“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. It’s also a great example of reading a theological position into a passage to justify what we’ve already decided it means. 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?

Does God “Need” Jesus to Forgive?

On Good Friday, let’s stir the pot a little, shall we?

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 always outlasts 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.

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.

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.