DeanaTheriault290

Resurrection

What was The lord doing on the cross?. It constitutes a search for understanding of one of the crucial events of history, perhaps the crucial event. The whole New Testament focuses on the death, burial, and resurrection, events prior to and flowing from it, its theological significance and ethical implications. We are going to focus on the deep significance with the atonement, as explained from three perspectives: the dynamic, subjective, and objective views.

Dynamic view The dynamic view sees Christ's death and resurrection because the climax of a cosmic conflict with Satan and the demonic forces of evil. Christ came since the Second Adam (Romans 5:18-19), winning the contest that Adam failed. He also came as the new Israel, faithfully keeping submitting to God rather than to Satan as the first Israel had done (Matthew 2:15; 4:4; etc.). Just after His baptism, the Spirit "drove" (Greek: ekballei) Him into the wilderness so that He might confront Satan (Mark 1:12). His victory there was clearly only one of what must have been many battles, for Luke records that Satan left Him until "an opportune time" (Luke 4:13).

Throughout his ministry Jesus offered His ability to cast out demons like a demonstration that He was stronger than Satan. Although He described Satan as a "strong man," He claimed the ability to "bind" the strong man and despoil his possessions (i.e., people who were demon-possessed). His ability to cast out demons "by the finger of God" He presented as evidence of the arrival of God's kingdom on earth (Luke 12:20-22). Jesus got His disciples active in the warfare; their successful preaching, healing, and exorcism mission He afterward referred to as the fall of Satan from heaven (Luke 10:18).

Satan was behind the betrayal of Jesus by Judas (John 13:2, 27), his abandonment through the other apostles (Luke 22:31-32), along with his trial and murder (John 8:40-41, 44). Jesus recognized Satan as His principal enemy, and even before His death, He was confident of victory he spoke of it as a fait accompli (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 32). As soon as before His death Christ Himself uttered the triumphant words, "It is finished" (John 19:30; compare Luke 12:50). The glorious resurrection is proof that His death was a victory and not a defeat (Revelation 3:21).

In his confrontation with false teaching at Colossae, Paul is definitely the cross and resurrection as a overcome spiritual enemies. The Colossians were vulnerable to being deceived by a syncretistic combination of Judaistic legalism, Hellenistic philosophy, and Eastern mysticism. Apparently the heretical teachers weren't advocating a rejection of Jesus, however they denied Him the primacy and only intermediary beings. "Go beyond Jesus Christ to greater realities," they could have taught. Paul replies that there are nothing beyond Jesus Christ, in whom God's fullness dwells. He it really is Who "disarmed the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of which, triumphing over them by the cross" (Colossians 2:15).

Not only did Christ conquer Satan, demons, principalities, and powers. Also, he conquered death (Acts 2:24; Revelation 5:5-6). Paul uses militaristic terms to talk about the resurrection, e.g., "destroyed" and "victory" (1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 54-56).

Because Christ has triumphed as our representative, we be part of His triumph (hence the super-conquerors of Romans 8:37). In Ephesians 4:8 Paul applies Psalm 68:19 to Christ's triumph, picturing Christ as a conquering general returning to Rome for any victory parade: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in the train and gave gifts to men." The ensuing passage explains the gifts He gave will be the offices for building up the church. The captives are bypassed, but Colossians 2:15 seems an appropriate commentary.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, Paul says that "God... always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and thru us spreads everywhere the fragrance with the knowledge of him." In this case the apostles (see 1 Corinthians 4:9), and maybe all Christians, are probably those types of following along behind--themselves conquered, yet joyously sharing in the victory celebration. Our struggle against Satan and demonic forces continues (Ephesians 6:12). As they is victorious, we also can be victorious (Revelation 3:21; 1 John 2:14-15; 4:4; 5:4-5).

Subjective view It's true that we are the subjects of His daring rescue (Colossians 1:13-14), but we participate. This is the subjective nature from the atonement: it transforms us. While we are united with Christ through faith-repentance-baptism, God's Spirit begins the process of transforming us from one amount of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit, Himself the guarantee that this beginning will reach its intended end (Ephesians 1:13-14), actually starts to produce His fruit inside our hearts (Galatians 5:22-23) as we cooperate by "walking inside the Spirit" and being "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:4, 14; Galatians 5:16). The metamorphosis is not automatic; it takes constant mental concentration as we count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11). In addition, it requires continual moral striving, once we refuse to let sin dominate us, yielding the people in our bodies to righteousness instead of to sin (Romans 6:12-13).

