The Good News Revisited
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Prayer Requests/Praise Reports:
Timothy’s special moments; A School grad, orders to C School in Great Lakes, April 5th to Dolgrin VA; friend is having hard time forgiving, Greg
Larry, Horton family, loss of a cousin
Mary, optometrist’s contract renewal
*Recap from , maybe read from 1:15-2:10 for new people for full context*
Who can tell me what we talked about two weeks ago?
I felt there was a heavy emphasis on the reality of the bad news, but not so much on the good news, so here is what I want to remind us in what we should be taking away from our last passage:
What we see happening in this transition between 1-3 and 4 is: Atonement.
The phrase “to make atonement” occurs frequently in the Older Testament, particularly in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The term literally means ‘at-one-ment,’ which is to say, reconciliation, the making of amends, the restoration of broken relationship.
The need for atonement comes from the heavy reality that sin has alienated humans from God, placing them subject to God’s holy hostility—that is, to God’s righteous wrath.
The constant presence of sacrificial rites throughout the OT were intended to keep the following realities always and ever before the ancient Israelites:
· The irreducible, irrepressible reality of human sin.
The irreducible, irrepressible reality of human sin.
· The irreducible, irrepressible reality of God’s holiness.
The irreducible, irrepressible reality of God’s holiness.
“We insist on legislation that guarantees zero tolerance for wife-beating, drug-trafficking, sexual exploitation of children; zero tolerance for income tax evasion and impaired driving. We insist on social policies of zero tolerance because we know in our hearts that tolerance isn’t a sign of generosity or magnanimity or large-hearted liberality. Tolerance is ultimately a sign of confusion, blindness, and spinelessness – none of which can be predicated of God. His tolerance, in the wake of our primal defiance and disobedience, would be only the shabbiest character defect in him.” ~Victor Shepherd
The reality that sin inevitably, invariably leads to death.
· The reality that sin inevitably, invariably leads to death.
The reality that sin inevitably, invariably mobilizes God’s holiness in the form of wrath.
· The reality that sin inevitably, invariably mobilizes God’s holiness in the form of wrath.
· The reality that God has graciously made provision for atonement.
The reality that God has graciously made provision for atonement.
· The reality that, with atonement, human sin is judged and God’s wrath is appeased—the result being peace (i.e. the restoration of shalom) between God and his people.
The reality that, with atonement, human sin is judged and God’s wrath is appeased—the result being peace (i.e. the restoration of shalom) between God and his people.
Two mistakes Christians typically believe and assume concerning the atonement of God provided in Christ:
First, Christians routinely attribute this atonement to the work of Christ but not to the person of Christ, thereby categorically separating the work of Christ from the person of Christ.
Second, Christians routinely attribute this atonement to the death of Christ but not to the life, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, thereby taking away the full scope and glory of our salvation.
Atonement literally means ‘at-one-ment,’ the making of amends, the restoration of broken relationship.
This doctrine speaks to the reality of both the very person of Christ and the work Christ performed in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension in order to accomplish—to merit, or earn—our reconciliation with God, something that Paul makes clear we’re not capable of in .
So for the rest of our time, I want to go into how the life, death, resurrection and ascension tie into our good news that we see Paul addressing in Ephesians 2:4-10, as Paul is clearly making a connection as to how these affect us corporately and individually (, )
Is anyone lost, have questions or thoughts at this point?
The Atoning Life of Jesus Christ: Incarnation
Jesus Christ is our very salvation because he has taken upon himself our humanity and united us to the Father. In this sense, the incarnate Christ is our salvation (; ). That is to say, salvation is someone not something, and salvation is certainly not a benefit of Christ to be had apart from Christ.
The fact that the eternal Son of God assumed our humanity is not incidental to salvation, it’s not something that happens on the side (i.e. the incarnation is not simply of historical interest, nor a mere prerequisite to the cross). Rather, it means that the Son of God has saved us by assuming us into himself.
