We Must Preach Jesus

Jared Wilson has a post in which he outlines the ways in which Christians generally, and preachers in particular, can leave Jesus out of our message.  To summarise:-

1.  We speak in vague spiritual generalities.  We talk about love, joy, hope, peace, blessings, but divorced from Christ himself as the incarnate, crucified and risen Saviour and Lord.  Our message is pleasant and up-beat; inspirational, even.  But, separated from Christ, who is himself our joy, our hope, our peace and so on, it’s rubbish.

2.  We speak of Christ only as a moral exemplar.  We tell people to be good because Jesus was good.  We deal with imperatives (‘be like Jesus’), but neglect the indicatives (‘Christ died for sins’).

3.  We avoid the real problem – sin.  And because of this we avoid the real solution – the cross.  So, in many churches, sin and the cross are scarcely mentioned.  Or, if the cross is mentioned, it is only as a demonstration of the love of God and not at all as a sacrifice for sin.

Friends, let us resolve to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2).

 

 

 

Giles Fraser: “The Death of Christ was not a Sacrifice”

Having posted quite a bit recently on the Cross of Christ and the doctrine of atonement, I was interested to read Giles Fraser’s firm dismissal of any understanding of the death of Christ as a sacrifice for sins.  He is eager to stress how important it is for us to insist on a non-sacrificial understanding of the death of Christ:-

For too long, Christians have put up with a theory of salvation that has at its core the idea that God requires the sacrifice of his own son so that human sin can be cancelled. “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin,” we will all sing. The fact this is a disgusting idea, and morally degenerate, is obvious to all but those indoctrinated into a very narrow reading of the cross.

But inflated language (‘disgusting…morally degenerate…obvious…indoctrinated…very narrow reading…’) is no substitute for an appeal to the data (in this case, the data of Scripture) or for reasoned argument.

The Triumph of the Cross

The New Testament (writes John Stott) sounds a note of victory that is sadly muted in many parts of the church today.  The victory is God’s and he has achieved it through Jesus Christ; more specifically, through the cross of Christ (1 Cor 15:57; 2 Cor 2:14; Col 2:15; Rom 8:37; Rev 3:21; 5:5; 12:11).

What seemed like the defeat of goodness by evil was, in fact, the defeat of evil by goodness.  The victim is the victor.  The cross secured the conquest of evil.

Images of Salvation

We have been considering four of the principal New Testament images of salvation – propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation.  These are derived from the shrine, the market, the lawcourt and the home respectively.  Because they draw on different life situations, they cannot be pefectly integrated with one another.

However, certain themes emerge:-

The Kinsman-Redeemer

The classic illustration of redemption is found in the Book of Ruth.  The framework of this touching idyll consists of two clauses of ancient Hebrew legislation: the law of Levirate marriage, rendering compulsory the widow’s marriage to her late husband’s next of kin, Deut 25:5-10, and the law of the kinsman redeemer, Lev 25:25-34.  Adied by these two enactments, Ruth, the loyal but poverty-stricken stranger, was able to marry into the best family in the district and to become the ancestress of King David and of the Messiah.

By the kinsman-redeemer enactment, if a Hebrew falls into slavery and is forced to sell himself, his family, his estate, all that he sold can be compulsorily redeemed by the next of kin.

It will be noted that the kinsman-redeemer has three qualifications, and both Boaz and Christ had all of them.

Reconciliation

Still moving through John Stott’s great book on The Cross of Christ, we come to the fourth image of salvation – reconciliation.

In this image, we leave the temple precincts, slave-markets and lawcourts, and come home to our family and friends.

Reconciliation is the answer to alienation, and to all who feel alienated reconciliation sounds like the good news that it is.

Reconciliation begins with a restored relationship with God, Rom 5:9-11 (note the parallel in this passage between reconciliation and justification).  The idea is closely linked with those of ‘adoption’ (Jn 1:12f; 1 Jn 3:1-10) and ‘access’ (Rom 5:1f; Eph 2:17f; 1 Pet 3:18; Heb 10:19-22).

Justification

The third great picture of salvation, according to John Stott in The Cross of Christ, is drawn from the lawcourt.  It is the picture of justification.  If propitiation speaks of God setting aside his own wrath by means of self-sacrifice, and redemption speaks of our rescue at the cost of the death of his Son, then justification speaks of the verdict of ‘not guilty’ pronounced on those who have been thus redeemed.

The doctrine of justification was recognised by the 16th-century Reformers and their heirs as being of critical importance.  Luther regarded it as ‘the principal article of all Christian doctrine, which maketh true Christians indeed.’

Redemption

Whereas the imagery of propitiation is that of the temple court, the imagery of redemption is that of the market-place. The basic meaning of ‘to redeem’ is to buy or buy back, whether as a purchase or as a ransom. Strongly implied is the plight from which we needed to be ransomed.

Propitiation

How did the cross of Christ achieve its purpose?  In what ways did his death and resurrection usher in ‘the day of salvation’ (2 Cor 6:2)?

Just as several pictures, or metaphors, are needed to fill out the meaning of ‘church’ (bride, temple, household, and so on), so several are required to illustrate the salvation that Christ achieved.  Chief among these are the terms ‘propitiation’, ‘redemption’, ‘justification’, and ‘reconciliation’.  It is important to realise that these images are complementary to one another, for underlying them all is ‘the truth that God in Christ has borne our sin and died our death to set us free from sin’.  In other words, substitutionary atonement is the fundamental doctrine, and these other terms illustrate and explicate that doctrine.

The self-substitution of God

How can we, who are deeply unholy and unrighteous, be reconciled with God, who is gloriously holy and righteous?  How can God express simultaneously his holiness in judgment and his love in pardon?

The astonishing, yet scriptural, answer, is, in the words of Cranfield, that

God, because in his mercy he willed to forgive sinful men, and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against his own very self in the person of his Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved.

Satisfaction for Sin

The notions of ’satisfaction’ and ’substitution’ in relation to atonement are often seen as crude and primitive.  Indeed, the idea that God would need to be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of his Son is frequently thought to be inconsistent with the character and teaching of Jesus himself.

How Can God Forgive Us?

What can the brutal death of a single Jew, two thousand years ago, have to do with us finding peace with God?  And why, if God wishes to forgive us, why does he not just do so, without all the paraphernalia of sacrifice?

As one sceptic put it: “Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job”.

It might further be objected that we are required by God himself to freely forgive one another.  Why can’t God simply do the same with us?