I am blogging my way through N.T. Wright’s book The Day the Revolution Began, creating an outline of the book as a small group study I am leading at our church. This is the fourth of six blogs in this series. All quotations followed by a number in parenthesis are quotes from the book. Click here for previous weeks [Week 1] [Week 2] [Week 3]

 The Kingdom of God and the Triumph over the Powers
The Day the Revolution Began (Chapters 10-11)

Chapter 10: The Story of Rescue

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, he is not talking about a place called “heaven,” where we go upon death, but the “rule of heaven,” that is the kingdom of God. The warnings Jesus gives associated with hell are often directed toward pending disaster in this world, namely the imminent destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD., even if some references to hell, (Greek word Gehennah), seem to point to something beyond calamity in this world. (For example see Matthew 10:28 and Luke 12:4-5.) If the gospel writers could talk to modern preachers of the gospel, they would most certainly confirm they were proclaiming the gospel, while our speculative theories and propensity to hand-pick individual verses of Scripture have turned atonement into a mechanism rather than the crucial moment when God’s revolutionary kingdom was launched.

While the gospel writers have tended to be ignored when we have turned to the Scripture to understand the meaning of the cross, the time has come to turn up the volume on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in order to hear the stories they are telling about the kingdom, the Temple, Pilate, and the mocking crowd. By doing that we can hear the big story they are telling. Listening to these stories guides our journey towards understanding what exactly happened the day Jesus died. During this quest we will find both historical answers and theological answers.

Historically, Jesus died because the chief priests saw Jesus’ ministry as blasphemous. The Romans saw Jesus as a rival king. The Pharisees held Jesus in contempt for challenging their rules. The followers of Jesus abandoned him, including one who betrayed him. Our search for theological answers, asking what was the divine reason Jesus died, cannot continue without taking into consideration the historical answers. For Wright, “The historical questions and answers are the place to go if we want to find the theological answer” (199). Our purpose in paying attention to the historical questions in the gospels is to determine Jesus’ own understanding of his mission and purpose.

When we listen to the gospel writers we can hear them telling the story of Jesus as the long-awaited return of Israel’s God. In fact, they intentionally connect the Jesus story with the story of Israel. Jesus came as the Son of God, the living embodiment of Israel’s God, and Emmanuel, God with us. The life and ministry of Jesus was filled with compassion and love in the gospels. Jesus’ death is the tragic end of the one who embodied the covenant-keeping love of Israel’s God. The gospel writers, particularly John, described the growing hostility towards Jesus (see John 5:18, 7:1, 7:19-20, 7:25, 8:37-40).

Within the story the gospel writers are telling is not only the story of Israel but the story of darkness and evil that has plagued God’s good world. Evil has been depicted throughout the story of Israel in various forms of idolatry and injustice not only by pagan people but by members of the people of God. The patriarchs and the kings, the heros in the up-and-down story of Israel were all flawed, hindered by the ever-presence of evil and sin. Evil is not merely a pagan problem but a disease affecting all people and all creation.

The storm clouds were forming around Jesus from his birth, as Herod sought to kill him before his ministry even got started. The poor responded to his ministry, but his kingdom message did not draw applause from the ruling Jewish elite. The Pharisees opposed him. The chief priests sought to kill him. Rome saw him as a political threat. He taught the way of peace, reconciliation, and self-sacrifice, eclipsing all the traditional Jewish cultural markers. All of this animosity and opposition was how evil coalesced into a single force putting Jesus to death. Jesus had been battling not people and their evil ideas as much as Jesus was battling evil itself. As Jesus drew near to his death he told his disciples, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:31-32). Jesus’ death would be a victory over evil by casting out the ruling force behind the evil in the world. This victory was not placed artificially over the story of Israel but reaches its climax with the story itself.

In this way, we can read the gospels as the coming of God’s kingdom being the culmination of Israel’s story, but equally as a story of how evil came together against Jesus wherein Jesus defeats death, evil, and sin itself. In Acts 4, as the followers of Jesus were praying, they quote from Psalm 2 acknowledging that “the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed” (Acts 4:26). Evil had gathered together in Herod and Pilate at the trial of Jesus, just as Psalm 2 said. When Jesus was arrested he told the chief priests and the temple guards, “this is your hour, and the (the hour of the) power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). The battle Jesus was in was not against flesh and blood but against the power of darkness itself.

The power of darkness is the satan, the “ruler of this world,” who will be cast out by Jesus’ death. The satan entered Judas turning him into “the accuser,” the literal meaning of the word “satan.” This battle with evil is not the convenient backdrop to the death of Jesus which is about something altogether different. Particularly for John’s gospel, the meaning of the death of Jesus is connected to the story he tells, a story of struggle and death, victory and love, a story of Jesus’ death as the defeat of evil according to God’s covenant love. As we have seen, the gospel writers convey to us the words of Jesus about his death at the Passover. Jesus is the Passover lamb who, in the words of John the Baptist, “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). As sin is taken away, a great victory over the power of evil has been won. The coming Messiah rules in the proclamation of God’s kingdom by putting an end to sin. The great themes of God’s kingdom rule and the redemption of the world through the cross are inextricably tied together in the gospels.

Forgiveness of sins, and thus the end of exile, comes about because Jesus bears the punishment of Israel. Jesus brings an end to exile also by redefining the shape of the kingdom of God by his very death. The kingdom of God in contrast to first century Jewish expectations looks like self-giving love and self-denial. As Israel’s representative, Jesus does what Israel was called to do but ultimately could not do, namely, representing the light of God’s truth to the Gentile world. Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up,” a reference to his death (John 3:14). As Jesus was lifted up on the cross, sin and death that had plagued not only Israel, but all mankind, were brought together. When we see the cross and gaze upon the suffering of Jesus we realize our sins have been dealt with. According to Jesus, his death was not to appease an angry God, but rather it demonstrates the love of God, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16).