To put this another way: Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God himself, has taken upon himself precisely that which needed to be saved: our human persons in our estrangement from God.
“What Christ did not assume he cannot heal.” ~Gregory of Nazianzus
, this is why Christ had to put on our humanity
To better grasp the atoning incarnation of Christ, one might ask: Why did the eternal Son of God, God himself, take on human flesh?
Christ took on our humanity that he might save us to the utmost, our bodies, minds, and souls—our whole persons!
Christ came in the totality of man because man’s totality needed saving.
In this regard, the church has spoken—and must continue to speak—of the vicarious humanity of Christ. He has borne unredeemed humanity in his person so that all he has done in the flesh is done precisely for our sake and for our salvation. Note well: the entirety of the fleshly existence of Christ was and is for our salvation. Thus, we are profoundly and mysteriously assumed into his existence and represented by him as he lives faithfully, blessedly, righteously, and dependently before the Father. Think of the birth of Christ, the baptism of Christ, the temptation of Christ…what are these all about?
He has borne unredeemed humanity in his person so that all he has done in the flesh is done precisely for our sake and for our salvation. Note well: the entirety of the fleshly existence of Christ was and is for our salvation.
Thus, we are profoundly and mysteriously assumed into his existence and represented by him as he lives faithfully, blessedly, righteously, and dependently before the Father.
Think of the birth of Christ, the baptism of Christ, the temptation of Christ…what are these all about?
This then leads us to the active obedience of Christ.
“The shadow of the cross fell upon the entire earthly life of Jesus.” ~John Calvin
We’re not just saying that Jesus only died for our sins, but that he is the human representative who fulfills all righteousness on our behalf. While the death of Christ surely secures our forgiveness, his active, obedient, faithful life is also regarded as ours! Christ himself is our righteousness (). Here, we speak of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us (; ).
Is anyone lost, have questions or thoughts at this point?
What does Christ’s uniting himself with us in the incarnation tell us about the nature of salvation? How might dichotomizing Christ’s work from his person introduce false dualisms (i.e. abstract, external relations rather than personal, internal relations) into our understanding of theology/soteriology? What might some of these false dualisms be?
The Atoning Death of Jesus Christ: Penal Substitution
In discussing the atoning death of Christ, the key thing to keep in mind is that the death of Christ is a reality in which believers participate (; ; ).
The Atoning Death of Jesus Christ: Penal Substitution
· Penal substitution may be described like this: Jesus Christ voluntarily offered himself as a perfect sacrifice to his Father and was punished (penal) in the place of his fellow humans (substitution), bearing in his body and soul their guilt and shame, and thus the full force of alienation, condemnation, and death, thereby satisfying the demands of God’s holiness in order that sinners may be justly forgiven by and reconciled to God.
1) Anselm proposed an almost ontological necessity for the incarnation, and thus spoke of Christ’s person and work in highly rationalistic terms. Calvin, however, did not.
“Now it was of the greatest importance for us that he who was to be our mediator be both true God and true man. If someone asks why this is necessary, there has been no simple (to use the common expression) or absolute necessity. Rather, it has stemmed from the heavenly decree, on which men’s salvation depended. Our most merciful Father decreed what was best for us.” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.1.
“The fact that we are reconciled through Christ’s death must not be understood as if his Son reconciled us to him that he might now begin to love those whom he had hated. Rather, we have already been reconciled to him who loves us, with whom we were enemies on account of sin…. Thus in a marvelous and divine way he loved us even when he hated us. For he hated us for what we were that he had not made; yet because our wickedness had not entirely consumed his handiwork, he knew how, at the same time, to hate in each one of us what we had made, and to love what he had made.” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.4.
Jesus Christ voluntarily offered himself as a perfect sacrifice to his Father and was punished (penal) in the place of his fellow humans (substitution), bearing in his body and soul their guilt and shame, and thus the full force of alienation, condemnation, and death, thereby satisfying the demands of God’s holiness in order that sinners may be justly forgiven by and reconciled to God.
