Transcript for:
Understanding Atonement in the Gospels

[Music] thank you please pray with me just for a moment thank you Father for my brothers and sisters here focused on your word your life your mission in the world strengthen us now and open our hearts and Minds aresh to understand the truth which is there waiting to be dug out and give us the courage and the fortitude and the perseverance to live it out we pray in jesus' name amen yeah the selfie culture is ubiquitous I mean we have it just as much in in uh in the UK I was saying to somebody um you remember Nelson Mandela's funeral um two three years ago there was a little bit of a scandal because David Cameron and Barack Obama and the Danish Prime Minister whose name I can't remember uh took a selfie of the three of them standing there the funeral and some people thought this was disrespectful to no I Nelson Mandela would have been right in there but anyway that's the point but then the next day in the London Times there was a lovely cartoon which was Nelson Mandela arriving in heaven and God taking a selfy of himself with [Applause] Mandel everyone wanted to be in on that I want to talk a bit today about atonement in the gospels and I have a lot of books on the atonement as I'm sure many of you do and very few of them give any detailed attention at all to Matthew Mark Luke and John except for pulling out the odd verse here and there Mark 10:45 the son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many everyone makes a Bel line for that there we are this is atonement theology thank you Mark and then they criticize Luke because Luke in the parallel passage doesn't actually have Jesus quoting that uh that line which with its Echoes of Isaiah 53 and some people have even said oh Luke doesn't have an atonement theology for him the cross is just the way to glory and that's all there is as I shall be showing you that's completely wrong um but then there's of course John 3:16 which I think every American School child certainly every American Christian School child uh knows perfectly well I was once coming into your beloved country and you never quite know what questions are going to be asked in customs and I foret when this was maybe it was the time I came here last time 11 years ago but I was already a bishop I know because the Customs officer said to me so what do you do and I said well actually I'm a bishop oh Bishop are you what does John 3:16 say [Laughter] and so thinking very quickly on my feet I said gapon so he fortunately he let me and I might have been on the plane home for pulling that St I the problem is that the gospels do not appear to be talking about how to go to heaven and that's what everyone thinks an atonement theology ought to be about and so they say the gospels don't have an atonement theology except for those little nuggets so the gospels have been treated as much in Conservative Christian circles as in buol Manan circles as the backstory to the real thing which is what you get in Paul and Hebrews and so on friend of mine Nick perin who's now dean of the graduate school at weaton College Illinois said yeah basically it's like a meal the gospels are the optional chips and dips at the beginning bits and pieces which may be may be nice to nibble on and then we go to the table for the red meat of Pauline theology well I've spent half of my life in Paul and I love Paul but that's not the right way to do it part of the trouble I think and certainly I grew up with this is that if you start reading the New Testament at the beginning and if you have the traditional Western soteriology in your head I.E how do you get to heaven then Matthew's gospel again and again and again has Jesus saying so that you may enter the kingdom of heaven and unless somebody takes you by the Scruff of the neck and says look Kingdom of Heaven is not a place called heaven where you you go and you die it's a fact called the rule of God in the world which were to pray on Earth as in heaven unless somebody does that to you you will Lurch back into thinking yeah this is all about how we go to heaven and then it's a puzzle because Jesus says unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven and people say so Matthew believes in Works righteousness and then we have all kinds of wrong debates I mean it's fun to have the debate but wouldn't it be nice to have had it on the right footing so somehow all that I'm saying this week about the recalibration the redirection of what being saved might look like and mean does send us back to the gospels not searching for a little nugget here and there that will speak to the soteriology we thought we ought to have but actually to hear what they have to say footnote many of you will know that there's been a growth industry in America over the last generation of study and propagation of the Gnostic Gospels Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Mary gospel of Phillip Gospel of the Egyptians etc etc most scholarship around the world reckons that this stuff was being generated from the late 2nd Century onwards some people more in your country than anywhere else in the world I think have tried to say that some of that stuff goes back really early as an early version of Thomas which is earlier than the synoptic gospels Etc most uh Gnostic Gospel scholars in Europe in Britain in uh Australia Etc just don't see it like that at all and I think there are local cultural reasons in America why some people want to find the Gnostic Gospels as prior one of which is that they don't of course have anything to do with the cross and Resurrection they turn Jesus simply into a teacher of supposedly uh abstract wisdom quirky um like Buddhist Coan you know just just saying odd things to tease people into thinking differently about their life and I wrote an article on the Jesus