The Cross
March 28, 2021
Throughout history, there have been 3 major views on what God does at the cross (the technical term is “atonement theories”). They are referred to in various ways, but I’ll just use the ones I’m most familiar with (and perhaps you’ve heard of them, too). We can start with the least common—the Exemplarist Theory. It’s the idea that Jesus’ death was an exemplary model, an illustration of God’s love for us, freeing us from fear of God so that a desire to love and serve God may rise within us. This is the idea behind saying things like, “Look at how terrible the cross was. God was willing to do that for you, because he loves you.” Doesn’t that move us to love God in return?
The second is the one we are perhaps most familiar with—Penal-Substitutionary Atonement. Sin is a breaking of God’s law, resulting in God being wrathful toward us and our deserving conviction (hell). On the cross, Jesus serves as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He is the sin offering, taking our sins and the punishment due us, on our behalf, so that we don’t have to take it and so that God’s justice can be satisfied. Christ is our substitute. This is the idea behind talking about Jesus taking our place, or dying for our sins.
Both of these theories have truth to them. The cross does reveal God’s love for us, which calls us to reciprocate, and it does deal with our sin problem.
But the last theory (Christus Victor) is staring us in the face, and we so often ignore it. After all, Jesus did not die during the feast of Atonement, but during the Passover, and the Passover was not about sin, but about liberation. God chose his people, slaves in Egypt, and freed them so that they might serve him. This forms them into a community of faith amongst whom God can dwell, a community concerned about loving God and attending to personal sin and holiness, but also the community through whom God would go about setting all things right.
How will God set all things right? What is stopping all things from being right? Personal sin, yes, but also things like systemic sin. “Right” looks like humanity and nature flourishing with God dwelling in their midst, as things were in Genesis 1-2. But now there are nations and governments oppressing people, passing unjust and unrighteous laws, warring with one another, hating one another, doing what they can to ensure the flourishing of the few on the backs of the many. What is God to do about all this, this rebellion against his reign? He sends his son as a human, one of us, to live in and amongst us, to live the way God would have all of us live. In doing so, he attracts the attention of the powers and principalities, who try to put a stop to God’s work in Jesus by hanging him on the cross. But, wonder of wonders, instead of stopping him, they actually bring about their own demise, for Christ was victorious (hence, Christus Victor)! So now, we are freed from slavery to evil powers, in order that we might serve the true king, at peace with God, one another, and all of creation.
—John Coffey
