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Atonement

What was God doing around the cross?. It constitutes a search for understanding of one of the crucial events of human history, perhaps the crucial event. The complete New Testament focuses on the death, burial, and resurrection, events leading up to and flowing from it, its theological significance and ethical implications. We'll focus on the deep significance from the atonement, as explained from three perspectives: the dynamic, subjective, and objective views.

Dynamic view The dynamic view sees Christ's death and resurrection since the climax of a cosmic conflict with Satan and also the demonic forces of evil. Christ came as the Second Adam (Romans 5:18-19), winning the competition that Adam failed. He also came because the new Israel, faithfully keeping submitting to God as opposed to to Satan as the first Israel tried (Matthew 2:15; 4:4; etc.). Soon after His baptism, the Spirit "drove" (Greek: ekballei) Him in to the wilderness so that He might confront Satan (Mark 1:12). His victory there is only one of what must have been many battles, for Luke records that Satan left Him until "an opportune time" (Luke 4:13).

During His ministry Jesus offered His capability to cast out demons like a demonstration that He was stronger than Satan. Although He described Satan being a "strong man," He claimed the opportunity to "bind" the strong man and despoil his possessions (i.e., those that were demon-possessed). His ability to cast out demons "by the finger of God" He presented as proof the arrival of God's kingdom on earth (Luke 12:20-22). Jesus got His disciples involved in the warfare; their successful preaching, healing, and exorcism mission He afterward referred to as the fall of Satan from heaven (Luke 10:18).

Satan was behind the betrayal of Jesus by Judas (John 13:2, 27), his abandonment through the other apostles (Luke 22:31-32), as well as his trial and murder (John 8:40-41, 44). Jesus recognized Satan as His principal enemy, and also before His death, He am confident of victory that He spoke of it as a fait accompli (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 32). The moment before His death Christ Himself uttered the triumphant words, "It is finished" (John 19:30; compare Luke 12:50). The glorious resurrection is proof that His death would be a victory and not a defeat (Revelation 3:21).

In the confrontation with false teaching at Colossae, Paul presents the cross and resurrection as a conquer spiritual enemies. The Colossians were in danger of being deceived by a syncretistic combination of Judaistic legalism, Hellenistic philosophy, and Eastern mysticism. Apparently the heretical teachers were not advocating a rejection of Jesus, however they denied Him the primacy in support of intermediary beings. "Go beyond Jesus to greater realities," they might have taught. Paul replies that there are nothing beyond Jesus Christ, in whom God's fullness dwells. He it really is Who "disarmed the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of these, triumphing over them by the cross" (Colossians 2:15).

Not only did Christ conquer Satan, demons, principalities, and powers. He also conquered death (Acts 2:24; Revelation 5:5-6). Paul uses militaristic terms to go over the resurrection, e.g., "destroyed" and "victory" (1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 54-56).

Because Christ has triumphed as our representative, we share in His triumph (hence the super-conquerors of Romans 8:37). In Ephesians 4:8 Paul applies Psalm 68:19 to Christ's triumph, picturing Christ as a conquering general returning to Rome to get a victory parade: "When he ascended on high, he led captives as part of his train and gave gifts to men." The ensuing passage explains the gifts He gave would be the offices for building up the church. The captives are bypassed, but Colossians 2:15 seems an appropriate commentary.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, Paul says that "God... always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and thru us spreads everywhere the fragrance with the knowledge of him." In cases like this the apostles (see 1 Corinthians 4:9), and perhaps all Christians, are probably the type of following along behind--themselves conquered, yet joyously sharing in the victory celebration. Our struggle against Satan and demonic forces continues (Ephesians 6:12). While he is victorious, we also can be victorious (Revelation 3:21; 1 John 2:14-15; 4:4; 5:4-5).

Subjective view It is a fact that we are the subjects of His daring rescue (Colossians 1:13-14), but we also participate. This is the subjective nature of the atonement: it transforms us. When we are united with Christ through faith-repentance-baptism, God's Spirit begins the process of transforming us from one level of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit, Himself the guarantee this beginning will reach its intended end (Ephesians 1:13-14), starts to produce His fruit within our hearts (Galatians 5:22-23) as we cooperate by "walking inside the Spirit" and being "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:4, 14; Galatians 5:16). The metamorphosis is not automatic; it takes constant mental concentration as we count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11). In addition, it requires continual moral striving, as we refuse to let sin dominate us, yielding the members of our bodies to righteousness instead of to sin (Romans 6:12-13).

