In recent days I’ve been re-studying Hebrews, re-reading my notes from 29 years ago and 14 years ago, the two times I did full-blown studies of the book, as well as the additional comments sprinkled in from further read-throughs and evaluations, and of course adding more thoughts from my current vantage point.
Reading Hebrews again has given me the courage I need to face one of the bastions of fundamental and evangelical Christianity that I’ve been wanting to face off with for a while. At first I didn’t know that this picture had larger implications, but I have since learned that it does.
It is . . .
The Courtroom.
The Courtroom is without a doubt a massive part of the architecture of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. It looms in front of us, with its enormous podium where God (the Father) sits, perhaps with a large white wig and definitely with a large gavel to bang in the name of Justice. Distant. Fearsome.
In front of Him stands God (the Son) ready to passionately plead the case of the already-condemned prisoner off to the side.
Me. You.
In The Courtroom scenario, God (the Father) is ready to send the condemned prisoner to a just punishment, but the condemned prisoner is sorry, but God (the Father) demands just punishment for sins committed, so God (the Son) intervenes with the ultimate intervention: Himself. He lets the Father know that He, the Son, has taken or will take the punishment instead so that Justice can be served.
God (the Father) agrees that this fulfills Justice, God (the Son) receives the just punishment, and the penitent prisoner is released.
The Courtroom is used so ubiquitously to explain salvation that challenging it is almost tantamount to heresy.
And of course, for many years, I didn’t. It was part of the warp and woof of my thinking.
But then—and only because of the Bible, not because of any other books I was reading—I began to wonder about it. See, the problem is that The Courtroom isn’t in the Bible. And that bothered me.
It had already been bothering me that God the Father and God the Son were being so split up in this scenario that I would hear people refer to them as “God” and “Jesus” as if Jesus weren’t God. That troubled me a good bit.
But the Lack of Courtroom in the Bible began to disturb me on its own.
Fact is, The Courtroom isn’t even a remotely Biblical concept. After all, courtrooms such as that which is presented in The Courtroom came along hundreds of years after Bible times.
A few years ago I asked on my Facebook page for anyone who could to give me Scriptural reference that would support The Courtroom. I pondered the Scriptures that were offered, and I considered. None of them actually supported the judge-and-attorney style courtroom presented in The Courtroom.
The Courtrooms in Scripture
There are three perhaps-pertinent courtrooms presented in the Scriptures. That is, I’ve heard of at least one of them being used to represent our salvation. All of them are about Jesus.
— Jesus appeared before the High Priest in the Jewish court. The high priest condemned Him as a blasphemer.
— Jesus appeared before Herod in Herod’s court. Herod mocked Him and allowed his soldiers to mock and abuse Him.
— Jesus appeared before Pilate in Pilate’s court. This, in my experience, is the one that has been used to support The Courtroom metaphor. Jesus, we are told, took the punishment for Barrabas, and we are all Barrabas, we’re told, so by extension we can see that He took the punishment for us.
But really?
This means, in The Courtroom scenario, Pilate would represent God the Father, wanting above all to do Justice? No, it’s very clear from the text that he only wanted to appease the crowd.
And did Jesus offer Himself in place of Barrabas? No, it was the frenzied mob who called for that.
And was Barrabas sorry for his sins, an essential ingredient of The Courtroom metaphor? There is no indication. No, nowhere. Could Jesus really have substituted for Barrabas if Barrabas wasn’t even sorry? How does that follow through with the way salvation is represented to us?
Though this one has been used in sermons to reinforce The Courtroom, it falls apart upon even slight examination.
So, back to my initial observation: there is no Courtroom presentation in the Scriptures, in the way The Courtroom is presented today.
The alternative to The Courtroom
What I HAVE found in the Scriptures, over and over, through and through, is the Temple/Tabernacle Sacrificial System. Without doubt, and very clearly, our Lord Jesus is presented as both the Great High Priest and the sacrificial lamb.