Jesus dies as a rebel in the place of rebellious Israel, as depicted in the crowd’s desire for Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified. The gospel writers make it clear that Jesus was innocent. He had done nothing wrong, yet he was sentenced to death. Even as he hung on the cross, the penitent thief being crucified with Jesus announced that Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong (Luke 23:41). Jesus promised “paradise” to this thief – not heaven, but a restful holdover until resurrection. Within Luke’s gospel we see the powers of darkness are defeated because Jesus dies on behalf of the guilty. Throughout his ministry, Jesus had warned people of coming disaster – not going to hell after death, but real world disaster. Hell in the afterlife is a reality not to be overlooked, but not the primary form of punishment Jesus was talking about.

Jesus dies as a substitute in that Jesus represents Israel as their Messiah. Jesus bears the weight of Israel’s sins and the sins of the world, and dies as the forces of evil collude against him so at long last the kingdom of God may come. The death of Jesus is what it looks like when Israel’s God becomes king of the nations, but it does not look like conventional power. This surprising death of King Jesus revealing the power of the kingdom of God is the power of co-suffering, self-giving love. The kingdom is therefore launched not by the elites of society but by the poor, the meek, the mourning, and the peacemakers. The kingdom will not come through the military might of empire, but through the way of nonviolence, enemy-love, and prayers or persecutors.

By his death, Jesus sets forth a new ethic – the ethic of love and reconciliation that will become the ethic by which God redeems the world. The death of Jesus therefore does not save us from the world by taking us to heaven. Rather the death of Jesus saves us for the world, a powerful revolution within the world, a vision found among Israel’s prophets. Israel was always called to be the means by which the kingdom of God would come, but the means by which the revolution began took most of Israel by surprise. The Messiah came into this world born of a virgin in Bethlehem, but he came with the words of peace and forgiveness on his lips. The very nature of power had to be radically reimagined by the followers of King Jesus. According to Wright, “A new sort of power will be let loose upon the world, and it will be the power of self-giving love. This is the heart of the revolution that was launched on Good Friday” (222). The powers are overthrown by the death of Jesus in part because Jesus was powerless in his death.

As we step back and take a bird’s-eye view of what we see about the death of Jesus in the gospel, we find the following predominant landmarks. First, the gospel writers do not give us bits of information that we need to factor into a formula or theory about what the death of Jesus really means. Rather the meaning of Jesus’ death is found in what they have written. According to Wright, the “formula” is in fact a “portable narrative, a folded-up story” (223). We resist any attempt to understand the death of Jesus apart from the historical context, which has much to say about the kingdom of God coming to Earth.

Second, before we begin to look at how Paul deals with the cross in his letters, we acknowledge the revolutionary and kingdom-nature of the cross. In this wide-angle view of the cross, we do not lose the truth that Jesus died for our sins, which has personal implications for all those who believe. Individual faith and responsibility are still intact, but we as modern individuals are invited into a larger story that is more than going to heaven when we die. We find ourselves in a story of creation, covenant, and new creation, a story we repeat as we come to the communion table, a story we live out as we cooperate with the Spirit’s work of peace and reconciliation.

Chapter 11: Paul and the Cross (Apart from Romans)

The Apostle Paul had much to say about the death of Jesus. Traditional atonement theologies have had the tendency to look first to Paul, running right past the gospels and much of the Old Testament. But just as we want to ground our understanding of the death of Jesus in its historical context, we also want to ground our reading of Paul in his historical context. Paul used a variety of different images to describe the cross of Christ. We can develop a singular vision of atonement based on one of these images, which some have done with the penal substitution theory from the perspective of the works contract. We do find both “penal” and “substitutionary” aspects to the death of Jesus, but these are not the only images Paul uses. Reducing the atonement to only the penal substitutionary view limits our understanding of the cross, because Paul has more to say about the death of Jesus.

Two overarching concepts to keep in mind as we look at what Paul has to say about the cross are (1) the story of redemption is moving towards new creation and (2) the death of Jesus is the means by which new creation is attained. Jesus takes upon himself the divine condemnation of sin on behalf of Israel and the world. This sacrificial act becomes the supreme revelation of God’s love, the very covenant-faithful love we see throughout the story of Israel. Paul proclaims the power of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18). However he does not explain precisely why or how the cross has the power it has. So while we do not know how the cross is powerful, Paul does identify the effects of the cross which includes both the salvation of those who believe and the driving out of “rulers of this age” (1 Corinthians 2:6).

As we have discovered, Paul delivered to the churches as it was received that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). In other words, Jesus the Messiah died for our sins according to the story of Israel. The expectation of Jewish believers in Jesus was that the death (and ultimate resurrection) of Jesus would establish the kingdom of God (see Luke 23:42, Acts 1:6). The various images Paul used are not random metaphors but all find their cohesion and definition in the Old Testament. Behind all Paul revealed about the death of Jesus stands the truth that Jesus died as Israel’s Messiah. The English word “Christ” comes from the Greek word christos which means “anointed one.” The Jewish tradition was not to coronate their kings. Rather, they anointed them with oil. The Hebrew word for “anointed one” is mashiach, best translated in English as “Messiah.” Christ or Messiah was the Jewish title for their king.

The metaphors Paul used to describe both the death of Jesus and its effects including sacrifice, atonement, redemption, deliverance, justification, victory, and rescue all bring resolution to the previously unresolved story of Israel. When we make the death of Jesus only about individual sinners going to heaven when they die we lose the story of Israel, the very context we need to make sense of what Paul wrote. The goal of new creation underscores God’s promises to Abraham to be the father of many nations, where Gentiles would come and worship the God of Israel (Romans 15:8-9). Let’s take a brief look at what Paul said about the death of Jesus in various letters.