seminar many years ago and uh I entitled it five gospels and no gospel because they added Thomas into their synopsis Matthew Mark Luke John and Thomas but if you do that what you're saying is that this stuff is not good news it is simply good advice my friends there is all the difference in the world between good news and good advice Matthew Mark Luke and John give you good news because something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place and Thomas was written by people who did not want to believe that because they wanted to escape the world and go somewhere else the Gnostic Temptation so the question really is I love the question why the word why simple little word and it goes in all sorts of different directions why did Jesus die well he had heart failure no no that's not the right answer why did Jesus die well some people didn't like him well possibly but it's not quite good enough why well there are the big answers the historical answer and the theological answer I once taught and to my surprise Looking Back Now I once taught 12-year-old Sunday school when we were living in Canada my wife had been teaching the 12-y olds and then somebody dropped out of the 10-year-old so she moved down to that and she said they need a 12-year-old a teacher of the 12-year-old class would you do it I said I teach undergraduates I really then I looked at the syllabus and it was more or less the same as I was teaching my first year undergraduate so so I taught the 12-year-olds and one and one we went through the gospel story one point and one day I came and I said to them I want you without confirming to write down on a piece of paper one sentence why did Jesus die we hadn't prepared for this just wanted to know roughly half the class gave me historical reasons he died cuz the Pharisees were cross with what he'd been doing he died because um the chief priests were worried about what he did in the temple he died because the Romans thought he was a revolutionary and roughly the other half of the class it wasn't a male female thing it was just an odd division gave me the theological reasons he died to save us from our from our sins he died so that we could go to heaven he died because um we needed forgiveness and we spent a very interesting hour putting those two sets of answers together I've never forgotten that day it seems to me Matthew Mark Luke and John have put those two sets of answers together and they are answering the theological questions by means of telling us the historical story because as we'll see in a minute more particularly because this theology is about God the Creator and Redeemer Of The World God is not going to throw his beloved beautiful creation into the trash can and say well that's enough of that let's do something else so much Western Christianity has assumed that that is in fact the case this is a major battle at the moment had an email yesterday from somebody telling me about a book that's just coming out I won't tell you who it's by um a criticizing me because I spend too much time with history well excuse me the word became flesh and lived among us and we beheld his glory where in history where does it have to become flesh again where does the glory have to be revealed again in history your history your ministry Your World My World not in some abstract place that we can escape to sorry I could bang on about this all day I need to talk about the gospel now the gospels each tell us in their own very different ways this is my that was the introduction this is my first main point the gospels each tell us in their own different ways that they are that this story is the Fulfillment of the Old Testament narrative the so-called apocalyptic school on Paul at the moment and if you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry but just in case you do um say no no no Carl Bart taught us that God breaks into history there is no backstory it's absolute rubbish Matthew Mark Luke and John all tell the opening chapters in such a way as to say this is the Matthew's genealogy Mark's reference to Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 Luke's telling of those first two chapters resonating with one and two Samuel and John and RK and holos in the beginning it's a new genesis they're all saying this is where Israel's story was really going this is what you know wienstein said lud wienstein said that the Old Testament is like a torso and the gospels are like the head that was meant to go on that torso a very interesting observation he went on to say that Paul is offering a crown to this head and he said he can imagine a torso without a head but he he could imagine he could imagine a head Without a Crown but he couldn't imagine a torso without a head which was I think a way of saying I like the gospels but I'm not sure about Paul well okay but at least that's a good way of seeing what the gospels are saying they are and this means that we have to see the gospels in terms of creation and New Creation Covenant and New Covenant Tabernacle Temple and Jesus of Passover of the monarchy of the davidic monarchy and particularly of Exile and restoration think again Matthew's genealogy Abraham David Exile Jesus just an accident of how the numbers worked not a bit of it m Matthew sees that the Exile the punish the deuteronomic punishment for Israel's sin is one of the key moments in the story and when Jesus comes he is the true Seed of Abraham the true heir to David's throne and he is the one through whom God forgives sins in other words undo Exile Israel's Exile the world's Exile Adam and Eve's Exile from the garden and this is done so densely and richly that we really shouldn't ignore it though people often do and they are therefore saying that Jesus of Nazareth came as the climax of Israel's story and when Jesus says in Mark 1 