Thinking about models and concepts of the Atonement

I want to think here a bit about the Atonement. I stumbled upon this topic a couple years ago while reading my daily portion of Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional book, “My Utmost for His Highest”. I am seeing that how we think about the Atonement fundamentally influences our expression of the Gospel message. That is a reason why I think the atonement is an important area for renewed scrutiny, something I have been studying over the past months.

The Atonement is an area of doctrine that considers what Jesus accomplished upon the cross. I want to direct the conversation to consideration of a couple questions.

What is the message that most effectively represents what Jesus accomplished on the cross? That message becomes “the Gospel” that is offered to people!

What is the need of man? What is broken or lacking?

What is God’s concern that He was taking care of with the atonement by Jesus?

I was trained as a sales rep in Silicon Valley. Permit me to inject some sales and marketing lingo in the discussion here. The activity of sales is finding out what your prospect needs, and then showing them how your product or service meets that need. Without a felt need, people aren’t motivated to make a buying decision.

I heard an interesting observation a couple months ago in my reading, that during the first 1,000 years of church history, the focus was on the life of Jesus. Then there was a shift of focus upon the death of Jesus. When you think of that in terms of “product marketing”, how and why did the church’s message change? Take a look with me at a couple things I came across in the New Testament.

Remember the EF Hutton commercial slogan “When EF Hutton speaks, everyone listens”? Someone representing the EF Hutton investment firm in the commercial would offer some financial advice in a conversation in different public places and everyone around would hush and listen. I found an “EF Hutton” moment in Acts 5:20. Some number of the apostles were apprehended by the high priest and his cronies, who put them under guard in a local jail. Then the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors at night and led them out. Now the EF Hutton moment when the angel tells them “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.” I was intrigued what the heavenly messenger told them to talk about.

Then in John 20:31, the apostle states his purpose for writing his gospel “But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

In John 5:40 Jesus tells his Jewish listeners “And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”

I came across an observation about Martin Luther written by Leonard Verduin:

“We meet in Luther, to put it theologically, a very heavy emphasis on the forensic aspect of salvation and a correspondingly light emphasis on the moral aspect. Luther was primarily interested in pardon [for sins], rather than in renewal [of life]. His theology [Reformation] was a theology that addressees itself to the problem of guilt [of sins committed], rather than to the problem of pollution [of life inherited from the first Adam]. From “The Reformers and Their Stepchildren”. 1964 p. 12

One of my favorite books in the past couple years and one I highly recommend is by Dennis F. Kinlaw, “Let’s Start with Jesus” that presents three metaphors to describe the nature of the relationship God desires with us. He writes in his introduction (and two more quotes following), “I began to realize that the juridical metaphor that was so liberating in the Reformation is biblical enough, but that is not the only metaphor that the Scriptures use to explain the heart of what Christ died to do for us”.

“We see that salvation is God’s gift to restore us to fellowship. Christ died to do more than get us past the judgment and help us escape hell. He became incarnate and died on Calvary’s cross to remove any impediments that would hinder us from being comfortable in his presence and to change us so that we can enjoy him in self-giving love now and forever. Any understanding of the atonement that does not make provision to get us ready for that intimacy with him is inadequate, incomplete, and only partially biblical”. p. 68

“God wants humanity to share in the communion of love that is the inner life of God. That does not come easily. The gospel makes it very clear that the reason for the incarnation and atonement was to prepare us for just such communion with God”. P 44

Back to the question of how the emphasis of the church moved from the life of Christ that he offers to us to an emphasis on the death on the cross – I found some very readable insights in a scholarly work by James A. Fowler.   The 16-page paper is entitled “Concepts and Models of the Atonement”. http://www.christinyou.net/pages/atonement.html He describes briefly (and understandably!) over fifteen concepts of the atonement and provides a very engaging account of how these concepts developed over the centuries.

Back to some practical considerations, and this entire discussion gets very practical! When you “share the Gospel” with someone, where are you going to start and with what kind of invitation are you going to end? I suggest that if we give this subject some thought, we could develop a much more compelling expression of the life that Jesus has purchased for us than is currently being presented by the current widespread emphasis on penal substitution.