This is a battle we fight, yet Paul assures us, "[S]in will have no dominion over you" (Romans 6:14). The struggle results in holiness and the end is eternal life (Romans 6:22). When Christ returns, on the eschaton, the Spirit will have performed His are employed in us: "[W]e shall be like Him, for we shall see Him while he is" (1 John 3:2).

Though this can be work that changes us from within and in which we ourselves participate, the loan still belongs to God, since it is His work being done in us and through us. He is the one that will bring it to completion on that day (Philippians 1:6). Meanwhile, we image Christ these days. He was our representative in the cosmic conflict; we are His representatives in the existential struggle against the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

Objective view Yet Christ's death is more than what he did for (hyper) us (see Mark 14:24; Luke 22:19-20) and what he is doing in (en) us (see Colossians 1:27). It also involves what He did as opposed to (anti) us (see Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45)---the objective view of the atonement. In fact, many believe that the substitutionary nature of the atonement is the central aspect of all.

Several types of the substitutionary atonement originate from Genesis. The word used in 1 John 3:12 to explain Cain's murder of his brother is the word for "slaughter" (Greek: esphaxen), such as the offering of a sacrifice. It has led some to view the earth's first murder, recorded in Genesis 4:8, because the offering of a substitute sacrifice. Essentially, Cain may have said, "So, You didn't like my vegetables as a possible offering? Let's see how You like THIS! (slash)." The murder certainly involved the shedding of his brother's blood, for it cried out from the ground against the perpetrator (Genesis 4:10).

If the angel stops Abraham from stabbing Isaac to death, Abraham finds a ram caught in a nearby thicket that he can offer rather than (Septuagint: anti) his son (Genesis 22:12-13). The passage assumes that some sacrifice must be offered, and the one is replaced by the other.

abductions - More than a hundred years later, when Joseph's testing of his brothers developed a crisis situation involving the enforced servitude of Benjamin, Judah stepped forward and freely offered himself as an alternative for his brother (Genesis 44:18-34, especially not the Septuagint's use of anti in v. 33). In this instance also, some substitute must be provided. There was no chance of mere escape from the demands with the master.

Yet all three of these are one-for-one substitutions, just as the "eye-for-eye" provisions of the Law. Christ's sacrifice (one for a lot of) is more like the sin offering in behalf of all people or the sacrifice with the goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4:13-21; 16:15-19). He is the "atoning sacrifice for our sins, rather than only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). He's the "Lamb of God, Who eliminates the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

One for the world? How can that be just? Its justice depends upon the identity of the Sacrifice. Just one human deserves infinite punishment due to sins. Adding the punishment of some other human adds no more than was there already (for infinity plus infinity equals infinity). The same is true for "the sins of the [whole] world." The slaughter from the Infinite One for these sins beings one infinity into experience of the other--just payment.

Our sins brought us beneath the curse of the law, but Christ was a curse for us by hanging around the tree (Galatians 3:10-14). Because of Christ's death, God was able to effect what Luther called a "happy exchange": we had been the subjects of God's just condemnation, the objects of His righteous wrath, but the sinless Christ became "sin" for us, so that we might become God's righteousness by Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God established Him because the propitiation, the appeasement, so that the all-consuming fire of His wrath might be diverted to Him as opposed to destroying the rest of us humans (Romans 3:25). As Isaiah said, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity people all" (Isaiah 53:6).

Must we choose? resurrection - Dynamic, subjective, and objective--must we choose from them? No! By its very nature the atonement is greater than any one metaphor or perspective can contain. We have to always be answering, "Yes, and much more besides." Like astronomers surveying the universe, the harder we study it, the more vast it becomes. Our lack of ability to fully comprehend its dimensions doesn't nullify what we can understand, nor does it rob us of the amazement we sense at what we should know was accomplished.