the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand this is saying all that stuff in Daniel about a particular time which is to come all those great prophecies back behind Daniel this is where they're all coming together and particularly of course the gospels describe the inauguration of God's Kingdom on Earth as in heaven Israel's god recapturing control of his world from the dark Forces which have seized control illegitimately and again you have to see this in terms of the large story I I love the way the Temptation narratives are resonating with some of the moments at the end of the story the S the Satan comes after jesus' baptism he said if you are the Son of God command these TS to be made bread if you are the son of throw yourself down from the temple and we who know the whole story here right at the end if you are the Son of God why didn't you come down from the cross it's the same point the satanic Challenge and the Satan in Luke says to Jesus I rule all these kingdoms and if you'll worship me you can have them that's a claim and Jesus the Risen Jesus at the end of Matthew says all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me get the message something has happened as a result of which the usurper power has been broken this my friends is the kingdom of God that's what it means god is now King in a whole new way when I was writing that book how God became king um my wife looked over my shoulder as she done sometimes and said isn't God always King and I we've had this conversation many times but she just likes to wind me up you know and and so I said I said yes the Psalms celebrate that God is King but his kingdom seems to have been invaded and taken over and we still feel the effects of that of course but the gospels all say that by 6: p.m. on Good Friday something had happened to make the power of the Satan a broken Force so that the pattern of the early victories I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven says Jesus point forward to the great Victory which is to come I talked about John 12 the other night now the ruler of this world is to be cast out says Jesus and when I'm lifted up from the earth I will draw everyone to myself somehow his lifting up which in John always means the cross is going to be the glorification that invites all people to come to him because the power that has kept them under control preventing them from worshiping the true God will have been broken and so you get the passage in Luke and Matthew if I by the Finger of God if I by the spirit of God cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you of course the kingdom is inaugurated not consummated we all know this it's a now and not yet thing it is not fulfilled while Herod and pilate are still running the show of course not but if I by the finger or spirit of God do this then something is happening the main power is being decisively defeated and so just as the gospels tell the story of how Israel's story comes to its Climax and the kingdom is being inaugurated this is the bit that I I struggle with but I think it has to be said the gospels also seem to me to be telling the story of how evil reached its climax as well the historical and Theological Story of Evil Gathering itself together to fight against God's kingdom purposes and to do its worst at the very point where God was going to love to the uttermost so we have at the beginning of Matthew Herod Herod the Great going after the baby Jesus or the poor little boys in Bethlehem we have Herod Antipas in Luke 13 and Jesus says go and tell that fox I don't care about you and then we have Herod a grippa even in Acts 12 going on the herods are still at it but we have Rome of course standing behind as a dark brooding presence should we give tribute to Caesar or not whose is this image this superscription on that coin I've got one of them at home you can buy them for about $50 they're probably all fake but I've got one anyway um and it says Son of God and high priest who is this image and superscription Rome is usurping Authority here and then you have the Pharisees plotting and you have the herodians plotting and you have the chief priests getting worried because Jesus is doing things which would May mean that there'll be some awful explosion and bad things will happen and in and around it all you have the demons shrieking and and mocking and legion dashing him gashing himself and so on you even have Jesus family Mike was telling us about how his mom and dad couldn't get in here that happened to Jesus too you know that um they um yeah yeah and the end of Mark 3 your mother and brothers are here wanted to get in Jesus who is my mother who's who might be I bet you didn't say that and and the way that the gospels tell this story is of an accumulation of evil from all sorts and directions and even among jesus' own disciples incomprehension and then rebellion and then betrayal and then denial and so on and I was thinking about this the other day and think um maybe this is what's happening in acts when they look back in Acts chapter 4 when they're being threatened by the authorities and they pray Psalm 2 in Acts 4: 23-31 and they say yeah David said this why do the Nations rage why do the peoples gather themselves together against the Lord and his anointed this is the beginning of Psalm 2 and they say specifically Herod and pilate in this city got together to conspire against against the Messiah and then of course they pray and now Lord look upon their threats and Grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal it's one of my favorite prayers in the whole new testament but the point is that this perception of the early church was of evil Gathering itself together to do what scripture said evil would do but we know how Psalm 2 goes on the one who dwells in the heavens laughs the Lord has them in derision