For primary readings on this, see for example:
Athanasius, On the Incarnation
Gregory of Nazianzus, Letters in Critique of Apollonarius
Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ
When the apostles say Christ suffered and died for us, once for all (Rom 6:10; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 3:18), for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 13:28; Col 2:13) and not ours only, everybody's (1 John 2:2), what does that actually mean?
1. The NT connects sin with it's inherent destructive consequences, its intrinsic judgment. Among the metaphors used for what sin holds over the sinner are 'wages' (Rom 6:23) or 'debt' (Matt 6:12). Having collectively turned from God -- our source of life -- to sin -- the source of death -- humanity has come under the domination of sin and it's bitter fruit.
2. The NT identifies the destructive consequences of sin, ultimately, as the curse of death (Rom 5:12; 6:23). Sin condemns us to 'perish' (John 3:16-18), a death sentence already at work in us, through which the satan holds us in bondage to fear all our lives (Heb. 2:15).
3. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus has come to rescue, redeem or ransom us from the curse of sin, which is death. The Incarnation was God's decisive redemptive act, through which he set us free from root to fruit: from the domination of sin, the corruption of fallen sinful nature, and the condemnation of death itself.
4. How does Christ accomplish this redemption?
a. The divine Word (God the Son) assumed the likeness of sinful human nature (Rom 8:3) in the person of Jesus Christ to heal human nature of the curse. As St. Gregory once wrote, 'Whatever is not assumed is not healed,' so Christ assumes the whole human condition in order to heal it all, including the curse of death itself.
b. Christ proclaims the Father's grace and freedom to forgive sin by freely forgiving sin throughout his life and ministry, and then does so once, for all and forever, when on the Cross he invokes the Father's forgiveness, even for the supreme human sin of deicide. The Father's answer comes through the voice of the Son, 'It is accomplished.' Our sin is forgiven and our lives washed clean by this act of mercy and grace.
c. Having freely forgiven us, we are reconciled to the Father, but the curse of sin must still be broken: death itself must be eradicated. So Christ does for us what we were unable to do for ourselves. He dies to enter death and so to overcome it. As all the church fathers testify (from Irenaeus to Athanasius, to the two Gregorys, Cyril and Maximus the Confessor) If Christ were merely God, he could not die. But if he were merely man, he could not defeat death. So Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, enters death by death to annihilate death itself. This victory is made complete and manifest in the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
5. Thus, through Christ's incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection, he has brought about salvation (rescue from Satan, sin and death) for all people. His sacrifice was not the pagan appeasement of a wrathful deity, but rather, the sacrificial love of a God who became man to enter the human condition, including death and hades itself to rescue his beloved children.
6. Yes, Christ died for the forgiveness of sin, but as we see, this is an abbreviation that includes the truths that Christ came, lived, died and rose for the forgiveness of sin, cancellation of the curse, and defeat of death. Now we are invited to return to the open arms of the Father who opened the way back home through his Son. As we respond, we experience now what Christ already accomplished. By faith, we experience that forgiveness and freedom and salvation from sin and its awful consequences. We find that just as God in Christ participated in our human nature, we who are in Christ participate in his divine nature. As he took on our likeness to heal humanity, we are transformed more and more into his likeness and glory.
7. This is the apostolic testimony, received and faithfully preserved by the early church. This is not a theory of the atonement, but the gospel itself, the faith once delivered from the beginning. In this Gospel, Jesus is indeed a substitute, in that he does vicariously, as a man, what humanity could not do for itself. What is it that he does for us? God-in-Christ engaged and experienced the penalty (wages, debt or curse) of our sin -- namely death itself -- triumphing over it through his death and resurrection. In exchanging his life for our death, we rise with him in his life and find that death is no more.
For those committed to the language of 'penal substitution,' this telling of the gospel takes seriously the penalty of sin (death) and the substitution of Christ (as our vicarious representative), but it is distinguished from the much later version which identifies the penalty with God's wrath and punishment rather than sin's consequences and curse. In this telling, God the Word himself, via His incarnation as Jesus Christ, saves us from sin and death, swallowing them up in the magnificent victory of grace.
Brilliant! When I first encountered Father's love, the idea of penal substituion was the first one that flew out of the window as it simply didn't make any sense anymorea and I couldn't find it in Scripture anymore. It's so great to see how the early church confirms these deep spiritual instincts and how more and more people come into an understanding of Father's unfailing mercy...
Posted by: Florian Berndt | January 15, 2015 at 02:41 AM
Oh Yes I forgot. I like the idea of substitution mentioned above: what comes to mind is the analogy of a football player being injured and needing a substitute to take his/her place to finish the game... Only Jesus can finish the game for us (He is our substitute)...and He already has won the game for us! Praise be His Name!
Posted by: Rene Lafaut | November 03, 2014 at 05:26 PM
I think that this article by Brad Jersak is very good. But lacking one thing: Jesus also came to heal us of our sins because the Bible tell us "By His stripes we are healed". Interesting thing is that evil and good are not defined in the popular sense... but evil is defined as spiritual sickness; and goodness or holiness is defined as spiritual healthiness and that involves healthy relationships (Jesus calls Himself a Physician and wants to heal us from the wounds in our hearts/minds/actions/relationships). Fact is that Jesus came to heal "us" and that means healing our relationships too since by His stripes "we" are healed...! I'd also like to say that people most of the time believe what they are taught in their churches... and bring their own baggages to Scripture both good and bad... we all do... no sense in getting angry with those who hold the incorrect Penal Substitution view of Salvation... none of us have it all together...we all have blind spots...we are all on journeys...Jesus taught us to not judge or condemn...but to be merciful... it's OK to be "angry" but lets not let the sun go down on our anger...let's not have a chips on our shoulders! The Good News that God is not like pagan deities and thirsty for revenge means He is not a mean God...but a loving God...He is slow to anger...and because He is not mean, capricious, fickle, and annal... we can be like Him when it comes to others crossing our boundaries...and kind to ourselves too for having crossed other people's boundaries...It is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance...not threats, fears, or a heavy hand...let's act likewise!!! Thanks Brad Jersak!
