not eliminate this protective dimension from the immediate narrative.

Third — and this is the most important point — however we read the Passover in its original Exodus context, the New Testament authors clearly drew on the Passover's protective-substitutionary overtones when they identified Jesus as the Passover lamb. Paul says, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor 5:7). John's Gospel times Jesus's death to coincide with the slaughter of the Passover lambs (John 19:14, 36). First Peter says believers were redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or defect" (1 Pet 1:19). Revelation portrays the Lamb as having been slain, and his blood as the means of deliverance (Rev 5:6, 9).¹⁸

Now, Rillera acknowledges all of these texts. His argument is that the Passover identity carries no substitutionary significance because the Passover itself is non-substitutionary. But this is precisely where I disagree. The NT authors are not simply classifying Jesus within the Levitical system. They are reading the Exodus 12 narrative — where a lamb dies and its blood protects from death — and seeing in that narrative a pattern fulfilled in Christ's death: the Lamb of God dies, and his blood delivers from a greater death. They exploit the protective-substitutionary overtones of the Passover even though the Passover is not technically a kipper sacrifice.

Robin Routledge has argued persuasively that while the Passover does not fit neatly into the Levitical atoning categories, its "narrative logic" includes a genuine element of vicarious deliverance that the New Testament authors recognized and developed.¹⁹ Similarly, T. Desmond Alexander has noted that the Passover lamb's blood functions as a "ransom" — a protective covering that shields from divine judgment — even though the Passover is not classified as a sin offering.²⁰ And L. Michael Morales, despite Rillera's criticisms, is correct that the basic narrative of Exodus 12 involves a death (the lamb's) that is directly connected to the sparing of other lives (the firstborn). Whether or not we use the word "substitution," the pattern of life given so that other lives are spared is present in the text.²¹

Rillera imports a rigid Levitical classification scheme onto a ritual — the Passover — whose narrative logic in Exodus 12 includes an element of vicarious protection. The NT authors read this narrative and saw substitutionary logic, even if the word "substitution" is not used. And the fact that they identified Jesus as the Passover lamb and simultaneously attributed atoning significance to his death (Rom 3:25; Heb 9:14, 22; 1 John 2:2) demonstrates that they did not share Rillera's conviction that these categories are incompatible.

There is a further point worth making. Rillera argues that the Passover blood has a "protective" or "apotropaic" function — it wards off the destroyer — and he draws on the hyssop rituals to support this reading.³⁴ I think Rillera is right that the hyssop connection is interesting and that the blood functions protectively. But "protection" and "substitution" are not mutually exclusive. In fact, vicarious protection is a form of substitutionary logic: one thing (the lamb's blood) stands in the place of the people, shielding them from a consequence (death) that would otherwise fall on them. The difference between "protection" and "substitution" is not as sharp as Rillera implies. When a Secret Service agent steps in front of a bullet to protect the president, we would call that both protective and substitutionary. The agent takes the bullet instead of the president. Similarly, the Passover lamb's blood protects because it stands between the household and the destroyer. The lamb dies, its blood is applied, and the family lives. This is the pattern the NT authors recognized and developed when they identified Jesus as "our Passover lamb" (1 Cor 5:7).

Moreover, Rillera's appeal to Ezekiel as a model for understanding Jesus's death — Jesus as a prophetic "place-sharer" who enacts Jerusalem's destruction in his own body, like Ezekiel lying on his side — is creative but insufficient. Rillera writes that "Ezekiel is not a 'substitute' since Israel and Judah still experience exile. He is 'place-sharing' and enacting both their curse and eventual restoration. So too with Jesus."³⁵ But there is a crucial difference between Ezekiel and Jesus that Rillera does not adequately address: Ezekiel does not die in his prophetic action, and his action does not accomplish anything — it merely symbolizes what will happen. Jesus, by contrast, dies, and his death — according to the NT — accomplishes something. It secures forgiveness. It establishes the new covenant. It defeats death. The Ezekiel parallel illustrates solidarity, yes, but the NT claims about Jesus's death go well beyond what Ezekiel's prophetic action achieved. The NT's "more than solidarity" language — ransom for many, blood poured out for forgiveness, death for our sins — requires a substitutionary dimension that the Ezekiel model alone cannot supply.³⁶

Section 4: Jesus's Self-Understanding and the Limits of Rillera's Framework

Rillera claims that "the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus's death that is attributed to Jesus himself" is the Passover/covenant combination at the Lord's Supper.²² This is an important claim, because if true, it would mean that Jesus himself did not connect his death with atonement in any sacrificial sense. But I believe this claim is too restrictive. It depends on defining "sacrificial interpretation" so narrowly that other significant statements by Jesus are excluded.

