“It’s the Most Wonderful Time…”

A few weeks ago, Beth and I decorated the house for Christmas. Though I used to be a “Scrooge” in younger days, I now enjoy the Christmas season. It is a lot of work to decorate your house, however. What’s more, last year we had packed very well anticipating a move to a pastorate somewhere else. Of course, we were delightfully surprised when an opportunity opened up locally for us to stay, but we did have to  unpack Christmas decorations a little more than normal. I spend more time than I like to in the attic. I hate the attic. I spent my time there singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” hoping that the song would have some sort of reverse psychological effect on my surroundings. It didn’t. I still hate the attic. But I made it through once again.

The girls “helped” us decorate. I believe only one ornament was broken – a new record! A few hours into the endeavor our youngest daughter, Annagale, got into trouble and was banished to her room for a while. When she came out, she apologized to her mom for the grievance, as is normally the case. But this time, something unique happened. Beth told Annagale, “I forgive you” and Annagale responded by throwing her arms around her mother and saying loudly: “Awww! I love you too, Mom!” I was walking through the room and stopped mid-stride. Never before had I heard such an excellent example of the interconnection between love and forgiveness. Beth said I forgive you, but Annagale heard I love you.

I was reminded that all forgiveness whether human or divine flows from a point of relationship. Certainly forgiveness can be granted to someone without relationship just based on the willingness to forgive in the name of Christ. But more importantly, I realized that what I had just heard was a great example of my belief that God’s forgiveness at the cross was merely a result of his larger emphasis to show us how much he loved us. I posted about that here and here. Tony Barlett wrote a phrase in an article I read a few weeks back that I found significant. He said the cross was (and still is) “equal parts forgiveness and disclosure.” Beautiful way to describe the cross…but I would take it even further. All elements of forgiveness in the cross are an outward manifestation of God’s self-disclosing love. Annagale experienced this with her mother. She innately understood that forgiveness is only granted out of love. So, she merely skipped the result and affirmed the root of Beth’s forgiveness toward her: the deep love of a parent for their child.

Hopefully, Advent represents a time in a Christian’s life when we can reflect upon God’s self-revelation of love. After all, God did die for us. I hope that when you hear God say “I forgive you” you will ultimately hear the cry of desperation “I love you!” behind it that compels him to forgive.

Merry Christmas to everyone. 25,000 views and 1,000 comments later, I’m going to take a blogging break for a week or two. I’ll come back and tell you about a missions program that has dramatically transformed our church and invite you to join in for 2009.

See you in the New Year!

Sam

The Healing Cross

Back to the cross again.

Most people know John 3:16. And often that verse is extracted from its surroundings and used in evangelical meetings where the cross is explained as Jesus paying the “penalty” of sin by suffering the wrath of God. The point being: someone has to pay – Jesus took the heat so that we wouldn’t have to.

But it’s the verses above it that really explain Jesus’ interpretation of v.16. Here are verses 14 and 15: “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.” Verse 16 follows: in this way, God so loved the world that he gave his son. So, what way is Jesus talking about here?

He’s referring to Numbers 21, where the Israelites in the wilderness are attacked by poisonous snakes. Moses prays to God for relief and God says in verse 8: “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” So that’s what Moses does – he made a snake image of bronze, attached it to a pole, and lifted it up for everyone to see. Those who looked were healed.

Jesus uses this passage to explain not only why but how the cross brought life to humanity. The cross wasn’t for God. It was for us. We were poisoned and diseased. Jesus was the anti-venom. He was the great physician. Now, if we’re obsessed with the prospect of forgiveness in the cross, then we’ll miss the deeper reason for it: eternal life. See, when God banished Adam and Eve from the garden, it wasn’t an act of punishment. It was an act of mercy…and here’s why. Had God not removed them from the Garden, they may have eaten from the Tree of Life, forever damning themselves to an eternally diseased state where they would remain alienated from a loving God. So, by removing that possibility, God could later enter into our humanity, heal us from sin and return us to a state of everlasting life.

Sin was surely something to be overcome. But it was little more than something to be dealt with in order to reach the cross’s larger goal: the healing of humanity to a state of eternal life. In using the serpent passage from Numbers, Jesus radically shifted the understanding of the cross away from legal terms towards a more organic plan of healing and reconciliation. A rescue mission to the sick. It was for this reason that God loved the world by sending Jesus to express his full and passionate commitment to their healing.