Within the book of Galatians we never find the words “saved” or “salvation,” emphasizing the fact this letter is not about individuals “getting saved.” Rather the letter is about unity, that is, the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham of a single family made up of Jews and Gentiles worshipping the God of Israel as a unified family. Paul offered a blessing from Jesus “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4). Deliverance is Passover language, pointing the death of Jesus towards a new Passover. The “present evil age” and the “age to come” are standard ways of thinking of Jewish eschatology.
Paul summed up his unity letter to the Galatians by pointing to what really matters – new creation (Galatians 6:15). This new creation is a present reality because through the resurrection of Jesus the new age has broken into the present evil age. Jesus’ death has abolished the power of the old world. In this new creation world, Gentiles are now welcomed into the family of Abraham. The law of Moses was a temporary guardian (Galatians 3:24), but now Jesus has come and redeemed us.

Redemption, like deliverance, is Exodus language. We were slaves to sin like Israel was enslaved in Egypt and Jesus came to rescue us through his death and resurrection. Now, Jews and Gentiles have full knowledge of God through Jesus and the Spirit. The need for circumcision has passed away with the old world. Jesus has redeemed Israel from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), a reference back to Deuteronomy. The blessings and curses in Deuteronomy were not bestowed on individuals, but on Israel as a whole. Paul does not say Jesus bore the curse so that individual Gentiles could be forgiven. This new Exodus for Israel would require new thinking about what identified people as members of God’s family.

Galatians 3:10-14 is “penal” and “substitutionary,” but not according to the traditional narrative coming out of the Reformation. This section of Galatians is best read within the context of the covenant of vocation. Exile is over because the curse has fallen on Jesus as Israel’s substitute or representative, thus freeing Israel so she could be liberated to fulfill her vocation as a light to the Gentiles. As Israel’s representative, Jesus can act as a substitute. Jesus enters into the story of Israel and receives Israel’s curse, so the story of redemption for the world can move forward. The problem with Israel is not their sin in general, but that their sin has stalled the promise of world-wide redemption. When sins are forgiven, the powers are robbed of the power so that the goal of new creation, including the promises made to Abraham, can be reached.

Along with this new Passover/new Exodus journey toward new creation, we also have a new identity. Each person in Christ can now say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). While most of Paul’s descriptions of salvation were plural, he did speak of himself in the singular as having a reshaped identity in Christ. Paul lived “within the faithfulness of the Son of God,” a better translation than “faith in the Son of God.” The revolutionary nature of the cross changes how we look at ourselves. We identify ourselves by the cross; if we were to identify ourselves by the Jewish law there would be no reason for Jesus to die (Galatians 2:21).

Wright sums up three points in locating the connection in Galatians between the death of Jesus and the inclusion of Gentiles into the family of God. First, God has condemned the present evil age and broken in with the “age to come,” freeing all people from evil and sin. Second, God has done this through the death of Jesus who died for our sins. In Christ no one is labeled “sinner” or “unclean” or “excluded from the family of God.” Third, Jews in Christ have a radical new identity formed around the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Galatians is about unity in Christ, although older interpretations of Galatians going back to the Reformation tend to read it as a text advising the church not to attempt to earn “righteousness” or salvation by good works. Any attempt to read a rebuke of “legalism” in Galatians is to miss Paul’s point. The old age is passing away, which implies the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) associated with that age. The Spirit-driven age to come ushers in a new lifestyle typified by the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Moral energy and effort for those in Christ is not connected to earning one’s salvation, but in recognizing what has happened in Christ. This new Passover event was a means towards the kingdom’s triumph over the powers of the present evil age. A new kind of unity and holiness for the people of God is the appropriate response to this revolution. To live according to the ethics of the present evil age is to deny that the age to come has arrived through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

As with the book of Galatians, Paul does not give us a clear explanation of how or why the death of Jesus accomplished what it does. Paul does continue with the use of Passover imagery. “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:6). He connected the practice of communion with the “new covenant in my blood” and the “proclamation of the Lord’s death” (1 Corinthians 11:25-26). We have seen Paul’s important statement regarding the death of Christ “for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). This sacrificial death, and the resurrection that follows, defeated sin and death for us that we may share in his victory (1 Corinthians 15:57). Jesus’ inauguration of the kingdom of God through death overturned all conventional approaches to power.

The followers of Jesus exercise power on the earth through suffering: “For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11). The cross is not simply a mechanism by which salvation occurs. The cross shapes our lives as followers of Jesus and the cross reveals to us what God is like. According to Wright, “The Messiah’s crucifixion unveiled the very nature of God himself at work in generous self-giving love to overthrow all power structures by dealing with the sin that had given them their power, that same divine nature would now be at work through the ministry of the gospel not only through what was said, but through the character and the circumstances of the people who were saying it” (251). This understanding of the cross fits within the covenant of vocation. The cross was the means by which our sins are dealt with and the cross becomes the way we live as the image-bearing creatures of the Creator God.

According to Paul, as we are in Christ, we have entered into God’s new creation and have received a job to do, that is the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not so we could keep the rules according to the works contract, but so we could be agents of reconciliation in God’s world: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might (embody) the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Those working from the perspective of the works contract see in this verse what has been called “double imputation,” where our sin was imputed to Christ and his “righteousness” was imputed to us. However, in the context of the ministry of reconciliation (and the larger context of the covenant of vocation), Paul was not talking about a righteousness we receive, but a righteousness we embody. The “righteousness of God” in this verse is not a moralistic status, but a covenant status. God’s own righteousness, or “rightness,” speaks of God’s fidelity to the covenant. God made him, Jesus, who knew no sin to bear our sins, taking them away through his death, so we could embody God’s faithfulness to the covenant. Jesus, in reflection of God’s love, dies innocently on behalf of the guilty that we might be restored in order to reflect God’s fidelity and love into all creation.

