Christ Died for Me (Condensed) (Luke 18:31-34; 23:33a) (3/20/16)
As an adult returning to the faith, one
of my first questions of my pastor was, “Why did Jesus have to die?” Why did Jesus have to die? I mean, this was God. Why couldn’t he have come to earth, looked
around, declared our salvation and go back to heaven?
How about you? As Christians we believe that Jesus died on
the cross. We all say he died to save
us, but how does that work? We’d all
like a pat answer. We want to know the formula. I’m not sure there is a formula, something as
simple as two plus two. More than likely
it is a drama, a metaphor, a story. We
need a story to understand.
So when I asked my pastor Frank why did
Jesus have to die, he gave me a story to read.
I can’t remember the book, I can’t remember the author, but remember the
story:
“This young couple, madly in love, married. But unfortunately, three or four years into their marriage the wife was unfaithful, had an affair which she grievously regretted. It tore her apart. Just looking at her faithful, loving husband filled her with guilt and regret and destroyed her relationship with him. All he the husband knew to do was to try to love her all the more. He longed for the relationship they had once known but it seemed never to be. Twenty years passed by. The guilt and the broken relationship remained. On spring in the garden, the two were on their knees preparing the flower bed and he looked at her in love and said, “I forgive you.” She lashed out at him and said, “How dare you forgive me. You have no right to forgive me!”
“This young couple, madly in love, married. But unfortunately, three or four years into their marriage the wife was unfaithful, had an affair which she grievously regretted. It tore her apart. Just looking at her faithful, loving husband filled her with guilt and regret and destroyed her relationship with him. All he the husband knew to do was to try to love her all the more. He longed for the relationship they had once known but it seemed never to be. Twenty years passed by. The guilt and the broken relationship remained. On spring in the garden, the two were on their knees preparing the flower bed and he looked at her in love and said, “I forgive you.” She lashed out at him and said, “How dare you forgive me. You have no right to forgive me!”
What we are talking about here is our
strong desire for atonement, reconciliation with God. At-one-ment.
We want our relationship with God restored, the relationship between God
and sinful humanity
Incarnational Theory of Atonement
So, let’s start with my story. “How dare you forgive me. You have no right to forgive me.”
Unless you have walked in my shoes, experienced
my grievous guilt, your words alone cannot reconcile us.
Jesus came and lived among us, experienced
our temptations, lived as we lived, vicariously shared our experiences, and then
took to the cross all of the sins and guilt of sinful humanity so that in his
humanity he could experience the grievous guilt of us all. Because he shared our sin, shared our guilt, he
has the right to forgive us, to reconcile the broken relationship with us.
This
is called the incarnational theory of atonement. It is not just a formula, it is poetry, an emotional
drama played on the cross that explains why we are separated from God, why God
had to become like us in order to save us, why he had to suffer to bring us
back into relationship with him.
The incarnational theory of
atonement. There are a dozen such
theories all giving us a little different picture of the drama that we call
salvation theory. Some work for us, some
don’t. Some find us right where we
are. In other cases, we need a different
story, a different drama.
Penal Substitution Theory of Atonement
That was the incarnational theory. A second one.
The most popular is the “Penal Substitution Theory.” Christ substituted himself to pay our
penalty. Humanity’s sin has cause a
great gulf between us and God. Because
God is perfect and we are not, because God is holy and we are not, there is a
gulf between us that cannot be bridged.
And without that gulf being bridged, we will experience God’s
wrath. Because we are sinful, we deserve
punishment. There is nothing we can do
ourselves to avoid God’s wrath. Try as
we may, we fall short and are judged. Jesus
took our place, took the punishment for us all, took it to the cross, and in so
doing bridged the gap between us and God. We have received God’s just
punishment through Jesus’ substitution, and we can be reconciled with him.
Like all metaphors, all stories it breaks
down.
Here’s where it breaks down for me. It portrays a wrathful God. While there is judgment in the New Testament,
it doesn’t seem to portray the loving, forgiving God that Jesus describes. It doesn’t tell of the seeking God of the
lost sheep, the searching God of the lost coin, the longing God of the Prodigal
Son who celebrates when reconciliation takes place. It doesn't sound like good news at all. It
doesn't seem to portray grace.
If it works for you fine. If parts of it work for you fine. If it doesn’t, set it aside or combine it
with another story. I think the next two will be helpful.
The Perfect Penitent Theory of
Atonement
The next is from CS Lewis called “The
Perfect Penitent.” (See Mere Christianity pg 44 for a full
explanation)
Lewis emphasized that we may not need
to fully understand how God through Jesus Christ has reconciled us to him, but
it does work. I does work, we just need
to know the outcome. Here it is: “Christ
was killed for us. Somehow his death has
washed away our sins, and by dying, he has disabled death itself.”
