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HOUSMAIL HM128 20
March 2008 WHAT
JESUS SAID ABOUT THE ATONEMENT Properly
understood, "The Atonement" is meant to provide a "covering"
for our sins, and reconcile us to God, and to each other. That lies at the very
heart of the teaching of Jesus, especially in his "Two Greatest Commandments"
(Matthew 22:36-40) and
in the Sermon on the Mount. People who are reconciled to God live in obedience
to the teaching of Jesus. If it has not done that for us, we do not yet understand
the Atonement. Down
through the centuries countless thousands of pages have been written on the subject.
All too often the simpler believers seem to get lost in the maze of words, and
simply stop reading. Take heart! You are in good company! (1 Corinthians 1:27-28) I think Jesus had us
in mind when, in the Gospels, He never ventured into any of those long complicated
"expositions". He preached a Gospel which offered salvation without
them! Indeed,
have you noticed that Jesus never once used the word "Atonement"? For
Him the very first word in the Gospel was "REPENT"! (Matthew 4:17) It is practical and radical
repentance turning away from sin to practice holiness which results in reconciliation
with God. NOTHING LESS! You don't need a PhD. to understand that it "works"
and has achieved its goal FOR US when we begin to love Jesus and obey His commandment
to "love one another as I have loved you". (John 15:12) And that can be done without any of those complicated "Atonement
theories" worked out by the "scholars"! That
said though, Jesus did talk about his death in relation to our salvation. When
He did it was in the simplest of terms, and all contained in a few verses. He
spoke about:
And that's it! Just a few short word pictures designed to help
us understand that he sacrificed His life to save ours BECAUSE HE LOVED US. In what
follows we shall refer often to the fact that Jesus said that the reason for His
sacrificial death was "for the remission of sins". We needed remission
of our sins to save us from the penalty we had incurred for our sins. However
we must never lose sight of the Gospel's uncompromising accompanying call to repentance.
The sacrificial death of Jesus cannot save us from anything if it stands alone.
To receive the free pardon which it has made possible we must meet the conditions
on which the pardon is offered. To qualify for pardon, we must each make our own
personal confession of our sins, repent, be baptised for remission of our sins,
and turn away from sin to pursue HOLINESS "without which no man shall see
the Lord" (Hebrew 12:14) 1.
LOVE IN ACTION A MAN LAYING DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS. "This is my commandment, That ye love one another,
as I have loved you. Those
words, spoken to His disciples at the "last supper" on the night before
His crucifixion, are perhaps the most significant of the few that Jesus spoke
about "The Atonement". This is love in action! It tells us WHY the Atonement
happened. It tells us WHAT it was meant to achieve. It tells us HOW it was done.
And it tells us WHAT is expected of us now that our friend has laid down His life
for us. Why
did we need Him to do that? We sinned and were under sentence of death. Jesus
is the Saviour who LOVED US enough to save us from that by dying FOR US. Now that
He has saved us from our death sentence we are required to live in obedience to
that same sacrificial love for one another. It isn't
easy for men to live that way! Almost beyond all that we can ask or think, says
Paul. But it isn't impossible! We are PROMISED that we CAN "know the love
of God which surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness
of God!" (Ephesians 3:14-20) This
is no ordinary love to which we are called. There is NOTHING NOTHING AT ALL
which can quench it .... not rejection .... not reviling or mocking or false
accusation .... not spitting in His face ..... not plucking the beard from His
face ..... not the buffeting and bruising which marred his visage beyond recognition
..... not placing that fearsome crown of thorns on His head ..... not flogging
the skin from His back ..... not even nailing Him unjustly to a Roman cross. Nothing
nothing in this life; nothing in all creation; nothing for all eternity; can
ever make this man, or the God who is His Father, cease from loving us. (Romans 8:38-39) THAT
is the love which Jesus calls US to. And once we find it, it can never be quenched
for all eternity. 2.
