August 14, 2005                                                                                          Isaiah 53:3-12

This I Believe:  Exploring the Apostle’s Creed

THE GREAT EXCHANGE

JESUS OF HISTORY

The passion and death of Jesus Christ could hardly be a more central theme in Christianity.  We are a religion of the cross.  In some gospel accounts, almost a quarter of space is devoted to Jesus’ last few days.  If you consider our hymnology, it is amazing how many hymns reflect on the nature and meaning of Jesus’ death: Rock of Ages, Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross, Were You There?

But why did Jesus die?  Why couldn’t God have simply forgiven us sinners and be done with it?  I don’t demand a bloody sacrifice in order to forgive those who have wronged me.  The whole idea of a bloody sacrifice seems very strange to our ears.  This is a real stumbling block to many.  I once read a Muslim man’s 10 page article on the internet about the illogic of the Christian notion of atonement.  Even theologians (Deloris Williams) think the idea is dated.  “Think of Jesus’ death as just what it was, the death of an innocent man, a victim.  Not as some payment for the penalty of sin.”

I remember arguing with my father after hearing a hymn with the words “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.”  “How can the death of a man 2000 years ago have anything to do with me? It’s just that--a tragic crucifixion by the Roman Army like countless others. Why does God demand the bloody death of his Son? ‘Fountains of blood’ seems so pointless and gory.”

How ought we respond?  We could simply say, “The NT teaches it, so it’s true.”  But we need to try our best to understand exactly why it is true--its significance.  I will present four reasons for the necessity of atonement.  I cannot plumb the depths of the atonement in four little points.  But we can get a handle on it--especially considering that the church has reflected on this very issue for two millennia. 

PERSPECTIVES ON THE CROSS

The cross can be viewed from varying angles.  Throughout the history of the church, different perspectives help us to understand the cross in different ways.  I think the best approach is to not accept only one perspective, but to look at it through the varying lenses and realize that each perspective has its own strengths and weaknesses.  When we use all of them, we come out much better.

Ransom Component

This is one of the earlier perspectives and is associated with Origen and St. Augustine.  The image here is of a slave on the slave-block up for sale.  This view maintains that humanity was enslaved to evil and Satan such that it could not set itself free.  Christ’s death was an act of such sheer goodness and self-sacrifice, it sent out spiritual shock-waves that destroyed one force of evil in the world so that we could, by faith, be set free from serving evil and to serve God.

I think this view reminds us that there is a real spiritual battle in the world.  This is a warfare worldview that is based on the conviction that our world is engaged in a cosmic war between good and evil.  The warfare worldview makes sense out of evil, human freedom, and the power and urgency of prayer, evangelism, and social action.  Instead of resigning ourselves to our circumstances when we encounter evil, the warfare worldview encourages Christians to revolt against evil as evidence of Satan’s activity, rather than God’s mysterious will.  Many Christians tend to think of evil as somehow God’s mysterious will.  Evil is never the will of God and God is always working against evil in the world.  The cross is the fundamental work of God in this struggle.

Moral Influence Component

In this view, the grounds for atonement are not found in God but in humanity.  Sin and evil must be overcome in the human heart by a magnificent display of the humble, self-sacrificial love of God.  This love is displayed on the cross.  The cross displays to us what God would do in each of us if we cooperate with the Spirit.  Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow.  He set the highest example by literally taking up his cross.  It is this example of self-sacrifice that transforms us and motivates us to the high calling of discipleship.  This view was traditionally defended by Abelard and Bernard of Clairveaux and recently by C.S. Lewis.

Moral Government Component

God is a holy God who cannot easily wink at sin without trivializing his own moral order.  Sin is something of a cosmic moral chaos that needed to be made right.  Sin is a huge moral mess that God wanted to straighten up to his standards of morality.  By the crucifixion of Jesus, God’s honor and moral justice are satisfied.  The cross provides salvation in that God’s honor is protected, salvation is provided, and the moral order of the universe is upheld. 

Imagine that you are a judge.  You are very loving but not altogether just.   A person comes in who has committed a crime.  You know this person had a very rough childhood.  So you simply let the person off the hook.  You slap his hand and tell him to straighten up.  You get in the habit of letting people off the hook if they sincerely apologize.  You would have created a great injustice; we all know that justice must be upheld for social order. 

So the cross of Christ restores moral order in the universe by paying the price that must be paid.  God is too just to create that kind of moral chaos in his universe.