In Philippians, Paul recorded what was either an ancient hymn or poem (see Philippians 2:6-11). At the very heart of this poem is the line “even death on the cross.” This poem tells the story of Jesus with the cross at the center. In the great crescendo we see the victory of Jesus over all powers and creatures in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. This exaltation of Jesus is kingdom-language marking the inauguration of the kingdom of God led by King Jesus. The poem also noted that Jesus took the “form of a servant,” echoing Isaiah 40-55 and the servant of the Lord. The kingdom of God is established precisely by destroying the power of idolatry and taking away the power of sin and death.

According to Colossians 2:13-15, Jesus at the cross disarmed “the rulers and authorities.” These ruling powers are both the earthly rulers of Rome and their appointees (namely King Herod in the Judean province of the Roman empire), as well as the invisible rulers, the dark forces that manipulate earthly power structures. Jesus in his death triumphs over them, putting them to shame, because their system of power and domination results in putting to death not just an innocent man, but God in human flesh.

Earthly rulers are able to rule through the power of punishment (i.e. death) and through the enslaving power of idolatry. In ancient Rome, the Caesar was worshipped as divine and the pantheon of gods offered idolatry to the masses. When human beings worship in the place of God that which is not God, corruption of their humanity begins. But through the death of Jesus sins are forgiven and taken away, breaking the power of sin and idolatry and reconciling broken humanity to their Creator. In this act, the invisible powers at work within idolatry lose their power.

I am blogging my way through N.T. Wright’s book The Day the Revolution Began, creating an outline of the book as a small group study I am leading at our church. This is the third of six blogs in this series. All quotations followed by a number in parenthesis are quotes from the book. Click here for previous weeks [Week 1] [Week 2]

A Renewed Covenant and the Passover
The Day the Revolution Began (Chapters 8-9)

Chapter 8: New Goal, New Humanity
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus we waiting for (longing for!) the redemption of Israel. As Jesus spoke to them, he was revealing that indeed redemption had happened through the suffering of Christ, who had come into his glorious reign as King. They just did not know it. Israel had been redeemed through the death of Messiah, but they would have to rethink what “redemption of Israel” meant. God was redeeming Israel as a rescue mission to restore Israel, and thus all humanity, to their original calling of reflecting God’s image into the world. This reimagined hope is not about going to heaven, but experiencing a new creation on earth. The death and resurrection of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah causes the followers of Jesus to rethink the entire story of Israel. The questions we ask at this point are two-fold: What are human beings called to do and be in God’s new creation? How is God rescuing human beings from the devastation of sin so they can become what God has called them to be?

Wright argues that Christians have made a three-layered mistake in answering these questions: “We have Platonized our eschatology (substituting ‘souls going to heaven’ for the promised new creation) and have therefore moralized our anthropology (substituting a qualifying examination of moral performance for the biblical notion of the human vocation), with the result that we have paganized our soteriology, our understanding of ‘salvation’ (substituting the idea of ‘God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath’ for the genuinely biblical notions we are about to explore)” (147). A Platonized eschatology describes God’s future goal as discarding the physical world and taking human spirits to a non-physical heaven. A moralized anthropology describes humanity’s essential purpose as keeping God’s moral rules. A paganized soteriology describes Jesus’ death as that which necessarily satisfies the wrath of God in order for us to experience salvation.

Yes, we find a heavenly element in God’s new creation. Yes, the human vocation contains a sense of moral obligation. Yes, the death of Jesus is both representative and substitutionary in nature. But all of these themes need to be reassigned in a way consistent with the big story the Bible tells. This reassignment begins by returning to Israel’s Scriptures where we find the hope of Israel is not abandoned. Israel’s hope included the forgiveness of sins, which implied not that Jewish people would go to heaven upon death, but that Israel would be redeemed and the Gentiles welcomed into the family of God.

The suffering and death of Jesus read as a fulfillment of Israel’s prophecies made the forgiveness of sins possible, meaning Israel and the world were released from the captivity to sin. The goal of God’s redemption of the world through Christ was not the blessedness of heaven for those who had departed the earth in faith. This worn-out mistaken view is not what is meant by the “forgiveness of sins,” a phrase which belongs to the story of Israel. The book of Acts opens with the assumption that the kingdom had been launched. The disciples, still unaware of the significance of what has happened, asked if Jesus is going to restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). They did not ask if now they need to go tell people their sins were forgiven so they can be assured of heaven upon death. In their minds, the work of Jesus was related to the kingdom of God on earth. Without this historical context, we can easily shrink the gospel down to a “detached spirituality” (156). Within the long sprawling story of Israel, the “forgiveness of sins” implied a new Passover, a new exodus, a new covenant, and a new creation.

One of the problems with a focus on heaven, and not new creation, as the goal is the modern myth that heaven is where good people go and hell is where bad people go after they die. Some Christian traditions want to respond to this myth by saying we are all bad people and all that has made us bad has been dealt with at the cross and the goodness of Jesus has been added to our account, making us good. However both this myth and the Christian response is distorted in that goodness vs. badness is placed at the center of an equation that is supposed to lead to heaven. Living as the good people of God finds a role in God’s redeemed people carrying out their calling. God’s new humanity has been redeemed to be a “kingdom and priests” for the world.

The restoring of Israel fulfilled the three hopes of Israel (1) freedom from Roman occupation and domination, (2) Israel’s God becoming King of the world, (3) God dwelling once again with his people. We see the fulfillment of these three expectations in the book of Acts in the theme of the kingdom of God. Modern readers tend to connect the kingdom with the second coming of Jesus, while Luke describes it as a present reality. Wright describes three kingdom symbols in the book of Acts.