Getting His love from my head to my heart

This post records some additional thoughts about the podcast “Stop Doing”.  Located on The God Journey site:  www.theGodJourney.com  

 

What’s our part in this process of getting God’s love for us from our head to our heart?  Believers can usually find mental agreement to the assertion that “God loves you”.  But experiencing the deep assurance of His delight and enjoyment of us as His children in our hearts requires more than our agreement; it requires our participation. A couple quotes from the letters Wayne and Brad shared:

“How do I live there? I feel that sitting around waiting for the change to come is accomplishing nothing.  What are the things I should be doing to get this through to my heart?” From another letter: “How do you make the jump from head to heart? We know Jesus loves us, because the Bible tells us so.  We hear Thomas Merton’s words and yours and recognize their truth.”  Wayne response: “I think the whole part of that program performance based mindset is “OK, I now see what I want, what do I do to make that happen?”  The heart of the righteousness that faith produces is sitting before God and saying “I can’t do this, no matter how hard I try. I can’t do what God wants to make real in my heart.”

I was reminded a few months ago about something I said in my brash and self-confident young adulthood.  I remember telling my pastor “Just tell me what to do to live the Christian life and I will do it!”  So I join Wayne in whining about how many years it took me to see that was the wrong tree to be barking up.  Thankfully, very thankfully, my pastor didn’t respond to my ignorantly sincere request.  Instead, he encouraged me to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to me. But it still took years! J  I share this by way of background to segue into my thoughts about how Wayne and Brad responded to these questions.

 

What I heard on the podcast was a bit unclear and possibly confusing. I want to help by thinking here about this question.  Paul Young, author of The Shack, said something in his interview on the God Journey about salvation being spoken of in three verb tenses in the bible.  The actions that Jesus did on the cross and the actions He will do in the future at the end of the age to bring us into our full inheritance are His alone.  But the present tense activity of His transforming work in us requires our participation.  Briefly, what He is offering us is a relationship, one in which we must participate willingly and with conscious intention.  To be known by Him in the way that truly meets our deepest needs requires us to open ourselves to His involvement in our lives.  He brings the power and the initiative to transform us, but we retain the awesome responsibility to respond and choose to open the door to His knocking.  

 

The Reformation placed such a heavy emphasis on salvation by faith alone that the notion of personal transformation through a dynamic relationship with the living Lord Jesus was marginalized, even minimized.  In our current day when we grapple with the question of the nature of our participation, there exists even still such a strong influence to pull toward describing our part in terms of “grace through faith alone” that our participation in the transformation process is expressed with the same kind of passive cognitive belief constructs that define faith as mental assent.  It stays in our heads and doesn’t get to our hearts!  Ordering off that menu gets us hamburger instead of filet! 

 

But there is a trap lurking for anyone who begins to articulate anything that resembles a “program” or hints of “performance” to move towards heart transformation.  The aversion to legalism hobbles people from engaging in a robust pursuit of God!  Yet, I don’t think we can expect to see spiritual heart transformation by “sitting around waiting for change to come” as the dear sister wrote to Wayne in her letter and attests to.

 

Over the past couple weeks I have listened to about twelve hours of teaching audio from Dallas Willard and audio from a five-session Renovare conference with Richard Foster.  If you know of these men you will recall that they both have written well-received books about the spiritual disciplines.  Both of them taught in these sessions about the benefits of the spiritual disciplines of Solitude and Silence!  And then what I heard Wayne and Brad articulating sounded strikingly similar: (the numbers are the location on the MP3 file. The text is not word for word but very close.)

·         31:57  How does it happen? When He speaks. You can’t hear his voice without Him speaking. The reality is that I can’t control that.  There is not a button that I can push: Speak, God!   It’s more like I can make myself available. Get into some space that helps allow that to happen.  For the most part this is really getting into some space, getting away for a bit, even if it’s to take a half hour walk. But creating a space for that to happen.  Our harried world existence where we’re running from one responsibility to another responsibility doesn’t allow for the space for revelation to happen. It doesn’t take going up to a mountain and praying for 24 hours, but it does help taking a little bit of space in your life for that opportunity to happen

·         34:23  I think rest opens up space and not being afraid, and not being harried. Even if it means going in a room for 15 minutes, close the door and say “Jesus, would you make yourself known to me?”  Creating that space to me opens up the opportunity for us to know love that way. 

·         37:58  The heart of the righteousness that faith produces is sitting before God and saying “I can’t do this, no matter how hard I try. I can’t do what God wants to make real in my heart.”  That is a great place of faith.  I’m now at peace with the fact that I can’t get there. 

·         39:56  That can be a real place of peace, not self-pity, self-loathing, or frustration.  It’s liberating, because now I can stop doing all the stupid things that I have been doing for all these years to try to make this happen in my heart, and now just do the one thing I can do, which is to say “Jesus, would you do this in me?”  It’s coming to a place of acceptance, not defiance. It’s coming to place of relaxed rest that God is big enough to do this in me, and I’m not big enough to do this in myself.  So I’m going to stop trying, and I’m going to learn to listen and learn to live loved.