“My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

Everyone in Christian evangelical circles has had this quote explained to them in the following way: “God is unable to look upon sin and hates it so much that he turned his back on Jesus. And Jesus cried out in that moment of loneliness and isolation: why have you forsaken me?”

Though that makes for good theatrics, it’s not really accurate. Jesus isn’t just saying some random phrase – he’s actually quoting Psalm 22. And throughout the majority of the New Testament, Old Testament passages that are quoted sparingly are meant to be interpreted in light of the of the whole passage, not just the snippet that, say, Paul or Luke might give you. It’s kind of like a song or hymn. Though most pop songs derive their titles from the chorus, hymns or praise and worship anthems use the first line. So, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” is actually the first line; so is “I’m Trading my Sorrows” or “As the Deer.” Jesus was actually quoting a song title – Psalm (song) 22 to be exact. He quotes the first line (verse 1), knowing that we’ll know that he meant for us to read the whole text in light of his crucifixion.

But we don’t. We lost that little cultural clue along the way. And our accepted legal model of the atonement is happy to see God turning his head away from his object of wrath: Jesus. So, why don’t I give you the rest of the song?

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
      Why are you so far away when I groan for help?
 Everyone who sees me mocks me.
      They sneer and shake their heads, saying,
“Is this the one who relies on the Lord?
      Then let the Lord save him!
 If the Lord loves him so much,
      let the Lord rescue him!”

 My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;
      an evil gang closes in on me.
      They have pierced my hands and feet.
 I can count all my bones.
      My enemies stare at me and gloat.
 They divide my garments among themselves
      and throw dice for my clothing.

 Praise the Lord, all you who fear him!
      Honor him, all you descendants of Jacob!
      Show him reverence, all you descendants of Israel!
 For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy.
      He has not turned his back on them,
      but has listened to their cries for help.

 The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him.
      All the families of the nations will bow down before him.
 Our children will also serve him.
      Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.
 His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born.
      They will hear about everything he has done.

So, what’s going on here? Well, like every Psalm, this one tells a story. Psalm 22 tells of possible abandonment and affliction by enemies. It even describes some of the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion (another reason why Jesus chose to quote it). But in the “song,” when things seem the darkest, God rescues the afflicted. And though the Psalmist in verse one believes God is turning his back, verse 24 tells us God has not done so. That’s the point Jesus was making. God (identifying with Jesus) is on a rescue mission to save the world so that everyone will “hear about everything he has done.” If we believe that the fullness of the Trinity was reconcilling the world, they were all there with Jesus at that moment. All three were completely invested in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We’ve asked countless times why Jesus died on the cross. Yet, we fail to read the rest of the “song” after Jesus quotes its title. Psalm 22 explains the cross as a moment when everyone can see the depths to which the Trinity will go to reconcile the world – to heal and deliver it from certain destruction. God doesn’t turn his head. He does the opposite. He dives directly into the human condition by becoming one of us. He’s not too holy to look at sin. He’s too holy to let sin hold humanity captive. And like the Father who hugs his prodigal son whose covered in pig filth, God in Jesus surrounds himself with sin so he can explode sin from the inside out.

Now, that makes more sense, doesn’t it?

Jesus and Me at 33

Most folks believe Jesus entered his ministry days around age thirty and was crucified around age 33. I (regretfully) turned 33 in September. Other than the normal depressing thoughts associated with getting older, I have been thinking lately about how young Jesus was. He was a very young man. We live in a society where someone can make an impact in their thirties but most folks don’t consider you “seasoned” until your forties. Executive level jobs are normally held for those in their forties and fifties.

Churches in particular value age as a factor in determining wisdom. Elder boards are full of people in their forties and fifties. Why do we value age in that way? Well, for one, people in their forties and above have had plenty of time to “calm down.” Their children have worn them out and they’ve stayed put in a job for at least a decade. If they have stayed married to one person, they’ve put in around twenty years. They make major decisions a little slower and are prone to weigh all the consequences of their actions. They have had time to “sift” through life and see what really matters. They’ve also had the chance to “prove” themselves to others as worthy of responsibility.

Jesus did none of that. He didn’t wait on anyone for anything. He launched into aggressive ministry without the consent of or regard for his rabbinical peers. And by today’s standards, Jesus’s ministry of healing and demonic deliverance would’ve been seen as a that of a crackpot revivalist, praying on the weak minds of the underclasses and undereducated. He would’ve been considered way too young to wield that type of spiritual authority. What’s more, Jesus’s ministry was supported by contributions, a large amount of which came from women: a gender class with its own issues of persecution and representation at that time.