Consider Mark 10:45, where Jesus says, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom (lytron) for (anti) many." Rillera acknowledges this text but treats it in Chapter 7 as non-sacrificial because lytron is an economic/liberation term rather than a Levitical sacrificial term. And he is right that lytron is not drawn from the Levitical system. But the phrase lytron anti pollōn — "ransom in place of many" — uses the preposition anti (ἀντί), which is one of the clearest substitutionary prepositions in Greek. It means "in the place of" or "instead of." Jesus says he gives his life as a ransom in the place of many.²³ Whether we call this "sacrificial" in the narrow Levitical sense or not, it is clearly a vicarious, life-giving act on behalf of others. Jesus understands his death as doing something for others that they cannot do for themselves. As argued in detail in Chapter 7, this is substitutionary logic, even if the specific vocabulary is economic rather than cultic. Cross-reference Chapter 2 for the fuller discussion of anti versus hyper.

Consider also the Gethsemane prayer, where Jesus asks, "Let this cup pass from me" (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). The "cup" language draws on the Old Testament prophetic tradition of the cup of divine judgment (Isa 51:17, 22; Jer 25:15–16; Ezek 23:31–34; Ps 75:8). Jesus understands the "cup" he is about to drink as connected to the experience of divine judgment. If the "cup" is merely a metaphor for suffering in general, the language of judgment is unexplained. But if Jesus understands his death as bearing something — a weight of judgment, a consequence of sin — that would otherwise fall on others, the cup language makes perfect sense. This suggests Jesus understood his death as substitutionary in at least a broad sense: he bears what others would otherwise bear.²⁴

Furthermore, consider Jesus's words elsewhere in the Gospels about laying down his life. In John 10:11, Jesus says, "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." In John 15:13, he says, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." These statements portray Jesus's death as vicarious — he dies for others, for their benefit, in a way that costs him his life so that they may live. Whether or not these are technically "sacrificial interpretations," they reflect a self-understanding in which Jesus sees his death as having a vicarious, others-benefiting, life-giving significance that goes beyond mere moral example.²⁵

Rillera's framework is too narrow. By restricting "sacrificial interpretation" to explicit Levitical categories, he excludes statements by Jesus that clearly reflect a vicarious, substitutionary self-understanding of his death — statements that the NT authors then developed through both non-atoning (Passover, covenant) and atoning (kipper, sin offering, Day of Atonement) sacrificial imagery.

Section 5: The Multivalent Logic of the New Testament

One of the things I appreciate most about Rillera's work is his emphasis on the diversity of the Old Testament sacrificial system. He rightly insists that we should not collapse all sacrifices into a single "substitutionary death" category. Different sacrifices have different functions, different blood rituals, different rules about who may eat and who may not. This diversity is real, and honoring it is important for good exegesis.

But here is the irony: Rillera does not extend the same respect for diversity to the New Testament's interpretation of Jesus's death. In the Old Testament, he insists on careful distinction between sacrificial categories. In the New Testament, he insists on a rigid either/or: Jesus's death is interpreted through non-atoning sacrifices or atoning sacrifices, but the two cannot coexist. Yet the New Testament authors are doing something genuinely new. They are taking the entire Old Testament sacrificial system — in all its diversity — and seeing it fulfilled in a single, unrepeatable event: the death of Jesus on the cross.²⁶

