1.
The Way of the Son into the Far Country
The
atonement is not a conceptual abstraction but an historical event. It is the
history of Jesus Christ and as such takes precedence over all other histories.
The first aspect of this history with which we will concern ourselves is God’s
grace in Christ. In Christ God graciously goes into the far country, into our
world in its perverse rejection of him, in order to take upon himself our
situation in all its horror. This extravagant willingness to stoop so low to be
with us distinguishes the one true God from all the false gods who only
reflect our pride.
While
the New Testament witnesses, especially in the first three gospels, plainly
affirm the full humanity of Jesus, he is just as clearly acknowledged as God: For
in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9, English
Standard Version, here and following); “My Lord and my God!” (John
20:28). The biblical witnesses were not led to this conclusion by enthusiasm
but by the Holy Spirit.
Yet
Jesus Christ did not manifest his lordship by exercising coercive authority. He
did it through obedience. And not just any obedience but, in conformity with
God’s will, a willingness to live as a suffering servant and apparently to no
effective purpose. Indeed he lived as one numbered among sinners and died as
one crucified between thieves.
We
must also note that the Word became flesh as a Jew. Jesus obediently suffered
as the one fulfilling God’s covenant with the people of Israel. It was only as
Israel’s Messiah that Jesus came also as Savior of the world. The God who
condescended to become flesh in Jesus was the same one who centuries earlier
condescended to be known simply as the God of Abraham and the one small people
who were his descendants. Moreover, God already began his journey into the far
country in the Old Testament by choosing to rule among a people who only
rebelled against his authority. So the place of Israel the son in the Old
Testament, which was taken by Jesus the Jew in the New Testament, is the place
of disobedience. Jesus allows everything said against them and us to be held
against him. In Jesus Christ God willed to be reckoned a sinner and to bear the
fatal consequences of our rebellion. Even this utterly gracious act of God
toward sinners in Jesus Christ stands in direct continuity with God’s gracious
acts toward Israel attested throughout the Old Testament.
To
understand the meaning of Jesus Christ’s divinity, we begin by affirming that,
when God the Son became flesh, this caused no diminishment of his divinity. God
the Son remained fully God as a human being. God is love and God as love is
Lord. God as love, then, is free in relation to all else. God’s divine nature,
then, includes the love that is free to make our form his own without having to
undergo any change. For God, it is just as natural to be humble as to be
exalted. In fact, the humiliation of the Son on the cross for our sake did not
contradict the divine nature but signified its greatest glorification.
We
now know that the humiliation of Jesus Christ meant no diminishment of his
divinity. But Jesus Christ chose this self-humiliation in obedience to the will
of the Father. We must now seek to know in what manner we may have this kind of
superior and subordinate relationship in God and still rightly speak, first, of
one God and not two and, secondly, of Jesus Christ as truly God as well as
truly human.
We
still rightly speak of one God and not two even though the Son was obedient to
the Father. We begin by affirming that God’s unity is not a static solidity but
a dynamic unity of three ways of being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Also,
beginning in God, the subordination of one way of being to another does not
imply an inferiority or diminishment of dignity. Instead, the Son is of equal
dignity and in perfect unity with the Father and this in the Holy Spirit. With
the Holy Spirit, the one God is in the Father in his relationship to the Son;
the one God is in the Son in his relationship to the Father; and therefore the
one God is God only in the history of this relationship of love between Father
and Son and between Son and Father.
We
still rightly speak of Jesus Christ as truly God as well as truly human even
though he was obedient to the Father. First, Jesus Christ could accomplish
God’s judgment of the world and do so by bearing it himself only because he
himself was truly God. Secondly, to root out sin where it reigns, in the world
and in our flesh, Jesus as truly God also had to become truly human.
2.
The Judge Judged in Our Place
We
have just concluded that the way of the Son into the far country, his becoming
flesh and remaining obedient even unto death, revealed that he was truly God.