This is a battle we fight, yet Paul assures us, "[S]in may have no dominion over you" (Romans 6:14). The struggle leads to holiness and the end is eternal life (Romans 6:22). When Christ returns, on the eschaton, the Spirit will have performed His are employed in us: "[W]e shall be like Him, for we shall see Him because he is" (1 John 3:2).

Though this is work that changes us from within and in which we ourselves participate, the credit still belongs to God, because it's His work being done in us and thru us. He is the one that brings it to completion on that day (Philippians 1:6). Meanwhile, we image Christ these days. He was our representative in the cosmic conflict; we are His representatives within the existential struggle against the world, the flesh, as well as the Devil.

Objective view Yet Christ's death is more than what he did for (hyper) us (see Mark 14:24; Luke 22:19-20) and what he is doing in (en) us (see Colossians 1:27). It also involves what He did rather than (anti) us (see Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45)---the objective view of the atonement. In fact, many feel that the substitutionary nature of the atonement is the central aspect of all.

Several types of the substitutionary atonement originate from Genesis. The word used in 1 John 3:12 to spell it out Cain's murder of his brother may be the word for "slaughter" (Greek: esphaxen), as in the offering of a sacrifice. It's led some to view the world's first murder, recorded in Genesis 4:8, because the offering of a substitute sacrifice. Essentially, Cain may have said, "So, You didn't like my vegetables being an offering? Let's see how You such as this! (slash)." The murder certainly involved the shedding of his brother's blood, for it cried out from the ground against the perpetrator (Genesis 4:10).

Once the angel stops Abraham from stabbing Isaac to death, Abraham finds a ram caught in the nearby thicket that he can offer rather than (Septuagint: anti) his son (Genesis 22:12-13). The passage assumes that some sacrifice has to be offered, and the one is replaced from the other.

abductions - More than a hundred years later, when Joseph's testing of his brothers created a crisis situation involving the enforced servitude of Benjamin, Judah stepped forward and freely offered himself as a substitute for his brother (Genesis 44:18-34, especially not the Septuagint's use of anti in v. 33). In this instance also, some substitute had to be provided. There was no possibility of mere escape from the demands with the master.

Yet all three of these are one-for-one substitutions, similar to the "eye-for-eye" provisions of the Law. Christ's sacrifice (one for a lot of) is more like the sin offering in behalf of all of the people or the sacrifice from the goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4:13-21; 16:15-19). He is the "atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins with the whole world" (1 John 2:2). He's the "Lamb of God, Who eliminates the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

One for that world? How can that be just? Its justice depends upon the identity of the Sacrifice. A single human deserves infinite punishment because of sins. Adding the punishment of one other human adds no more than was there already (for infinity plus infinity equals infinity). The same holds true for "the sins of the [whole] world." The slaughter of the Infinite One for these sins beings one infinity into experience of the other--just payment.

Our sins brought us underneath the curse of the law, but Christ became a curse for us by hanging on the tree (Galatians 3:10-14). Because of Christ's death, God surely could effect what Luther called a "happy exchange": we had been the subjects of God's just condemnation, the objects of His righteous wrath, nevertheless the sinless Christ became "sin" for us, to ensure that we might become God's righteousness by Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God established Him since the propitiation, the appeasement, so that the all-consuming fire of His wrath might be diverted to Him as opposed to destroying the rest of us humans (Romans 3:25). As Isaiah said, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).

Must we choose? resurrection - Dynamic, subjective, and objective--must we choose from them? No! By its very nature the atonement is greater than any one metaphor or perspective can contain. We should always be answering, "Yes, and much more besides." Like astronomers surveying the universe, the harder we study it, the greater vast it becomes. Our lack of ability to fully comprehend its dimensions does not nullify what we can understand, nor can it rob us of the amazement we sense at what we should know was accomplished.