A GOOD SHEPHERD DEFENDING HIS FLOCK FROM THE WOLF "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd
giveth his life for the sheep." (John 10:11) In John 10:1-16 Jesus pictures His mission
as that of a good shepherd defending his flock from a wolf. In the process the
shepherd loses his life, but the flock are saved from the wolf and none of them
is lost. We live and are safe because He died. Of course
this cannot be referring to our "natural death", which we still experience.
It must be referring to death of a different kind the death penalty for sin
the "second death" from which he HAS saved us by dying for us on
the cross. He has
saved us from "the wolf" by taking upon Himself a "death penalty"
which HE did not deserve, to set us free from one which WE did deserve. 3.
A GRAIN OF CORN "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone:
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John 12:24) Jesus
is the single "grain of corn" who surrenders his own life to bring forth
a harvest of many like Himself. In the
parable in Matthew 13:30, corn
has been changed to wheat, but the message is the same. The crop has been sown
in all the world and is growing. At the Resurrection the "wheat" from
the harvest will be gathered "into the barn". (Matthew 13:30) Because
Jesus has died to give us life, we will not be burnt with the "tares"
at the judgement. We will live for ever! 4.
A BRASS SERPENT "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of man be lifted up". (John 3:14) Jesus
here points us back to an Old Testament story in which God sent "fiery serpents"
amongst the Israelites as a punishment for their complaining against Him. (Numbers 21:5-9) Many
died. But when the people confessed their sin and asked for deliverance, God told
Moses to make a serpent of brass, and set it up on a
pole. Any who had been bitten were able to "behold" the brass serpent
and live, instead of dying. (Numbers 21:9) Of course it ought to be obvious that merely looking at the brass
serpent was only part of the story. It needed to be accompanied by the repentance
which led to God providing it as the means of healing. (Numbers 21:7) When
Jesus took that story and applied it to Himself, we are left in no doubt that
the "lifting up" he had in mind was His crucifixion! You can easily
use your concordance to check that the same Greek word for "lifted up"
is used in John 12:32-33. "If I be lifted
up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me. The
message is simple. We need to "behold" Jesus "lifted up" on
the cross in order to be healed from the otherwise fatal "bite" of sin.
And of course, as John tells us, "healing" requires more than mere "looking".
It also requires BELIEF. And that means belief in everything about Jesus who
he is, what he said, what he commands us to do, and what he offers in return for
our repentance and lifelong growth in obedience to His commandments. There
is no need to complicate this story as some do, with speculative "types and
antitypes" about the symbolic meanings of the "serpent" and the
"brass". Especially meanings which refer to them as symbols of Jesus
being afflicted with some sort of "serpent like nature", or "inherited
condemnation", or "curse", merely because he was born with a normal
human body exactly like ours. Taken at simple face value, there is NOTHING about
any of that in what Jesus said. Nor is it found anywhere else in the Scriptures. Let
us concentrate on what Jesus DID say about the brass serpent not on what He
did NOT say. And reading at that level, the message is simple. He died on the
cross to save us from the death we had incurred as a penalty for our sin. If by
believing in Him, we repent from our sins, we will be saved from that death. 5.
THE BREAD OF LIFE MANNA FROM HEAVEN When
Jesus invited his disciples to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to live
for ever, many took offence and left Him. (John
6:66) Of course
they had misunderstood. It wasn't literal flesh and blood He was talking about.
It was His WORDS. (John 6:63) We need to feast upon (hear and believe) His words about the flesh
that was crucified, and the blood that was shed to save us from the penalty of
our sin. And we need to feast upon His words about the way of life he practised,
that made his REAL flesh and blood a perfect sacrificial offering for our sins.
And when those words are translated into action they will keep us "spiritually
alive" in this life and guarantee us eternal life in the Age to Come, instead
of death at the Judgment. 6.
DRINKING FROM A CUP THE CUP OF SALVATION. (Matthew 26:39-42) In Matthew 26:39, Matthew 20:22, Mark 10:39, Jesus spoke about "drinking
a cup" in a way which makes it clear that was referring to His death on the
cross. It seems
more than likely that it was a figure of speech taken from Psalm 116:13. "I will take
the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the LORD." His
death on the cross was "the cup of our salvation". He "drank"
it to save us from the penalty of our sin so that at the judgement we could have
eternal life instead of death. 7.