In this sub-section we will explore the purpose for which the Son freely embraced
this self-humiliation.
To
begin with, God did so for the sake of his own glory. The first words sung by
the angels at Christmas are “Glory to God in the highest…!” (Luke 2;14).
God enhances this glory by graciously rescuing us, his sinful creatures, from
the power of death. Why did the Word become flesh? Because God freely chose in
love as our loyal creator to be our savior as well.
The
Word became flesh both for God’s glory and for us and our salvation. But Jesus
Christ is for us as our Savior by coming into the world and taking our place as
Judge. The Fall began with our desire to judge between good and evil (Genesis
3:5). There we usurped the right to judge ourselves righteous and others as
guilty. But Jesus Christ is for us because he wholly displaced us and renders
God’s judgment in our place. We see our illusions of grandeur shattered as
Jesus Christ stands in our place and overturns our illusory judgments about
others and ourselves. Yet this brings with it tremendous relief, for now we need
not work so hard convincing ourselves and others of our righteousness.
But
Jesus Christ is for us and our salvation not only by rightly standing in our
place as Judge, but also by graciously standing in our place as the one judged.
When Jesus Christ decided to make our sin his own, he revealed that nothing
less would save us from the power of death. This was not lightly decided, with
the misgivings of Jesus in Gethsemane (Matthew 14:36) and the questioning of
his forsakenness from the cross (Matthew 15:34). Furthermore, the fact that
Jesus took our place and, in that place, suffered God’s wrath reveals to us
inescapably that we are sinners in need of salvation. Third, the fact that
Jesus Christ stood in our place means that he who knew no sin chose freely in
love to accept full responsibility for our sin before God. Because he did that
with divine authority, we stand forgiven. Now when we look at Jesus Christ in
faith, we may see ourselves for the sinners we are, yet we may also see
ourselves in joyful confidence as those forgiven and therefore as those freed
now to turn from being sinners.
Thirdly,
Jesus Christ was for us and our salvation by enduring the judgment against us
in our place and for our sake. He actively willed to be and do so. His
self-sacrifice occurred at a certain time and place which is unique and
unrepeatable. And as the act not only of a man but of God himself, it
objectively altered the situation of all people of all times and places whether
they know it or not. This is because Jesus Christ met not simply biological
extinction but eternal death, the outer darkness, damnation, and dealt not just
with sins but with sin itself, and in doing so bore it all away. The world and
the flesh died with him on the cross. So Jesus Christ did not simply endure the
punishment we deserved. He destroyed that which threatened us with destruction.
Finally,
Jesus Christ is not only the one Judge, the one judged, and the one enduring
God’s judgment. He is also for us and our salvation as the justice or
righteousness of God. He is this as the one who remained right with God by
living for God in free obedience.
But
Jesus Christ remained righteously free for God and from sin only by identifying
with us as sinners to the bitter end. Satan tempted him to reject this
identification and so to deny the cross as his goal. According to Luke, Satan
first tempts Jesus to end his penitence by using his divine power to feed
himself. Jesus refuses, content to wait, as sinners must, upon the gracious
Word of God. Satan then tempts Jesus to establish a full-blown kingdom of his
own over all the earth—by first discreetly accepting the domination of the
world by evil and so again by abandoning the cross. Again Jesus chooses to
persist in penitent obedience by worshiping God alone despite the fact that it
would culminate, to all appearances, in abject failure. Finally Satan tempts
Jesus to prove God’s favor by demanding God’s acknowledgment of a great act of
religious fervor. But as with economics and politics, Jesus rejects religion as
well as an act of disobedience.
After
the temptations, the Devil departs until the decisive moment (Luke 4:13,
Barth) in Gethsemane. First, in his agony, Jesus takes with him three apostles.