he will mock them and he'll say I have set my king on my Holy Hill of Zion and then the messiah's words I will tell her the decree of the Lord he said to me you are my son this day have I begotten you and of course resonates through the whole of the gospel story this is God's son God's beloved on whom his favor rests ask of me and I will give you the Nations as your inheritance the uttermost parts of the world for your possession I hope when you read brief extracts from scripture in the New Testament you go back and look up the whole context and this is something Richard Haye taught us with Paul and he's now teaching Us in his new book on the gospel same thing but it works in acts as well look at the whole of Psalm 2 because acts 4 means what it means in the light of the whole of Psalm 2 and so on but my point here is simply that this is an early Christian perception of evil Gathering itself together and when you read the gospels and look at that you realize yeah these are very extraordinary stories hardly a page goes by without opposition without um bad things happening without conspiracies and so on and this all builds up into the world that's generated out of Psalm 110 out of Daniel 7 the world which says yes this is how God's purposes go forward God is going to win the great victory over the forces of chaos and so we have in the gospel certainly in Matthew Mark and Luke and then John as usual in a different key but it's still there the sense of the Messianic battle only now it's been redefined all the Messiah of this period ending with bokar in the 130s ad were looking for a military Victory against Rome and when Jesus said who do you say that I am at cesaria Philippi and they said you are the Messiah Peter's so-called confession Peter doesn't mean you're the second person of the Trinity he means you're Israel's Messiah and that carries with it the IDE we're we know now we're signed on we're with you we're going to go up to Jerusalem and we're going to pray for those Legions of angels and we will win so not long afterwards James and John are figuring out who's going to sit on which side of Jesus when he comes in his kingdom and Jesus says immediately yes we are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be handed over and killed and on the third day raised and I I've I think and I've argued this in many places I think they just didn't get it I think they were thinking he's talking in riddles again this is a parable of course he's not going to get Peter says no you're not and Jesus says you're that's the voice of the Satan right there but this is what it's all about the strange Messianic Kingdom which will come through Jesus suffering and death so what Jesus is trying to tell them it's what Matthew Mark Luke and John are trying to tell us this is the climax of Israel's story when Israel's King is finally enthroned with the word Words king of the Jews above his head because in Luke 23:53 when they come to arrest him in the garden Jesus says this is your hour and the power of Darkness it's a very telling moment Jesus sees that the darkness has gathered all around him and he knows that it is his vocation to go into the heart of that darkness and to take its full force upon himself self I actually see a straight line from here right across to Romans 7: 8 which God willing I should be talking about tomorrow just in case you thought fall Paul had fallen off the back of my Bible this week um a sense of evil building up and building up and coming together so that at that point it can be dealt with once and for all and that that whole thing the kingdom of God's story and the accumulation of Israel's story no wonder the gospels are so hard to read no wonder we turn them into little Snippets and read maybe 10 verses in church if we're lucky and then preach a little sermon out of that these are massive dangerous documents when you read them at a run the whole thing they are the whole story and then of course the gospels are also I'm not going to stop on this but the gospels are also the documents written to enable the church who tells this story to be the Jesus people for the world the gospels were Not Mere historical reminisence of course they weren't even just teaching the truth about what had happened so that we could now believe it they were written in such a way that when people read them together and pray them together they want to live them together and they want to follow Jesus when he says now it's your turn take up your cross and follow me because the cruciform gospel which is Jesus turns into the cruciform life which is us that's our theme this week of course and we see this in so many we see it a dozen ways I haven't got time to go into but one of my favorite little nuances here is in The Sermon on the Mount Jesus says uh turn the other cheek and go the Second Mile and you are like the light of the world and a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden and I'm convinced that Matthew knows that what he's going to tell us about 20 chapters later is about Jesus not resisting when he's beaten up about Jesus going the Second Mile carrying the Roman cross about Jes Jesus being set on a hill so that he cannot be hidden this is The Sermon on the Mount is not just here's how to be a nice person for Jesus you know that'll help too but it's about this is what the kingdom work looks like and then Jesus goes and does it himself and so at this point in the narrative I want to say this is Kingdom talk which means it's all about Victory God's victory over evil does that mean it's a Christus Victor theology over against a substitutionary atonement theology no it doesn't it means that we have to put both the christas Victor story and the substitutionary at atonement story Into the story of God and the world and Israel and Jesus instead of into