My Atonement is Bigger Than Your Atonement

 
April 15th, 2006 by iMonk

And my Kingdom trumps all your atonements. A Holy Week dust-up.
Mark Dever wrote about the meaning of the atonement in Christianity Today. Scot McKnight commented on Dever’s article, taking issue with the idea that the meaning of the atonement is so narrow that we would have a debate about its true meaning during Holy Week. Phil Johnson emerged to flame McKnight for what he says and how he says it.
Let me quote the majority of McKnight’s post so that the real point can be made: there is a rich diversity of meanings given to the atonement in scripture, and all of them need to be heard during Holy Week and in the Gospel.

I beg to differ, not because I think penal substitution needs to be denied, but because the atonement is too important during this Holy Week to turn into the “atonement wars”. Atonement is more than penal substitution. And it all needs to be in front of us, especially today. Here’s what will go through my mind and heart and reflections today and tomorrow, but on Sunday we let go and utter “Christ is risen!”

First, I’m thankful that Jesus died for our sins (including mine). His life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his sending of the Spirit are all “for us” - not for himself, but all for us.
Second, in his death, as Paul says in Roman 6 and Galatians 2, he represented us - both exclusively (called substitution) and inclusively (called co-crucifixion). He both died for us and we die with him.
Third, as we find in Colossians 2, in his death and resurrection march into the presence of God, he liberated us. He conquered the systemic and demonic enemies, nailed them to the cross, and defeated them so we could live in the power of his resurrection. He is the ransom price paid for us so that we could be set free.
Fourth, overall, to use the language of Irenaeus and Athanasius, which are based on Romans 5, he recapitulated our life: he became what we are so we might become what he is.
Fifth, he identified with us “all the way down”. Phil 2:6-11 shows that Jesus came to earth to become like us and in doing so he died for us. By identifying with us, he is our substitution who takes on the very depth of our punishment, even death, even death on a cross, so that he might lift us into the presence of God.
Sixth, he not only dies for us but he gives us in his death a new paradigm for life: we are to die to ourselves, deny ourselves, and make the cross the paradigm of how we live - and that we means we enter into his life by making the cross our own.
All this and more: the death of Jesus is not a source for the atonement war, but a source of contemplation for how God has taken on our case, become like us even unto death, so we might be redeemed, justified, and liberated from our sinful condition. The CT article forces our hand.
Phillip Ryken, the capable preacher and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, wrote this short piece on C.S. Lewis and made an interesting statement which has been echoed by hundreds of other writers on Lewis:

There are a number of weaknesses in Lewis’s theology, including his failure to embrace the inerrancy of Scripture and a certain ambiguity in his understanding of the atonement. Yet C. S. Lewis was and continues to be an extraordinarily successful evangelist, especially among skeptics.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis stated that he did not see detailed theories of the atonement or the Lord’s Supper having a place in his basic presentation of Christianity. Yet, I would suggest that while detailed versions substitution may not be found in Lewis’s writings, the idea that Christ’s life and death are “for” us in a saving way is plainly taught everywhere in Lewis.
I believe Lewis was on the right track in MC, even if he stopped a bit too short for some tastes. Affirming the “for us and for our sins” nature of the atonement is critical, but the death of Jesus is wide and deep, and appreciating its scope and celebrating its achievement are more important than describing the hows of the atonement. No one wanted a running theological commentary at the bottom of the screen at “The Passion of the Christ.”
Last evening, the Spencer family- all of us for the first time in months- sat together in church at the Good Friday service of Saint Patrick’s Anglican Church in Lexington. The liturgy for Good Friday from the BCP contains many wonderful affirmations of the meaning of Christ’s death. For example, at the beginning of the service:

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

And in the anthems at the end of the service.

We glory in your cross, O Lord,
and praise and glorify your holy resurrection;
for by virtue of your cross
joy has come to the whole world.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
O Savior of the world,
who by thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us:
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
And in what may be the most powerful prayer of the Good Friday Liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

I’ve long felt, like Lewis, that our affirmations of Christ himself standing “for us” and “in our place” in worship, prayer and liturgy usually do a much better job than our voluminous debates on the exact meaning and mechanics of the atonement, which seem designed to exclude those who can’t high-five our footnotes or applaud our team rather than to include all Christians in the worshipful work of the one mediator.
Hanging around in back of this debate are two theological lightweights whose writings concerning the place of the atonement in Christianity have created an atmosphere conducive to fighting about the atonement, and probably for good reason.
Steve Chalke’s book “The Lost Message of Jesus” seems to set its sights on the evangelical stress on substitutionary atonement as a real liability in hearing the true message of and about Jesus. Brian Mclaren (That exploding sound is normal. Just stay calm.) has written a new book called “The Secret Message of Jesus” which I haven’t read, but which reviews lead me to believe is in the same territory: the Kingdom message of Jesus is in the Gospels and not in theology of the atonement.
Mclaren and Chalke may be saying some provocative things, but much of it seems to be the kinds of liberal protestant theology that have been around in various forms for more than a century. The Kingdom message of Jesus is crucial, and too much focus on the details of one theory of the atonement can be guilty of short-changing many other aspects of the Biblical presentation of Jesus. That’s a point well made. The problem, however, is that Jesus’ death is as much a part of his Kingdom message as anything else Jesus said or did.
It was Jesus who, in the middle of proclaiming the Kingdom, stopped and headed for Jerusalem to die “as a ransom.” It is in the death of Jesus that all the Gospel writers see the heart of Jesus’ Kingship, exaltation and victory. Paul says that in his cross he triumphed over his enemies and transferred us from one dominion to another. Hebrews brings together the prophet, priest and King as one mediator. John’s Gospel tells us in the first chapter that the King of Israel is the sacrificial Lamb of God.
If we are discussing what happens when there is too much emphasis on one aspect of Jesus’ work as “saving,” and how that translates into the shape of the message and the methods used to proclaim it, I think it is a good discussion. If it is a debate about which ONE view of the death of Jesus is the right view, I think we may be going down a needless road of controversy. Should we choose the worship of the church or the theological debate of the church during Holy Week? It’s foolish to think we can separate the two entirely, but I’ll vote for the language of atonement to be sufficient in worship and prayer, and the debate on the atonement, as important as it is, to be held at an appropriate time. (The same goes for preaching. Polemics have their place, but preaching the Gospel to the people of God should be a pastoral ministry first and foremost.)
Anytime our focus leaves Jesus to a “subset,” i.e. something about him or something he does, we risk having our own preferences displace the primacy of the person of Christ and make the Gospel smaller. What seems important to any one of us must stand in the light of Christ ALONE. In that light, both atonement and kingdom, and all theories of both, must take a back seat to His glory.

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