3) Whereas Anselm proposed that God’s character is such that he required satisfaction or punishment, Calvin maintained that God required satisfaction through punishment.
“Hence, when Christ is hanged upon the cross, he makes himself subject to the curse. It had to happen in this way in order that the whole curse—which on account of our sins awaited us, or rather lay upon us—might be lifted from us, while it is transferred to him…. The Father destroyed the force of sin when the curse of sin was transferred to Christ’s flesh…. Christ was offered to the Father in death as an expiatory sacrifice that when he discharged all satisfaction through his sacrifice, we might cease to be afraid of God’s wrath.” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.6.
4) Whereas Anselm proposed no redemptive value in Christ’s life, Calvin robustly did.
“Now someone asks, How has Christ abolished sin, banished the separation between us and God, and acquired righteousness to render God favorable and kindly toward us? To this we can in general reply that he has achieved this for us by the whole course of his obedience…. In short, from the time when he took on the form of a servant, he began to pay the price of liberation in order to redeem us.” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.5.
5) Whereas Anselm and Calvin both stressed the objective nature of Christ’s death, Calvin brought together the objective and subjective aspects of Christ’s death by way of the believer’s union with Christ’s person and participation in Christ’s work.
“The second effect of Christ’s death upon us is this: by our participation in it, his death mortifies our earthly members so that they may no longer perform their functions; and it kills the old man in us that he may not flourish and bear fruit…. The apostle teaches that ‘we have been united with Christ in the likeness of his death’ [] and ‘buried with him…into the death’ of sin []; that ‘by his cross the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world’ [; ].” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.7.
In discussing the atoning death of Christ, the key thing to keep in mind is that the death of Christ is a reality in which believers participate (; ; ).
With that said I want to address 6 details that are important in light of the death of Christ:
1) Christ Our Obedient Second Adam
· ; .
· Christ’s humanity is the basis of his identification with and representation of humankind.
· Christ restores Adam’s active disobedience with active obedience.
· From manger to wilderness to Gethsemane to cross, Christ was intimately acquainted with grief, temptation, rejection, betrayal, fear, human and divine abandonment, shame, and pain, all the while learning obedience through suffering (; ; ; ).
2) Christ Our Legal Substitute
· Having actively obeyed his Father as the only true keeper of Torah, Christ voluntarily offered himself to his Father in passive obedience through his death on the cross, redeeming us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us ().
3) Christ Our All-Sufficient Merit
· By his obedience from cradle to cross, Christ is our righteousness ().
· Having suffered once-for-all for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, Christ earned our salvation, effectively bringing us to God ().
4) Christ Our Victor
· Christ confronted and bested every force that oppresses and molests us—sin, death, hell, fear, shame, the devil, and the world (; ; ).
5) Christ Our Example
· The shape of Christ’s death gives unremovable shape to the Christian life. In other words, the Crucified One renders the Christian life necessarily cruciform (having the shape of a cross; a costly life) (; ; ; ).
· It is important to understand that Christians follow Christ’s example because they have been redeemed, not in order to be redeemed. In other words, the cruciform nature of the Christian life is in no sense whatsoever meritorious and/or redemptive!
6) Christ Our Sacrifice
· Christ is the fulfillment of the sacrificial order in the Older Testament (; ; ; ; ).
· Christ’s once-for-all self-offering is both an expiation (payment) and a propitiation (appeasing). Christ’s self-offering is an expiation in that his blood covers, or blots out, sins. Yet Christ’s self-offering is also a propitiation in that it appeases, averts God’s righteous wrath from sinners, as that wrath has been fully and finally borne and borne away in the flesh of Christ (; ; ; ).
Sacrifice is the dominant theme in Scripture regarding the death of Christ, and the theme which lends coherency to all others. Consider the other five themes discussed above.
