Matthew 26:28 — Covenant blood for forgiveness

“For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Matthew 26:28

Context

Matthew 26:26–29 reports Jesus' last Passover meal with his Twelve. In v.26 he interprets the bread of his body, in vv.27–28 the cup of his “blood of the covenant.” This is a deliberately arranged interpretive saying: Christ himself sets the symbolic meaning of his impending death — and in doing so chooses the vocabulary of the Sinai covenant, not that of the Day of Atonement.

In the narrower narrative thread the saying stands between the announcement of betrayal (vv.20–25) and the word about the future drinking in the Father's Kingdom (v.29). The latter is eschatological: the meal points forward to the consummation. The meaning of the covenant blood is therefore not backward-directed (payment of a debt), but forward-directed (the bringing-into-force of an order of salvation).

In the wider horizon of the Matthean composition, the saying belongs to the arc of the passion predictions (16:21; 17:22–23; 20:17–19) and culminates in the saying about the “ransom for many” in 20:28 (parallel Mark 10:45). Both passages, Matt 20:28 and 26:28, employ the same “for many” (perí / antí pollôn) and are to be read together: self-giving and the establishing of a covenant are one connected action.

The OT background is unambiguous: Exod 24:8 reports how Moses sprinkles the people with the blood of the covenant and says: “Behold the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you.” Jesus quotes this formula almost word for word. Zech 9:11 promises the eschatological release of the prisoners “because of the blood of your covenant” — here too covenant blood, not a penal rite.

Luke and Paul (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25) independently attest the other transmitted form “this cup is the new covenant in my blood” — with the explicit designation kainê diathêkê, new covenant. Both traditions converge in the covenant thought; neither speaks of penal payment.

The Socinian core thesis

Socinianly, Matt 26:28 is the covenant-making word of the new covenant. The language is consistently that of Exod 24, not that of Lev 16. Covenant blood is sprinkled in order to bring a salvific order into force; expiatory blood according to Lev 16 is carried into the Holy of Holies in order to effect a cleansing of the temple. Christ chooses the first vocabulary — and that is a theological pre-decision.

In the new covenant, forgiveness is not the consequence of a penal payment, but the content of the covenant promise (Jer 31:34: “I will remember their sins no more”). This promise was uttered long before Christ's death. Christ's blood activates it; it does not first call it into being.

The verb ekchynnómenon “being poured out” is, in its OT background, covenant terminology (Exod 24:6, 8: Moses pours half of the blood at the altar and sprinkles the other half upon the people). It does not belong to the language of penal execution; it designates a covenant rite.

The prepositional formula eis áphesin hamartiôn with eis + accusative consistently marks in Koiné an indication of goal or purpose, not a mechanistic effecting. The blood is poured out with a view to forgiveness — to ratify it, not to purchase it.

Sozzini takes up this verse at several places in his work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore)”, most pointedly in the second part in the context of atonement. His central argument: Christ's blood did not bring about forgiveness through a penal equivalence, but set into force the new covenant previously promised by God — and precisely this covenant contains forgiveness.

Exegesis: key terms and word-field

Five key terms decide the interpretation of Matt 26:28 linguistically and philologically:

haíma tês diathêkês — “blood of the covenant”

The phrase quotes Exod 24:8 LXX verbatim: idoù tò haíma tês diathêkês. In the OT original context it is the blood with which Moses sprinkles the people and the altar after Israel has been bound to obedience to the covenant words of YHWH. The act is covenant-making — not the averting of punishment.

Zech 9:11 also employs the formula: “because of the blood of your covenant I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” The eschatological liberation is grounded in the covenant blood, not in some foreign penal sum. Jesus deliberately places himself in this traditional line when he designates his own blood thus.

The penal-substitutionary dogmatics, by contrast, reads haíma predominantly from Lev 16 (high-priestly ritual, expiatory blood). But the text sets the term tês diathêkês “of the covenant” alongside it — and precisely thereby the categorial classification is forced: it is covenant blood, not Day-of-Atonement blood.

diathêkê — covenant and testament

The Greek diathêkê has, in secular usage, predominantly the meaning “last will and testament”, in the Septuagint however predominantly “covenant” (Hebr. bêrít). Heb 9:15–17 plays on the double meaning of both senses: in one respect Christ's death is the bringing-into-force of a covenant, in the other the activation of a testament through the death of the testator.