They, the Church, sleep despite his need and theirs, leaving Jesus to pray in
their place and for their sake (Luke 22:31f., John 17:15f.). Secondly, Jesus
prays in agony that God’s good will should not end up being the same as the
evil will of the tempter and the world dominated by him. But Jesus prays, “thy
will be done,” and in so doing receives anew the freedom needed to remain
obedient to God to the bitter end. In doing so Jesus was for us by taking our
place as judge, the one judged, the one enduring the judgment, and the one
acting justly.
3.
The Verdict of the Father
The
first subsection, speaking of the way of the Son into the far country, focused
on the person or being of Jesus Christ; specifically, on his divinity. The
second subsection focused on his work or action as the Judge judged in our
place. On this Christological basis, subsequent sections will speak
anthropologically about our corresponding sin of pride, our justification, our
gathering into the Church, and our faith. The purpose of this third subsection
is to explore the transition established in Christ between the Christological
and anthropological, between Jesus Christ being and acting for us and our own
recognition that we are among the sinners for whom Christ died.
Peter
said to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke
5:8). Isaiah lamented, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean
lips…” (Isaiah 6:5). Both expressed the problem created by God’s commitment
to man in the face of man’s rebellion against God. This rebellion was overcome
in the crucifixion when, in Christ, our existence as rebels ended. But any move
beyond our death as sinners, any affirmation of us as faithful partners in
covenant with God, any conversion of us to God, required something more. It
required: (1) an act by the same God who judged us in delivering up Christ to
death; (2) an act distinct from yet related to the crucifixion; (3) an act
related to the crucifixion as a new beginning relates to the end of the old;
(4) an act in history like the crucifixion; and (5) an act in the life of Jesus
Christ. This gracious act was the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was an act by the same God who judged man in
Jesus Christ. It was an act of grace done with the same seriousness as his
previous act of judgment. But unlike the crucifixion, the resurrection was
exclusively an act of God by which he alone attested that he indeed had been at
work in Christ. Finally it was an act of pure grace by God the Father for
Christ the Son.
2.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not only the revelation of the positive
value of the crucifixion. It was an act distinct from it as God’s response to
it. The resurrection was an act of justice, the verdict of the Father in which
he graciously affirmed the obedience of the Son as right. The resurrection was
God’s act of accepting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the right means of
fulfilling his just wrath on all people in order to express his justifying
grace for all people. Finally, the resurrection was the act by which God the
Father justified himself, that is, the act in which he revealed his
faithfulness as Creator by creating life anew and revealed his love as Father
by raising his Son to life.
3.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ relates to his crucifixion in that both
expressed God’s reconciling will: first, in the Son’s obedience to the Father;
secondly, in the Father’s gracious response to the Son. Our conversion to God
was accomplished in these two distinct but related acts. Looking back from the
resurrection, the crucifixion took place to free us completely from the old so
that we could live for God. Looking forward from the crucifixion, our radical
turning toward God presupposed a complete freedom from our past. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold,
the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).
4.
Like his crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a historical event.
Unlike the crucifixion, we do not have detailed accounts of how the
resurrection took place. Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried; Mary
Magdalene finds his tomb empty; he appears to his disciples. Since people
participated in the crucifixion, the account of it is strongly historical;
since his resurrection was the act of God alone, the account of it—like that of
creation—must be in the form of saga or legendary witness. Even so the
resurrection itself was a historical event occurring at a particular time (AD
30) and in a particular place (a tomb just outside of Jerusalem).
5.
We have spoken of the relationship between the crucifixion and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Now we will speak of their unity. The crucifixion took place once
and for all. Even so it eternally transformed our situation before God by
reconciling us with God. The resurrected life of Jesus Christ is an eternal
life. But his life, resurrected once, continues as he reigns in time and for
all time. So we know Jesus Christ only as the one Crucified yet Resurrected. We
cannot rightly understand the judgment of the cross without knowing the greater
grace proclaimed in the resurrection. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1
Corinthians 15:54).
Copyright © 2019
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights
reserved. Fair use encouraged.