· Sacrifice is the dominant theme in Scripture regarding the death of Christ, and the theme which lends coherency to all others. Consider the other five themes discussed above.
The obedience of Christ was perfected by the characteristic act of that obedience, namely, obedience unto self-sacrifice.
Christ is our victor because he conquered sin, death, hell, and the devil by the efficacy of his self-sacrifice.
Christ, like the lambs of old, was a legal substitute for transgressors of the law in order to incur the curse of the law as an expiatory, propitiatory sacrifice.
Christ’s merit, like his obedience, was perfected by his self-sacrifice.
And Christ’s example is one of faithfulness, patient endurance, and self-giving love, even unto sacrificial death, an example that Christ’s followers are to emulate by offering themselves to God at all times and in every circumstance as living sacrifices.
DON’T TOUCH THE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS, ETC. REFERENCE ONLY IF QUESTIONS ARE ASKED
VII. The Death of Christ: Four Crucial Questions
1) Does God Suffer?
· Immutability, or unchangeableness, is a divine attribute (; ).
· Divine attributes are trinitarian attributes, meaning Christ is immutable ().
· On the scriptural meaning of immutability.
· The God of the prophets and apostles is not the god of the Greek philosophers, in that immutability does not suggest impassibility, or apathea—the philosophical term meaning perfect indifference to all things external to one’s self, or the utter lack of emotion (i.e. disinterested benevolence/willed altruism/dispassionate commitment).
· On the perichoresis (i.e. mutual interpenetration/coinherence) of the persons of the Trinity (; ; ).
· Implications of affirming or rejecting the apathea of God: Does God love? Does God forgive? Is Christ the true image of God? Is conformity to Christ the true goal/end of our salvation?
“The love with which God created us appears to have cost him nothing; but the love with which God so loved the world manifestly cost him everything…. It appears not to have cost God anything to have us come forth in primal splendour. But to have us be born anew, to have us made afresh, to have us be, at last, what we were always supposed to be; this entailed that child, born for us, who from the moment of conception gathered into himself the eventuality of the cross. Christmas, therefore, cost God everything.” ~Victor Shepherd
2) Did God Really Die? Or, Did Christ Die According to His Human Nature Only?
· On the relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ.
· On the relationship between the natures and person of Christ.
3) How Could God Die?
· Biblical/theological meaning of “death.”
· Alienation from God; Separation of soul from body (i.e. de-creation); Not the cessation of existence!
· Qualifications, rejections, and affirmations.
· The death of Christ and his so-called “decent into hell.”
4) For Whom Did Christ Die?
· Getting our terms straight: Everyone, except thoroughgoing universalists, espouse some form of “limited” atonement—that is, an atonement limited in either scope or efficacy.
· Apart from thoroughgoing universalism, there are only two possible options: Hypothetical/General Redemption or Definite/Particular Redemption.
· Points on which both sides agree.
a. Not all will be saved.
b. The gospel can and should be offered freely and genuinely to all people.
c. The sacrifice of Christ is of infinite redemptive value.
· The Point of Contention: Did the death of Christ actually secure salvation for a certain number of people—namely, the elect—or did the death of Christ provide the possibility that any and every person could potentially be saved?
· Theological Considerations.
a. Do the persons of the Trinity work harmoniously in the redemption of sinners (, ; , )?
b. Is Christ’s intercession co-extensive with his self-sacrifice (, )?
c. Can the will of God be definitively repudiated by humans?
d. Does the efficacy of Christ’s death demand particularity?
Key biblical texts.
a. Texts commonly cited for definite/particular election (; ; ; ; ).
b. Texts commonly cited for definite/particular redemption (; , ; ; ; , ; ; ; ; ; ).
c. Texts commonly cited for hypothetical/general redemption (; ; ; ; ; ).
d. Meaning of “world” and “all.”
Is anyone lost, have questions or thoughts at this point?
