Can I Ask That? – Part Fourteen – Why Did Jesus Die Upon the Cross?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%202%3A13-15&version=NIV
Head/Mind –
The Bible uses metaphors/word pictures to describe what Jesus did for us on the Cross. It doesn’t give us a mechanical explanation of how the work of salvation was accomplished. Instead, it provides words, pictures, and windows by which we can see some of what was done for us. The New Testament uses more than 19 of these word pictures but focuses on about five of them.
Over the next two thousand years, the church would focus most of its attention on these five-word pictures.
1. The Recapitulation Theory, or what I like to talk about as Jesus’ infusing us with new life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory_of_atonement
2. The Christus Victor Theory/Ransom Theory is about Jesus breaking the hold of evil over our lives. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/christus-victor/. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransom_theory_of_atonement
3. The Penal Theory is about how Jesus’ death satisfies the wrath of God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransom_theory_of_atonement
4. The Satisfaction Theory is about Jesus paying the full price of our salvation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement
5. The Moral Influence Theory, or what I would call focusing on the example of love set for us on the Cross, which we will leave till last. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_influence_theory_of_atonement
We are going to look at each, searching for what they tell us about the reason Jesus died on the Cross. We will also look at the distortion caused if we push these word pictures beyond their Biblical intent.
Heart – The Personal Connection
1. Recapitulation and the Gift of New Life
The Book of Romans calls Jesus the New Adam. As the new Adam, Jesus succeeded where Adam failed. Adam and the human race fell short of God’s calling, by failing to live a genuinely human life that reflects the image and advances the reign of God in the world. Jesus completed the mission and made it possible for us to become something new.
This means that it is not just the moment of Jesus’ death on the Cross that brings us salvation. Instead, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection bring salvation. Jesus restores the human race and offers to share this redeemed life with us, infusing us with eternal life. This idea has become somewhat easier to understand with the advent of twenty-first century medicine.
For the last decade of my grandfather’s life, he lived with leukemia. A part of what that meant was that he relied on regular transfusions of blood to keep him alive. That meant that he depended on the generosity of other people. He lived because they gave him the gift of life. Without that gift, my grandfather’s life would have been much shorter.
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Jeremiah 17:9 – Good News Translation
“Who can understand the human heart? There is nothing else so deceitful; it is too sick to be healed.”
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#Jeremiah17
Most of us visit our primary care providers, expecting them to be able to keep us healthy. Unfortunately, this expectation sometimes borders on magical thinking. We think that there will always be something that can be done, a pill that can be prescribed, or a treatment that will keep us getting sick, no matter how poorly we have cared for our bodies or how old we are.
We are never ready to hear the doctor say, “There is nothing else we can do.” Most of us can barely conceive of the ideathat our bodies will someday fail. Yet, for the more than 100,000 Americans who are currently on the waiting list for a lifesaving organ transplant, this fact is a looming reality they face every day. Another name is added to the national transplant waiting list every 9 minutes.
On average, 17 people die every day from the lack of available organs for transplant. Yet, one deceased doner can save up to eight lives through organ donation and can save and enhance more than 75 lives through the lifesaving healing gift of tissue donation.
Information is taken from http://www.Americantransplantfoundation.org http://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/
On the http://organdoner.gov/ site, I was able to read the stories of organ recipients and the stories offamilies that decided to allow their tragedies to become a chance of new life for someone else.
But here is the thing about organ donations. The donor has to be healthy at the time of their demise. You don’t want an organ coming from someone with Hepatitis C, HIV, or cancer. Only a healthy donor can give the gift of life.
Jesus can share the gift of life with us because he is life, and his life is untainted by sin. And, by living the human life to completion, God made it possible for him to redeem it from top to bottom, from beginning to end, and to share that life with us.
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The prophet Ezekiel saw a day coming when the Messiah would give his people a heart transplant. Here is how he said it: #
Ezekiel 36:24-29
New International Version
“For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.”
