an offering presented to God in worship, above all a slain animal or gift given up at the altar, and by extension the act of offering it
The word names both the act of offering something to God and the thing offered. In its plainest use it is the animal, grain, or other gift that a worshiper brings and hands over to God, the everyday currency of Old Testament worship. The New Testament writers, above all the letter to the Hebrews, use it constantly for those older offerings, and it is often paired with the broader word for anything presented to God (προσφορά), where sacrifice points more narrowly to the victim given up at the altar.
From that concrete base the word reaches in two directions. First, it becomes the way to speak of the death of Christ: his life given up is presented as the one true offering that all the earlier animal offerings only pointed toward. Second, it turns figurative, naming a life, an act of kindness, a gift of money, or words of praise that a believer offers to God in place of a slaughtered animal.
What holds all of this together is a single picture: something handed over to God as an act of worship. Whether the offering is a lamb on an altar, the cross, or a life laid down in service, the word keeps that one shape. The New Testament does not so much abolish the older sacrifices as move them: from the temple to Christ, and from Christ outward into the daily, bodily, shared life of the church.
Nuances
Whether Christ's sacrifice in Hebrews is accomplished at the cross or is a multi-stage process completed only when the risen Christ presents his life in the heavenly sanctuary.
- majorityChrist's sacrifice is his death on the cross; his entry into heaven presents or applies that finished offering rather than completing it.; Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews (Hermeneia, 1989), 261-266; Nicholas J. Moore, "Sacrifice, Session and Intercession," JSNT 42.4 (2020): 521-541
- minorityChrist's sacrifice is a multi-stage ritual patterned on the Day of Atonement, completed only when the risen Christ presents his living blood in the heavenly holy of holies.; David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Brill, 2011)
Disputed
How to understand the New Testament's figurative use of the word for Christian prayer, generosity, and daily life: whether it spiritualizes and replaces the temple cult, relocates real worship into the embodied life of the community, or positively affirms the underlying claims of sacrificial worship.
- majorityTransformation and relocation: the cult is not abolished but moved, from temple to embodied community and from animal victim to Christ's self-offering and its echoes in Christian life.; Ernst Kasemann, "Worship in Everyday Life: A Note on Romans 12," in New Testament Questions of Today (SCM, 1969), 188-195; Nijay K. Gupta, Worship That Makes Sense to Paul (WUNT 2/175, 2010)
- minoritySpiritualization: cultic worship is progressively made inward and replaced by ethical and spiritual acts, completing a trajectory begun in the prophets and Hellenistic Judaism.; J. Behm, "θύω, θυσία," TDNT 3:180-190; Stephen Finlan, "Spiritualization of Sacrifice in Paul and Hebrews," in Ritual and Metaphor, ed. C. Eberhart (SBL, 2011)
- minorityPositive extension: the cultic vocabulary affirms rather than criticizes the underlying tenets of sacrificial worship, extending divine presence, pleasing aroma, and communion into new realms.; Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple (Oxford, 2006), 213-222