The Atoning Resurrection of Jesus Christ
The NT stresses that Christ’s bodily resurrection was a historical event (; ; ; ). For if Christ had not been raised bodily, as an actual historical event, the Christian hope would be pathetically impotent and thus utterly pitiful (). Clearly, then, the resurrection of Christ is profoundly important, and has present bearing, with respect to our being reconciled to God.
The nature of Christ’s resurrection.
a. Christ’s resurrection was not a resuscitation, as was that of Lazarus, who was raised from the dead only to eventually die again. Rather, Christ’s resurrection signaled his transformation into a new mode of human existence—that is, into a perfect, spiritual and eternal/immortal mode of human existence ().
b. What is Christ’s resurrected body like? Some did not immediately recognize him (), whereas others did (). He was able to appear, vanish, and move unseen from one location to another (, ). There is considerable but not complete continuity between the physical appearance of Christ before and after his resurrection.
c. Christ was raised to live forever more in a physical, material body (), the very same broken, ruined frame that was taken down from the cross and buried three days earlier (). Thus Christ’s resurrection in no sense rendered him “disincarnate.”
d. The resurrection of Christ manifests to the faithful that:
i) He is indeed the Son of God ().
ii) He is the righteousness of God ().
iii) His self-sacrifice was accepted by his Father ().
iv) He gained victory over death by efficacious suffering ().
· The resurrection of Christ and our reconciliation with God.
a. Christ was raised for our justification (). That is, Christ was raised for our being put in right standing before God. The resurrection of Christ signifies the Father’s vindication (the act of clearing someone of blame or suspicion) and approval of Christ—of the life Christ lived and the death Christ died, so as to be made sin for us ().
In other words, Christ is the Justified One, and thus we too are justified in that we share in God’s approval of his only begotten, much beloved Son ().
b. Christ was raised that we might have new life. Just as we have been crucified with Christ, so have we also been raised with Christ (; ). In other words, we now participate in the reality of the resurrection life that is his (; ; ).
c. Christ’s bodily resurrection is the basis for our eventual bodily resurrection. Paul refers to Christ as the “firstfruits” of those who have died and shall be made alive because they belong to Christ (; See also ; ).
d. Christ was raised that we might share in the power of his resurrection, just as we share in the power of his death (; ). Christ’s resurrection, then, is the basis for our hope in and energy for God (; , ).
Is anyone lost, have questions or thoughts at this point?
The Atoning Ascension of Jesus Christ
The ascension of Christ finds a significant place in the way the church has understood the Christian faith. “He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty,” reads the Apostles Creed. Historically, the church has laid great stress upon the ascension of Christ for the very reason that Christ’s ascension is intimately and inextricably tied to our salvation.
The ascension of Christ and our reconciliation with God.
a. The ascension of Christ indicates that his redemptive life and death achieved their purposes, and that Christ has been received into a state of exaltation, a position which was his prior to the days of his earthly ministry, that is, prior to his state of humiliation (; ; ).
b. It is from the right hand of the Father that Christ exercises his spiritual omnipresence, making himself accessible to all who invoke him, that he might hear, heed, and help them at all times and in all places (; ; ; ).
c. Christ indicates very clearly that his sending of the Holy Spirit is predicated upon his enthronement at the right hand of the Father (; ).
d. Christ’s ascension is the basis of our ascension. In other words, he was received by the Father in his resurrected body—flesh and blood—so that in Christ, we now have our very flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, our head, will bring us, his members, into the very presence of God (; ). Having been joined to Jesus Christ as head to members, we participate in his ascension (Note carefully Paul’s argument in ).
Conclusion:
In sum, Christ’s atoning work consists of all that he accomplished, in his incarnate person, for us and our salvation. This means the totality of Christ’s action in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. What is more, as Christ’s person and work are of a piece, Christ benefits are never to be artificially abstracted from Christ himself. By receiving the living Christ, the church—both individually and corporately—receives all that he has done for us!