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Through the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the giving of the Holy Spirit, Jesus places a living heart in the chests of spiritually dead men, women, and children. And, we stay alive and vibrant by means of regular infusions of life from Jesus. Here is how he says it:
#newHeart
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John 15:1-5. #John15
New International Version
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
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The Ransom Theory – Our Rescue from Evil
In 1 John 3:8 , we find out that the reason Jesus came into the world was to destroy the work of the devil. Without this being done, we would have been slaves to the forces of evil forever. We would have been powerless to become free.
At its heart, the story of salvation is a rescue mission. When Jesus sought to explain why it was necessary for him to dieupon the Cross, his explanation came in the form of a meal, what we call the Last Supper. Celebrating the Jewish Passover with his closest followers, Jesus pointed to the Exodus as the key to understanding his mission. The Exodus was the original rescue mission.
The members of Abraham’s family were the chosen people, the vessel through which God would bless the world. But their story took an unusual turn, and they ended up becoming slaves in the foreign land of Egypt. There, they groaned under the heavy hand of Pharaoh for nearly four centuries. The Exodus is the story about God setting his people free to serve the LORD in their own land. The Passover meal commemorates that event. What Jesus did that night was an even greater act of deliverance. He was about to undertake the rescue, not of one people, but of the entire world.
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Colossians 1:3-14 #colossians1
New Revised Standard Version
In our prayers for you, we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. Thisyou learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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From the Wikipedia entry for Rescue and Recovery Effort After The September 11 Attacks on the World Trade Center (edited)
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center elicited a large response of local emergency and rescue personnel to assist in the evacuation of the two towers, resulting in a large loss of the same personnel when the towers collapsed.
Firefighters from the NYFD were on site by 8:50 a.m. By 9:00 a.m., shortly before the second tower was hit, a command center was established, and a general call was made for all available responders, on duty or off duty, to make their way to the World Trade Center. Though several command posts were set up away from the two towers, several of the department’s chiefs remained in the lobbies of the buildings to direct operations, which were primarily focused on sending firefighters up to assist people who were trapped in elevators and elsewhere.
Emergency medical technicians, medical personnel, and volunteer hospital and ambulance corps began arriving by 8:53 a.m. and immediately began setting up five triage areas where medical needs could be assessed.
NYPD dispatched police emergency service units and began assisting with operations, including facilitating the evacuation of 5,000 civilians from Lower Manhattan.
The Coast Guard and its auxiliary helped evacuate between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people, making it the largest maritime evacuation ever conducted in the United States, surpassing the nine-day evacuation of Dunkirk, conducted by the British.
That day, 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics), 60 police officers, 8 EMTs, and one patrolman died to bring others to safety. Hundreds of other emergency personnel would later develop cancer, lung disease, and other ailments due to their involvement in the evacuations.
What shocks me most is that these brave men and women did not know the people they died to save. I can imagine running into a burning building to save my wife or the life of one of my children. After all, greater love has no one other than the love it takes to lay down our life for a friend or loved one. That I can imagine, but to die for a stranger? That I find a little harder to conceive.
#rescue. #recovery
Surely, many of those who were rescued were terrific, innocent people. But some may have been white-collar criminals who spent their office time robbing the accounts of little old ladies or embezzling funds from their company. A few of them may have been terrible people. But to the emergency personnel, it didn’t matter. Each life mattered, no matter what. This fact makes me think of something the apostle Paul once said:
“Indeed, rarely will anyone die willingly for an upstanding person, though perhaps someone might be willing to die for a deeply good person. But God proves his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:7-8
Jesus Christ, the light of the world, stepped down into the darkness of this fallen, broken world so that he might rescue the human race. What God did for the Hebrew people in the Exodus was just a sign of the greater rescue mission he would conduct on behalf of the world. That is what we mean when we speak of being saved. We mean that God has rescued us from the death of sin.
Left on its course, this world and all of its inhabitants were careening toward physical extinction and spiritual damnation. We were marching toward an eternity without God. But God, rich in mercy, came to our rescue.
