What is the gist of the gospel? It is the gracious work of God undertaken to restore us to himself, to his people, and to his project of renewing the world.

In light of this, Chapter 8 of McKnight's Embracing Grace poses these two guestions (p. 91):

• What does the gospel actually do for us when it restores us?
• How does the restoration project actually work?

What Does God Do?

Scot explains that God deals with suffering, sinfulness, and systemic evil. How does he deal with these things?

He absorbs our suffering, breaks the stronghold of sin, and counters the world's systemic evil with a new Kingdom community.

• By working with us he absorbs suffering.
• By working for us he breaks sin's stronghold.
• By working among us and through us he begins to restore good when once evil reigned.

Note those pronouns: God with us, for us, and among us. That's the beauty and the breadth of the gospel.

Strangely, much of our contemporary evangelical tradition has reduced the rich diversity of the atonement story to one lone theory, that of "penal substitution." Imagine if you were to receive the latest and greatest in a home computer system. This system had all the best hardware and all the fanciest software. You could run a business with this thing. Yet, the only thing you did with this high-powered, cutting-edge computer was use its calculator to balance your checkbook. All this at your fingertips and you use only the calculator? Wow--what a squandering of resources! What are we missing?

Unfortunately, we have done much the same with the atonement. God is with us, for us, and among us, and all some of us care about is that our sins are forgiven so we can go to heaven some day when we die. Is that what the atonement is all about? In failing to see beyond some "legal transaction" in heaven we miss out on so much. Let's set aside our constricting categories and open our eyes afresh to the multi-faceted nature of the atonement, both as described in the biblical record and as transmitted throughout church history. There is much here to discover. There is much here to experience.

THE MANY SIDES OF ATONEMENT

What's Your Favorite Golf Club?

In his excellent new book on atonement, Scot McKnight opens with this analogy:

At a dinner table one night a companion asked me which of my golf clubs was my favorite. I had never been asked that question, and it struck me as odd. My answer went something like this. When I'm at 150 yards, I like to “knock down” my 7-iron. When I'm at 200 yards and there is no wind, I like my 3-iron. When I'm on the tee box, if the fairway is open, I like my driver. On the green, I like my putter. When I'm in the bunker around a green, I like my sand wedge. When I'm at 80 yards and in the fairway, I like my lob wedge. So, I said to him, I don't have a favorite club. I use all fourteen clubs in my bag.

But I once played with a man who did have a favorite club. And it was the only club he carried. That solitary club had to be adjusted so that it could be flat like a putter and angled like irons. The reason he had only one club was that, in his own words, “I’m too lazy to carry a bag of clubs.” You can guess that he wasn't a very good golfer, but I must admit that he did pretty well for being a “one-clubber.”

This story illustrates the central metaphor in this book about atone­ment. Some atonement theories today are “one-club” theories that have to be adjusted each time one plays “the atonement game.” This is unfortu­nate because we have a big bag of images in our Bible and we need to pull each from the bag if we are to play out the fulsomeness of the redemptive work of God.

The game of atonement requires that players understand the value of each club as well as the effort needed to carry a bag big enough and defined enough so that one knows where each club fits in that bag.

What does each club in our bag offer us, are we using all the clubs in our bag, and is there a bag defined enough to know where to place each of those clubs? Those are the questions I intend to answer in A Community Called Atonement.

Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2007), xiii. Amazon.

Biblical Explanations of God's Work on Our Behalf

The atonement is like a multi-faceted diamond, each facet offering a different perspective--all the facets, connected and in unison, are required to appreciate the gem's unique beauty. The NT writers explain the significance of the work of Christ using "a full bag" of metaphors. Joel Green, Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, writes:

The diversity within the Scriptures. In speaking of the atoning significance of the cross, Paul's letters employ two formulas, which themselves represent widespread and early Christian thought. The first presents the "giving up" of Jesus for the salvation of humankind, either as an act of God (e.g., Rom 8:32) or as an act of self-giving (e.g., Gal 1:4). The second formula takes the form of a slogan, "Christ died for our sins" or "Christ died for us" (e.g., 1 Cor 15:3; 1 Thess 5:10). These expressions point plainly to the saving significance of Jesus' death, but without tying down in what way the cross is salvific. Moving beyond these stereotypical expressions, Paul, and with him other New Testament writers, generated a wide array of models for communicating the saving importance of the cross. Taken as a whole, these images tend to congregate around five spheres of public life in antiquity: the court of law (e.g., justification), the world of commerce (e.g., redemption), personal relationships (e.g., reconciliation), worship (e.g., sacri­fice), and the battleground (e.g., triumph over evil).