Both aspects converge in one statement: the death (the blood) activates a disposition that has already been previously decided. It pays nothing. In the testamentary image the notion would be absurd that the testator must, through his death, purchase the inheritance for his heirs; the inheritance is already provided for, the death merely makes it legally valid.

This observation is decisive for the Socinian view: the new covenant was decided long ago in God's plan of salvation (Jer 31:31–34), before Christ appeared. Christ's blood is the event of bringing-into-force, not a previously missing condition of forgiveness.

ekchynnómenon — “being poured out”

The participial present ekchynnómenon describes the pouring out of blood. In the OT background (Exod 24:6 LXX: exechýthen) it designates the pouring of the covenant blood upon the altar; in Exod 24:8 the same blood is then sprinkled by Moses upon the people. It is covenant rite, not the slaughter-sacrificial terminology of penal intent.

A penal-juridical metaphoric would have had other vocabulary available — e.g. thuomenon “being sacrificed” or paradídotai eis thánaton “handed over to death.” Mark, Matthew and Luke unanimously choose the covenant term.

In the OT-shaped language of the NT, the pouring out of blood also designates the dying of innocent righteous ones (Matt 23:35: “the righteous blood of Abel that was shed”; Acts 22:20: the shed blood of Stephen). Here too: no act of penal equivalence, but witness and covenant fidelity to the point of death.

eis áphesin hamartiôn — “for the forgiveness of sins”

The preposition eis with the accusative marks, in Koiné, purpose, goal or reference. It is not a juridical causal word “because” or “in order to pay.” The blood is poured out with a view to forgiveness — its taking effect and its proclamation, not its commercial purchase.

Áphesis means “release, remission, forgiveness.” In the Septuagint the word stands for the release of a debt, often in connection with the year of release (Lev 25; Deut 15: áphesis tôn chreôn). The basic meaning is “released”, not “paid up.” This too does not fit with penal substitution.

Exactly the same formula occurs in Luke 24:47 (apostolic preaching: “in his name repentance for the forgiveness of sins shall be proclaimed”), Acts 2:38 (baptism eis áphesin hamartiôn) and Mark 1:4 (the baptism of John). In all these passages forgiveness is the consequence of turning toward God and of the bringing-into-force of a covenant — nowhere the consequence of a penal payment.

perí pollôn — “for many”

The phrase “for many” clearly quotes Isa 53:11–12 LXX, where the Servant of God perí tôn hamartiôn pollôn “because of the sins of many” and antallagma pollôn “for many” gives up his life. In the Hebrew idiom (rabbím), “the many” designates an inclusive totality, not a restricted selection.

A Reformed-restrictive reading (limited atonement: “for the elect”) is exegetically not compelling. As already set out in Mark 10:45, the “many” is to be read in the inclusive sense. This also fits the situation of the meal: Jesus founds a covenant which far exceeds the circle of the Twelve.

Important for the Socinian reading: the image is solidarity and a covenant action “for many”, not a juridical representation “in place of many.” The preposition perí with the genitive is not substitutive (anti would be that, and even there the substitutive reading is not compelling, cf. Mark 10:45).

Comparison of interpretations

Reference to Fausto Sozzini

Sozzini treats Matt 26:28 in detail in the second part of his main work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore)”, in the context of his confrontation with the doctrine of satisfaction. His key argument: the shedding of Christ's blood was not meant to move God, but to bring the new covenant into force.

Christ did not speak in this way because his death or the shedding of his blood was meant to move God to grant us the forgiveness of sins, or to reconcile him with us; rather, it was necessary that Christ himself should die and pour out his blood, so that we sinners might obtain forgiveness in that new covenant which had been previously offered to us by God himself through him within a nobler covenant, and consequently be freed from eternal death.

Fausto Sozzini, Second Part · Christ's death and atonement

Sozzini divides the saying into two statements that are not to be confused. First: the shedding of Christ's blood does not act upon God, not as an act which first produces the divine readiness to forgive. Second: the shedding of Christ's blood acts upon us, inasmuch as it gives legal validity to the new covenant whose content is the forgiveness of sins and the liberation from eternal death.