Some may have been more aware of that rescue than others. Some of Jesus’ followers were pulled from situations worse than any towering inferno. Some were pulled out of lives of addiction and brokenness. Others were rescued from lives of despair and meaninglessness. Still, others were carried away by such dysfunction and wickedness that it defies any easy description. But all who know Jesus have been rescued from something.
Some of us did not initially know that we needed to be rescued. Some of us, like the educated, well-dressed workers,white-collar workers in the World Trade Center, had no idea that someone would have to come and pull us from the clutches of disaster. So comfortable, so distracted, so blissfully ignorant were we that we could not imagine what it would have been like to enter into an eternity without God. Jesus mounted his rescue mission for those who knew they were lost and for those who had no clue.
But this rescue mission did not come without a cost. Like the emergency workers on 9/11, Jesus rushed into a disaster to pull us out. And his efforts cost him the ultimate price. He exchanged his life for our own.
The Penal Theory – or, How Jesus satisfies the wrath of God.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” – Romans 5:8-9
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Till on that Cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on him was laid —
Here in the death of Christ I live. ([In Christ Alone] https://www.gettymusic.com/in-christ-alone
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#wrathofGod. #cross. #romansfive
If you are looking for something warm and fuzzy to read, this is not it. This article is for those who like robust theology. It is not for the faint of heart.
Something is wrong with the world. Something is badly wrong. The Cross is the sign that God thinks there is something is wrong with the world.. The Cross tells us that. One of the Biblical ways of talking about this is to speak of God’s wrath.But, unlike human wrath, we are not talking about God being emotionally unstable when speaking of God’s wrath. Neither are we talking about a supercharged emotional state – though we are certainly talking about God’s passionate stand against sin and his fervent commitment to the redemption of creation.
At the Cross, God went to war. And, in the broken body of Jesus, we see the victory of God on display (see Colossians 2:13-15). Unfortunately, the human eye has trouble seeing the defeated enemy, which collectively is sin, death, and evil. All we see is the broken form of Jesus. Thus, we tend to draw all of the wrong conclusions about what happened on Calvary, especially as it pertains to the wrath of God. Some well-meaning Christians think that a vengeful God was so angry that he had to kill someone in order to be able to love the world. In this view, the Cross becomes a cosmic case of Child abuse. Such an interpretation gets us into some very murky water. #colossians This misunderstanding confuses our understanding of God and creates a division within the Trinity, with a meek and mild Jesus trying to pacify a vengeful, angry father. That is not what we believe. It is because God loved the world that he gave his son. The giving of Jesus was an act of self-giving. And the Father and Son work together for our salvation. When we speak of God’swrath, we mean that God cannot simply overlook sin and that he finds it so terrible and repulsive that he is willing to go to any lengths to deal with it once and for all.
When I was a child, my parents took it upon themselves to help a young man break his addiction to cocaine. However, before I describe what happened, I need to tell the reader that in the early 1980s, rural western Kentucky did not have many drug rehab centers none of which the working poor could afford. Tom (not his real name) was so badly addicted that his life quickly turned into a nightmare. Young as he was, he was already starting to have serious health problems, hewas in debt to some nasty people, he was in danger of losing his job, and worse, from his point of view, he was in danger of losing his girlfriend that he loved. He sought the help of my parents, and my mom and dad agreed to help him.
He moved into our home, only going to work when he was not at our house. The first week or two were rough but not bad. The next three or four were terrible. Tom went through all of the worst side effects of withdrawal, including sweats, vomiting, convulsions, wildly fluctuating emotions, and hallucinations. Though my parents tried to shield us from most of it, my siblings and I still caught a few glimpses. At one point, Tom was punching the telephone pole in our backyard, screaming, crying, and shaking. My father, a quiet, strong man, held Tom as he fell to his knees and wretched for hours.
Tom was spent emotionally, mentally, and physically when it was finally over. He looked like a defeated man – but he wasn’t. Instead, he was a victorious man who had just beaten a terrible, invisible foe called addiction. Looks can be deceiving.
