AtlanteNoles427

Abductions

What was The lord doing around the cross?. It is really a search for understanding of one of the crucial events of history, perhaps the crucial event. The complete New Testament focuses on the death, burial, and resurrection, events before and flowing from it, its theological significance and ethical implications. We are going to focus on the deep significance of the atonement, as explained from three perspectives: the dynamic, subjective, and objective views.

Dynamic view The dynamic view sees Christ's death and resurrection as the climax of a cosmic conflict with Satan as well as the demonic forces of evil. Christ came as the Second Adam (Romans 5:18-19), winning the contest that Adam failed. He also came since the new Israel, faithfully keeping submitting to God instead of to Satan as the first Israel had done (Matthew 2:15; 4:4; etc.). Just after His baptism, the Spirit "drove" (Greek: ekballei) Him to the wilderness so that He might confront Satan (Mark 1:12). His victory there was clearly only one of what must have been many battles, for Luke records that Satan left Him until "an opportune time" (Luke 4:13).

During His ministry Jesus offered His ability to cast out demons being a demonstration that He was stronger than Satan. Although He described Satan as a "strong man," He claimed a chance to "bind" the strong man and despoil his possessions (i.e., people who were demon-possessed). His ability to cast out demons "by the finger of God" He presented as evidence of the arrival of God's kingdom on earth (Luke 12:20-22). Jesus got His disciples involved in the warfare; their successful preaching, healing, and exorcism mission He afterward called the fall of Satan from heaven (Luke 10:18).

Satan was behind the betrayal of Jesus by Judas (John 13:2, 27), his abandonment through the other apostles (Luke 22:31-32), along with his trial and murder (John 8:40-41, 44). Jesus recognized Satan as His principal enemy, and also before His death, He was confident of victory he spoke of it as a fait accompli (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 32). The minute before His death Christ Himself uttered the triumphant words, "It is finished" (John 19:30; compare Luke 12:50). The glorious resurrection is proof that His death would be a victory and not a defeat (Revelation 3:21).

As part of his confrontation with false teaching at Colossae, Paul presents the cross and resurrection as a triumph over spiritual enemies. The Colossians were vulnerable to being deceived by a syncretistic combination of Judaistic legalism, Hellenistic philosophy, and Eastern mysticism. Apparently the heretical teachers were not advocating a rejection of Jesus, nevertheless they denied Him the primacy in favor of intermediary beings. "Go beyond Jesus to greater realities," they might have taught. Paul replies that there is nothing beyond Jesus Christ, in whom God's fullness dwells. He it is Who "disarmed the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of which, triumphing over them by the cross" (Colossians 2:15).

Not only did Christ conquer Satan, demons, principalities, and powers. Younger crowd conquered death (Acts 2:24; Revelation 5:5-6). Paul uses militaristic terms to talk about the resurrection, e.g., "destroyed" and "victory" (1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 54-56).

Because Christ has triumphed as our representative, we share in His triumph (hence the super-conquerors of Romans 8:37). In Ephesians 4:8 Paul applies Psalm 68:19 to Christ's triumph, picturing Christ being a conquering general returning to Rome to get a victory parade: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in the train and gave gifts to men." The ensuing passage explains the gifts He gave are the offices for building up the church. The captives are bypassed, but Colossians 2:15 seems suitable commentary.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, Paul states that "God... always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and thru us spreads everywhere the fragrance from the knowledge of him." In cases like this the apostles (see 1 Corinthians 4:9), and possibly all Christians, are probably among those following along behind--themselves conquered, yet joyously sharing in the victory celebration. Our struggle against Satan and demonic forces continues (Ephesians 6:12). While he is victorious, we also can be victorious (Revelation 3:21; 1 John 2:14-15; 4:4; 5:4-5).

Subjective view It is a fact that we are the subjects of His daring rescue (Colossians 1:13-14), but we participate. This is the subjective nature with the atonement: it transforms us. If we are united with Christ through faith-repentance-baptism, God's Spirit begins the whole process of transforming us from one amount of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit, Himself the guarantee that this beginning will reach its intended end (Ephesians 1:13-14), starts to produce His fruit inside our hearts (Galatians 5:22-23) as we cooperate by "walking in the Spirit" and being "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:4, 14; Galatians 5:16). The metamorphosis is not automatic; it takes constant mental concentration even as count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11). Additionally, it requires continual moral striving, once we refuse to let sin dominate us, yielding the individuals our bodies to righteousness instead of to sin (Romans 6:12-13).