This means the New Testament's use of sacrificial imagery is inherently multivalent. The same death is the Passover lamb (1 Cor 5:7), the sin offering (Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 5:21), the covenant blood (Matt 26:28; Heb 9:20), the Day of Atonement sacrifice (Heb 9:11–14), and the guilt offering (Isa 53:10, applied to Jesus in the NT). These are not competing interpretations in tension with each other. They are complementary lenses through which the early church understood the inexhaustible significance of a single event. As I argue throughout this book, the atonement is multi-faceted, and the New Testament reflects that multi-faceted character by drawing on the full range of Old Testament sacrificial imagery.²⁷

Fleming Rutledge captures this beautifully when she writes that the New Testament's use of sacrificial imagery resists any attempt to reduce the cross to a single category or motif. The cross is "too large, too multidimensional" for any one model to contain.²⁸ Rillera is right that we should not collapse all sacrifices into one. But the solution is not to erect rigid walls between categories and insist that the New Testament must respect them. The solution is to recognize that the death of Jesus fulfills — and thereby transcends — the entire system.

John Stott made a similar point when he argued that the cross is the place where all the Old Testament's sacrificial types converge. The Passover points to deliverance. The sin offering points to the bearing of sin. The burnt offering points to total self-dedication. The covenant sacrifice points to the establishment of relationship. The Day of Atonement points to the comprehensive purification of God's people and dwelling place. All of these find their fulfillment in Christ's death, and none of them — taken alone — exhausts its meaning.²⁹

This is why Rillera's framework, for all its exegetical precision in the Old Testament, breaks down when applied to the New. The NT authors were not Levitical priests performing rituals according to a strict category system. They were theologians reflecting on an event — the death and resurrection of Jesus — that they believed was the climactic act of God in history. And they used every available category, every available image, every available lens to understand what that event meant. The Lord's Supper is a Passover meal that celebrates deliverance. The death it commemorates is also an atoning sacrifice that accomplishes forgiveness. These are not incompatible. They are two dimensions of the same inexhaustible reality.

A comparison with Richard Averbeck's work on Old Testament sacrifice is helpful here. Averbeck has argued that even within the Levitical system itself, the boundaries between sacrificial categories are more porous than is sometimes assumed. The burnt offering (ʿōlâ) can have an atoning function in some contexts (Lev 1:4; 16:24) even though its primary function is "divine attraction." The well-being offering, though non-atoning, is closely associated with the atoning sacrifices in the sequence of rituals performed on festival days.³⁷ If the categories are somewhat fluid even within the Levitical system, it is even less surprising that the NT authors would layer them freely when interpreting the single, unrepeatable event of the cross.

Similarly, Roy Gane has argued that the Day of Atonement itself combines elements from multiple sacrificial categories — the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the scapegoat ritual — into a single complex event that transcends any one category. If the Old Testament's most important atoning ritual already combines multiple categories, then the New Testament's combination of atoning and non-atoning imagery in its interpretation of the cross is not a category mistake but a natural extension of the same synthetic theological method.³⁸

David Allen makes the point well. The death of Christ, Allen argues, is "the reality to which all the shadows pointed," and "it is the nature of a reality to be richer and more complex than any of the shadows that foreshadow it." The Levitical system offered multiple types of sacrifices because no single type could capture the fullness of what was needed in the divine-human relationship. The cross fulfills all of them because it accomplishes what they could only point to: a comprehensive reconciliation between God and humanity that addresses sin (atonement), establishes relationship (covenant), celebrates deliverance (Passover), and consecrates a new people (ordination). To insist that the cross can only be interpreted through one category at a time is to diminish the event rather than honor it.³⁹

I want to note one final point on the relationship between Rillera's framework and the book of Revelation. In Revelation, the Lamb is presented as having been "slain" (Rev 5:6, 9, 12; 13:8), and his blood is described as the means by which people are "ransomed" or "purchased" from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (5:9). Rillera acknowledges these texts and argues, following Richard Bauckham, that the "ransom" language here goes beyond the Passover's original function — Jesus's blood is treated as a "currency" for liberation, not as a sacrificial blood manipulation.⁴⁰ This is a fair point. But Rillera then argues that the ransom language is purely economic and non-sacrificial: Jesus's blood "pays" for freedom the way a manumission price frees a slave, not the way sacrificial blood effects atonement.