HIS BLOOD SHED FOR REMISSION OF OUR SINS. (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20) This
statement by Jesus is firmly grounded in the Old Testament ritual of animal sacrifice.
When people sinned, and repented, they expressed their contrition by sacrificing
an animal a bullock, a goat, a ram, a goat, or a lamb. Before killing the animal
they were to lay their hand on its head as a token of identification. (Leviticus 4:29) By this they confessed
that they had sinned and were worthy of death. The death of the lamb was a graphic
illustration of the death which THEY deserved for THEIR sin. But in the forbearance
and mercy of God, the lamb died and they lived. Jesus
uses that picture to describe His own death for remission of our sins. The animal
in the Old Testament was only a prophetic symbol of Jesus. According to John the
Baptist, Jesus was the REAL "lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world". (John 1:29, John 1:36) Jesus died for our sins
and we have been pardoned. We identify ourselves with His sacrificial death
as our own personal "lamb of God" when we are baptised. 8.
HIS BLOOD SHED TO SEAL A COVENANT. (Matthew
26:28, Mark
14:24, Luke
22:20) In Old
Testament times it was customary for men making a covenant (contract) to "seal"
it by offering an animal sacrifice. Jesus
refers to His own death in that same Jewish idiom. God wants to make an everlasting
covenant with us. Jesus is the sacrifice which placed Gods "seal" (signature)
on the covenant. These are the terms of the covenant: "I will put my laws into their mind and write
them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying,
Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will
be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will
I remember no more." (Jeremiah 31:33-34, Hebrews 8:10-12) The
death of Jesus is God's guarantee of his commitment to the covenant. We make our
own commitment to the covenant through repentance and baptism. 9.
A SACRIFICIAL "RANSOM" PAID BY JESUS FOR OUR RELEASE FROM SLAVERY TO
SIN "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45) "Ransom"
is a price paid for the release of a captive. The
price paid for our release from captivity to sin, was the life of Jesus, freely
surrendered in exchange for ours. (Matthew 26:28; 1 Peter 1:18-19) SUBSTITUTION? The
word "substitute" does not appear on the lips of Jesus in our English
versions. In this article, I don't want to complicate things with a lesson in
Greek. But if you want to check it out for yourself with a Concordance you can
easily find that Jesus did use a word in this context, (Greek "anti")
for which one of the common meanings is "instead of". Sufficient to
say here that "SUBSTITUTION" is certainly implied in the concept of
"ransom". Jesus "RANSOMED" us by sacrificing His life to save
ours. But
how can that be? It is obvious that Jesus has NOT saved us from experiencing "natural
death", "mortality", "the common death of all mankind". (Numbers 16:29) When their bodies wear out, believers with mortal bodies still
die in exactly the same way as unbelievers. It is NOT related to whether or not
we sin. Even a child which dies at birth without ever committing any sin, experiences
that death. The death that is the consequence of sin is the "second death"
at the judgment. There
is of course a sense in which Jesus has saved us all, saints, and sinners alike,
by exercising God's forbearance towards us in this life. (Romans 3:25, Act 17:30) We are all in the same
position as that woman taken in adultery. Just as He did for her so also has He
done for us. "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more". (John 8:11) In a very real sense, we who had incurred a death penalty for our
sins have been given our lives back. We have been given a fresh chance to get
it right. But that is simply a postponement of judgment until it has been determined
how we will use the pardon offered. It is NOT the same as being saved from the
death penalty which will be the lot of unrepentant sinners at the judgment. We can
accept the offer of pardon, repent and be forgiven, and be "born again"
(John 3:5) to live new lives of
obedience in preparation for the kingdom of God. Or we can reject it and eventually
suffer the penalty of the "second death" in the lake of fire. (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:14) It is
that "penal second death" or "wrath to come" which Jesus died
to save us from. THINGS
JESUS DID NOT SAY 1. Jesus
did NOT say Please
I am NOT saying that Paul got it wrong! But some who try to explain Paul, certainly
do get it wrong! I do suspect that Pauls "exposition" in Romans might