By this distinction Sozzini preserves the OT logic: God is not the one to be appeased, but the one who forgives of his own accord. The new covenant was “previously offered within a nobler covenant” — it had long been decided in God's plan of salvation before Christ appeared. Christ's blood sets it in motion.

In the Racovian Catechism (question on the priestly office of Christ) the same line is taken up: “Christ has sealed the new covenant by his blood and confirmed the new testament by his death” (following Heb 9:15–17; 13:20). The image is seal and activation, not penal payment.

Sozzini also applies the testamentary argument: just as a testament comes into force through the death of the testator (Heb 9:16–17), so the new covenant comes into force through Christ's death. No one regards the death of a testator as a penal payment directed at the heirs. Precisely this logic is to be applied to Matt 26:28.

Overview of the writings of Sozzini

Logical arguments

The following arguments speak against the penal-substitutionary reading and for the covenant-making reading of Matt 26:28:

1. Covenant language of Exod 24:8. Jesus quotes Moses' word almost verbatim. In the Sinai covenant the blood is a covenant seal, not a penal rite. Whoever reads Matt 26:28 from Lev 16 ignores the clear quotation-signal in Matt 26:28 itself.
2. The Zechariah promise. Zech 9:11 expects the eschatological liberation of the prisoners “because of the blood of your covenant.” Jesus places himself in this prophetic line. The image is covenant effect, not penal payment.
3. Jer 31:31–34 as covenant basis. The new covenant had long been promised with the express content “I will remember their sins no more.” Forgiveness is therefore covenant content already before Christ's blood. Christ's blood activates it; it does not first create it.
4. Testamentary logic according to Heb 9:15–17. Hebrews comments on the event expressly in testamentary terms: a testament becomes legally valid only through the death of the testator. The effect of the death is activation, not payment to a recipient.
5. Verbal semantics of ekchynnómenon. The pouring out belongs to covenant-rite vocabulary (Exod 24:6 LXX), not to the slaughter-sacrificial technique of the Day of Atonement. Whoever knows the vocabulary cannot overlook the reference.
6. Prepositional semantics of eis. Eis with the accusative marks an indication of goal, not mechanistic effecting. “For forgiveness” is a formula of purpose, not of cause. The parallel formulation of baptism “eis áphesin hamartiôn” (Acts 2:38) is also not penal payment.
7. Meal symbolism. Christ founds a covenant in the circle of his disciples; he does not carry out a forensic procedure. The meal is a covenant-establishing act after the OT pattern (Gen 26:30; Exod 24:11; Ps 23:5).
8. Eschatological orientation (Matt 26:29). Immediately after the covenant-blood word Jesus looks toward the future shared drinking in the Father's Kingdom. That is forward-directed covenant hope, not backward-directed penal settlement.
9. Inconsistency of the penal-payment reading. A penal payment requires a recipient. In Matt 26:28 God would have to be the recipient of his own payment — logically circular, as already set out at Mark 10:45. The covenant reading escapes this.
10. Consistency with Luke 22:20 / 1 Cor 11:25. The parallel tradition speaks expressly of the “new covenant in my blood” and employs the term kainê diathêkê. There too: covenant founding, not penal execution.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for a correct understanding of Matt 26:28 and bear the covenant-theological interpretation:

Exodus 24:6–8 — covenant blood at Sinai

Moses “pours half of the blood into bowls and sprinkles the other half against the altar”; after the covenant words have been read out, he also sprinkles the people and says: “Behold the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you.” Jesus expressly quotes this formula in Matt 26:28. The image is covenant sealing — not a penal service rendered to God. Whoever knows the Sinai scene cannot easily read the covenant blood of Christ as a penal rite.

Zechariah 9:11 — eschatological covenant liberation

“As for you also — because of the blood of your covenant I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” The prophet links covenant blood with eschatological liberation. Jesus, who allows this word audibly to resonate in Matt 26:28, interprets his dying as a covenant-driven act of liberation — not as a penal payment to God.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 — promise of the new covenant

“I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel … and I will remember their sins no more.” Forgiveness is the content of this new covenant — not something first to be produced by a penal payment. According to Matt 26:28, Christ's blood activates precisely this Jeremianic covenant. With that, the Socinian reading is canonically anchored.