The first symbol is the “restoration of true worship” (161). Jesus has ascended into heaven joining together heaven and earth in his very person. We reject the idea of heaven as a far away spiritual place. We reject this idea in light of Jesus’ ascension. Jesus causes us to rethink things. “In Christian theology we have to start with Jesus and reconfigure our ideas around him, rather than trying to fit him into our existing worldviews” (162). The followers of Jesus become the living temple, a new community where the one true living God is worshiped.

The second symbol is the witness of the Christian community to God’s rule over the entire world. The principalities and powers colluded to put Jesus to death publically. As the Apostles proclaimed the gospel, the “forgiveness of sins” was communicated as a real historical event and the whole world was called upon to turn from sin and believe the good news. The rulers of this world have been defeated as God has made Jesus “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). The Apostle Paul would go on to proclaim this message throughout the Mediterranean world enduring the suffering associated with proclaiming the kingdom of God. In God’s rule, God’s people are the royal priesthood doing the work of the kingdom through worship and witness.

The third symbol is the hope that Israel would be finally free from living under the rule of a pagan power, that they would truly be freed from exile. Jesus fully embodied Israel’s identity becoming Israel-in-person and as Jesus was freed from death, the ultimate weapon of all pagan powers, Jesus freed Israel (and the world) from the power of foreign oppressors. In this regard, God is not rescuing people so they can escape the world. Rather God is rescuing people so they can escape death and cooperate with God in the work of redeeming the world. This work is the work of the kingdom of God accomplished by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 9: Jesus’s Special Passover

At the very center of the book is the burning question: How did the earliest Christians understand the death of Jesus? The Christians during the time of the Apostles believed that something had happened with the death and resurrection of Jesus, “something as a result of which the world was now a different place. A revolution had been launched” (169). So, the pressing question as we consider the meaning of the atonement is: What changed and how did things change with the death of Jesus? Much of the theological work on atonement has ignored the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and have failed to connect the death of Jesus with the kingdom of God. The Gospel writers record what Jesus said about his death and how he said it. The most significant thing Jesus said in talking about his death is that he chose the Last Supper to describe in the clearest of terms what his death meant. The larger context for the Last Supper is the Jewish Passover, a central, and often overlooked, aspect to how the early Christians understood the death of Jesus.

If the goal of salvation is a disembodied heaven, then the gospel writers have very little to say about the implications of the death of Jesus. Furthermore, many of those who have worked on the meaning of the atonement have treated the gospels as the backstory, whereby the four gospels simply tell us what happened to Jesus at the end of his life, whereas Paul in the epistles tell us what it means. This approach is a mistake. As we have seen, the goal of salvation is new creation and, contrary to popular approaches to the atonement, the gospel writers have much to say about the atonement, each in their own way.

The crucifixion of Jesus in its historical setting held no immediate significance other than the message of despair and defeat. No one who witnessed his death understood he was dying for the sins of the world. None of the disciples expected Messiah to die for their sins. On the day of his death, nobody was doing what we now call “atonement theology” at all. The death of Jesus was the end to everyone’s hopes and messianic dreams.

The catalyst for the reinterpretation of the death of Jesus was the resurrection. Many Jewish people in Jesus’ day believed in the resurrection of the dead, which would usher in God’s new world at the end of this age. Nevertheless followers of Jesus believed he had risen, physically and literally, from the dead in this present age. This central belief caused them to look back at the cross through the resurrection and for the early Christians this reflection did not immediately produce the atonement theories we know today. The gospel writers did not pepper their gospel accounts with atonement theories; rather, they wove their own interpretation of the death of Jesus into the fabric of their narratives.

When we look to the four biographers of Jesus for how they understood the meaning of his death, we see first that Jesus was crucified by the Roman officials who displayed a sign above Jesus’ head which read: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Jesus had regularly proclaimed the revolutionary nature of God’s kingdom and therefore died as a Jewish king. Rome regularly executed rival kings. The gospel writers also make it clear that Jesus died around the time of the Jewish Passover. Jesus had entered into Jerusalem with shouts of “Hosanna!” Jesus challenged Jerusalem one last time while the nation was celebrating God’s act of freeing them from slavery in Egypt. Jesus chose Passover for this final proclamation of God’s coming kingdom, because the in-breaking of God’s kingdom implied the overthrow of enslaving powers. Moses confronted Pharaoh before the Exodus; Jesus confronted the Temple establishment before his death. Israel was leaving Egypt in order to worship God; Jesus’ death, and soon-to-follow resurrection, would reimagine worship and the meaning of the Temple for the renewed people of God. Jesus’ death was a new Exodus.

Jesus describes the meaning of his own death in the clearest of terms as he is with his disciples in the Upper Room sharing a Passover meal with them. According to Wright, “When Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his forthcoming death was all about, he did not give them a theory, a model, a metaphor, or any other such thing; he gave them a meal” (182). Jesus transformed the Passover meal from looking back towards the Exodus to looking forward to his pending death. The cup of wine was the “blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). The death of Jesus would be an experience of liberation and victory and the launch of God’s kingdom. Jesus connected his death with the Passover tradition.

The victory over the powers of slavery was secured as Jesus’ death dealt with the sins of Israel and the sins of the world. The Jewish people were still experiencing exile. Even though they were in their ancestral homeland, they were still in bondage to the powers of their Roman oppressors. This New Exodus event coming through the death of Jesus would be an act of forgiveness of sins and thus the long-awaited end to exile. With the Last Supper in sight, we can rescue our discussions about the cross from the pagan ideas of a wrathful God demanding satisfaction. Instead, we find a covenant-faithful God taking sin upon himself in order to move the story of redemption forward. Atonement from the perspective of this sacred meal is more of a story for Christians to enter than an abstract theory to try to understand. Sharing in the bread and the cup makes followers of Jesus active participants in God’s story.

