The second sacred image that the cross echoes is the “Lifted-Up One,” and it comes from the bronze snake in the desert. YHWH tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and “anyone who has been bitten by a serpent and looks upon it will be healed” (Numbers 21:8). It is like a homeopathic symbol. The very thing that is killing the Children of Israel is the thing that will heal them! It is presented as a vaccine that will give you just enough of the disease so you can develop a resistance to it. The cross dramatically raises up the problem of ignorant hatred for all to see, hoping to inoculate us against doing the same thing and projecting our violence onward into history.
The Universal Pattern: Loss and Renewal
Jesus takes away the sin of the world by dramatically exposing the real sin—ignorant hatred and violence, not the usual preoccupation with purity codes—and by refusing the usual pattern of vengeance, which keeps us inside of an insidious quid pro quo logic. In fact, he “returns their curses with blessings” (Luke 6:28), teaching us that we can “follow him” and not continue the spiral of violence. He unlocks our entrapment from within.
.. It is not that Jesus is working some magic in the sky that “saves the world from sin and death.” Jesus is unveiling a mystery that redefines the common pattern of human history. Jesus is not changing his Father’s mind about us because it does not need changing (as in various “atonement theories”); he is changing our mind about what is real and what is not. The cross is not a required transaction (which frankly makes little sense), but the mystery of how evil is transformed into good.
Jesus on the cross identifies with the human problem, the sin, the darkness. He refuses to stand above or outside the human dilemma. Further, he refuses to scapegoate, and instead becomes the scapegoat personified (as we’ll explore in greater detail next week). In Paul’s language, “Christ redeemed us from the curse . . . by being cursed himself” (Galatians 3:13); or “God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him [together with him!] we might become the very goodness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Bruxy: Understanding Atonement
The pattern is pronounced: WE are responsible for killing Christ. BUT GOD intervened by raising him from the dead. Yes, there is wrath displayed in the crucifying of Christ, but it is ours, not God’s.
When we look at the cross, we see our wrathful rejection of God, and his unhindered love for us. For some reason, the earliest gospel preachers and the writers of scripture refrain from describing God pouring out his wrath upon Christ on the cross.
.. God discharging his wrath upon Jesus is simply never stated in Scripture. And if it is not stated in Scripture, and never preached publicly as the gospel, there is likely a very good reason why God has decided not to offer us that mental image – an image of our loving Father pouring out pure undiluted angry punishment upon his beloved son.
.. When we think about the suffering of Christ, we do see wrath, but it is our wrath we see raging against Christ. And God? He is in Christ, suffering along with Christ, loving us through Christ, and reaching out to us with reconciling love. This much is clearly stated in Scripture:
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
God was in Christ.
God was reconciling the world to himself.
.. If I told you I forgave you for the debt you owe me, and I can do this because I already got my son to pay that debt on your behalf, well, that isn’t true forgiveness, but just a different route to payment.
.. If a convict is exonerated for a crime and given a full judicial pardon (i.e., justified), the punishment simply goes away; it is withdrawn. That person’s punishment doesn’t have to be meted out onto someone else to keep things fair. Forgiveness is, by nature, unfair.
.. his all seems to me to be the HEART of the Gospel. God’s wrath is no longer something a Christian will face because the Son took it on himself for us. That makes the good news SO GOOD. That is why grace is so amazing. We are so sinful and utterly inept to change our present state that we need a Savior to die on our behalf and be that sacrifice that we could never be for ourselves.
.. The idea that an almighty God cannot simply forgive the sin of a repentant believer until he vents his anger onto another member of the Trinity seems to many to diminish rather than heighten his holiness.
Now, I agree that it is very good news indeed that no one has to face the wrath of God, if they trust in Christ to exchange their sin for his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Praise God! And yes, this is at the HEART of the gospel. But precisely HOW God goes about doing that is not the heart of the gospel and is not proclaimed in Scripture. And so on this matter I think it is best to heed the apostle Paul’s warning: “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). As I pointed out in my blog post, why should any of us object to proclaiming the gospel the way the first Christians did in the book of Acts and elsewhere?
.. I’m suggesting, along with a growing number of Christians, that this popular atonement theory has very weak biblical support.
.. Jesus died the death of a sinner, his cry on the cross was not Father, Father why are you killing me, but why have you forsaken me
Isaiah 53: 5th Gospel
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.