the story which is simply our moralistic one of I got it wrong I'm very naughty I need punishing fortunately somebody took the WRA for me you know I much I said somebody yesterday I'd much rather people believe that story that they were Sinners and that Jesus had taken their punishment I'd much rather they believed that than believing in I don't know Buddhism or epicureanism or something else much rather they had Jesus at the center of their worldview but I would long and hope and pray that the Jesus they put at the center of the worldview will be the Jesus of Matthew Mark Luke and John not of certain 16th 17th and 18th century theological schemes sorry I don't want to be too pical here actually I do want to be too pical but I'm not going to be um so if that's the big picture which is about the victory of the kingdom over the accumulated forces of evil what's the inside of that what's going on in in the heart of it and the answer is again and again the Forgiveness of sins which in Israel's scriptures is all about the return from Exile is happening to actual people as Jesus goes around my child your sins are forgiven and they say you can't do that and he says okay take up your bed and walk to prove the point and all those feastings with the wrong people with the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the Sinners and so on actual people being released from the grip of the Satan Luke 13 the woman whom Satan has bent over for all those years she should be released from her bond on the Sabbath days a wonderful passage Jesus is coming to break the grip of the Satan and the way that you break the grip of the Satan the way that you win the big victory is by the Forgiveness of sins because it is sin flowing from idolatry which enables the powers to be the powers the healings which are the signs of New Creation are saying this this is clear again and again one passage after another um as an Anglican I love the Benedictus zachariah's hymn at the start of Luke's gospel when he uh knows of the of the birth of his son who's to be John the Baptist blessed be the Lord God of Israel who's visited and redeemed his people raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant David as he promised to our forefathers um and remembered his Holy Covenant that he would give us forgiveness of sins it all comes together that we being delivered from the hands of our enemies might serve him without fear in Holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life and then John you child will be called the prophet of the highest you'll go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways the big victory deliverance from all our enemies through the Forgiveness of sins you cannot play lay them off against one another and so as I stand back from the gospel story and I see this particularly in Luke which is why the business of does Luke have an at atonement theology is so ironic for me I see this great syllogism looming up which I've expounded in various books and some of you will know this as well as I do that Jesus is announcing God's judgment on impenitent Israel because Israel whether it's kzin and Betha whether it's the cities that Jesus had gone around preaching or whether it's Jerusalem itself Israel as a whole has resisted his way of Peace he comes into the city in Luke 19 in tears on the donkey if only you had known even now you the things that belong to your peace but they're hidden from your eyes the days will come when your enemies will come and smash you to pieces Luke 13 as well unless you repent you will all likewise perish what's that likewise it's not frying in Hell after you die it's R swords killing pilgrims in the temple and falling Towers crashing on people in Jerusalem yes says Jesus that's going to happen if you don't turn from what you're doing from your headlong flight into Rebellion against God which is showing itself as zealotry Rebellion against Rome so Jesus is announcing God's urgent imminent judgment on his people Jesus is then identifying with his people Jesus as Messiah is coming to the place where Israel is representing Israel being Israel in their midst we see this again and again with his feastings with his Gathering of people with the feedings and so on this is Jesus being Israel so what what happens when you put those two together Jesus goes ahead of his people and takes upon himself that which he had warned would come upon them my teacher George K said in a famous line thus in literal historic truth as well as in theological interpretation the one bore the sins of the many the warnings that he issued were warnings about what Rome would do to Rebel subjects what did Rome do to Rebel subjects it crucified them we see it in the end of Luke 13 and the end of Matthew 23 as well when Jesus says how often I would have gathered you like a hen Gathering her chicks under her wing and you would not the image is of a fire in a farmyard or possibly the arrival of a of a predator a fox in Luke he's just talked about Herod as that fox anyway there's danger and the hen gathers the chicks under her wings and I am told I've not seen it myself that if there's a fire and if the hen does that sometimes afterwards you will find a dead hen charred to bits with live chicks under the wing the hen taking the full force of the fire or the fox to save the Earth that's what Jesus wanted to do and he says you're refusing you're not accepting this and then in that very odd saying in Luke 23:31 if they do this when the wood is green what will they do when it's dry you know the difference between green wood and drywood I once amazingly worked on Lumber camp in in British Columbia when I was very young had a gap year and and I could tell you that difference between Greenwood and drywood Greenwood is a lot heavier to lift cuz it's full it's full of moisture