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Rethinking the Purpose of the Crucifixion
By Steve Jones
The cross has long been the chief emblem of Christianity. The New Testament writings give it a preeminent place. The death of Christ is said to have reconciled us to God, defeated the principalities and powers, destroyed death, provided a ransom, removed our sins.
Out of this language come atonement theories that attempt to explain a nagging perplexity: How can a Jewish preacher's death two millennia ago effect our redemption?
Many give a ready answer here. They say that Jesus in some mysterious way took our sins onto himself and was punished in our stead. A perfectly just God must punish sin, so He punished a substitute instead of us. Golgotha drained the cup of divine wrath so that the Creator could treat us favorably.
I. Penal substitution flawed
I won't launch into a lengthy disputation of this view, known historically as penal substitution. But I will point out one glaring flaw in the theory: It annihilates free forgiveness. Under penal subsitution, God forgives no one, He instead exacts payment from another.
An analogy may frame this objection better than anything. You have amassed an unpayable debt. A generous rich man hears of your plight and pays the creditors, freeing you from a hopeless obligation. Now it's true that this gets you off the hook; but no one can rightly argue that your creditors forgave your debt when the rich man paid them off. There was, in fact, no forgiveness at all. That's the conundrum that this theory saddles us with.
Forgiveness, in its essence, means remitting offenses freely without getting paid, without punishing anyone. It is an act of mercy, not the transfer of an obligation from one person to another. That's the way you and I are expected to forgive and it's the way I believe God forgives.
Besides, it is unreasonable to demand one simple explanation of Calvary and its relationship to our redemption. After all, many different views of the atonement have ascended, then fallen over the centuries of church history. The ransom-to-Satan theory, Anselm's theory and many others have come and gone. Currently penal substitution is dominant.
But the implications of the cross are too vast to fit into a credal "one liner." Christ's death is multi-faceted. The following is an attempt to approach the truth of that staggering event from several directions:
II. The Cross and 'The Powers'
One of the aspects of the cross seldom appreciated is its role in defeating "the powers" or "the authorities." In Colossians, Paul writes, "[Jesus] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it [the cross]" (2:15).
The system crucified Jesus. First, the religious authorities handed him over to be killed. Then the Roman government, the most powerful secular force on earth, carried out the deed. The evil system of this world — the one that adheres to "might makes right," that seeks power over others and crushes its rivals — fastened our Lord to the tree. The authorities sought to wipe him out the way it had done with thousands of others: brute force.
Jesus stood up against the authorities with the weapons of humility, nonviolence and trust in his God. He defied the sword, the spear, the lash. And he triumphed. He started a movement that swept across the globe, despite all efforts of the system to destroy him. Now the name of Caesar is little more than a curiosity of history buffs; the name of Jesus holds sway over millions.
In an act of nonviolent resistance, Jesus defied the evil world system of domination, and won out. Calvary’s cross has beaten the principalities and powers in a public display of meekness.
The cross is an open and graphic condemnation of the violent world system.
III. The Cross and Ethics
There is another simple way of looking at the cross, one that remains true to Hebrew figures of speech. It also takes seriously the ethics of Jesus as a crucial part of redemption. It is simply this: Jesus went about preaching the kingdom of God, calling his hearers to radical love, peace and selflessness. He introduced God as a loving Father in heaven. He befriended the lowest of sinners, urging them to repent. Throughout his ministry, Jesus wonderfully transformed lives and set people free. Despite his knowledge that certain death awaited him were he to continue his ministry, Jesus pressed on. He laid aside self-interest to do the will of his Father, and was crucified for it.
That death was a manifestation of everything God calls us to be. Like Jesus, we must lay aside our own interest for the imperatives of love. When we do this, we experience redemption from what we once were. Had Jesus lived out a long life, modifying his message to keep himself alive, his words may no longer reach us through the ages. But he sealed his words in his own blood, forever imprinting them on the human consciousness.
While some criticize the "moral example theory," there can be no denial of its biblical status, as 1 Peter 2:21 attests: "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps."
IV. The Cross and Ratification of the Covenant
Jesus ratified a New Covenant with his death. His blood was the stamp upon the proclamation of a new era — an era of unmatched grace and forgiveness. The cross is a marker suspended in history, dividing the age of ethnic favor and the age of "whosoever will." Therefore, the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins.
We sometimes hear this kind of language applied to patriotic themes. "The blood of the patriots has made us free," someone might say. Does he mean this in a mysterious sense, a literal sense? Everyone knows this is not the case; he is saying that the deaths of these people set in motion events that led to our freedom. If we can understand such usage in secular language, why not in sacred?
Calvary set in motion the events that gave birth to the Christian church. It was also a symbol of inclusiveness — the Old Testament sacrificial system that built walls between Jew and Gentile, male and female, was fulfilled. Christ was "hanged on a tree," a cursed condition under Old Covenant law (Gal. 3:13). Therefore, he could relate to the needs of the "cursed" Gentiles who wished to know God. The death of Christ, accordingly, brings redemption to those once shrouded in darkness.
V. The Cross as a Way to the Resurrection
The cross was also the vehicle to the resurrection appearances that so galvanized the disciples. Without his death, Jesus could not have risen. The hope of life beyond death is bound up in the fact that Jesus died and yet now lives. Therefore, the death of Christ brings us life.
Why do we need a doctrine of atonement beyond this? Is the beauty of Jesus' resignation to death not obscured when we turn it all into a cosmic transaction that automatically "fixes" our legal standing with God?
VI. The Cross Focused on Sanctification, Not Metaphysics
I believe that we preserve the grandeur of Calvary when we view it as a means of sanctification. Jesus' death works a change in us so that we give up our sinful, self-absorbed life and walk in his steps. This is salvation, the life of cross-carrying discipleship.
The New Testament, however, supports the idea that Christ died chiefly to bring us into a state of transcendent goodness. Note the following:
"He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people who are zealous of good deeds." (Titus 2:14)
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Pet. 2:24)
"And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them." (2 Cor. 5:15)
VII. Conclusion
The message of the cross should always be coupled with the message of discipleship. We must take up our cross and follow Christ in a life of servanthood and love. It is common for the New Testament authors to speak of the cross, then to speak of our need to "die" to sin and self-centeredness. And that is the crucial point — the grand objective of the crucifixion. It is for our sanctification that Jesus gave his life. Paul's declaration "I am crucified with Christ" should be ours.
But is there no place for the idea that Jesus in his death effected our redemption in a way that goes beyond ethics? Is the forgiveness of sins not tied in some way to Calvary? This I will not deny. I leave room for that possibility in my belief system. But I will say that such ideas must be regarded as mysteries hidden within the Divine.
When we speak of the crucifixion, we ought not devise theories, but sit in awe of such great condescension.
About the Author
Steve Jones has made his living as a writer since 1989. He spent part of his career as religion editor for a daily newspaper. In the mid-1990s, he also was an interim pastor for a small congregation in Michigan.
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