. . . it is not even clear that 1 John 2:2 is claiming anything about
Jesus’s death specifically. This is only assumed because of the mistaken
view . . . that OT sacrifice finds any meaning in the death of the
sacrificial animal. The claim in 2:2 is based on the personal presence of
Jesus before the Father (2:1). . . . the point here is that since sacrificial
decontamination is accomplished by conveying “life” (i.e., blood, cf. Lev
17;11, 14) in the presence of God in the holy of holies, then Jesus-as-hilasmos
may be owing to the fact of the kind of life Jesus is and that this life
is present before God. The kipper-function of Jesus would be due to his personal
resurrected and ascended presence before God, not to his death
itself. (Andrew Remington Rillera, Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied
Sacrificial Understanding of Jesus’s Death [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books,
2024], 215)