drywood has been dried out ready to be shaped cut or burnt if they do this when the wood if they are punishing as a rebel someone who is obviously not a rebel if they are treating as a criminal and a brigand someone who went about loving and healing and teaching people what will they do when Jerusalem is full of people the the young boys currently playing around their mother's knees who in 30 or 40 years will be the revolutionaries of the Next Generation and we know what happened and in Luke again particularly I'm really stressing this because Luke is so full of this and you just wonder what happened to scholarship that couldn't see it Luke makes it almost embarrassingly explicit he has Jesus arraigned on a charge of which his readers know perfectly well he is innocent we found this fellow perverting the people giving himself out to be a king and forbiding to give tribute to Caesar Jesus has not done that but that's the charge but then the barabus incident Luke 2318 to2 it's very clear it's a choice Jesus or barabus and Luke rubs our noses in it they released the one who had committed murder in the Insurrection in the city and they handed Jesus over to be crucified if that isn't substitution I don't know what is and of course luk is not drawing a little theological moral he's just saying that the whole narrative is about substitution and then the brigands on the cross beside him one of them starts throwing abuse at him and the other one says hey shut up this man has done nothing a Miss we are getting what we deserve but he didn't deserve it how much pler can Luke make it Jesus Remember me when you come in your kingdom interesting what does Luke think that meant I think Luke thinks that that meant sooner or later maybe there will be a kingdom of God and maybe you'll be part of it and then and Jesus says let's not talk about the distant future today you'll be with me in paradise and to today in Paradise is not Resurrection yet it's one of the few places in the New Testament where you get a hint of a blissful intermediate State and then the Centurion at the foot of the cross in Luke says truly this man was dios in the right right now I'm not going to tell you as a historian whether he said truly this man was the son of God as in Matthew and Mark or truly this man was in the right quite happy that he should have said both and lots of other things as well um respect he didn't actually want to take a selfie at the time but um but the point is this man was dios and Luke has rubbed our noses in it Jesus is innocent Jesus is innocent Jesus is innocent and all around him are people who are guilty and guess who who dies Jesus is that a Theology of atonement or is it a Theology of atonement and just in case you thought that Luke had forgotten Isaiah 53 Luke 22:37 that very strange saying about the two swords I've got a PhD student who's working on that as a chapter in his thesis it's a very odd bit but Jesus quotes Isaiah 53:12 which says he was reckoned with the Lawless and again one vers from Isaiah 53 is quite enough to tell us that the whole passage is in mind Jesus is dying as the servant and so with the famous passage in Mark 10 a kingdom passage a cross passage the whole thing going together James and John of course come to Jesus and I I love this scene because you can see what's going on you know James and John are brothers and they're sons of Zeb sons of thunder but there's another pair of brothers out there and one of them is the Big Guy Peter and I think James and John are getting in first because they're frightened if they don't Peter and Andrew will be sitting at Jesus right in his left so okay we're on the way C can we have a word we want to sit at your right and your left Jesus says you have no idea what you're asking for and of course five chapters later there are people sitting at jesus' right and his left when he comes in his kingdom and happily for them it isn't James and John but then Jesus says can you drink the cup that I'm drinking or bapti be baptized with my baptism they say yeah we can well you sort of will but and the cup is of course as in Jeremiah and Lamentations the cup of the wrath of God we can see where Jesus is going with this because then this issues in a redefinition of power it's one of the many things that the cross is all about listen says Jesus the rulers of this age lorded over their subjects their great ones exercise dominion over them it's not going to be like that with us with you we're going to do it the other way let the one who is great among you be your servant the one who wants to be first must be the slave of all because the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many now I've heard dozens of sermons on Mark 10:45 I don't think I've ever heard a sermon putting Mark 10:45 in the middle of the larger context which is about the redefinition of power itself you get the Theology of the Cross inside the Theology of the redefinition of power you get substitution inside Christ's Victor isn't that interesting this is the servant vocation and the new Passover is accomplished the victory over Pharaoh over Egypt over the Red Sea the new Passover is accomplished through the representative substitution in which the Messiah takes upon himself the true servant vocation of Israel to be the place where and the means by which when evil does its worst evil will be defeated that's the narrative within which these doctrines make sense accept no substitutes in that sense in other words Matthew Mark Luke and John are not simply giving us picture language for a Doctrine which turns out to be the real thing how platonist we are in our thinking still as though well that's just a sort of historical instantiation but the real thing is this sort of abstract transaction that happens in midair somewhere no the reality is literally flesh and