What does Jesus’s sacrifice mean?
The disciples must have wondered that—probably more than once—and so, in his own way, did Paul, chasing after them before he ever joined them.
These days, the word sacrifice gets used in all sorts of ways. Usually it means giving something up: something valuable, in order to help someone else. Or maybe giving up one thing to gain another you value more. Sometimes it means suffering for others, a kind of altruism.
But that’s not quite what it meant originally—not in a religious sense.
The word sacrifice comes from the Latin sacrificium, a combination of sacer (holy, sacred) and facere (to do, to make). So at its root, it means “to make holy” or “to do a sacred act.” It’s about offering something to the divine—not just giving something up, but setting it apart, dedicating it. That’s the deeper, older idea.
And when we lose sight of that—when we think of sacrifice only in terms of transaction, loss, or exchange—I think we miss something. Maybe we miss both the joy and the challenge. Maybe even the truth.
So here’s a thought: what if God didn’t sacrifice His son in the way we often imagine? I don’t think that language makes sense within the framework of Jesus’s own religion, or that of his disciples. It’s more the language of chess players, businessmen, athletes.
What we’re actually told—famously, in John 3:16—is that God gave His son. Gave him to the world. And gave him for a purpose. That purpose was (and still is) to be our sacrifice to God. The Bible calls it the “propitiation” for our sins—a holy offering that bridges the distance between God and humanity. So that even though we die, we may live—abundantly.
It echoes, doesn’t it, the story of Abraham? The moment God provides the lamb to be offered in place of Isaac. Abraham didn’t need to offer his son after all. God provided the offering.
And I believe God still provides. I believe God suffers with us—every sorrow, every cry of anguish. That divine love is not distant from Jesus’s pain, or from the pain of anyone, anywhere. So when God gives His son, there must be, in some divine way, sorrow in the giving.
But that’s different from sacrificing him in the human sense. Jesus becomes our offering—if we accept it. If we believe. But what does that really mean? How do we make Jesus our offering?
Paul encouraged the early Christians to offer up their whole selves—not just in the physical sense, but their mortal, passing, ego-driven selves—as a kind of holy service. He called it their “reasonable” act of worship. In John’s Gospel, when the disciples asked Jesus, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered simply:
“The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Belief is a doing word. Even just saying it, quietly, is an action. So maybe there isn’t a hard divide between faith and works. Maybe they’re the same thing. Faith is works, and works is faith.
The surprising thing is that this sacrifice—this act of offering—often turns out not to be as painful as we fear. It might begin with a letting go of things we thought were protecting us: pride, fear, panic, shame. Sometimes what we’re giving up is the pain itself. And in exchange, we discover life. A more real life. Abundant life. Eternal life. A spiritual life that somehow feels more solid than the one we’re trying to hold together.
Of course, for some, the cost is much higher. Across parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, many Christians have paid with their lives—killed for their faith by militant ideologies and oppressive regimes. Their offering is everything. By contrast, the sacrifices asked of us in the West may seem small. But they’re still real.
And I think this is what the cross means. That Jesus becomes our offering to God—not because God demanded it, but because God gave it. And we, in turn, follow him. Through the death of the self. Into a life more alive than the one we leave behind. Toward an ascension into something beyond our sight.
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