I suggest that we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies "with us" - entering into our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies "instead of us" - he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies "for us" - his death forgives our sin, "declares us right," absorbs God's wrath against us, and creates new life where there was once only death.
Not only is this death saving, this same death becomes the paradigm for an entirely new existence that is shaped, as Luther said of theology and life, by the cross. A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others, and the world. And a life shaped by the cross sees in the cross God becoming the victim, indentifying with the victim, suffering injustice, and shaping a cruciform pattern of life for all who would follow Jesus. The cross reshapes all of life.
Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, p. 69
4 comments:
scott is a very interesting brother.
dying to the old self and a gain of Love of God and for self and for others in giving and receiving this Love in new life.
a new life...where there was once...only...death.
there is something lost and something gained in living every day...
i looked at love from God way now, the give and take, and now somehow it is God's Love i recall, i really trust in God and His Love.
sorry joni...just had to do a rewrite.
God's love to you and you wife and daughter...and even cleo.
This is very good.
Thank you for this today.
Nancy,
Yes, the cross and what Jesus accomplished for us on it is so central to our walk and to God's redemption of creation.
Deb laughed at your words to us at the end of your comment. But love to you and yours, as well.
Yes John. That's a fine book, well worth the read and reread. Alot of good exegetical and theological thought on this, and puts atonement in a more Sciptural light I think, than how atonement is normally treated. At least it brings out the communal aspect of the atonement, how it it figures in our life as community in Jesus, which is so underplayed in our modern thinking and treatment of theology.
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