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

"If Jesus remained dead, his program would not be realized. If he remained dead, then it would appear that the Jews were right after all: Jesus was a transgressor, stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. The way of Jesus was a pollution and a prescription for social and religious chaos. It was good that this man was put to death to save Israel from him. Jesus' order of sacrifice, purity and justice depended on Yahweh coming out from behind the veil and living among his people. If Jesus died and stayed in the grave, then he must never have been Yahweh incarnate to begin with. If Jesus died and stayed dead, then the Creator was still distant from his creatures, and the whole stoicheic system more firmly entrenched than ever. If Jesus died and stayed dead, flesh—mortal flesh—had the last word, and that means death and sin would continue to reign unscathed. He did not stay dead."

"Once Jesus rose from the dead, and was revealed to be the true Son of the Father, the true Israel, the Lord of glory, the evil of his persecutors was fully revealed. In the light of the resurrection, it became clear that they were the blasphemers, the enemies of God. In the light of the resurrection, it became evident that the charges they brought against Jesus were the very charges that might have been brought, justly, against them. In short: it is only in the light of Jesus' resurrection that we can see the gospel story as a story of penal substitution. The resurrection was the act by which God turned the accusations against the accusers and condemned those who pronounced condemnation against Jesus. Those who acknowledge the justice of God's charges against them are saved; those who do not will be destroyed."

"Jesus lived in flesh that had been created by the Spirit, and in the flesh he lived by the Spirit. In his death, he died to fleshly life, died to what Paul calls his psychikon body (1 Cor 15), and by his resurrection entered fully into the life of the Spirit, with his soma pneumatikon. He left his disciples behind, but he did not leave them fleshly. The Spirit that animated the life of Jesus—the life of welcome festivity, the life of breaking yokes, the life of cleansing sinners by the force and power of his Spirit and presence, the life of redemptive justice—that Spirit was poured out into the flesh of the disciples. The disciples devoted themselves to practicing Jesus' festivity, including Jews and Greeks, slaves and freemen, the unclean and the outcast. In preaching, generous almsgiving, hospitality, healing, they continued Jesus' war on flesh, which is Yahweh's war. They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to prayer, In the world of flesh, Jesus' death, resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit created a "community called atonement." That community will reach its final perfection in the final resurrection, but even now the Spirit of Jesus has formed and is forming a new humanity from the broken elements of the old. The atonement of Jesus—his formation of a new kosmos no longer operating by the ancient social physics or by the flesh—becomes a fact, a social fact."

"From the death of Jesus stoicheic order is all but nullifed, signified by the rending of the temple veil at the time of Jesus' death. Woven with cherubim, the veil was a reminder that the gate into Eden was blocked and access to the Creator's presence severely restricted. The rending of the veil announced the end of the stoicheic order and of God's accommodation to flesh. As by one act of disobedience humanity was excluded from Eden and placed under a curse, so by one act of obedience humanity was offered a return to Eden. Stoicheic order was nullified by a final sacrifice, when Jesus offered his life to establish a new covenant that remits sins, when God put Jesus forth publicly as a hilasterion in blood (Rom 3), when he brought Jesus as a sin offering to purify the people and temple once and for all (Rom 8:3). Jesus became the first full human worshiper of Yahweh, the first Torah-keeper, who passed through death into Eden as a man. He died for the remission of sins, so that those who trust and follow him can enter Eden with him to feast without veils or barriers in the presence of God."

"Jesus died and rose to become the cornerstone of a new holy house, but prophets and apostles constituted the rest of the foundation (Eph 2:20). Jesus taught his disciples that the Old Testament was a typological account of Christ's sufferings and glory, AND of the apostles' preaching of repentance and forgiveness to the nations (Lk 24:46-47). The first Christians were not only objects and beneficiaries of Christ's atoning work; because they are beneficiaries, in Christ and by His Spirit, they are subjects of the actions by which God fulfills his promises and saves his creation. We are tempted to flinch at this last moment. We are tempted to retreat from the ambiguities of history into an atonement theory whose mechanism works regardless of whether Torah had ever been given, one that does not depend on the events of Jesus' life or the faithful witness of the founding, firstfruits generation. We are tempted to conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection might effect salvation without the Church, with all its failures and imperfections, obvious already to Peter, Paul, James and John. We are tempted to think we can have an atonement that needs no sacraments or an atonement accomplished by the Son without the Spirit."

"Jesus died to form a people, the Church, his body and bride. He died to preserve his new temple movement; his death was a day of atonement where he bore the liabilities and punishments of Israel to give them a new past and a new future. His own sacrifice was part of his ordination and he rose again to preside as an immortal high priest qualified not by flesh but by the power of indestructible resurrection life (see Eph 2:11-22; Heb 7:1-28). Jesus brought forgiveness because his death founded a forgiven people-temple where forgiveness continues to be freely offered: a temple where the single bath of baptism purifies and consecrates; where confession of sins without sacrifice cleanses from all unrighteousness; where the word of absolution is spoken with all the authority of the Son of God; where Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free are invited to share a common sacrificial meal, eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood for the remission of sins. Salvation breaks into the world because God removes the veil, takes his gifts of word, bread and rod out of the treasure chest of the ark and hands them over to everyone everywhere who will receive them. Forgiveness comes to historical reality because by his death and resurrection Jesus establishes these simpler, fewer and above all more effective rites to unite us to God and one another."

"By the end of AD 70, the temple was in ruins and all its elements melted and scattered like ash (2 Pet 3:10), the physics of socioreligious life had been transformed, and the disciples of Jesus, and also the world, had entered a new epoch of history. They had entered the era opened by Jesus, the Christian era, populated by humans of a new physis (nature), neither Jew nor Greek but made Christians by the Spirit of Christ. This entire sequence is the sacrifice of Jesus the eternal Son, and it is this entire sequence that saves the world."