“Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.”
What are we affirming in this statement?
This is not an exhaustive summary of the entire meaning or mechanism of the cross for our salvation. It points to many aspects of what Christ has done on the cross, but Christ work is richly multifaceted and many aspects of it are left unsaid here. Rather than a complete summary, this statement should be taken as allowing for all that the bible has to say about the cross, while serving a very specific two-fold purpose:
1. To defend a core aspect of the atonement which is precious to evangelical faith and commonly finds itself misunderstood or rejected entirely, namely, the penal and substitutionary dimensions of Christ’s death.
2. To emphasise that which is central to the meaning and significance of Christ’s death in overcoming our Sin and it’s consequences.
“Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin”
In Biblical language, to redeem is to deliver from bondage or set free by paying the cost of deliverance. Christ has redeemed us from Sin by paying the price in his own death on the cross. He has done all that is necessary to enact our rescue from sin itself and all its consequences.
Jesus rescues us from our own complicity in sin (guilt), from death as the consequence of God’s righteous judgement on sin (penalty), and from ongoing slavery to sin (power).
Guilt – the consequence of sin upon our moral and relational standing with God is dealt with. Sin makes us guilty of breaking God’s holy law, of turning away from God and breaking our relationship with him. Jesus death clears us of our guilt and cleanses us of our shame washing away any stains of unrighteousness and opening the way for us to return to a right relationship with God.
Penalty – Sin leads to death as God’s just punishment of sin and the ‘natural’ result of rejecting God, the source of all life. (See God’s Wrath as an Aspect of His Love, by Tony Lane for a treatment of how God’s condemnation of Sin is an expression of his love for humanity). By suffering death for us, Jesus bore the penalty of death in his own body in our place. God’s wrath against our sin is fully satisfied in Jesus’ death, so we are rescued from the penalty which we could not bear ourselves while God remains justly opposed to sin.
Power – Sin’s ultimate power over us is the sting of death. Jesus has rescued us by facing that death himself – and coming out the other side of it. Sin no longer has any claim over us. Our sinful nature was put to death on the cross (Romans 8:3), and while we still struggle with temptation in this life, the ultimate power that sin had over us is gone. We no longer live under sin’s rule, and when we join Jesus in death we will also join him in his resurrection in an existence totally free from the presence of sin.
“only”
It is only Jesus’ work, culminating on the cross, and his work alone that secures our redemption. We do nothing to contribute to our salvation. While the gospel calls us into lives of good works, these do nothing to add to our redemption from sin, somehow ‘taking over’ where Christ’s death left off. Rather, they are a consequence of our redemption already achieved by Christ alone.
No other being contributes to our salvation or right standing before God but God alone through the work of the Son. He alone saves us and acts as our go-between to the Father. Jesus is “the only mediator between them and God.” No dead saint or angel works for our salvation or provides us with access to the Father alongside Jesus. Thus all our worship, devotion and prayer is directed to Christ alone and not to angels or saints.
“through the sacrificial death once and for all time of our representative and substitute, Jesus Christ."
Substitution is the central motif that holds together all that was achieved upon the cross. Jesus death is both on our behalf and in our place. He died the death we should have died so that we can live the life that belongs to him. He made the sacrifice in his own body that clears our guilt (Hebrews 7:27), suffering our penalty that satisfies God’s righteousness (Romans 5:9) and put Sin to death as our representative, winning the victory over our great enemy on our behalf.
“Christ both bears divine judgement on the cross and restores humanity in his life via the mechanism of self-substitution.” (Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, 176)
This is not to deny or downplay the saving significance of Christ’s incarnation, his resurrection or his ongoing intercession for us. Instead it is to confess with Scripture that all of Christ’s work culminates in and points back to the cross and may be summarised by reference to Christ’s substitutionary death. After all, Paul says, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” 1 Corinthains 2:2 (c.f. Galatians 6:14) in a letter in which he gives his most extensive treatment of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15).
Where is this challenged or a challenge when studying theology at university?
One of the biggest challenges to evangelical theology from the academy in the area of the atonement is in the sustained criticisms and rejection of the idea of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) in biblical scholarship and systematic theology. PSA is that aspect of Christ’s substitutionary death by which he turns aside God’s wrath from us by himself bearing the penalty of sin that was due to us. This is criticised and rejected in several ways.
PSA is rejected on the basis that it portrays God’s justice as vengeful and violent. Where is the God who loves and forgives? This rejection downplays the seriousness of sin in relation to God’s character. Sin is not just a social problem among humans in which God needs to intervene by coming and showing us how to love each other properly, sin is an affront to God’s goodness and righteousness, a rejection of him as the source of goodness and life. Sin puts us on the ‘wrong side’ of his goodness. His wrath against sin is not the tantrum of a violent, angry God who doesn’t get his way, but the holy, passionate burning of Goodness himself, before whom only what is good can ultimately survive. Athanasius describes Christ’s death as the solution to the dilemma faced by a God who is truly good and just (and thus cannot let Sin exist unpunished) and who thoroughly loves humanity and can’t bear to see us perish (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, §6-10).
PSA is also rejected (especially in popular level writings) on the basis that it portrays God as committing “cosmic child abuse” in letting out his anger towards us on his son instead. This is cautionary, not for the notion of PSA itself, but to avoid poor articulations of this aspect of the cross. The best defence against falling into this critique is to recognise the robust Trinitarian nature of the cross. It is not exclusively the Fathers wrath, but the wrath of God – the Son burns against sin just as much as the Father. And when Jesus dies on the cross, it is not some third-party stepping between us and God, but God himself who takes our place and bears his own wrath.
PSA is also rejected in favour of other biblical motifs such as Christus Victor. There is a caution here for us and a legitimate critique of those who treat PSA as summarising the cross in its entirety. PSA is a central motif but we would be wise not to confuse or conflate it with the broader notion of substitution which encapsulates Christ’s payment of the objective price of sin in our stead, his defeat of sin and death on our behalf, and his replacement of Adam as our head and representative restoring our very nature. Looking to other biblical motifs at the centre of the cross and the atonement doesn’t require us to reject PSA. We want to hold it all together, affirming everything that is true without reducing it down to only PSA. “In many penal substitutionary models, salvation is reduced to atonement, and atonement to guilt-bearing.” (Ortlund, 144) That reduction should be avoided.
It is beneficial to look to substitution broadly as a way of integrating diverse biblical motifs “since both Christ’s restoration of human nature and payment of human debt come through his standing in our place as both Deus and homo.” (Ortlund, 161).
How does this help us do Evangelical Christian theology better?
Christ’s death on the cross is a significant cornerstone for distinctively evangelical theology on par with our commitment to Scripture. Christ’s sacrifice for us is the euangelion by which we find ourselves made right with God and from where we derive our motivation for both theology and evangelism.
Evangelical theology shaped by Christ’s death will always have an eye for the proclamation of this good news even when that is not the focus of a given theological project. The cross is the centre of Christian theology and it cannot help but have its influence on theology done by those who have been redeemed by the blood which Christ shed upon it.
One of the most exciting theological projects that is currently capturing the attention of many scholars is bringing what the bible says about human identity and flourishing into conversation with wider cultural conversations about identity, living ‘the good life’ and living in harmony with creation and self. Any optimistic or positive vision for human flourishing that is truly biblical and Christian must reckon with our fallen sinful natures and our redemption from that slavery that only comes through the cross of Christ. We have no hope of ‘the good life’ aside from Christ. We have confidence and certain assurance of it through his death.