Jesus makes mention of the “blood of the covenant” as he lifted the cup in the Passover meal pointing to the sacrificial overtones of his death. Drinking blood would have been unimaginable for Jesus’ Torah-observant followers. In the face of scandal and controversy, Jesus connects the cup with blood, covenant, and the forgiveness of sins, pointing to Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant which is itself connected to the exodus event (See Jeremiah 31:31-34). Jesus connected the shedding of his blood to the blood of animals, which, when they were sacrificed, were not being punished. We have seen that early Christians understood Jesus died “according to the Scripture,” that is in accordance with the story the Bible is telling. This story included the suffering not only by God’s people, but the future suffering of God’s servant who would do for Israel what Israel could not do for herself, which includes remaining faithful to the covenant and vocation of Israel to be a light to the Gentile world.

Jesus as the servant of the Lord offered forgiveness throughout his ministry as he was announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of God. As we have seen the announcement of the forgiveness of sins implied the end of exile, the liberation from oppressive powers, and a renewal of the covenant. Jesus offered forgiveness with great compassion and mercy explaining to his disciples, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Jesus wasn’t offering his disciples an abstract theological principle to understand his sacrificial death. Rather, he was summing up his entire life mission. Jesus was giving his life as a ransom because of his great love, which remained “to the end” (John 13:1).

The offering of his life, as Jesus announced at the Last Supper, was an announcement of the coming of the the kingdom from heaven to earth. Jesus renewed the covenant as Israel’s representative substitute, taking upon himself the vocation and fate of Israel, laying down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Theories of the atonement grow out of the story of Jesus as Jesus’ entire life and ministry guide us in understanding the meaning of his death. Without the foundational story of Jesus found in the gospels, a story rooted in the story of Israel, the death of Jesus too easily becomes a “paganized doctrine” where an innocent person dies to appease an angry deity. With these stories in view, Paul’s summaries of what happened when Jesus died become much clearer, namely that God, the God of Israel, the Creator God, was in Christ “reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Through Jesus’ death the covenant to bless the nations of the earth through the people of Abraham was renewed. For Wright, “The cross became the encoded symbol as well as the actual outworking of the dying, and hence the undying, love of Israel’s God” (194).

Discussion Questions

1. When you first heard of salvation, “getting saved,” or “accepting Christ” was it in the context of the assurance of heaven after you died? What were your earliest memories of salvation?
2. If God would have been an angry deity demanding blood to satisfy his wrath, what would that communicate to us about the nature of God?
3. Why do you think it is still a cultural assumption that “good guys go to heaven and bad guys go to hell”?
4. Why is it important to start with Jesus and reconfigure our ideas around him when we are trying to understand the nature and work of God?
5. Look again at Matthew 26:28. What does Jesus say about his death here?
6. Look again at Jeremiah 31:31-34. What does this say about the new covenant that was fulfilled in and through Jesus?
7. Why is it necessary to understand the story of Israel in order to understand why Jesus died?
8. How would you describe the love of God you see revealed in Jesus’ life, ministry, and death?

I am blogging my way through N.T. Wright’s book The Day the Revolution Began, creating an outline of the book as a small group study I am leading at our church. This is the second of six blogs in this series. All quotations followed by a number in parenthesis are quotes from the book. Click here for previous weeks [Week 1]

The Stories of Israel
The Day the Revolution Began (Chapters 4-7)

Chapter 4: The Covenant of Vocation

Some approaches to atonement make the wrong assumption that sin implies that human beings have done wrong and thus need to be punished. This is in addition to the mistake of heaven as the goal of salvation.
Wright describes these mistakes as a “platonized goal” (going to a disembodied heaven) and a “moralizing diagnosis” (the problem is that human beings have not kept the rules God commanded), which together lead to a “paganized solution” (Jesus’ death pacifies the anger of God).

The primary problem is not merely that human beings have failed to obey God’s moral commands, although that is a part of the problem. The primary problem for which human beings need rescue is idolatry and the corruptive forces unleashed on the earth when human beings reject the worship of the one true God and begin to worship idols.

Wright calls the mistaken view the “works contract,” whereby humanity was under contract with God to keep a certain code of moral behavior. Either humanity obeyed and was rewarded or they disobeyed and were punished. The good news for humanity according to the works contract was Jesus obeyed God’s rules according to the contract and took the punishment for disobedience that humanity deserved for not obeying God’s rules.

For those who believe in Jesus, “righteousness” was transferred from Jesus to believers. “Righteousness” from the perspective of the works contract was a moral status, like five gold stars, that has been conferred from Jesus to believers.

The problem with the works contract is that it is a shrunken view of the story the Bible tells. The works contract view ignores the heart of the Old Testament and it oversimplifies the problem of human sin. The story the Bible tells about God’s creation, humanity’s purpose and failure, and God’s solution in Christ is what Wright calls a “covenant of vocation.”

This vocation, this job, given to humanity by God was to reflect God’s image into creation and echo all of creation’s praise back to God the Creator. When God’s people fail to obey God’s commands they not only break God’s laws, they empower dark forces through idolatry that ends up enslaving them and all Creation. The solution needed to correct this problem is not that human beings need to be punished, but that these enslaving forces need to be broken.

Idolatry does not embolden God’s desire to punish; idolatry corrupts the primary human vocation whereby we improperly live out our humanity. We not only fail to rule effectively in our royal position, but idolatry corrupts our ability to live as adequate priests standing between heaven and earth.