Though that may be shocking to think about, what really makes me wonder most is: what was Jesus’s mindset? Not what he said, but what he thought that no one ever heard. Granted, he’s the Son of God. Sure, that’s obvious. But his thought patterns (if he was fully divine and fully human) must have at least somewhat reflected that of every 33 year old man. And though Hebrew culture at that time was very different than ours today, Jesus was still a guy.

I started thinking about this in light of my own behavior at age 33. Though I have moments of maturity…I honestly try not to have too many of those. I think there’s still a lot of “my twenties” in me at 33. I still act immature. I still have a lot of energy. I still don’t like people telling me what to do all the time. I still shout at the TV when my favorite football team scores a touchdown. In other words, I’m spunky. And I imagine Jesus was, too. I’ve calmed down a lot from previous years. I’m working on getting to a decade of marriage. That’ll calm you down. My kids wear me out – I occasionally find myself begging them to go to sleep. And what energy I have left, I have the illustrious distinction of allowing church work to take the last of it.

Jesus didn’t have a wife. Jesus didn’t have kids. He was a carpenter – and most scholars see that as more than woodworking. Jesus worked a brawny, scrappy construction job and probably walked up the road five miles to Sepphoris everyday to do it. Jesus was wiry and energetic – he’d stay up at night to pray while everyone else went to sleep. He said highly inappropriate things - stuff about eating flesh and drinking blood. He called religious people older than him rude and critical names, made fun of local lawyers, dismissed the rhetoric of the local politicians, and told incredibly outlandish stories. And then he’d pray for everyone that needed physical healing. He was young, fiery, intense, and, to some, intimidating.

But I think that’s part of the reason he could make it all the way to the cross. Beth and I were talking the other day about your twenties and early thirties. It’s like God “hardwires” you to be crazy enough at that time in life to push forward with having multiple children, finishing education, marrying someone, and working your way up the corporate ladder. And in your thirties, you still think it’d be cool to be in a rock band in your spare time!  At no other time in life do you have that level of energy to simultaneously sustain that much activity at once. It’s insane. Yet, I think that’s part of the reason Jesus ministered on earth at such a young, unacceptable age. It took a certain level of youth and intensity to be the Son of God.

I guess I’m saying that I find solace in that. Older people thought Jesus was an “upstart.” If he can wrestle with his youthfulness and meet the needs of his followers, then God can use me too. In many ways, Jesus lived the life of every person in their early thirties. Hopefully, 33 will be better to me than it was to him… 

Christ, our “Substitute”?

Those who have been following this blog for a while have probably read some of my posts on “Views of the Cross, Parts I and II,” “Does Reformed Theology Restrict God More than Process Theology?” and “Does God ‘Need’ Jesus to Forgive?” I state in several different places that I believe the cross can be substitutionary without requiring penal substitution. In other words, atonement can occur without retributive action by the Father towards the Son. I’ve said all along that I believe this is a Trinity problem, not a cross problem: once the Trinity is fully understood, it’s pretty easy to recognize that Jesus is not a “sacrifice” to God. Jesus is God – Something Protestants have historically had trouble understanding. Therefore, God (represented in Jesus) died on the cross so that we could have life. That exchange of death for life is what the Bible is speaking of when it mentions substitution.

I came across a post tonight by Baxter Kruger called “The Wonderful Exchange” that does a great job of explaining this concept. So, rather than write my own, I thought I would just post his:

 

 

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2Corinthians 8:9).

This short verse from the apostle Paul takes us out a merely forensic or legal view of Jesus’ coming and gives us a much richer and far more profound vision. Here, as throughout the early Church, the coming of Jesus is not merely about the taking away of our sin, but about the staggering life that he brings to us, the very life that he himself enjoys with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Cleansing is certainly critical, but the taking away of our sin is unto a greater purpose, the sharing of his life. Jesus is, as the Baptist said, “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And he is also the one “who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.” The saving work of Jesus, in the New Testament’s vision, always involves both dimensions. As John McLeod Campbell argued, there is both a retrospective and a prospective dimension to salvation in Christ. There is the removal, the cleansing, the taking away of sin, and there is the giving or sharing of life.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons”(Galatians 4:4). 

