Toward the end of the sermon Luke gives Paul in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia we hear “Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” (Act 13:38-39 NRSV) The theme of forgiveness of sins is common in Acts; what’s Paul (Luke) talking about in v.39?

Fitzmyer’s commentary (1998) confirms that this is an old question. “It is sometimes said that Luke is here introducing a nuance, so that he makes Paul declare that the Mosaic Law would justify people from some things but not from all…it may be a misreading of Luke to insist on that nuance, as some interpreters have done” (pp.518-519). OK, if that’s not what Luke is doing, what is Luke doing?

Perhaps Lohfink’s chapter “Dying for Israel” in his Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is relevant. The people’s leadership’s decisive rejection of God’s eschatological messenger has created a new situation—and we’re off the Mosaic map (no paragraph that starts “Should you happen to murder God’s eschatological messenger, prepare these sacrifices…”). Recalling one of Jesus’ thinly veiled parables as recorded in Luke, after the vineyard tenants kill the owner’s “beloved son,” the owner “will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (20:16). If that’s the context/situation, the possibility of forgiveness becomes the question.

Nor is this simply a Jewish question. Pilate is our stand-in, equally culpable despite his clumsy attempt to distance himself from the whole affair (“So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted” (Luk 23:24).

The evening before, as Luke records:

“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” (22:19-20)

And here I pass the mic to Lohfink: “Therefore in this moment Jesus and Israel were faced with an entirely new situation, and that new situation demanded a new interpretation. To argue that Jesus never spoke before about his blood, about substitution and atonement, is not to the point. It assumes that the existence of individuals and of nations is carried on outside history. But the new interpretation Jesus gives in this very moment when the people of God is at the point of squandering its election for the sake of the world does not happen just anywhere and at any time. It happens at the Passover meal, at one of the holiest hours of the Jewish year. Jesus interprets his death as a final and definitive saving decree of God. Israel’s guilt, concentrated in Jesus’ death, is thus answered by God: he does not withdraw election from his people but instead truly allows that people to live, even though it has forfeited its life. That is precisely what the Bible means by ‘atonement’” (p.261).