Substitution Component

The idea of substitution (Jesus died in my place) has the best footing when it comes to the Old Testament’s view of sacrifice.  When we read Isaiah 53 we see that the theme of penal substitution is strong.  The church has always interpreted this text as referring to Jesus Christ.  Notice the words: “But HE was pierced through for OUR transgressions, HE was crushed for OUR iniquities. The chastening for OUR well-being fell upon HIM, and by HIS scourging WE are healed.” Notice the substitution. Here again we see Christ paid the price for us! Jesus as the Passover lamb was the one whose punishment substituted for ours.  It is also beyond doubt, I think, that Jesus applied this very verse himself to his own death.  It is the interpretive tool Jesus himself used to help us understand how we are to interpret his death.

The NT affirms this as well.  “And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Here again we see that Christ took the sins we committed onto Himself to pay the price for us. A few verses later we read, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18). Not only do these verses teach us about the “substitute” that Christ was for us, but also that he was the “atonement,” meaning He satisfied the payment due for the sinfulness of man.

Imagine you are a judge and you are trapped between two impulses.  On the one hand, you can bring down the hammer of the law upon all those on the wrong side of the law.  On the other hand, you feel pity up people and you want to provide hope and understanding.  You realize that people often need a second-chance. 

So, you bring down the justice of the law and pronounce the harshest sentence.  But then you take out your own checkbook and pay the fine yourself.  Or you serve the prison term yourself.  In this way, you have walked the line between love and justice – by being a substitute for the punishment.  You have upheld moral order and provided redemption.  You also have been a moral influence; by doing what you have done, this person has tremendous sense of the need to behave.  And you’ve set the captives free (ransom component).

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST MOVIE

This whole idea took on new light when Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus’ death came out.  Interestingly, as a student at Hebrew Union College, I heard (read emails) from the Jewish students who were outraged at the presentation of Jews.  If there was any depiction of the Jews as being particularly heinous people, I’m not sure.  But the NT depictions of Jesus’ passion show that everyone involved was responsible: the Jews, Romans, Pilate, the crowds, etc.  Jews only represent what is true of us all.  We all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.  He was pierced for my transgressions.  Of sinners I am chief, Paul said.  This can hardly be stated forthrightly enough!

Many people struggle with the notion of substitutionary atonement.  They feel that it embraces the notion of divine child-abuse.  For here, God abuses his own son, glorifies human indignity and suffering, and encourages the victim to be subservient.  I’m afraid this completely misses the point.  It forgets the basic principle of Christian theology – the Trinity.  The judge and savior are the same person.  We do not characterize the Father as judge and the Son as victim.  It is Jesus himself who said, “No one takes my life from me.  I lay it down of my own accord.”  It is the same God who through Christ saves us from ourselves.

John Stott has said, “The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone.  God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.”  God is not only loving but holy.  It is in this matrix between the love and justice of God that the crucifixion of Jesus must be understood.

THE EXHORTATION

It is all this we confess – provided in abridged form – in the creed; He was crucified, dead and buried.  You are the person whose crimes have been remitted.  God in Christ is the judge who has come down from behind the bench, put on the robes of our humanity, and served our sentence for us, so we can go free.

During the Second World War, there was a Czech gentleman--a father of ten children--who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.  Several prisoners escaped from the camp and in retribution, the SS officers decided to randomly select 10 men from the camp to put into a starvation chamber.  The Czech father was selected, and when his name was called out, he started to weep, “Oh, my children.  My poor wife and children.”  A man near him in the line came forward and said, “I would like to take his place.”  He was a Polish priest who had no immediate family.  The Nazi’s agreed.

The guards who kept an eye on the starvation chamber said that it became like a church.  The priest prayed throughout his starvation, and led all the others in prayer.  In 1982, the pope honored this man’s sacrifice by bringing his huge family to Rome.   In his proclamation, he noted that the sacrifice of the Polish priest bore some resemblance to that of Jesus Christ.

We serve a God who has redeemed us at great personal sacrifice.  This should change the way we live our whole lives.  Just as the family of this Czech father lived with a sense of great indebtedness, so every moment of our lives, we rejoice in the salvation we have encountered in Christ.  If it were not for this sacrifice, we would be spiritually dead.  We would not know eternal life.  We would be lost in our sins and without hope.

I challenge you today to live your life reflecting the gratitude to God in Christ that he deserves.  He has ransomed your soul from enslavement to sin.  He has substituted his own dear son so we could live.  He is the moral influence whose sacrifice calls us to sacrifice our lives for his kingdom and righteousness.  Friends, this is the very heartbeat of Christian faith.  Believe it and live.