An expansive terminology attests this variety. With regard to images of sacrifice, for example, Paul and John refer to Jesus as the "Passover lamb" (1 Cor 5:7) and "the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (Jn 1:29; cf. Jn 1:36; Rev 5:6); language regarding the handing over of Jesus can hark back to the binding of Isaac (i.e., the Akedah; Rom 8:32; cf. Gen 22); 1 Peter observes how Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (l Pet 2:24; cf. 1:19); and Jesus' death is portrayed as "blood of the covenant" (Mk 14:24; cf. Ex 24:8) and as "first fruits" (1 Cor 15:20, 23; cf. Lev 23; Deut 16). Another example: although the language of "reconciliation" is rare in the New Testament (katalasso, e.g., Rom 5:10-11; 2 Cor 5:18-20; Eph 2:16; Col 1:20, 22), the concept inhabits other texts as well, including references to "peace" (e.g., Eph 2:14-18) and the many acts (e.g., Rom 16:16), pleas (Philemon), and testimonies (e.g., Acts 15:8-9; Gal 3:26-29) of reconciliation that occupy the pages of the New Testament. In these ways the New Testa­ment writers draw on the life worlds of their audiences while at the same time working to induct them into the world of Israel's Scriptures and the ways of Israel's God.

We should not imagine that the variety of New Testament images of atonement is simply a function of the different writers of its books. Paul himself can write of substitution, representation, sacrifice, justification, forgiveness, reconciliation, triumph over the powers, redemption and more. John can speak of illumination as well as sacrifice. Although in Hebrews the notion of sacrifice is paramount, Jesus is presented as both the perfect high priest and the perfect sacrificial victim. First Peter speaks of Jesus' death as a ransom and sacrifice, while the book of Revelation presents Jesus' death in terms of military triumph and redemption. This variety might appropriately lead us to the conclusion that the significance of Jesus' death could not be represented without remainder by any one concept or theory or metaphor. This is due first to the universal profundity of Jesus' death as saving event, to the variety of contexts within which Jesus' death required explication and to the variety of ways in which the human situation can be understood.

Within this variety we can discern common threads. Thus each image of the atonement presumes a portrait of the human situation, of human need. We find in the New Testament an abundance of terms and phrases for con­ceiving the condition that characterizes human existence apart from God: slavery, hard-heartedness, lostness, friendship with the world, blindness, ungodliness, living according to the sinful nature, the reprobate mind, the darkened heart, enemies of God, dead in trespasses and more. How we ar­ticulate the saving significance of Jesus' death is tied to our conception of the human situation. People who are blind need illumination. Slaves need liberation. The lost need to be found.

Second, the message of atonement is all-encompassing. That is, it cannot be reduced to one group of people, to one individual or to some aspect of the human person. What happened on the cross had universal significance: for Jew and Gentile, for slave and free, for male and female. The work of Christ on the cross had as its object even the cosmos, giving rise to images of new creation (2 Cor 5:17) and all-encompassing reconciliation (Col 1:15-20). The atonement is not narrowly focused on the individual's relationship to God but involves persons in their relationships to others, both neighbor and enemy, and to the world. The cross is less about a transaction after which persons are no longer guilty, and more about salvation as a call to reflect in day-to-day life the quality of life oriented to the other and on exhibition in Jesus' death on behalf of others. Atonement is a divine gift, but it summons and enables human response. 

Finally, in the restoration of broken relationships, God's initiative is par­amount, and this initiative portends no distinction between the will or action of God the Father and God the Son. For example, Romans 5:1-11 presents the death of Christ as the ultimate expression of the love of God: "But God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (v. 8). In this important text we are told that God demonstrates his love by means of what Christ did. We might have anticipated that God's love would be revealed in God's own deed, and this would certainly have been the case were Paul sketching an atonement theology oriented toward the role of the cross in the Son's assuaging God's wrath. Instead, Paul asserts the oneness of the purpose and activity of God and God's Son on the cross. As the apostle puts it elsewhere, "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5:19). In this passage where descriptive terms for the saving effects of Jesus' death congregate (2 Cor 5:14—6:12: substitution, representation, sacrifice, justification, forgiveness and new creation), Paul carefully shows how the work of God and of Christ are one. There is no hint of mutual reconciliation. The "world" is estranged from God and needs to be brought back into relationship with God, but we find no hint that God is estranged from the "world." Rather, Paul affirms that God's love always has the upper hand in divine-human relations and that the work of Christ had as its effect the bringing of the "world" back to God.

“Kaleidoscopic View” in Beilby J and Eddy PR, eds, The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 166-169. Amazon.

Multiple Models in Church History

Joel goes on to explain:

The diversity of the tradition. Across the centuries that followed, theologians developed numerous models for expressing the saving significance of Jesus' death. Interestingly, the ecumenical councils that produced the great creeds of the Christian church, thus defining classical orthodoxy for us, never selected one interpretation of the saving significance of the cross as definitive. Instead, from earliest times we find multiple models...

