Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission > Status Update

"Jesus came as a new Moses, and as such he brought "plagues" that destroyed "Egypt's" (Israel's) world of worship in order to make way for a new one. The plagues included eating with sinners; healing on the Sabbath; showing kindness to tax collectors and Gentiles; touching lepers, corpses and women with flows of blood. He instructed his followers to subvert the world order by returning kindness for harm, blessing for insult, by bearing others burdens. Jesus came with plagues of mercy that subverted the perverse Torah-regime of the scribes and Pharisees and the brute force of the Romans."

"In John's Gospel, Jesus entire life is a series of trials. Yet the real trial is not the apparent trial. Not Jesus but the Jews who accused and "tried" Jesus are on trial. This becomes most evident in Jesus' trials and death. Speaking of his death after his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus referred to the coming hour of judgment on "this world" (Jn 12). While the entire world was coming under judgment, that judgment began with the house of God, the people of Israel. Jesus' interpretation of his approaching death is in the background of the trial in John 18-19, where Pilate places Jesus on the judgment seat before the Jews, who renounce Jesus in favor of Caesar. Pilate too is on trial, but the trial centers on the people who claim to be sons of Abraham. By crucifying Jesus, the Jews and Romans ultimately condemned not Jesus but themselves. Flesh's apparent victory was flesh's defeat. By twisting Torah into an instrument to kill the living Word, by boiling the Torah-Giver in the milk of Torah, flesh is self-condemned. In Jesus death, Yahweh's prosecution of flesh came to its climax."

"Though Jesus was mortal, though he feared death, he was not determined by the fear of death, did not live kata sarka. He went to death and laid down his life, giving it up in the Spirit to his Father, trusting that his Father would vindicate him in the end, As Jesus' death exposes the evils of flesh, it also answers to the brokenness of the human condition, the product of human frailty, vulnerability, mortality and the very sinful ways to stave off our weakness, It answers to our fleshly condition. We begin to have an account of atonement that captures the "inevitability" of the cross when we recognize that Jesus gave up the blood of his flesh so that he could enter fully into the life of the Spirit, and so he could share that Spirit with us. This is what Paul means when he writes of pistis Christou (the faith of Christ)."

Pistis Christou has two equally possible meanings: "faith in Christ" (objective genitive) or "faith of Christ" (subjective genitive). The first render the focus anthropological (ithe individual's faith in Christ), the second Christological (the faith/faithfulness of Christ). The ramifications here are quite high, as pistis Christou is how we are justified.

"Is Paul's presentation of the gospel in Romans and Galatians mainly an answer to the question, how can sinners be saved? (Answer: Trust in Christ!) Or is it mainly an answer to the question, how did God reveal and manifest his justice in the world? (Answer: Through the faithful work of Christ.)"

First, we know that Paul uses subjective genitives. For instance, in Romans 4:16 "pisteos Abraam" is universally rendered "the faith of Abraham," and never "faith in Abraham."

Second, Romans 3:22 all but cements "the faithfulness of Jesus" as the correct translation. Looking at the verse itself (dikaiosyne Theou dia pisteos Iesou Christou), all tanslations render dikaiosynē Theou in the subjective genitive ("the righteousness of God"/God's righteousness). It would be very odd, therefore, if pisteos Iesou Christou was an objective genitive. The verse should read God's righteousness through Jesus Christ's faith(fulness).

Furthermore, this makes better sense of the argument of the surrounding passage, where Paul's point is not that God's righteousness is manifest in the belief of believers (what does that even mean?), but that God's righteousness is manifest in the faithfulness of Jesus "whom God put forward as a propitiation (a wrath appeasing sacrifice) by His blood." In Christ's death, God publicly dealt with the sin He had been patiently bearing/carrying (Exo 34:7), iniquity, transgression, and sin He had previously covered or "passed over." But He did not "leave it unpunished," thus proving Himself righteous, both "just and the justifying One of Jesus's faithfulness" (Rom 3:26).

"What made Jesus' death different? The answer is, his identity and his life. Jesus was the "son of God" in the Old Testament sense: he was Israel's King, Israel embodied in a single person, and so his death, like the death of every king of Israel, was on behalf of his people. When he passed through death toward transfiguration, Israel went with him. More, Jesus was Israel's king and Israel's High King in one person, both David's Son and David's Lord. He poured out his blood, the life of his flesh, as Yahweh incarnate, and so his passage through death was Yahweh's own passion, God's own passage through human death. Besides, Jesus' entire life made his martyrdom unique. Heroic as they were, no other martyrs had lived a life of complete obedience to Torah. None had fully realized all that Torah required. Like every sacrificial animal, Jesus offered himself "without blemish to God" (Heb 9:14). Thus he fulfills the entire sacrificial system of Leviticus: those sacrifices were the shadows, but Christ's is the substance that cast the backward shadow."