And here I am studying Hebrews again.
I see it every which way I turn. There He is, being our Great High Priest. There He is, being the sacrifice. There He is, tearing the veil. There He is, in the Holy of Holies. Inviting us to join Him there, in relationship with the Father.
There is so much, so much available for us in Jesus Christ, my brothers and sisters. He has already given us the metaphor He wants us to use, and He invites us to explore it to its fullest.
THIS is the picture of our salvation that the Lord wants us to focus on. I will say it boldly: The Courtroom falls short in almost every way and is not what the Lord has chosen as the appropriate representation of His great salvation.
As it turns out, I was seeing these problems and writing about them before I put them all together as all being related to The Courtroom.
Where I’ve addressed these issues in the past
In 2017 I wrote the post “Jesus as Intercessor: Barely Restraining God’s Wrath?” – observing problems with The Courtroom, but not yet realizing that I needed to completely walk away from it. In The Courtroom, Jesus is never freed from His job of “pleading our case” like a lawyer (because God the Father must be either very forgetful or overflowing with rage). This is not how He is presented in the Scriptures.
In The Courtroom, God the Father continues to present as an angry Judge. This is not who He is in the Scriptures.
The Courtroom is all about getting or not getting what I deserve. That isn’t where the Scriptures focus.
In The Courtroom, our “justification” is simply a legal declaration based on Christ’s righteousness. This is not what the Scriptures teach us.
In The Courtroom, even though we are no longer condemned, we are left unchanged. This is not what is presented in the Scriptures.
In The Courtroom, because we are left unchanged, we are dependent on reminders of what Jesus did for us and our gratitude for His sacrifice, to keep us living right.
As I’ve written about several times, these teachings and others like them conspire to bring about a Christian life that for many is fraught with discouragement, so different from what Jesus promised.
I invite you
I invite you to walk away from The Courtroom and explore The Temple. Not as an add-on to The Courtroom, but as its complete substitute.
And, to be clear, this is not because I want to try to return to a form of worship that tries to resemble that of the Old Testament. (If you’ve read my statement of faith, you know that I stand by the teachings of the Bible that the New Covenant is far better than the Old and the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New, specifically through the Lord Jesus Christ.)
But rather, because the symbols presented in the New Covenant—found in the New Testament Scriptures—are from The Temple rather than The Courtroom.
I think you’ll find, as I have, that this new exploration is life-transforming.
I understand that walking away from The Courtroom puts me at odds with a number of those in the Christian faith. But I’m used to that sort of thing by now, and I know it’s worth it.
Because we, the redeemed in Jesus Christ, never belonged in The Courtroom. We have always belonged in The Temple.
Lord willing, this is the first in a series I hope to write over the coming weeks.
Read Part 2 of this series here.
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Addendum: Someone asked me about the Last Day judgments, the Judgment Seat of Christ and separating the sheep from the goats. “In the jumble of teaching that swirls in my head, the present courtroom is done in preparation for the final courtroom to ensure good behavior today and ultimate destination later.”
Yes, this should have been included in this article, so here it is now.
In John 5:22 Jesus told His followers that the Father does not judge but has appointed all judgment to the Son. In the Last Day judgments, the Son is judging, and the Father is completely unified with the Son, having handed over all judgment to Him.
Also, that judgment is not a way to explain salvation but is about final judgment. This is a very different scenario from the way The Courtroom is presented to us as an explanation of salvation.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve been trying to work through this idea myself for ages, but have so much other stuff on….! I look forward to reading your work.
That’s one thing I was thinking about–“People have so much other stuff going on, they don’t have time to look into this, but it’s unsettling in the back of the mind.” Yes.