When we look at Calvary, we see the broken body of Jesus. We see the infinite Son of God, who emptied himself for our sake. He looks like a defeated man, maybe even a defeated God – but he wasn’t. He was and is victorious, having won the victory of God over a terrible, invisible foe. Oh, how looks can be deceiving. God’s wrath was not aimed at Jesus. It was aimed at sin and death. And on that Cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.
The Satisfaction Theory – Jesus Paid It All
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
He also says:
“For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for/because of our sins according to the Scriptures.” – 1 Corinthians 15:3. #1corinthians15
In his book, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, Kenneth E. Bailey talks about what it means for Jesus to pay the price for/because of our sins. #KennethEBailey
The grave danger in much popular reflection on the atonement relates to the introduction of a third party. The theory, in its simplest form, is as follows: God is angry over sin, and he could justly punish us. But Jesus enters the picture and takes the punishment for us. So far, so good. In this sense, Jesus is rightly understood as the substitute for us. But is Jesus a third party? Is God the Father a separate God from God the Son?
Is Jesus, the good God, rescuing us from the evil God? No. Paul writes, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He also wrote, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). There is no third party. God is the one who acts in Christ out of love to reconcile us to himself. There is no split in the heart of God, with God the Father opposing God the Son.
[Therefore, whatever else it might mean for Jesus to pay the price for our sins, our interpretation must not make it sound like there is conflict within the Trinity. John 3:16 does not say, “For God was angry at the world that he needed to kill Jesus in order to be able to love the world.” No! It says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Ken Bailey goes on to offer this story:]. #john3
A mother (who has a young son named Johnny is preparing to host a social gathering for some of her friends. In her kitchen-dining room, she spreads a tablecloth over the table and places a large glass pitcher of lemonade on top of it. She tells her son, “Johnny, don’t pull on the table cloth because if you do, the pitcher will fall on you, and you will get hurt.” As soon as her back is turned, Johnny grabs the tablecloth and starts pulling. Mom looks over her shoulder and sees the pitcher of lemonade about to crash down on Johnny’s unprotected head. Mom experiences a flash of deep disappointment and anger as she says to herself, If Johnny had only listened to me, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Note: The story has three possible endings.
Ending 1: Mom is mad. Her anger drives her to rush across the room, grab the pitcher of lemonade and say: “Johnny, I told you not to pull on the table cloth. Now you take this. (She dumps the lemonade on Johnny’s head).
Ending 2: A third actor in the drama is introduced. This third actor is Billy, Johnny’s older brother. Billy is in the next room working on his homework. Mom is again mad. She rushes across the room, grabs the pitcher, and in anger, says to Johnny, “Johnny, I should dump this on you because you deserve it for disobeying. But if I do, you will catch a cold.”
In a loud voice, she shouts over her shoulder, “Billy!”
Billy enters the room, and mother dumps the lemonade on Billy and then says to Johnny, “See what you made me do?”
Feeling very guilty, Johnny crawls under the table and starts crying.
[Note: This is the third-party version of the substitutionary theory of atonement.]
Ending 3: Mom notices that the pitcher of lemonade is about to fall on Johnny’s head. Her anger at his disobedience does not lessen the intensity of her love for him. She reprocesses that anger into grace and rushes across the room. Just as she reaches the table, the pitcher begins to fall, and she quickly knocks it aside. The pitcher shatters, and mother sustains a deep cut in her arm. Her arm begins to bleed profusely. She quickly grabs the towel that is across her shoulder and winds it tightly around her arm. Blood continues to soak through the towel and drip onto the floor.
Johnny is crying because he sees his mother getting hurt for him, and he knows it is his fault.
In this third ending, there is no Billy in the next room. Mom reaches out to the frightened child and says quietly, “It’s all right, Johnny. I love you anyway, and I forgive you. It’s okay. In three days, I will be able to take off this ugly bandage, and my arm will heal.”