blood the story is the reality we can turn it into theory if we like we need you know I believe in theory Theory functions like scaffolding to make sure that when you're telling and living the story you've got it in shape and keep it cleaned up but the theory isn't the reality like the scaffolding isn't the building the atonement is not a Heavenly truth of which the gospel simply give us the accidental historical outworking the atonement is a this worldly truth shot through as it should be with the life and the love of heaven and it's very interesting that in the book of Acts we don't have much in the way of what we think of as an atonement theology we don't have lots of sermons about the precise meaning of jesus' death we have plenty of announcements that Jesus has been raised from the dead that he is the lord of the world but the idea of atonement as we've seen it in Matthew mark Luke and John is woven into it the suffering of the Apostles is the means by which the gospel makes its way and one of the passages I love in Acts is that last great sequence from Paul's final hearing through the Shipwreck story of Acts 27 and some of you have probably heard me say this before but it Bears repetition Luke is a clever writer that's that's obvious it would have been so easy to have had the the book of Acts mirroring the gospel by Leading us up to Paul's death you may think it was written before Paul's death we just don't know that what Luke has done is that if you imagine the flow of thought in the gospel and then the flow of thought in Acts the Shipwreck takes the place of the crucifixion scene the one and the other and what's the most frequent word other than nautical words in the Shipwreck scene the word salvation look at it in the Greek salvation unless these people remain in the boat you can't be saved etc etc and finally we all got thoroughly saved onto the land Dian they all came safely to land Luke is saying this is how the cruciform gospel generates the cruciform church that through our suffering our shipwrecks we hang in there faithfully and the gospel comes to Rome and Paul announces Jesus as Lord and God as king openly and unhindered and how have we got there we've got there not least through the Cry of dereliction my God my God why did you abandon every every theory of atonement has to face that one sooner or later what on Earth is going on do we believe in the Trinity is there a split in it um how do we give an account of that my favorite answer to that is to go to what I think is the parallel in Romans 8 when Paul says in Romans 82 26 following that the spirit helps us in our weakness because we don't know what to pray for as we ought but the spirit groans within us within articulate groanings and the one who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit because the spirit is interceding for the Saints according to the will of God is there a split between father and spirit no there isn't but there's something very odd going on because the spirit is graning and travel yes because the spirit is the spirit of the loving creator to God redeeming his world and somehow we have to have a trinitarian theology big enough to say that on the cross God the son cried out in God forsakenness and that in the life the cruciform life of the church the spirit groans inarticulately with the pain of the world and all through this I'm just going to go on for a minute if that's right yeah all through this the portrait that we have in the gospels yeah the portrait of Jesus is extraordinary there are many stories about Jewish leaders Jewish Heroes Jewish would be prophets Messiah Etc in Josephus and elsewhere none of them even begin to look like this and again we're so familiar with it but if you came cold to it and W watched Jesus going around with Good Humor loving people yes loving people welcoming them being kind to people it's remarkable how many people are not kind in stories in the ancient world um even the Rich Young Ruler Jesus looked at him and loved him welcomed the little children when people tried to sh them away this isn't just decoration this is telling us something about what God incarnate looks like so that when you then get give his life as a ransom for many that's not just an add-on to a public career which was about something else it's a way of saying what John 13 said Jesus having loved his own in the world who he loved them to the the uttermost and it leads straight to Paul's saying the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me this is the victory which has substitution as its means which means what it means within the story of God the world Israel Jesus and us and flowing out of all that it is also of course the example there are those who've tried to say that the crucifixion the real meaning is look that's what love does you go and do it as well of course that makes no sense unless there is something else prior to that you know if if a friend of mine and I are walking along a riverbank and the friend slips and falls in and it' be an act of love as well as on my part foolishness probably to dive into try to save him but if my friend is standing beside me on the bank makes no sense to say I'll show you how much I love you and just go and dive in miscellaneously the the cross can only be an example if it's all also doing something else and in the Gospels it is winning the victory of the kingdom and it is doing so through Jesus as the substitute let's just pause and pray thank you gracious Lord Jesus for all you have done for us thank you for your love which goes the Second Mile which turned the other cheek which was set on a hill unable to be hidden enable us to follow enable us to take up our cross and through that we pray lead us in the way of your mission into the world that your love may be known amen amen thank [Applause] you