be amongst the things that the Apostle Peter said were "hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction." (2 Peter 3:16 RSV)
That some have indeed twisted it and got it wrong, seems obvious from the way
many have made "religious war" on each other because they disagree about
what Paul meant. When we read Paul we would do well to remember that Jesus kept
it simple enough for "babes". (Matthew
11:25, Matthew 21:15-16, Luke 10:21) We must NOT insist on
imposing our personal "private interpretations" (2 Peter 1:20) of Paul on those "babes"
in any way which confuses and discourages them. 2. Jesus
did NOT say: "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down
of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father." (John 10:17-18) He certainly
did not need to die for any sin of His own. He never
said anything about any personal need to cleanse Himself from so called ''defilement
of flesh" or "sin nature", or a "curse" arising from
the "inherited qualities" of the human nature He was born with. He never
mentioned "original sin", either in relation to Himself or to anyone
else. Nor
did He say anything about its "look alike" which some call "Sin
in the flesh". HIS WHOLE EMPHASIS IS ON WHAT HE DID TO SAVE US! A
SIMPLE CATECHISM I suppose
I could use an impersonal "THEY", or collective "US" in this
short catechism. However I will use the first person instead because the atonement
is meant to be so very personal between each of us and God. I trust that when
each of you reads those first person pronouns, you might be able to appropriate
them to yourself as you read. This is the "short version" of what I
believe the Gospel says Jesus did for us. Q. Who
should have suffered and died on the cross? Q. Who
did suffer and die on the Cross? Q. Why
did Jesus go to the cross? Q. What
would happen to me if Jesus had not died for me? Q. What
has been achieved? If we
can answer those questions we understand the most fundamental issue of the Atonement! OTHER
THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT There
are of course many other references to the Atonement in other places in the Scriptures.
We must be careful to avoid using them in a way which goes beyond the simplicity
of what Jesus said. Outside the Scriptures there are many man made "theories"
of how it works, some of them running to hundreds of pages! How do we decide whether
or not they are "correct"? Have we got to single any one of them out
to the exclusion of all others? Maybe
those are the wrong questions! The simple bottom line of any valid "theory"
of the Atonement is that Jesus loved us enough to die FOR US to save us from the
penalty of our sins. If we lose sight of that simple fundamental issue, none of
them will "work" for us! The Cross is meant to inspire love IN US. If
it doesn't do that we will never be able to give the obedience to which the Gospel
calls us. (John 14:15, John 14:23-24) "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye
love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." It is
not open for any negotiation between us that I might not be reconciled with God,
just because you think I dont understand or agree with what you think might be
a better or more detailed explanation about the "legality" of how it
all works. I KNOW
that my faith in the cross has reconciled me to God. It has saved me from the
penalty of my sins and changed my heart towards God. What Jesus has done for me,
has given me a new vision of who God is and what God is. It has changed my attitudes
and my response to the laws of God. It has given me Eternal life! But
if you have a different theory I will not reject you on account of it! I have
learned that love must concede that, even if your own understanding of how it
worked in your case is different to mine, you may also have arrived where I am.
If you are truly reconciled with God, that will be obvious from the visible "fruit
of the spirit" growing in you, (Galatians 5:22-25) If I can see that, I dare not fail to confess you before men as
my brother in Christ, (Matthew 10:32-33) just because we differ in our understanding of the detail of how
it came to pass for each of us. Have
we "arrived"? How do we measure that? "By THIS shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have LOVE one to another". (John 13:35) Now
this has grown to about 4 1/2 pages more than what Jesus said in the Gospels!
Time to stop with one last quote from the Apostle Paul: "But far be it from me to glory except in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and
I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation." (Galatians 6:14-15) Allon |