"According to the gospel story, Jesus was completely innocent of all charges. He was not a blasphemer, not a Torah-breaker. Rather, the Jews who accused and condemned Jesus and had him killed—they are the blasphemers (Mk 3:28-29; cf. Rom 2:24). Indeed, they were committing blasphemy in the very act of accusing Jesus of blasphemy and putting him to death. The Jews accused Jesus of the very sin of which they were guilty. They condemned Jesus as the rebellious son (Deut 21) when they were Yahweh's rebellious but beloved son, Israel (Ex 4:23). When they urged crucifixion and asked Pilate to put Jesus on a cross to display his cursedness (Deut 21, again), they were urging a punishment they deserved. The precision is exquisite: Jesus died as the penal substitute for Israel. This is not a piece of abstract theologizing, an inference from or an imposition on the Gospel narrative. It is a description of the gospel drama. It is there in the narrative. "Penal substitution" is a plot summary."

"Jesus' death at the hands of wicked men ransomed and redeemed because Jesus was the Davidic king, Israel embodied in one person. The Davidic king was Yahweh's son, the representative of Israel (Ex 4:23). Between David and the Babylonian captivity, the fate of Israel turned on the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of her king. Jesus was the Son of David, declared and proved to be such by the resurrection (Rom 1:1-3). The king lived for the people and died for the people. Jesus the King took on the penalty that Israel deserved, and so released Israel from the capital penalty for her blasphemy. If Jesus did not step in to take Israel's punishment, wrath would come to the uttermost, Israel would be scattered and die, the Abrahamic promise would not be fulfilled. Unless Jesus saved Israel, the world would not be saved, and he saved Israel by suffering the death she had earned."

"As the priestly people, Israel represented the nations, and blasphemy represented the blasphemy of all nations. Insofar as Jesus died to pay the penalty of Israel's own blasphemy he also suffered the punishment due to the nations for their blasphemy. Further, Romans joined with the Jews in putting Jesus to death, and so they too were guilty. The Romans condemned Jesus for making himself a king, a challenger to the true king. But he was the true King, the king of Romans as well as Jews. They executed Jesus for lese-majesté, but their execution was the supreme act of lèse-majesté. In condemning the King in the name of their king, Caesar, the Romans, like the Jews, charged Jesus with the very crime they were committing. Jesus died as a penal substitute for Romans as well as for Jews. Jesus was not only the true Israel and the world's king but also the Last Adam, the "Son of Man" who has come to tame the bestial empires that rise from the turbulent sea (Dan 7). This is something of an extrapolation from the gospel story, but it seems a legitimate one: Jews and Gentiles, which for the Bible constitute the sum of the human race, executed the Son of Man for the crimes they themselves committed. They punished him for their sins, and so made him their penal substitute for the sins of humanity."

"Jesus' becoming a penal substitute for Israel and the Romans was not a random accident, nor a deviation from the path he was sent to go. It was the path that the Father sent him to walk in the far country. It was the Father's pleasure to send his Son into this danger, into the valley of death, and it was the Son's pleasure to do his Father's pleasure. It was the Father's pleasure to deliver the Son to be crushed by godless hands; in delivering the Son to the godless the Father laid on the Son all of Israel's liability for punishment. The Son whose very being is to do his Father's will carried out this mission to the uttermost; he was crushed, and he suffered Israel's punishment for the joy set before him. The Father sent the Son, and the Son willingly was sent, to take the burden of the sins of Israel, of Rome, of the human race. As true Israel, as the King, as Son of Man, Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, suffered for our liabilities, was chastened to make us well, so that by his stripes we may be healed."

"Thus falls a major objection to penal substitution—that it violates trinitarian orthodoxy by putting the Son and Father in opposition. There are crude versions of penal substitution that are guilty of this charge, and it is both unbiblical and unorthodox to suggest that the kind Son pacifies his irascible Father. Both Father and Son are at war with sin, death and flesh; both Father and Son love creation and humanity and, with the Spirit, conspire to save. Even noncrude versions of penal substitution can fall afoul of trinitarian orthodoxy, especially when penal substitution is abstracted from the concrete events of the trial and death of Jesus. The Father never condemns the Son; he never counts him as a transgressor. He cannot, because Jesus is not guilty, because Jesus is his eternal, eternally beloved Son and because the work of the cross is the combined work of Father, Son and Spirit. The Father never makes common cause with Jesus' accusers. What the Father does instead is to hand Jesus over to be charged, falsely, by Jews and Romans, and then vindicate Jesus and condemn his accusers by raising Jesus in the Spirit. By his predetermined plan, God parries the accusations, condemnation and execution to overcome the sin of those who hate Jesus, including the very sin they commit in executing him. The Father counts Jesus' death as paying the penalty Israel deserved, but not because he counts Jesus guilty. As King, Husband, and Head Jesus takes responsibility for Israel's guilt, Israel's liability for punishment. This is the sense in which Jesus "becomes sin" and "bears the curse" for us. Jesus is not for a moment counted guilty in the divine court."