Hebrews 9:15–17 — death activates testament/covenant

“Where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it … it is never in force while the maker lives.” Hebrews expressly reflects on the meaning of Christ's death in the image of a testament. Activation, not penal payment, is the theological point. Matt 26:28 is thus explicitly commented upon.

Hebrews 8:8–12 — quotation of Jer 31 as christological fulfilment

Hebrews 8 quotes Jer 31:31–34 almost in full and designates the covenant founded by Christ as the fulfilment of the Jeremianic promise. The content is explicitly forgiveness. Thus a canonical connection between Matt 26:28 and Jer 31 is given, which confirms the covenant reading.

Hebrews 12:24 — mediator of the new covenant

“You have come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel.” Christ's blood is mediator blood, not payment blood. It “speaks” — it testifies to a covenant act valid before God. That is the Hebraic logic of covenant blood.

Luke 22:20 / 1 Corinthians 11:25 — “new covenant in my blood”

Both independent traditions expressly formulate the cup-saying as kainê diathêkê. By this the covenant reading of Matt 26:28 is not a later theory but earliest apostolic memory. Language of payment is not to be found at any point in the eucharistic words.

Isaiah 53:11–12 — “for many” in the Servant Song

“By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.” The phrase “for many” in Matt 26:28 quotes this text. As explained in the entry on Isaiah 53:5, the figure of the Servant is a bearer of solidarity there, not one juridically punished. The penal-substitutionary reading is therefore not forced by Isa 53 either.

Objections and Socinian answers

Objection 1: “Shedding of blood is always sacrificial terminology and therefore a penal rite.”

The premise is too narrow. Shed blood in the Hebrew Bible is a collective term for the dying of human beings or animals; the concrete categorial context decides what is meant. Exod 24:8 is a covenant rite, Lev 16 is the Day of Atonement, Gen 9:6 is a penal verdict, Matt 23:35 is martyrdom. The vocabulary as such fixes nothing.

In the case of Matt 26:28 the text-internal quotation marker decides. “Blood of the covenant” (haíma tês diathêkês) quotes Exod 24:8 verbatim, not Lev 16. There is no exegetical reason to ignore the quotation and instead to bring in another background text.

Moreover, the Day-of-Atonement background (Lev 16) is in the NT itself reflected upon — but in Hebrews 9–10, not in Matt 26:28. Whoever reads Matt 26:28 compulsorily from Lev 16 conflates two canonically distinguishable image-worlds and loses the point of Matt 26:28.

In addition, even the OT expiatory-sacrifice system is not a juridical penal procedure carried out on a substitute, but a cultic-symbolic purification rite. Even if one wished to read Matt 26:28 under Lev 16, penal substitution would not thereby yet be proved.

Objection 2: “For the forgiveness of sins” means unambiguously causal payment.

Eis with the accusative in Koiné marks an indication of goal, not a causal effecting. The construction says: the blood is poured out with a view to or for the purpose of forgiveness — it is the target-point of the bringing-into-force of the covenant, not a good purchased through payment.

The parallel phrase in Acts 2:38 (baptism eis áphesin hamartiôn) and Mark 1:4 (the baptism of John) shows: neither baptism nor repentance effects forgiveness in the sense of a payment. They are goal-orientation and covenant act. The same holds for Matt 26:28.

Sozzini emphasises this expressly in the second part of his work: the blood of Christ was not meant to move God, but to let us receive forgiveness “in the new covenant.” The prepositional syntax bears this. The payment reading must first be imposed by an external dogmatic pre-decision.

Finally: in a causal-juridical reading the verse would have to read diá tô haíma or en tôi haímati. The chosen construction eis áphesin is linguistically precisely not a payment syntax.

Objection 3: “Heb 9:22: Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

Heb 9:22 says literally schedon: “almost everything is cleansed in blood.” The “almost” deliberately breaks the universality. Hebrews too knows of bloodless cleansing — cf. Lev 5:11–13 (a grain offering in case of poverty). The passage is therefore not a universal teaching about the conditions of forgiveness.

Moreover, Heb 9:22 belongs to the argumentative field of the OT purification ritual (context: covenant-making at Sinai with blood). It is a cultic sentence about the cleansing rite, not a juridical sentence about penal payment. The category of cleansing is not identical with the category of penal payment.