The problem with this reading is that Revelation itself does not maintain the neat separation Rillera proposes. The same Lamb whose blood is a "ransom" is also the Lamb whose blood "washes" and "purifies" (Rev 7:14; 1:5). The same blood that "purchases" people from slavery (5:9) also makes them "a kingdom and priests" (5:10) — language that, as Rillera himself observes, echoes the covenant-inauguration of Exodus 19:5–6 and the priestly consecration ceremony, which involved blood applied to both altar and persons. In other words, Revelation layers economic language (ransom), Passover language (the slain Lamb), covenant language (kingdom and priests), and purification language (washed in blood) onto the same event. The boundaries Rillera tries to maintain between these categories dissolve in the actual New Testament texts.⁴¹

Section 6: Conclusion

Let me summarize what we have found. Rillera is correct — and helpfully so — on several important points. The Passover and covenant-inauguration backgrounds for the Lord's Supper are genuine and important. The distinction between atoning and non-atoning sacrifices in the Levitical system is real and should be taken seriously. The Lord's Supper, as a meal, draws on non-atoning well-being sacrifice categories. And the prophetic hope for the forgiveness of sins operated, in many texts, outside the kipper system.

But Rillera's rigid either/or framework — non-atoning sacrifices only, with no atoning dimension permitted — does not do justice to the layered, multivalent way the New Testament interprets Jesus's death. The NT freely combines imagery from multiple sacrificial categories and from non-sacrificial frameworks, interpreting the one event of the cross through many lenses simultaneously. The death of Jesus is a Passover lamb's death and a sin offering and a covenant sacrifice and a ransom and an atoning kipper event. The New Testament authors saw no contradiction between these categories because they understood that the death of Jesus was the event to which the entire Old Testament sacrificial system pointed.

I want to close with an irenic note. Rillera's emphasis on the Passover and covenant dimensions of the Lord's Supper is a genuine contribution to scholarship. These dimensions have often been underappreciated by those who focus exclusively on the atoning aspects of the cross. If Rillera's work helps us recover a richer, more multi-faceted understanding of the Lord's Supper — one that includes deliverance, covenant, moral purification, and participation alongside atonement — then he has done the church a service. The error is not in what Rillera affirms. It is in what he denies. The fullness of the gospel requires both the non-atoning and the atoning dimensions of Christ's death, held together as complementary facets of a single, inexhaustible event.

I think Rillera's work also serves as a helpful reminder that we should not reduce the Lord's Supper to a single theological theme. The Supper is, among other things, a celebration of deliverance — like the Passover, it looks back to a great act of divine rescue and looks forward to the final deliverance still to come. It is a covenant meal — it establishes and renews the bond between God and his people, sealed in the blood of Christ. It is an act of remembrance — "do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–25). It is a participatory event — as Paul says, the cup is a "participation" (koinōnia) in the blood of Christ, and the bread is a participation in his body (1 Cor 10:16). And it is an anticipation of the messianic banquet — "I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). All of these dimensions are genuine and important. Rillera is right to highlight the non-atoning dimensions that have been neglected.⁴²

But there is one more dimension that Rillera wrongly excludes: the atoning dimension. The death of Jesus — to which the Lord's Supper points — is the event in which God dealt with the sin that separated humanity from himself. The blood "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt 26:28) is not merely the blood of a commemorative feast. It is the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). And while Rillera argues that "takes away the sins of the world" is a divine prerogative exercised apart from sacrifice, the New Testament consistently attributes this sin-removing power to the death of Jesus — a death interpreted through both sacrificial and non-sacrificial categories, through both atoning and non-atoning lenses.⁴³

As we will see in Appendix G, this same pattern — Rillera reading out substitutionary and atoning themes by imposing a rigid participation-only framework — recurs in his treatment of key New Testament texts. And in Appendix H, we will address directly his argument that substitution and participation are incompatible, showing instead that substitution is the foundation for participation: Christ takes our place so that we can share in his. But for now, the point is clear: the Lord's Supper celebrates both the Passover deliverance and the atoning death that makes that deliverance possible. The lamb is slain, the blood is shed, and we are delivered — not merely by a commemorative feast, but by the death to which that feast bears witness.