the At-one-ment |
|
| Comments(8) |
For a long time I’ve had questions about the atonement (how Christ makes us at-one with God). The simple black and white approach many evangelicals take towards the atonement has been off-putting to say the least. Thinking about and studying the atonement really only leaves me with more questions and a deeper mystery, not more certainty. Many Christians approach the atonement; God made Christ died on the cross for me because this was the only way for me to have my sins forgiven. That approach (which dips heavily into the penal substitution model) cannot be the whole story and perhaps isn’t any part of the story.
What seems clear is that somehow the cross is intimately tied to our salvation. But how?
Some think that God was offended by our sin, and his wrath had to go somewhere. Like a grenade with it’s pin thrown away, there was no turning back, someone had to die and Jesus either voluntarily takes the brunt of God’s wrath, or God forces Jesus to. Besides the problems these pose to a Trinitarian theology they seem so contrived and tied to a feudal understanding of honor and offense (although many disagree). But seriously, this seems to put a system of honor and offense over and above God as something he couldn’t control. Perhaps by biggest problem with this approach is the lack of gravity given to Christ’s life, as it quickly becomes a means to an end. And in this tradition we get quotes like Mel Gibson’s tag-line to The Passion of the Christ – “He Came to Die.” Thus it is really easy for those in this camp to write off Christ’s humility and non-violence as not a part of his eternal character, but merely the best and quickest way to “get crucified” since that’s what his whole life was about anyway.
Another approach seems to go off-course in the other direction. Some Christians want to take Christ’s life and teaching very seriously (as we all should) but make his reconciling work between us and God just about being a role model and dispenser of wisdom, so salvation is really about the quality of your response to this prophetic information. In this (as well as the previous) model it doesn’t really matter whether or not Jesus was actually human. The first boils down to God committing suicide and then calling things with you good again. The latter comes down to your response the truth that Christ preached.
Yet another model says that Christ won a victory over evil/satan either by paying a ransom to the devil (as if the devil and not God had the final say on creation) or by defeating the power of death in his own crucifixion and resurrection (as he no doubt did).
I don’t think that any of these work by themselves (and most thinking Christians agree), but I’m not so sure that I like the hodge-podge of take the best from this and leave the worst from that I’ve seen either. And I’m sure that this will continue to be a mystery, but I’ve still got some questions. So please feel free to jump in the conversation.
Is there really anything specific about Jesus getting crucified that saves you?
Does the incarnation play a major role in our redemption? That is, does Jesus taking on our human bodies and our fallen nature matter in his reconciling work? Does Jesus make reconciliation possible by cleansing and redeeming us by becoming like us?
If so, what role does the Crucifixion play? How does that work towards our reconciliation, or is it just that Jesus had to experience death to redeem it, and therefore could have died of disease or old age?
What about Christ’s radical obedience to God? Does radical obedience to God inevitably end in death/martyrdom anyway, thus tying the incarnation and crucifixion together as part of the same reconciling act?
I’ve got some hunches, but I want to hear your thoughts.
This is the first year that I’ve really become immersed in the Lenten drama from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. I have previously participated in Lent by fasting and prayer, but this year for the first time, I was truly drawn into the drama of the Christian calendar. This is in large part due to the growing role of the Christian calendar in my own teaching as a youth pastor as well as the growing importance of the Christian calendar in my own spiritual formation.
Summer has arrived in a big and sudden way! Next month we’ll probably get snow.
Today is Palm Sunday, the day in the Christian calendar when we mark Christ’s