In the West we have been so thoroughly preoccupied with the retrospective dimension of Christ’s work (redeeming us from the law, taking away our sin, justification) that we have almost forgotten the prospective dimension (baptism in the Spirit, adoption, union, the sharing of life). Hence there are thousands of books on justification and only a handful on adoption, even though our adoption stands as the driving reason, indeed as the eternal reason, for Jesus’ coming (See Ephesians 1:5).

My point is not to denigrate the work of our Lord in taking away our sin—such a work is fundamental—but to bring us back to the early Church’s vision that Jesus both takes away our sin and shares himself and his own life with us. The great early Church father, St. Irenaeus, put it this way, “our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (Against Heresies, V, preface).

Note John Calvin here as well:

This is the wonderful exchange (mirifica commutatio) which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness (Institutes, IV.17.2). 

And James B. Torrance:

The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God (Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace, p. 21). 

In Paul and Irenaeus from the early Church, Calvin and Torrance from more modern times, we see that salvation in Christ is about a wonderful exchange involving not merely legal standing, but life itself. For Paul, the One who was rich before all worlds became poor in order to take away our poverty and give us his own wealth. For Irenaeus, the Son of God became what we are to bring us to be what he is in himself. For Calvin, the Son of God became one with us to make us sons and daughters with himself, and to share with us his own immortality, strength, wealth and righteousness. For Torrance, the Father’s Son became incarnate to give us a share in the very triune life of God.

For all four, not to mention the apostle John, Karl Barth and many others, the incarnation was not a mere prerequisite for a spotless sacrifice on the cross, but the way of union between all that God is as Father, Son and Spirit, and all that we are in broken human existence. Without the cross and Christ’s death on it there could be no such union, and talk of the incarnation would be a farce, but the death of Christ serves the larger purpose of the wonderful exchange of Christ taking all that is ours and giving us a real share in all that is his.

In a variation on Paul’s great statement, “For you know the stunning grace of the Father’s Son that though he was rich in the shared life of the blessed Trinity, yet for our sake he became poor, suffering our wrath to meet us, and now through his suffering we who were so poor have been included in Jesus’ own rich relationship with his Father and Spirit.”

As Professor Torrance insisted, the Christian life is about participation, about our personal participation or sharing in the very life of Jesus himself, and thus in his life and relationship with his Father, and in his relationship with the Holy Spirit, and indeed in his relationship with all creation.

May the Holy Spirit quicken us with hope that such a vision could be true, and may the Spirit of adoption give us the faith that yearns to know and experience Christ’s life within us, until the life of the blessed Trinity—shared with us all in Jesus—comes to full and abiding and personal expression in all the earth.

Does God “Need” Jesus to Forgive?

Okay, if you were raised in the church like I was, you got a steady diet of forgiveness talk, usually centering around the cross. Of course, there are plenty of atonement theories to wade through in all your spare time – I talk about those here and here. In most people’s minds, forgiveness is not really a God-like trait, but more of a Christ-like trait. After all, basic evangelicalism teaches us that the cross was necessary in order for God to forgive humanity. Though no one ever says it, we were taught that forgiveness couldn’t happen without the cross. In order for that to be true, any references to God’s forgiveness without Jesus should be absent from other parts of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. But that’s not the case. Curious? Are you squirming in your seat yet? Read on, my friend…

 Here are two verses (there are plenty of others) from the OT that express God’s forgiveness outside of the work of Jesus.

Numbers 14:20-22:

“Then the Lord said, ‘I will pardon them as you have requested. But as surely as I live, and as surely as the earth is filled with the Lord’s glory, not one of these people will ever enter that land.’”

This passage is early on in God’s relationship with Israel and though we assume that Deuteronomic covenant conditions dictate God’s forgivess/pardon of the Hebrews, in this case, it doesn’t. What is the deciding factor? Moses’s request for God to reconsider destroying the Hebrews. And what does Moses use as a foundation for the Hebrews pardon in vv. 17-19? God’s song. And based on his loyal character, God reconsiders and forgives. At the same time, in this passage, God does not lift the consequences of the Hebrews’ sin. But check out this verse…

Micah 7:18-20:

Where is another God like you,
      who pardons the guilt of the remnant,
      overlooking the sins of his special people?
      You will not stay angry with your people forever,
      because you delight in showing unfailing love.
 Once again you will have compassion on us.
      You will trample our sins under your feet
      and throw them into the depths of the ocean!
 You will show us your faithfulness and unfailing love
      as you promised to our ancestors Abraham and Jacob long ago. 

