10/4/23
On Sunday, I quoted one of my favorite writers, N.T. Wright about the meaning of the death of Jesus. Wright said, “When Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, a model, a metaphor, or any other such thing; he gave them a meal – a Passover meal.”
But those who follow Jesus didn’t stop with the meal . . . over the centuries there have developed somewhere between 3 and 7 (depending on who you read) theories about what the atonement of Jesus means. The main ones are (and these are going to be MAJOR over-simplifications):
The Moral Influence theory – Jesus Christ came and died in order to bring about a positive change to humanity.
The Ransom theory – Jesus’ death on the cross was a ransom paid either to Satan or to God the Father, satisfying the debt on the souls of the human race we inherited from Adam’s original sin.
The Satisfaction theory – Jesus died in order to pay back the injustice of human sin and to satisfy the justice of God.
The Penal-Substitution theory – Jesus is punished (penal) in the place of sinners (substitution) in order to satisfy the justice of God and the legal demand of God to punish sin. In the light of Jesus’ death, God can now forgive the sinner because Jesus Christ has been punished in the place of the sinner.
Christus Victor (Christ is the Conqueror) – Jesus died to defeat the powers of evil (sin, death, and the devil) in order to free mankind from their bondage.
If you ask me which one I believe, I’ll say “yes,” because I believe there’s at least an element of truth in each – like the facets on a many sided-diamond. But as you could probably tell from Sunday’s sermon, I really lean into Christus Victor, and believe anything else flows out of that.
Now. How much of this do we need to know to be saved?
A conservative Anglican scholar from a previous generation, John Wenham, was lecturing on the theories of the atonement. He laid them beautifully and clearly out for all to hear and at the conclusion someone asked him, “How much of this does somebody have to believe in order to be saved?” And Wenham said, “Very little. Something about the love of God, Jesus dying, reaching out with love and forgiveness.”
It’s not so much a question of how as it is a question of Who. Once we have that, then we are free to explore it all we like.
For a certain strain of believers, salvation comes through giving assent to a list of doctrines. If you believe the list, you are saved. I grew up with people like that – people who believed we are justified by faith by believing in justification by faith.
We are not – we are justified by believing in Jesus. Think about the woman who had the issue of blood. She believed that if she could touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, she would be healed – and she was! Now, afterwards, she may have come to one of the disciples and asked him, “How does this work?” and the disciple would have taken her back to Isaiah 53, “and with his stripes we are healed,” or something, but she didn’t start there. She touched the hem of his garment, and that was enough.
I’ve written about this before, but it’s probably good to be reminded that the Greek word for faith or belief is pistis, but that’s not all pistis means. It also means the loyalty, faithfulness and allegiance that grows out of our belief . . . but it begins with our belief.
I have a young friend who is working on his license to be a skydiving instructor. I know him, know his work ethic, know his drive and ambition, and fully believe he knows what he’s doing.
Do I believe in him enough to jump out of a plane with him? Maybe . . . there’s believing and then there’s BELIEVING.
Faith is the life that begins with our belief that Jesus is Lord - belief gets us in the door, but it doesn’t stop there. It includes the sort of loyalty we see in John 11, when Jesus says he’s going back to Jerusalem, and the disciples say, “Waitaminute – they want to kill you,” but Thomas says, “Ok, let’s go so that we can die with him.”
That’s the sort of tenacious allegiance that says, “I don’t understand it, but if this is where Jesus is going, I’m going with him.” We might call Thomas “Doubting Thomas,” but there’s a lot of faith in that!
But this life of belief, loyalty, allegiance and faithfulness begins with a Person who loves us and our response to him and his love.
Back in 1962, the renowned neo-orthodox theologian, Karl Barth, spoke on the campus of the University of Chicago. During the Q & A time, a student asked Karl Barth if he could summarize his theology in a single sentence. As the story goes, Barth responded by saying, "In the words of a song I learned at my mother's knee: 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'"
That’s it. There you have it. Feel free to explore it from there.