According to Wright, “We humans are called to stand at the intersection of heaven and earth, holding together in our hearts, our praises, and our urgent intercessions the loving wisdom of the Creator God and the terrible torments of his battered world” (80).

One place where we see God’s persistence in the viability of his covenant of vocation is 2 Corinthians 5:21, which is obscured by the works contract. Wright translates it like this: “The Messiah did not know sin, but God made him to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might embody God’s faithfulness to the covenant” (81). The context of 2 Corinthians 5:21 is not “going to heaven when you die,” but new creation and reconciliation (See 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Part of why Jesus saves us is so God’s redeemed people can become the place where God’s promises to Abraham are extended to the world. The Messiah’s death, according to Galatians 3:13-14, does not save us from hell, but from the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham would come upon the nations of the world. In his death, Jesus is obedient not in the context of a works contract, but, according to Romans 5:17, in the context of a priestly vocation.

The death of Jesus restores humanity to their original vocation of being God’s image-bearing caretakers of God’s new world. Sin implies a failure of that vocation. Idolatry, lying at the root of sin, represents humanity’s fundamental rejection of that vocation.

A helpful way to think of death associated with human sin in the context of a covenant of vocation rather than in the context of a works contract is to think about the difference between getting a speeding ticket and experiencing a car wreck. If you speed you could get pulled over and get a ticket as a form of punishment. Or you could speed and end up in a car wreck. The ticket and the fine would be the punishment we would receive for breaking the law. This is the form of punishment in the works contract. The car wreck is the form of punishment in the covenant of vocation. This view of punishment is one that is not enforced from the outside, but is rather the natural consequence of our actions. So if Jesus was punished for our sins it was like the punishment of a car wreck, not a speeding ticket.

In the works contract view, somebody has to get a ticket and, good for us, God the Father gave God the Son the speeding ticket that we deserved. In the covenant of vocation view everyone is getting into car wrecks all the time. Jesus entered into our car-wrecking world and, even though he wasn’t speeding, allowed himself to get into a car wreck in order to break the power of sin and idolatry which was the reason we have been wrecking our cars.

Chapter 5: “In All the Scriptures”

The phrases “royal priesthood” and “a kingdom of priests” draws upon the primary vocation of Israel to be the representatives of God to and for the world. As we read through the Old Testament we join the ancient people of God looking for the ending to Israel’s story. Israel had gone into exile in Babylon and even though they had returned to their homeland to begin to rebuild they were still living as exiles as an occupied people.

Jesus comes as the ending to the Israel story. Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension marks the fulfillment of the law and prophets (Matthew 5:17). In Romans 10:4, Paul writes, “Christ is the end of the law.” The word “end” is the Greek word telos which is better translated here as “culmination” as read in the New International Version.

Reading the Old Testament and New Testament as a cohesive account of the story of redemption implies that the Jesus conclusion makes sense only when it is read in connection to the story of Israel. The early Christians used various metaphors to describe Jesus’ death, and these metaphors only work together when we consider them in the context of the Old Testament.

When Paul passes on what he received of “first importance” regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus, he did so saying Jesus died for our sins “in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). This is not shorthand for “according to a few hand selected Bible verses in the Old Testament,” but “according to the entirety of the story told in the Old Testament.”

The story of Israel is a microcosm of what God intended for all creation. God designed the whole world to be saturated with life and the personal presence of God. Both Israel and Adam and Eve rejected God and were sent out of the land. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden and Israel was sent into exile, a picture of perpetual death on Earth. Despite Israel’s unfaithfulness, God would be faithful to the covenant and faithfulness seen ultimately in Jesus.

The problem which sent Israel into exile, the problem which Jesus becomes the answer for, is sin. The Greek word most often translated “sin” is the word hamartia meaning “missing the mark.” Some Christians interpret “missing the mark” as missing God’s moral standard (works contract). Yet the unfolding story of Scripture describes sin as missing the mark of humanity’s created purpose (covenant of vocation). Humanity has failed as God’s image-bearing people.

Since human beings become transformed by their objects of worship, sin is rooted in a failure to worship the one, true, living God. As we worship anything other than God (i.e. participate in idolatry) we give power to an idol to reflect an image into the world, but it is always a broken image which produces corruption in the earth. We have become like spoiled children who have been invited to participate in a theater production, but instead of learning our lines and playing our part we have tossed the script to the side and done our own thing. The results are disastrous.

If we think of sin as the failure to maintain God’s moral standard, and death as the just punishment for such failure it is easy to imagine Jesus’ death as necessary in terms of divine justice so that sins may be forgiven (works contract). We can find individual verses we can force into that narrative, but it does not fit the big sweeping description of sin and redemption in the Old Testament; the failure of Adam and the failure of Israel was much more of a vocational failure than a moral failure.

The story of Israel’s exile and hope for restoration becomes a signpost for early Christians attempting to understand the death of Jesus. Exile and restoration become a very “Israel-specific” picture that cannot be sanitized into an abstract theory of atonement, which is why Paul speaks of the death of Jesus as a death in accordance to the Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament scriptures.

To ignore the story of Israel is to pull the death of Jesus out of Scriptures. The forgiveness of sins by the death of Jesus was necessary; Israel’s sins had to be dealt with so the story of Israel could go forward, a story which has the redemption of the world as its great goal.

Chapter 6: The Divine Presence and the Forgiveness of Sins

Within the big story the Bible tells, the theme of God’s presence weaves its way through the story of Israel. The ark of the covenant became a predominant item connected with the presence of God throughout Israel’s wandering story.

The lid for the ark was called the “mercy seat,” the place where God promised to meet with his people (Exodus 25:22). Any discussion of the mercy seat in the New Testament is in the context of this bigger story of God dwelling with his people, which is both the story of God and Israel as well as God and the world.

