theologically very important. The theology is in the preposition “for.” The preposition signifies a beneficial connection between Jesus’s death and Jesus’s believers. It understands Jesus’s death as a death, like those of the martyrs of 2 and 4 Maccabees, that benefited others. That benefit was not just an appeal for God’s mercy, as in 2 Maccabees. It was, as in 4 Maccabees (borrowing from Exodus and Leviticus), a sacrifice that took away sin.17 In 1 Corinthians Paul presents a