As God’s involvement with Israel continues over the centuries, his loyalty alwaysoutlasts the failings of the people. By the time of the prophet Micah, God’s “delight in showing unfailing love” moves him to a place of forgiveness. God (pre-incarnation) forgives without the cross specifically mentioned. Now, Christians love to read this passage as a future understanding of God’s plan of salvation in Jesus. But that’s not really what Micah was saying, is it? If we take this part of the Bible seriously, we must accept the beautiful reality that God has always had the ability to forgive sin. God never treats sin in a casual manner, but he does forgive it before the historical event of the atonement occurs.

How is that possible? Well, what’s really at issue here is God’s unfailing loyalty. Forgiveness is merely an outworking of that deeper divine character. Unfailing love breeds forgiveness. Jesus basically gives us the same scenario as the prophets when he describes the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed or not, but the term forgiveness, one Christians are obsessive about when talking of Jesus, is nowhere to be found in that story. Yet, there’s no doubt that forgiveness was on the mind of the father as he bounded up the road to hug and kiss his estranged child. That forgiveness is buried within the actions of an unconditionally loving father. It never has to be said. It’s just part of the deal.

So does God “need” Jesus to forgive? No. But God, after expressing that loyalty through other avenues like the prophets, finally chose to express that forgives through the sacrifice of Jesus so that we can grasp the incredible love of the Father. The intention was that though he may be misunderstood in the writings of the prophets and his dealings with Israel, the cross can never be misunderstood. All three persons of the Trinity we in co-mission at the cross, enabling, standing beside, and creating the greatest event in human history. Yet, somehow we still don’t get it – we create scenarios and a priori arguments of God necessitating the sacrifice of another to appease his wrath. And if you’re looking to placate and angry view of God, then the cross certainly works. But what about the verses above? They don’t diminish the beauty of Christ’s work on the cross…but they do emphasize the unfailing loyalty of the Father that has always existed – even before the cross. It seems God has been forgiving all along.

Does Reformed Theology Restrict God More Than Process Theology?

I was talking about this with a friend the other day and am looking for some constructive input into the topic. I know I’ve got some serious thinkers that read this blog so I was hoping for some feedback.

Process theology is a relatively new phenomenon that, for most evangelicals, places God in a place of dependence upon nature – so much so that God is incapable of separating himself from the natural order. Of course, this presents a diminished view of God’s power and authorty – something quite unacceptable to conservative forms of Christianity. On the other hand, Reformed theology adherents usually are rather proud of the fact that in their system God remains sovereign – fully untouched by the human condition – while also providing a solution to the issues of sin and death. But it’s their view of atonement that has raised some new questions for me.

Reformed theologians often chide Process theologians for seeing God as dependent upon creation. But isn’t that what Reformists do with the penal-substitution theory? Hear me out while I explain this…and then let the hate mail pour in.

In the penal-substitution model, the sacrifice of Jesus appeases the wrath God by paying the penalty for sin. God effectively remedies sin for all humanity by releasing the punishment for that sin on Jesus alone. So, Jesus’s death though for humanity is ultimately for God – and this in turn frees humanity from their plight. According the that model, sin is the controlling factor in God’s efforts to rescue mankind. But God is bound by the effects of sin, something outside of himself caused by the actions of man. God chooses to honor that state of affairs and, if penal-substitution is the chosen model, allows sin to dictate his respose to our present world order. Supralapsarians (if they aren’t embarrassed of their belief that God ordained sin) could care less about this point, but for all other Reformists who believe God did not ordain humanity’s fall, this should be addressed. Though Process theology makes God dependent upon the world through panentheism, penal-substitution makes God involuntarily dependent on the death of Jesus in order to save humanity. In other words, sin puts God in a corner. At the cross, sin is sovereign, not God.

In the ransom model, God has an opponent: Satan – a force to strive against. And in the moral theory the cross displays the forgiveness of God outside of any payment for sin. But in the penal-substitution model, God is pitted against himself and bound by the neccessity of sin’s grasp over his own sovereignty. Sin is placed above God. God is sovereign over everything…but that. Looking at the sovereignty issues surrounding the cross, it seems that moral theory actually affirms God’s sovereignty more by allowing God to forgive sin however he chooses. But the penal-substitution theory severely limits God’s response to the human condition as if sin forces God to punish Jesus since God requires someone to pay for the infraction. It’s as if God created the rules, but then the rules forced him to punish Jesus. Put this way, God’s sovereignty is diminished within the universal causality that God himself ordained. It reminds me of the quote by Plato, “Not even God can fight against necessity.”