In Mom’s all-encompassing embrace, and with the sound of Mom’s words of forgiveness penetrating his consciousness, Johnny’s guilt melts away, and with it, his will to disobey her. He knows Mom got hurt for him, and she still loves him. There is no third party. Mom gets hurt for Johnny, but there is no Billy in the next room. Johnny’s disobedience makes it inevitable that someone will get hurt. Mom chooses to endure that suffering in place of Johnny, but her focus is on redemption, not on the penalty.
Johnny now realizes that mom’s initial admonition to leave the tablecloth alone was not an arbitrary exercise of will. There was no “you do what I say because I say so!” Mom’s will was an exercise of love for Johnny. Given the realities of glass pitchers, tables, little boys, and the force of gravity, mom’s law was an expression of her love. Johnny only discovers the depth of that love when he sees Mom knock the pitcher aside and sustain a cut in her arm for him. Witnessing that costly love changes Johnny.
Bailey, Kenneth E., Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, 2011, Intervarsity Press. Pages 433-435, edited.
God’s love for us was and is costly love. And, anyone who has ever loved someone deeply knows that love always costs something. We see this in the Old Testament. In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham. We read in verses 9 – 10. #genesis15. #God’sLove
“So the Lord said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and young pigeon. Abraham brought all these to him, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other, the birds; however, he did not cut in half.”
Now, this may sound very strange, but it would not have seemed strange to Abraham. Whenever a weaker party entered into an agreement with a superior party, a contract called a Suzerainty Covenant would be enacted. To initiate the covenant, a ceremony would take place in which all of the benefits and obligations of the covenant would be proclaimed. The stronger party would then read out all the punishments that would be inflicted on the weaker party if they did not live up to their end of the agreement. The weaker party would be first to walk between the severed animals, implying that their fate would be met out on the one walking through them if they did not uphold their end of the bargain. #abraham. #suzeraintycovenant
By the way, this part of the ceremony was known as the blood path. The covenant was literally being sealed in blood. The stronger party would be second to walk the blood path.
All of this would have made perfect sense to Abraham. What would have surprised him, and what should have surprised us, is that God did not have Abraham walk through the blood path. Instead, Abraham waits and waits and waits until he finally falls asleep. We read about what happened next, starting in verse seventeen:
“When the sun had set, and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham.”
Rabbi Marty Solomon makes this comment: The Lord says, I’ll walk the blood path on behalf of both of us. I know that you cannot uphold your end of the bargain. Therefore, I’ll pay the price and uphold both ends of the agreement. #martysolomon. #bloodpath
Take another example from the Old Testament. For centuries, animals were offered on the altar as a sin offering. Over the course of centuries, millions upon millions of animals were offered up at a staggering price. I know that this fact, brothers, those of you who have a soft spot in your heart for animals, and it should. However, I think that it needs to be stated that ancient Jews were not callous about the life of an animal. Yes, they felt no guilt about eating meat, but that does not mean that they did not care at all about the animals they owned.
For starters, ancient Hebrews lived with their animals. They did not go to the grocery store for their food. Instead, they worked the ground and lived with the animals they raised for food and clothing. There was no detachment between the average person and their food. And, meat was consumed less often in the ancient world because of the cost. All of this would have made the cost of animal sacrifice very palpable to an ancient Israelite. And over the centuries, this daily practice at the Temple reminded the Hebrew people of the high cost of salvation. But here is what the book of #hebrews Hebrews says:
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Hebrews 10
Selected Verses
“Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered since the worshipers, cleansed once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sin year after year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to takeaway sins.
Jesus abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering, again and again, the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”
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Love is costly. Ask any parent. Ask any lover. If you love deeply and long enough, it will cost you something to love another. And it cost God deeply to love us and he bore the cost in his own body. #Jesuspaiditall
In 1865, Elvina M. Hall wrote these lyrics: “Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe: sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.”
Hands – The Practical Application
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_influence_theory_of_atonement
John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends.”
Jesus’ love shines as an example for us. We seek to love with a full, self-giving love. And we seek to worship God in response to his love.