Are you familiar with the concept of honer/shame cultures? Basically, people living in ancient times and many cultures even today are focused on the shame of a wrong act instead of legal guilt. The courtroom analogy comes from our culture thinking in terms of innocent vs guilty, because many don’t realize that the cultures mentioned in Scripture wouldn’t think of it like that. And if someone wanted to use this anachronistic analogy, Jesus would be the judge, with God the Father being like the State/prosecutor. And it doesn’t apply to believers, but to people who died after rejecting the gospel and never accepting it.
Yes, I’m familiar with that concept, especially having studied other cultures with the missionary books I wrote years ago. The Courtroom presentation that has taken a hold in evangelical Christian culture certainly is hyper-focused on a forensic presentation of salvation that I don’t see in the Scriptures.
Thanks for sharing, Rebecca. I too have significant issues with The Courtroom as it is often presented, and the idea that God was so disgusted and angry with us that Jesus had to die to appease him. It ends up portraying God the Father as a terrible, vengeful god who delights in torturing and punishing anyone who dares to disobey his slightest wish or command. It really ends up not sounding like “good news” to me.
This then also gets coupled with teaching that portrays us as perpetual sinners, even after we receive the cleansing power of Jesus. It has the strange effect of both strongly condemning sin and portraying it as truly awful, while also excusing sinful behavior because, hey, we’re all sinners and we’re going to sin.
Really looking forward to more of this series!
Yes, I agree. To be fair to those who hold to The Courtroom, they wouldn’t say that the Father is “delighted” to torture/punish those who disobey. But no matter how you slice it, he ends up being presented in a terrifying way, especially to those who are already dealing with terrifying two-faced abusers. (One of the factors in my working through The Courtroom.)
And oh my goodness, Joel, your second paragraph is so spot on! THAT is exactly what we’ve seen!
This is so good, Rebecca! I would love to dig in deeper and discuss this topic. Forum? I have experienced this metaphor in an actual courtroom and it was super unsettling. This post really helped to clear the fog. I look forward to hearing more and searching the scripture on this. Thank you!
Oh, I would be fascinated to hear more about that metaphor being used in an actual courtroom.
Thank you, Rebecca.
This is so powerful! Has a woman who grew up well into my believing that God was standing there arms crossed tapping his foot and upset at me, judging me, this is so powerful.
The Temple. Thank you!
Yes, exactly. The caricature of The Courtroom that Christians carry with them–protestations of its proponents notwithstanding–is that God the Father is angry and distant, just waiting for us to mess up.
I look forward to explorations of The Temple in future articles.
I’m looking forward to reading this series, and seeing how the Temple/Sacrifice form differs from the Courtroom form. Because while I instinctively want to agree with what you’re saying, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how the two forms are different in their essentials — not because I don’t agree (or don’t want to agree) but just because I feel like I can’t see past my upbringing and bias here. I’m very excited to see how you present it.
Yes, I’m excited to see how I present it too, lol.
Oh, Rebecca, I can’t wait to read all of the posts in this series! This one is so good! God is LOVE, and we Christians need to remind ourselves daily, hourly, minute by minute that He loves us, knowing us completely. He is not repulsed by our mistakes and our sins, but rather He knows our frame. Thank you for this.
Yes, my friend, that’s it.
I agree with some of this. I think many people use the courtroom especially in evangelism, because people who are unfamiliar with temple symbols would not find it easy to identify with. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but just that court relates easier to us than the temple from 3000 years ago. It may not apply exactly right, like any parable but it doesn’t seem too sinister to me.
We might find it easy to identify with a metaphor that presents God in a way that is antithetical to His character.
We might have to dig and study a bit to understand a metaphor that He Himself designed to help us understand His character. It’s worth it.
Yes, whenever I’ve heard about it… I never thought of God as punitive, angry. Just holy because in him there is no darkness. Jesus is the light of the world. When witnessing, I think it can be a more concrete way of getting the message across to an unbeliever.
That said, I love this concept and as believers we should be looking at the Temple to understand the salvation/sanctification message since it was directly handed down from God to Moses.
Insightful and I’m looking forward to more from Rebecca!