Okay – all of this is thinking out loud. And I would enjoy some feedback on this idea. But don’t blast me if you don’t know what, for example, Process theology is. Well thought out responses please. I’m sure this idea been discussed somewhere but it’s something I haven’t seen recently. Any thoughts?

The Need for Christian Ritual

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Things should improve this week. We had a great Easter weekend – good services on Friday night and Sunday morning. I’ve finished a couple of books recently that I haven’t mentioned: E.W. Rice’s “Orientalisms in Biblical Lands” and Norman Snaith’s “Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament.” Both are fairly important to OT study and I’m trying to read some classic texts I may have missed along the way. The more I discover the “mentality” that lies behind the OT, the more I love it.

I was talking with a friend the other day who was upset at some critical comments made about the traditional symbols and rituals in our church. I agreed that they were wrong to criticize, but I also understood the other point of view – one that I previously held for many years. Belonging to a charismatic form of Protestantism that emphasized the “inner workings” of the Spirit, I had little need for tradition as well. But then things started to change for me. I read a book by Tom Driver called “The Magic of Ritual” that helped but I also began to listen to those who saw value in church tradition.

Ritual is important to keep the body of Christ together. Now, please refrain from quoting “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” scriptures at me for a moment. Unity is more than that. See, as with most symbols, the object is not the issue – it’s the memory those traditions hold and how they provide a seamless story of our Christian past. The church wreaths, Easter candles, or Christmas ornaments are not the important part – it’s the fingerprints on them of the ten generations of Christians that used them before you that matter. You now resonate with the millions of Christians that came before when you say the Lord’s prayer. Did Jesus say the Lord’s prayer so that we could all repeat it back to him? No. But with each reciting, you affirm the fact that you weren’t the first and you won’t be the last and that the reality of any inner working you hold dear is what ties you to all other Christians as well.

Call me a Schleiermacher disciple if you must, but I believe that the innate universal desire for experience resides in everyone…and often finds voice in ritual, particularly for those who value it. I’ll give you an example: my daughters. We have a friend overseas in Thailand teaching English at a Christian school. Now, my girls love this guy – they think he hung the moon. And before he left, we put up picture he had taken with them in their room. The girls mention him ever few weeks and look at their picture in their room…and then they do something that I have never taught them. They go find some scotch tape and place a piece on the picture. After a year, that picture (which I just cleaned off) had so many pieces of tape that it was hard to see the picture underneath. They created a ritualistic memorial on their own.

The same type thing happened a few months ago as well. My three year old is in a choir at church and her choir director sent her a present in the mail. It was a glow in the dark cross. Though that means little to me, she loves it. Now, she knows all about Jesus, but the tangible element of the cross connected with her in a unique way. So she keeps that cross in her room and sleeps with it. She doesn’t see the cross as a substitute for the protection of God (Protestants, don’t be silly ). She sees it as a representative object that reminds her of God’s goodness – a symbols for something she already knows.

Christians need symbols and ritual. Of course, we don’t need to eclipse the reality of relationship with the Father by relying on ritual alone. But there is a significant place for it in the body of Christ, if for nothing else than to remind us of Christians who have gone before us. Ritual provides reinforcement of things we hold dear, whether it be the friendship of another or the love of our Savior.

Views of the Cross, Part II

I just finished reading George Barna’s Revolutionary Parenting. It sure made me thankful for my parents’ willingness to provide us with a Christian home. They did all the things in that book without having to read a book.  

This post is a follow up to the first one. Jonathan asked for a more definitive explanation as to why the penal-substitutionary model of atonement is not my favorite. He asked me to address the many scriptures that seem to support it. So here you are – but let me say that this is not a comprehensive critique of that view. That’s what books are for. You might want to skip this one if you’re not into tedious, painful, laborious blogs…

Also, I didn’t inculde the governmental model of atonement in my previous post.  To me, it still retains God as punisher of Jesus, conveying a duplicitious nature similar to the penal-substitution theory, but then says the punishment was merely instructive or exemplary. That’s fine, but in that scenario God still punishes Jesus and I’m not okay with that. 