Even in the OT, forgiveness is frequently granted without the shedding of blood: Ps 51 (David after Bathsheba); Mic 7:18–19 (God casts our sins into the depths of the sea); Luke 15 (the father of the prodigal son); Matt 18 (the royal creditor remits the debt). Forgiveness in Scripture is broader than the forensic model.

Cf. on this the own entry on Hebrews 9:22: there the cultic embedding and the restrictive schedon are discussed in detail.

Objection 4: “Isaiah 53 stands in the background and teaches penal performance.”

Isa 53 speaks of the bearing-with of the consequences of foreign guilt — that is not the same as the bearing of a juridical penal performance. The phrase “he bore our diseases” (Isa 53:4) is in Matt 8:17 applied to the healing activity of Jesus, not to a penal payment to God. Solidarity, not substitution, is the basic category.

Even in the Jewish history of interpretation, Isa 53 is not primarily a penal-substitutionary text, but a text of the suffering righteous one who through his self-giving lets the people stand in the covenant before God. This line is taken up in the NT but not recast into a forensic theory.

The “for many” in Matt 26:28 is the language of solidarity, as also met in the Maccabean martyr tradition (4 Macc 6:29; 17:21–22) and in Mark 10:45. There one's own life is set “for” the people — not paid to God.

Cf. the detailed entry on Isaiah 53:5: there it is shown that mecholál and musár are not juridical penal terminology, but the language of solidarity and covenant.

Objection 5: “Without penal performance, Christ's death would be meaningless.”

This reduction is false. In the Socinian reading Christ's death has a multiplicity of salvifically constitutive functions: it activates the new covenant (Matt 26:28; Heb 9:15–17), it seals the promise of forgiveness (Jer 31:34), it reveals the radical love of God (Rom 5:8; 1 John 4:9–10), it calls to discipleship in suffering (1 Pet 2:21), it defeats the power of death through the subsequent resurrection (Heb 2:14–15; Acts 2:24).

None of these aspects requires a penal sum paid to God. Taken together they give a complete, richly articulated salvific event. The assertion that without penal performance the death is “merely a symbol” is a polemical caricature of the Socinian position.

For the rest, a salvific event “merely as a symbol” would in any case already be a great deal: symbols in the biblical sense are not emptied signs, but effective self-representations of a reality. Covenant blood works inasmuch as it brings the covenant into force — that is objective salvific effectiveness, not symbolic poverty.

According to Sozzini, the real reason for the death of Christ lies in faithfulness to his mission and the bringing-into-force of the covenant through death as a necessary step toward resurrection and exaltation (Acts 2:32–36; Phil 2:9–11). Death and resurrection together form the one salvific event.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast with the interpretation here set out:

• Mark 10:45 — ransom as image of liberation — the same logic as covenant blood: self-giving and activation, not penal payment.
• Hebrews 9:22 — “almost everything in blood” — the restrictive schedon breaks the universal penal-blood reading.
• Romans 3:25–26 — hilastêrion as a public place of pardon; dikaiosyne theou as saving covenant faithfulness.
• Isaiah 53:5 — text of solidarity of the Servant of God; linguistic background of “for many” in Matt 26:28.
• John 3:16 — self-giving out of love as the driving motive — consistent with the covenant reading.

Summary

Matthew 26:28 is, according to every linguistic, literary and intertextual examination, a covenant-making word. Christ quotes Exod 24:8 almost verbatim, lets Zech 9:11 resound and thereby founds the new covenant promised in Jer 31:31–34. The vocabulary — haíma tês diathêkês, ekchynnómenon, eis áphesin hamartiôn, perí pollôn — nowhere bears the language of a penal execution carried out on a substitute.

Sozzini reads the passage in the second part of his work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore)” consistently testamentarily: Christ's blood was not meant to move God, but to give legal validity, for our sake, to the covenant already previously decided. Forgiveness is covenant content, not the consequence of a payment. Heb 9:15–17 comments on precisely this by applying the image of the testament: the death activates, it does not pay.

Socinianly understood, Matt 26:28 is therefore a key text of covenant soteriology: the new covenant with its central promise — “I will remember their sins no more” — becomes legally valid in Christ's death and resurrection. Whoever has a share in the covenant has forgiveness. The covenant blood speaks of covenant faithfulness, not of penal payment.