I have a cousin, and his son in law,who had a ministry to Israel who spent significant time learning about First Century Jewish culture. The cousin has a very beautiful understanding of the Tabernacle as a description of our growing intimacy with God. He hasn t published anything yet but his son in law Joe Amaral has written “Understanding Jesus” about the First Century cultural contexts which make sense of many aspects of the gospel that leave us wondering about the meaning or get twisted into our Western/North American thinking. I think you and many readers would find the same relief, joy and awe at the beauty upon reading some of his insights/imagery. It was part of my personal “untwisting” journey.
Yes, I believe I know what you’re talking about regarding the “growing intimacy”–the courtyard, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies.
There’s a lot there worth examining. But since we’re in Christ, we can go directly into the Holy of Holies, which is really pretty shocking when you compare it to the way things were under the Old Covenant. The truth is so nearly incredible and so beautiful.
Yes!! I’ve been doing a lot of digging in to what forgiveness actually is, especially as I was writing my book coming out soon… I covered all of Hebrews 9 and 10 in Chapter 2.
The thing is, forgiveness does not require payment. Forgiveness is a ‘releasing of debt’.
I studied Redemption in light of the Jubilee. Regular redemption/ransom requires payment to get something back. But the Jubilee redemption was different. The Jubilee was Redemption- when everything enslaved returned to its original owner- without payment. We have become slaves of sin/death. Sin required death. We did not owe a debt to God (I couldn’t find Scriptural basis for this idea anywhere.) We owed a debt to death. Jesus paid for our debt to death by dying and defeating death. Then he turned around, and did not charge us for it!
Jesus IS the Jubilee!
The more I study, the more I realize that everything is a picture of Jesus. When I look at the Bible through this lens of Jesus, everything becomes so much more clear. He presents Himself to us in a variety of ways, so people from every walk of life can ‘get it’.
The courtroom idea definitely creates a strong separate persona between God/Jesus. One of my new favorite verses is: 2 Corinthians 5:19 God (in Christ) reconciled the world to Himself, not counting our wrongdoings against us. GOD WAS ON THE CROSS!!!
These are the concepts I flesh out in Chapter 2 of my book.
A REALLY GOOD 15 min video by Brian Zahnd called, “The Gospel in Chairs”, on youtube, is a fantastic illustration of the comparison between the modern, evangelical, fundamental idea of the gospel with the old, early church-father’s idea of the gospel. I can’t recommend it enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnj52gaauBs
THANK YOU FOR EXPOSING THIS DANGEROUS FALLACY OF THE COURTROOM. It is SO NEEDED.
Thank you, Amy. I’ve seen some things from Brian Zahnd that bothered me, so I felt like I couldn’t recommend him, but I haven’t fully explored his teachings.
But YES about forgiveness. And exactly about Redemption. It’s all a picture of Jesus, amen.
I’m looking forward to reading your book. (Yes, I know I have a copy in my files. 🙂 )
I just love this. I never really thought about it in quite this way. Thanks.
And greetings from another Kimball. ☺️
“Jesus IS the Jubilee!” YES!! Thank you for staying it so clearly!
Thank you, Rebecca, for taking the time to beautifully contrast the legalistic, shame-based perspective we hear and read so often with the gracious provisions our God has made on our behalf since the beginning of time! He loves us SO much that HE did it all for us, and all He wants is for us is to walk in His grace, love and peace, trust Him to guide and teach us and know that He will ultimately lead us home.
Amen! Thank you so much, my friend.
I just hate it when the plain truth of the Living Word trumps man’s theology!!! so I’m gonna take Bill Gothard’s “umbrella” (that is not in the Bible) & whap the “courtroom” (that is also not in the Bible) with said umbrella
On a serious note, I have heard Jesus people I respect talk about the concept of the Courts of Heaven. TBH I’ve not personally done a study on this. But my limited understanding is that COH is us as God’s kids simply asking Him to enact justice on our behalf…not pleading for or hoping for our salvation. I think it’s akin to sitting at the right hand of the Father with Jesus ruling & reigning with Christ per the authority He gave us in Luke 10:19…but pleeeeez verify me!!! Thx as always Rebecca!!!