As you may have figured out by now, I am not interested in “defeating” penal -substitution atonement (PSA) on scriptural grounds. People wrangle about biblical Greek to no end. I don’t believe that’s where the deciding factors lie. They are in historical context. The problem lies in our understanding of biblical justice. Biblical ideas of justice have nothing to do with punishment – they celebrate redemption, reconciliation, liberation, and deliverance. That’s the problem. The PSA theory assumes that sacrifice must include punishment and that God gains satisfaction from it.

Once again, views of the cross, if fully accurate, should begin with the heart of God. The gospels explicitly state why Jesus came: ”for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). The motivation was not punishment, but love. Jesus tells us why he embraced the cross: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).

The PSA model, though it’s a fully developed model atonement, presents a narrow picture of justice based on a medieval, legalistic interpretation. The OT is pretty clear that the idea of executing justice is not to punish, but to establish healing and reconciliation. The  justice of God is closely tied to righteousness. It means to make things right or to “do right” by someone. The prophets constantly reference God’s justice as something that denotes his righteous acts of compassion. Justice is an expression of mercy, not a contradiction to it. God’s justice is seen when he liberates the oppressed and downtrodden. Check out these verses:

Isaiah 1:17 – “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

Isaiah 30:18 – “Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him.”

Jeremiah 21:12 – “Give justice each morning to the people you judge! Help those who have been robbed; rescue them from their oppressors. Otherwise, my anger will burn like an unquenchable fire because of all your sins.”

The NT carries this theme as well in regards to Jesus’s ministry and his death on the cross. There is no dichotomy between a “God of justice” in the OT and a “God of mercy” in the NT. There is no duplicity in God’s character. God has always been a compassionate God, a God of love. Jesus said if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father. Plenty of NT scriptures reflect this same idea of justice as redemption and rescue.

Matt. 12:18-21 – “…And He will declare justice to the Gentiles…A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory…” Also, see Luke 4:18-19 and notice that Jesus purposefully left out “And the day of vengeance of our God” when quoting this passage from Isaiah 61.

So, contrary to the PSA theory, punishment is not what the justice of God required. God’s justice delivered/rescued humanity from its ultimate enemy: death. That’s what 1 Corinthians 15 is all about. Our limited Western perspective believes justice is only served when people are put in jail, or required to pay recompense, or put on death row. For the West, justice = punishment. However, God’s view of justice, by commending his love to us in Jesus, released us from bondage. That’s where PSA fails – it requires a transfer of penalty to someone, based on a Western understanding of legal justice, not the redemptive understanding of justice found in the OT. Requiring that transfer is not a biblical teaching but a rationalistic import from 16th century theology. NT passage can only be understood within this OT understanding of justice. Otherwise, the more important universal scope of the cross is ”lost in translation.”

As such, PSA adherents always confuse the  juridical with the sacrificial. I pulled this quote from this blog because I just couldn’t say it any better: “Sacrifice, in the Bible, is never punitive; rather, it is a divine gift which, as human offering, becomes an expression of praise and gratitude. It is also a demonstration that reconciliation is a costly matter. But justice too, in the Bible, is not essentially punitive or retributive; it is restorative. If we continue to think of the atonement in forensic terms, it is essential to see it not as a legal transaction but as the transformation of a relationship.”

So what do you do with verses like these that seem to support the PSA theory?

Romans 3:25 – “For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Galatians 3:13 – “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

1 John 2:2 – “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

1 John 4:10 – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

In all these verses, we must “unassume” certain things about them. Though they all say Jesus was sacrificed for or in place of humanity, none of them say the sacrifice was unto God. They also reaffirm that God, in concert with Jesus, initiated love to us through the cross. In keeping with the OT understanding of justice as redemption, they state that Christ redeemed us from the curse of sin and death through the cross. None of them say that God punished Jesus to do it. The writings of Paul do not stand on their own apart from the rest of scripture. The NT epistles should not inform our understanding of the OT and the gospels; the OT and the gospels inform all the epistles. Covenant theologians are supposed to know this. Paul, a good Jew, fully understood the OT context of justice and probably didn’t feel he needed to revisit the biblical definition of justice that was obvious to his first century listeners. Unfortunately, we’ve lost that along the way. I’m sure if he were alive today, he would make that clear for us.

If you haven’t fallen asleep by this point, hopefully this has helped a little. If not, you’re welcome to ignore it or ask any questions it may raise.