It is this traditional diversity that Scot goes on to unpack in the remainer of chapter 8. Below is an outline of some of the things we covered in our discussion.

Irenaeus: Recapitulation

Here Jesus is seen as the true Adam (or human being), who comes for the sake of the Failed Adam (i.e., all of humanity). Paul introduces this concept in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. The true Adam has several tasks to undertake:

• He takes on the consequences of the failed Adam
• He takes up the role that we forfeited (see our prior discussion of image-bearing)
• He takes along the failed Adam at his side so he (and we) can be
  • released from the consequence we incurred and
  • restored to the role that we had forfeited

In his book on atonement (quoted above), Scot summaries the goal of this recapitulation as "identification for incorporation." Jesus identifies with us in our botched assignment and our plight (which carried him to death, our death) in order to include us in his accomplishments (which led to his resurrection, which becomes our resurrection). This is part of what it means to be "in Christ." See our prior discussion: Participating in Christ's Image-bearing.

This recapitulation model helps us understand Jesus as the true Adam. It also helps us understand Jesus as the true Israel, who comes for the sake of failed Israel. This, I believe, is the key to understand Jesus as Messiah, Israel's King.

• He takes on the consequences of the failed Israel
• He takes up the role that ancient Israel forfeited (see our prior discussions of Israel's commission, part 2 and part 3)
• He takes along the failed Israel at his side so she (and we) can be
• released from the consequence incurred and
• restored to the role that had been forfeited

Classical View: Christus Victor or the Ransom Model

This model, as Scot tells us, was the dominant way of understanding the atonement for the first 1,000 years of the church's history. The backdrop for Jesus' victory is the conflict between God and his opposition and humanity's captivity to the enemy. Humanity's role as God's "lords" of the earth had been usurped by Satan. Below are a few illustrative verses:

• Luke 4:5-6. The devil led him [Jesus] up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
• John 12:31. Jesus says, "Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out."
• 2 Cor 4:4. Paul writes: "Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God."
• 1 John 5:18-19. We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Jesus came to overthrow the evil one and liberate his prisoners.

• Luke 11:21-22. Jesus says: "But if I am casting out demons by the power of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you. For when a strong man like Satan is fully armed and guards his palace, his possessions are safe—until someone even stronger attacks and overpowers him, strips him of his weapons, and carries off his belongings."
• Acts 10:38. And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
• 1 Cor 15:24-26. After that the end will come, when he [Jesus] will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power. For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
• Heb 2:14-15. Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. [Can you hear in this a brilliant blending of the recapitulation and ransom models?]
• 1 John 3:8. When people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.

Just as the Recapitulation model sees Jesus as the new humanity and the new Israel, the Ransom model here sees Jesus as the new Moses, liberating his captive people in a new Exodus. These models demonstrate to us how Jesus is only intelligible in Old Testament categories--at least that's how all the NT writers understood him.

For a clear presentation of the strengths of this "story of atonement," see Greg Boyd's essay, "Christus Victor view," in Beilby J and Eddy PR, eds, The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 23-49. Amazon.

Anselm: The Satisfaction Model

This atonement model was qualified during the Protestant Reformation to focus on the appeasing of God's wrath. This "penal substitution" model is the dominant, if not exclusive, way of comprehening the work of God in Christ in some sections of contemporary evangelicalism.

Abelard: Moral Exemplar

The focus here is on Jesus as our example, who models what it means to be lovingly loyal to God, committed to his people and his program.

• John 13:34. Jesus says, "Love each other as I have loved you."
• 1 Cor 11:1. Paul writes, "Follow me as I follow Christ."
• Phil 2:5. You must have the same attitude/mind-set that Christ Jesus had.
• Romans 8:29. God chose his people to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
• 1 John 2:6. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.

For more on the many "stories of the atonement," see, in addition to the two books mentioned above, Joel Green and Mark Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament & Contemporary Contexts (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000). Amazon. 

Combining These Models

The NT writers were followed by the church in employing a variety of metaphors to grasp different facets of the diamond we call atonement. This is why Scot has no favorite golf club. Like Joel Green, he prefers a kaleidoscopic view of the atonement. 

God is in the business of reclaiming his creation. The work of Christ and the Spirit are central to this reclamation. How is it that Jesus and his accomplishments effect the restoration of Israel, of humanity, and of the cosmos? Here is where these varied and complementary stories of atonement come in to play. Each has something to offer in helping us grasp the atonement, in helping us experience the atonement, and in helping us participate in its propagation.

There are many dishes served at this banquet. Come and partake of them all.