A Meal at the Table: Musings on the Atonement

Well - this is probably a more true-to-blog post than my usual sermon manuscript but it's an effort to start a conversation, begun this past Sunday, about the atonement - what happened on the cross, why did Jesus die, what are we saved from, etc. The metaphorical image guiding the discussion comes from N.T. Wright who said that Jesus didn't give a theory to the disciples to explain what he was doing but a meal. That meal also reminded me of the many other meals that Jesus shared with people throughout the gospel accounts and I hope all those meals provide us with a helpful metaphor as we seek to understand and discuss what Jesus has done for us. So, as we sit down at table together I invite a conversation that is gentle and kind, where we pass the dishes with care, mindful that we all have hungers, stories, and things to share.

So, here are some more thoughts on the topic at hand. I just read the book of Galatians this morning and was struck by both what it says about Jesus' work on the cross and what it doesn't. Absent are many of the elements associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with penal substitution and the like. Rather, Galatians speaks of Christ's work on the cross as the act of God and Jesus "to set us free from the present evil age" (1:3). It speaks of Christ having "redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (3:13). Of course, Paul is not arguing that the law is opposed to God but has been "imprisoned" under the "power of sin" (3:21-22). Paul then goes on to speak of Jesus offering us adoption and freedom from the "elemental spirits of the world by his being born - that is taking on our humanity and yet makes no mention of the cross; thereby signifying that Jesus' birth already signaled something critical for our salvation apart from the cross. Finally, Paul ends the letter with the statement: "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (6:14). Paul's point seems to be that Christ's death frees us from having to follow the law, hence the mention of cirucumcision in vs. 15, and that he is free from the tyranny of the world. I wonder if the latter doesn't fit back into his discussion of elemental spirits; that is, Christ's has freed us from those powers of the evil age that seek our allegiance and devotion.

A few thoughts on Galatians and the atonement: First, I am reminded how much our discussion of the atonement occurs because we allow one book to dominate the discussion. Here I of course mean the preponderance of Romans and the way in which it shapes much of the theology of Christ's work on the cross. This is not to say that Romans is wrong or bad, God forbid, but that it belongs to a canon which contains other books concerning salvation that must also be allowed to speak with equal weight and force. We must, in other words, make sure that the entire Bible is being served at our table and not merely one dish. Second, the book of Galatians focuses on the cross and incarnation as salvific with two foci: saving us from the law which has been, itself, imprisoned by sin and saving us from the present evil age and powers that, while not real gods, enslave us. Absent are any of the penal images that so many evangelicals focus on as well as the defining of sin simply as rebellion. In Galatians, however, sin functions less as an act of rebellion and more as an element of enslavement from which Christ's seeks to set us free. Third, for Paul the incarnation is not merely an instrumental element of the salvation that Jesus brings. Some atonement theories, in other words, are so cross focused that one would think that the only reason Jesus became a human being was to die. However, Paul's discussion, I would argue, makes Jesus' humanity far more salvific than the theories that simply focus on his death - in 4:4 his birth is redemptive.

A few thoughts to pass around and chew on. May the dish of Galatians nourish us as we think carefully about what God has done for us in Christ.

Peace,
Jon