You made me laugh!
There’s a distinction to be made between “The Courtroom” with a judge and attorney on the one hand, and the courts of the Lord as in Psalm 100 on the other hand, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.” That’s talking about the courts of the King, not a legal courtroom.
I’ve also heard about the Courts of Heaven teaching. Maybe it’s based on our going into the Holy of Holies? I don’t know and would also be interested in learning the Biblical basis for the concept.
As missionaries in Ghana, we have seen this. They only know the gods of fear that they must appease. The charismatic movement has swept in and added Jesus to their list of gods. The church services look the same as the “worship” at the shrines. They must obey or “God” is gonna do this wicked thing to them, or take this away, or…. This God of love that we talk about is so foreign. God is not a god of fear. His perfect love casteth out fear! As Christians, we can be free from fear, not enslaved by it! If we could fully grasp this ourselves, we would be much more effective and motivated to help others escape also. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca.
Beautifully put! Thank you, Kelly.
Rebecca, thank you. Can you give one link or more to an example(s) of this teaching posted or published by someone?
Well, since it’s a series, I’ll be fleshing this out in days to come.
Long time reader,first time poster.Have read all your books,Rebecca and appreciate your insights and wisdom.Michael Card has a beautiful song “ Jubilee “ with the refrain “Jesus is the jubilee”…check it out!
Love it, beautiful! Thank you, Janice.
Excellent! Thank you again Rebecca! ♥️
Rebecca:
As you have done so often, you have lifted a weight from many of us.
And confirmed what the Word *does* state. (With depth to be added when you write on this topic again! – Looking forward to that!)
May I add, the more we study & know *all* of the Bible (which is full of Jesus from Genesis through Revelation, OT & NT), the more we will see the Greatness of our God! (And His Goodness. And that He is Love. And SO MUCH MORE!)
Thank you for untwisting things again – using the Bible (sola scriptura) – not limited human reasoning.
Thank you, Dolla. I pray that I’ll be faithful to the Word as I walk through this.
Thank you Rebecca, for this! How beautiful is the gospel that transforms and purifies, and not merely “legal fiction”!
When the Old Testament talks about God’s courts, it’s talking about the courtyard of the Temple (or Tabernacle, as the case may be). This was the primary location that regular people (non-Levites) went when they were doing something inside the sacred areas.
We who are believers are going to be amongst the judges that people will face. See Matthew 19:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:2–3. There’s also Revelation 3:21.
For true Christians, as best as I can tell, our judgement will be God determining what crowns we get (which we then give to Jesus, if we take those verses literally, though Revelation isn’t meant to be taken literally since it is apocalyptic/symbolic). It may be that this judgement symbolism means that there will be a cataloguing of all of the good that we have ever done and we give God all the glory and praise for what God has accomplished through us–a bajillion times better than any worshipping and praising of God we do here with our mortal bodies.
Beautiful thought!
Rebecca,
How does your post fit in with PSA ? Just wondering about it. Thanks
Not very well, haha. And that’s pretty cool that you just figured I knew what “PSA” meant. (For those who don’t, it’s a certain theory of how salvation takes place.)
Do you have any articles or author recommendations to explore this topic? It’s what I’ve been taught, but it didn’t “sit well” with me. I didn’t know there were other ways of seeing Christ’s death. The people I have come across who got me thinking had left Christianity over it.
There’s a followup to this, #2 in the series.
So sad to leave the Lord over a doctrine that is merely an interpretation when there are other interpretations that make more sense.
There are many books on the topic. One that I recommend is here: https://amzn.to/4acSytr
[…] Part 1 of this series is here. […]