He starts out by saying we are not just
sinful, we are rebels. It is our nature
to rebel against God. As an army in
rebellion, we must surrender, submit, lay down our arms. But not only that, we must repent, turn
around, eat humble pie, kill the rebellious part of ourselves, our sinful
nature. That’s hard. Army in rebellion, surrender, repentance,
killing our sinful nature. That’s hard.
If it were easy, we could do it
ourselves. But if it were easy to do, we
probably wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place.
Here’s the predicament that Lewis
proposes: Only a bad person needs to repent; but only a good person can repent
perfectly. That same badness that make
us need repentance, turning back to God, keeps us from being able to do so.
We need a perfect penitent. But only God is perfect. But since God is perfect, he has never needed
to repent. Repentance is not in God’s
nature. There’s nothing in God’s nature
that tells him to surrender, to submit, to suffer, to die to self. God could never be the perfect penitent.
But, suppose God became man, he could
help us. And because he was the perfect
man, he could be the perfect penitent.
He could surrender, he could submit, he could die to self, he could
repent perfectly because he was also God.
That is the picture. Lewis is quick to point out that it is only a
picture, it is not the real thing. The
real thing is that “Christ was killed for us.
That his death has washed away our sins, and that by dying Christ has
disabled death itself.”
The Moral Theory of Atonement
That with the moral drama of the cross,
that God is trying to change your heart.
Because you witness the drama, you are part of the story and therefore become
a changed person.
In getting ready for today, I bumped
into a story of an amazing man, a man named Brennan. He was not always an amazing man. In fact, his name was not always Brennan, it
was Richard and he was part of sinful humanity.
Born in Brooklyn in the 30s, he spent
two years attending St. John’s University, dropped out, joined the Marines and
was serving in the Korean War. While in
a foxhole in a lull of battle, he and his best friend were sharing a candy bar,
a grenade rolled into the foxhole and his best friend without hesitation rolled
onto the grenade. Instantly horrified,
he looked at his friend as his friend turned his head toward Richard and
winked. Then it was over. His best friend was dead, killed and he was
alive. Richard came home from Korea and changed his name from Richard to
Brennan, the last name of his best friend.
He was a changed person. The life, death and sacrifice, the moral drama
of his best friend had changed him.
In a way, that’s what happens to us
isn’t it? It is the moral life of Jesus
that changes us, the sacrifice of our best friend, “What a Friend We Have in
Jesus,” that loves us and gave his life for us, who told us “No greater love
than this than to lay down one’s life for a friend.” And when we see that, we change our name too,
to Christian.
The Moral theory of Atonement that the
moral life of Christ including that of laying down his life for all of us
changes us.
There other theories and they may be
helpful: Jesus as the Passover Lamb who saves us as the blood of the lamb did
for the Children of Israel; Christ the Victor who took on all the forces of
darkness including evil itself. Just
when it appears as though evil has won on the cross, God overcomes death. “O death where is your victory? O death,
where is your sting?” Christ the
Victor. “New Covenant Theory” “This is my blood of the New Covenant poured
out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
All of it drama, poetry a love story. When it fits, use it. Where it doesn’t, set it aside. What matters is the outcome: “Christ was
killed for us; and somehow his death has washed away our sins, and by dying, he
has disabled death itself.
God has done so through His mighty acts
in Jesus Christ “who loved us and gave his life for us.”
Jesus came to experience life, to
vicariously take all of our sins, all of our suffering, all the guilt, all of
our pain to reconcile us to God. In the
same way he lifts our sins from us, our grievous guilt from us, so that a man
and a women on their knees in a flower bed can be reconciled and experience
love again.
One last thing, the cross, the cross
Rick, why the cross? The extreme cruelty
of the cross? Yes, I understand that
Jesus died for me, by why the incredible cruelty of the cross?
I can only describe it one way: God chose
the cross to show that there was no length, there was no limit that God would
not go to, to show his love for us. He
would put on display all of his Power, his unlimited love, to save us. There is
no lengths to how far go would go to show us his love. Paul tells us, “The
message of the cross is foolishness for those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God.” The incredible power of God’s love.
It is the love of God, the unfathomable
love of God that he would enter this world to demonstrate his unlimited love
for us.
There is one last part of the story, of
this drama. And that is no one asked Jesus to die for us. No one asked Jesus to
enter Jerusalem this day knowing that his destination was the cross. It is a pure act of grace. Grace. We not only
did not ask Jesus to die for us, we did not deserve it. “You were saved by
faith through grace,” each and every one of you. It is not something you
did. You are incapable of saving
yourself. You received salvation by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ was
killed for you; he has washed away your sins; he has overcome death itself. Grace.
Here’s what you must do: Trust that it is so. That is faith. Amen.