Posted by: Rene Lafaut | November 03, 2014 at 05:19 PM
It's hard for me, honestly, to read this good news and not get fired up and angry still: to want to take it and throw it in the face of so many teachers/friends/conservativebullies in my past and life (and even yesterday, this guy who came to TN accompanying a man out of prison and grilled me about TN doctrine and started with hell and God sending us to hell as his primary point and narrative for doctrine). This--what Brad summarized in the Fathers--is, honestly, what I believed since I was a boy, intuitively, as I read the scriptures. This is what I believed and articulated in college, too, having read little theology. And in my time at TN, with only Bob's angle on the scriptures, but no atonement training or patristics.
So to see that what I believed my whole life, and what I thought were my own lonely interpretations of NT teaching, were right there in the Fathers--it's a mixed feeling. Relief. Thrill. Vindication. Gratitude to God. Fury, pure fury. And an arming, a rehearsing, of these points, to go back to battle with those who tell a mean, pagan, sad story of salvation and tell me it's Biblical and that I'm going "light" on scripture.
I probably need to go deeper into dialogical prayer with this, and sit with Jesus, and let him put his hand on my heart, look into his eyes, and let the truth of all this burn with glory into my heart until it glows there and the anger is gone. I might need help doing that. Because I"m still so so angry, brother.
Like people told me my whole life that my father was someone else. And I deep down knew a different father. And they still tell me my father is someone else. It's disorienting. I want to take my real father by the hand, knock on the doors of all the people that confused my heart in my life, introduce them to my real father, and tell them they were wrong, they hurt me, they're hurting other people, they were never right, and they're hurting/confusing more people out there. Including themselves.
I can see why Jesus wasn't a sweetheart to religious leaders. He had fiery words that stung and cut at religious teachers that misrepresented God and thought they had the scriptures on their side in their smug study. I feel so bad for not having a compassionate/evangelizing heart towards my evangelical/heretical teachers, that I feel anger towards them. So it's odd that me, a guy very against warped/violent atonement narratives, is comforted by Jesus' anger here.
Posted by: Chris | November 02, 2014 at 08:55 PM
Dear Kent,
Thanks for the good question. I'll do my best to represent what I see in the NT and the fathers here. There are a number of issues in play.
1. First, there is of course the obvious problem of physical death as a result of our spiritual rebellion, which is why Jesus literally had to engage and overcome death through his resurrection. We know this is usually what the the fathers are referring to because they apply the results of Christ's victory over death to their lack of fear of death in the face of potential martyrdom. This was a BIG deal to them, such that fearlessness re: death was one of the chief proofs of authentic faith.
2. Second, while there is no doubt a spiritual estrangement from God through sin that requires reconciliation, this estrangement is not envisioned on God's side. While we, like Adam and Eve, have hidden from him in our shame and run from him in our rebellion, He has never separated himself from us. Rather, from the very beginning, he has graciously come looking for us, the Good Shepherd looking for and finding and rescuing lost sheep.
3. Thus, Christ did not have to (and could not, ontologically) experience the death of spiritual separation from God, for at least three reasons: a. in his love, God has never abandoned humanity, b. in his humanity, Christ never hid from his Father or abandoned his mission, and c. because the Trinity lives as One God, the three persons are indivisible. Thus, in both the NT and the fathers thereafter, any talk of the Son being less than or separated from perfect union with the Father is [formally] regarded as heresy.
3. So if only that which Christ assumed could be healed, and if Christ thus assumed the entire human condition, then the human condition must never be beyond (cut off) from God, even in spiritual death. Remember the Psalmist's words, 'even if I make my bed in sheol, thou art there.' So while there is a spiritual death attributable to sin, apparently we ought not equate it with 'separation from God,' in any ultimate way.
4. The verse used to identify a spiritual death defined as separation and experienced by Christ is typically Jesus' quote from Psalm 22:1 - My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? - In this case, Christ does identify with the human experience of despairing of God's rescue, but in the full context of the Psalm he is quoting and proclaiming, we hear the fulness of his experience in verse. 22-24, where he continues:
Here’s the story I’ll tell my friends when they come to worship,
and punctuate it with Hallelujahs:
Shout Hallelujah, you God-worshipers;
give glory, you sons of Jacob;
adore him, you daughters of Israel.
He has never let you down,
never looked the other way
when you were being kicked around.
He has never wandered off to do his own thing;
he has been right there, listening.
Jesus entered the dark place of knowing he would indeed face death and neither his Father nor 10,000 angels would pull him from the Cross ... but he also says in the clearest terms (at the last supper), "You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me." (John 16:32)
Posted by: Brad Jersak | October 30, 2014 at 04:00 AM
What are your thoughts on death being spiritual in nature instead of physical? For instance, when Paul writes, "the wages of sin is death," wouldn't it make more sense that he was saying spiritual separation from the Father instead of physical separation from this life? If so, did the early church fathers see it this way or did they understand it as physical or possibly both?
Posted by: HartmannKent | October 30, 2014 at 02:22 AM