It's a battle we fight, yet Paul assures us, "[S]in could have no dominion over you" (Romans 6:14). The struggle leads to holiness and the end is eternal life (Romans 6:22). When Christ returns, on the eschaton, the Spirit will have performed His are employed in us: "[W]e shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).

Though this can be work that changes us from inside and in which we ourselves participate, the financing still belongs to God, because it's His work being done in us and through us. He is the one that brings it to completion tomorrow (Philippians 1:6). Meanwhile, we image Christ in this world. He was our representative in the cosmic conflict; we are His representatives in the existential struggle against the world, the flesh, as well as the Devil.

Objective view Yet Christ's death is much more than what he did for (hyper) us (see Mark 14:24; Luke 22:19-20) and what he is doing in (en) us (see Colossians 1:27). Additionally, it involves what He did rather than (anti) us (see Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45)---the objective view of the atonement. In fact, many think that the substitutionary nature of the atonement is an essential aspect of all.

Several types of the substitutionary atonement come from Genesis. The word used in 1 John 3:12 to spell it out Cain's murder of his brother may be the word for "slaughter" (Greek: esphaxen), such as the offering of a sacrifice. This has led some to view the earth's first murder, recorded in Genesis 4:8, because the offering of a substitute sacrifice. Essentially, Cain may have said, "So, You didn't like my vegetables as an offering? Let's see how You similar to this! (slash)." The murder certainly involved the shedding of his brother's blood, for it cried out from the ground against the perpetrator (Genesis 4:10).

When the angel stops Abraham from stabbing Isaac to death, Abraham finds a ram caught inside a nearby thicket that he can offer in place of (Septuagint: anti) his son (Genesis 22:12-13). The passage assumes that some sacrifice must be offered, and the one is replaced through the other.

abductions - More than a hundred years later, when Joseph's testing of his brothers developed a crisis situation involving the enforced servitude of Benjamin, Judah stepped forward and freely offered himself as a substitute for his brother (Genesis 44:18-34, especially not the Septuagint's usage of anti in v. 33). In cases like this also, some substitute must be provided. There was no possibility of mere escape from the demands of the master.

Yet all three of these are one-for-one substitutions, just like the "eye-for-eye" provisions of the Law. Christ's sacrifice (one for a lot of) is more like the sin offering in behalf of all the people or the sacrifice from the goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4:13-21; 16:15-19). He is the "atoning sacrifice for our sins, and never only for ours, but also for the sins with the whole world" (1 John 2:2). He's the "Lamb of God, Who removes the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

One for the world? How can that be just? Its justice depends upon the identity of the Sacrifice. An individual human deserves infinite punishment as a result of sins. Adding the punishment of one other human adds no more than was there already (for infinity plus infinity equals infinity). The same holds true for "the sins of the [whole] world." The slaughter of the Infinite One for these sins beings one infinity into connection with the other--just payment.

Our sins brought us underneath the curse of the law, but Christ was a curse for us by hanging on the tree (Galatians 3:10-14). Because of Christ's death, God was able to effect what Luther called a "happy exchange": we were the subjects of God's just condemnation, the objects of His righteous wrath, but the sinless Christ became "sin" for us, to ensure that we might become God's righteousness by Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God established Him since the propitiation, the appeasement, so that the all-consuming fire of His wrath may be diverted to Him rather than destroying the rest of us humans (Romans 3:25). As Isaiah said, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity folks all" (Isaiah 53:6).

Must we choose? resurrection - Dynamic, subjective, and objective--must we choose between them? No! By its very nature the atonement is greater than any one metaphor or perspective can contain. We have to always be answering, "Yes, and much more besides." Like astronomers surveying the universe, the harder we study it, the more vast it becomes. Our wherewithal to fully comprehend its dimensions does not nullify what we can understand, nor will it rob us of the amazement we sense at what we know was accomplished.