Views of the Cross

I just finished reading Phillips and Okholm’s The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation. It was helpful and confusing at the same time. Unfortunately, my book club just finished King Me by Steve Farrar. If you want to scar your children for life, pick that one up…

The cross, although central to Christianity, is one the most difficult events in Christianity to understand. Now, that may sound strange to you because, you’re thinking, “Jesus paid the penalty for my sins – end of story.” Not so fast there, champ. There are several different views of the atonement. The one you just described didn’t even show up fully developed until four hundred years ago. So what did people believe about the cross before then? Thanks for asking – I’ll tell you. 

Most evangelicals (I am one, though very much a postconservative one) strictly adhere to the penal-substitution theory developed by Anselm in the 12th century and Calvin in the 16th. In essence, God is angry since we dishonored him (Anselm) and broke his law (Calvin). Both require recompense and God is seriously ticked off. Just as God drops his gavel in a cosmic courtroom, Jesus steps in to save the day: “I’ll take their sin and be their substitute, fully absorbing the punishing wrath of God.” We inherited this view from the Fundamentalists who believe this view of the atonement was one of the five “fundamentals” of Christianity, hence their name. I really don’t like that one. I prefer the other two views much better.

Probably the oldest interpretation of the cross was developed by Irenaeus (2nd cent.). He believed in the ransom or Christus Victor (Christ as Victor) model. It’s a good one to use. Humanity had given dominion to Satan through the fall. Jesus became the ransom for the world when he died on the cross, allowing humanity to return to God by accepting the ransom payment of Jesus. Jesus isn’t sacrificed to God for appeasement, rather he gives his life to rescue humanity. I like this one – it conveys God’s willingness to go to any length to redeem his people. God is working within the human predicament to bring about not punishment (as in the first view) but redemption.

The final view is the moral theory of atonement. After the substitutionary model became popular, people began to revolt against it. One of the most famous was Peter Abelard. He said that the cross was a way to convey the love of God in action. The cross expresses the love of God, not to force repentance but to persuade humanity to return to him. After all, it’s the “goodness of God that leads to repentance.” In Christ, we see the love of the Father manifested to all. What’s more, the cross shows the depth of love that compels him to rescue us from our destruction. I sure like this one as well. For me, it’s probably the most fun to preach.  

 The Bible has verses to support all three models. In Colossians, Paul uses moral theory in chapter one and ransom theory in chapter 2. However, I think the most common motif in all those verses is God’s choice to convey his love through the sacrifice of Jesus. So how does that work? Well, like I said it’s not that simple, but here are some clarifying factors.

To me, the cross is not so much about punishment and who takes that punishment as much as it is about a cure. This is a little more of an Eastern Orthodox approach, but I think the cross was more about overcoming/curing death than it was about sin. Now that may strike you as strange because Western Christians are taught to be highly sin conscious. And that’s part of the problem – we never get past clinging to the “old rugged cross” to receive the power of the resurrection. Though sin is significant, evangelicals act like it was a HUGE deal for God to overcome sin. That’s missing the point (of which we are experts). Sure, sin was an obstacle but what God really wanted was for us to not die in our sin. Newsflash: the cross was not the end of the story, though Protestants often see it that way. The resurrection was. So, the cross exists so that the resurrection could happen. The resurrection is the pinacle of the Christian message, not just some thirty second afterthought in a Mel Gibson movie.

Here’s the other reason I like the the final two rather than the “legal” model of the atonement. I believe God is good. That there is no evil in him. So, I think the substitution model pits bad, wrathful Father against good, merciful Jesus. It creates a duplicitous nature in God and promotes christomonism, another propensity in Protestant circles. It’s not surprising that the child’s phrase, “I love Jesus, but I hate God” arose around the time of the Reformed approach to the atonement. So rather than have a duplicitous nature in God, I choose to see the world in the in the temporal state of transition and irresolution. God’s intents and purposes are good even though sin continues to ravage the lives of people.

Let me give you a final example of the temporal nature of life. If I rounded the corner of my home and found my two year old sticking a fork in a power outlet, what do you think I would do? I would yell, “Stop!” I would run to rescue her from suffering. I’m not angry at her – she’s a child. But I am angry at the situation and will do anything I can to resolve it. And when she looks at my face as I run to save her, she might interpret that concern as anger. In the same way, God’s wrath (a temporal state of reaction against the human predicament) is motivated by his love (his eternal character) to eradicate the world of sin. Okay, so it’s not a perfect illustration, but it points to the temporal state of God’s wrath versus his permanent loving nature. Even then, I doubt we will be able to fully comprehend all that happened at the cross. But, in the meantime, I choose a combined view of options two and three.