King David looms large in the story of Israel. The “house of David” turned out not to be a building, but a human being, the coming Messiah. Through this King the glory of the God of Israel would fill the entire earth (Psalm 72:19). God’s presence dwelt in the Temple until it was destroyed and the people of God were carried off into exile. The Temple had been rebuilt by the time of Jesus, but the presence of God had not returned.

Jews of Jesus’ day were not looking for rescue from an angry God threatening to send people to hell. Most Jewish people were looking for “rescue and renewal with the present world” (113). A shorthand way to communicate this rescue was by talking about “forgiveness of sins,” which included a return from exile, rebuilding of the Temple, and the return of God’s presence.

God’s people were sent into exile because of their sins; therefore, to be released from exile Israel’s sins needed to be pardoned. Forgiveness of sins from this perspective emphasizes the heart of the revolution taking place on the cross where (1) Israel’s God was becoming king, (2) suffering was a necessary component, and (3) God’s covenant love was being demonstrated. Israel’s audacious claim to the pagan world was that their God was the world’s true King. The Psalms celebrate this fact particularly in Psalm 2, 46, 72, and 98. These Psalms are filled with kingdom-of-God language. For example see Psalm 2:8.

Chapter 7: Suffering, Redemption, and Love

In the Old Testament, and also in Jewish literature before the time of Jesus, a common theme could be found: the end of exile, including the forgiveness of Israel’s sins, was coming for the people of God, but it would come through suffering.

The Old Testament describes suffering during the rise of Messiah, but most often it is not described as redemptive suffering (Daniel 12:1 Psalm 22:1-2, 6-7, 16-18). The only place in the Old Testament where we see suffering as the means by which salvation would come to Israel is in Isaiah 53.

According to Isaiah, God’s servant would be the source of salvation which would include suffering (Isaiah 53:5). In Isaiah 53 we see for the first time in the Old Testament that suffering is not only the context of the coming deliverance from exile, but also the means by which that deliverance will come. It includes both the language of redemptive suffering, as well as victory language (Isaiah 53:12). Isaiah 53 became a key passage in how the New Testament writers describe Jesus’ death. The servant of the Lord who is suffering is both Israel (Isaiah 49:3) and a person (Isaiah 52:13 ff).

The suffering of God’s servant would not only occur at the time of Israel’s redemption; suffering would be the means by which Israel experienced the forgiveness of sins and their long awaited end of exile.

Jewish literature records the suffering of Jewish martyrs bringing an end to the suffering of God’s people during the Maccabean revolt 160 years before Jesus. The description of punishment by the Maccabean martyrs does not indicate that their death somehow absorbed the vengeance of God, but their description is similar to what Paul says in Romans 5-8 which Wright will discuss in later chapters. The concept of redemptive suffering was present in Jewish literature before the coming of Jesus.

Isaiah 53 is important for how early Christians viewed the death of Jesus, but this chapter must be read in the larger context of God’s faithful love. We do see God’s anger at human rebellion and sin in the Old Testament, but divine anger in Israel’s Scriptures is not like what we see in pagan religion. Israel’s God isn’t an angry god that needs to be pacified. He is a loving, faithful God whose anger at human sin is mixed with mourning. For Wright, “When God looks at sin, what he sees is what a violin maker would see if the player were to use his lovely creation as a tennis racquet” (132).

We trace God’s covenant love back to Deuteronomy 7:6-9 where Moses makes clear that the people of Abraham were chosen by the LORD who loved them. This theme continues through Isaiah (43:1, 3-4; 63:8-9), Jeremiah (31:3), Lamentations (3:22-23), and Hosea (11:1). In Isaiah in particular we see this covenant love will result in a new Exodus and this love would be extended to all the nations of the world.

Before we encounter the sufferings of the LORD’s servant in Isaiah 53, we see the love and comfort coming from the LORD to his people beginning in Isaiah 40:1-52:9. The suffering servant is “wounded for our transgressions…upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (Isaiah 53:5) and after this time of suffering the covenant will be renewed, when the LORD will gather the people of God again (Isaiah 54:7). The picture of rescue, or salvation, we see from Deuteronomy through Isaiah is accomplished by the LORD according to his love for his people. While suffering is included in God’s rescue plan, this suffering does not turn away God’s anger or judgment. Rather, salvation through suffering is an expression of the LORD’s love.

Three themes rise to the surface in a quick recount of the story of Israel, the ongoing exile, and the unresolved story we find in the Old Testament. (1) Forgiveness of sin implied the end of exile. Israel’s sin had led them into exile and God’s act of forgiveness indicated that their time of enduring exile was over. (2) The expected coming salvation would be a new Exodus, where the coming Messiah would lead Israel and the world out of a slavery to sin and death. (3) Salvation and redemption would come about by the LORD himself.

Isaiah’s suffering servant embodies these three themes. This servant would also embody the covenant love of the LORD, bringing forth redemption for Israel and the world.

Discussion Questions

1. When you were punished as a child, did you understand it as the result of:
   1. breaking the rules
   2. disappointing your parents
   3. your poor choices
   4. your parents’ anger
   5. some combination of the above
2. How have you seen people become enslaved by the idols they worship?
3. What are the key differences between God creating a system of rules for people to follow (works contract) and God creating a world for people to cultivate (covenant of vocation)?
4. What does it mean for human beings to “reflect God’s image into creation”?
5. What are the differences between getting a speeding ticket and getting into a car wreck? How does this inform how God punishes us?
6. What do we lose if we eliminate the story of Israel (the Old Testament) from our understanding of Jesus and the cross?
7. What does it mean for God’s anger to be mixed with mourning, like a violin maker seeing a player use the violin like a tennis racket?
8. How does Jesus’ death on the cross demonstrate the love of God?