·         42:35  “To some degree, until you stop all you are doing, how in the world are you even going to be able to see what He’s doing? I really think that in all of the flurry of our well-intentioned activity, I am so aware of what I am doing, that I am least aware of what He’s doing.  But if your identity is wrapped up in what you’re doing, it’s almost impossible to stop.  That is where the Holy Spirit is first nudging our heart.  Pull back, your identity is not based on your doing, your security as a believer is not based on all the things you’re doing, but we’ve been taught that it is.  But until I stop doing, I may not start seeing.   

·         “But it begins with him.  It’s empowered by him.  I have to get to the place where I settle myself and open my eyes and open my ears and ask “help me see where this is.”  It’s only when I know that I’m not doing this that I can be aware of the activity He is doing.  And then I do start to feel loved.  I start to perceive an activity that I couldn’t otherwise.  That is where living loved begins, in that space.”

 

There are intentional actions that we can take to create that space for God to speak!  Both Richard Foster and Dallas Willard have written and spoken extensively about those actions that we can take.  Do we invoke God to action by our preparations or make Him obligated?  No, ours is the action of humble servants, like the wise maidens who trimmed their lamps and were ready when the bridegroom arrived.  We do have our part in the great dance of relationship with God.  There have been earnest disciples in every age that we can learn from as we ask God to guide us on our journey.

 

There may be some materials from these other sources from which you can benefit. (I certainly have appreciated the other voices and viewpoints seeking to describe this Life that He offers!)  The audio tracks I mentioned are downloadable for free at http://christianaudio.com search on Willard and Foster.  A page with links to Willard’s other audio teachings is here: http://www.dwillard.org/resources/audio.asp 

Menu Choices – Will I let God pick for me?

I came across a podcast series by the two men who helped Paul Young, the author of The Shack, get his book published. They have been hosting a weekly podcast for a couple years. The focus of most of their informal, rambling discussions usually touches upon “living loved”, experiencing God’s love for us personally in a transformational way.

In last week’s podcast entitled “Stop Doing”, there were some comments about dealing with suffering and unmet expectations. Wayne and Brad offered some suggestions that got me thinking about some things I’ve been reading in the last few days related to this very same question.

Wayne replied to a letter from a listener with this observation: “This life is lived best as we celebrate what God gives rather than trying to get God to give us what we want”. There was a bit of discussion about the mistaken mindset that God’s love for us is evidenced when everything goes our way. Wayne speaking in the podcast:

“How do you interpret love? Does it mean that everything great goes your way? If to be loved by God means I have a carefree existence with no trouble, then you’re going to run into that issue every single day. It’s not even that it’s just suffering; it’s sometimes the disappointment of my own agenda. I’m praying for God to do these things, fix these things, give me these things. (And Wayne quipped…) And if I loved me, I would!”

I laughed!

I think God’s definition of love toward us encompasses so much more than our temporal happiness (read that: pleasure derived from what is happening now). He desires our blessing, a deep joy which is not based simply on our present pleasant circumstances but instead as an outcome of our relationship with Him. A practical way I have found to wrestle with this mistaken mindset is to pray “Lord, please bless me with every blessing You have for me today, I want to receive everything you have for me as your child.” You might recognize this attitude from the popular Prayer of Jabez. When I first began praying that part of the prayer seven years ago, I was intentionally opening myself up to whatever God had for me: His agenda, His pruning, His choice of the daily menu of life’s events. It’s a way of declaring my resolute trust in His faithful delight to extend His care to me and share His life through all of life’s experiences.

I remember at the beginning of praying that prayer, imagining mostly the kinds of blessings that bring that flush of thankfulness for pleasant circumstances. In the past couple years I am seeing that the greatest blessings are not “the stuff”, but the growing sense that He is Enough!

But I really think it would have been a challenge at the beginning of praying those prayers to comprehend the value of experiencing that sense of intimate fellowship into which He has drawn me. I can testify, though, from this vantage point, that the blessings are real and unexpectedly satisfying. If you have never tasted a good filet, hamburger tastes just fine! But after tasting a good steak, simple hamburger will not do! We spend so much of our time seeking hamburger when God wants to help us acquire the taste for steak!

Power: right-handed, left-handed, His…

I recently read a blog post discussing power as being right-handed or left-handed.  The general description of right hand power is that which comes out of our self-determination and self-direction, focused on meeting our own needs.  Left-handed power was characterized as power subordinated to the needs of those around us. The discussion was about the virtues of left handed power.  I had some thoughts catalyzed by something Eric Ludy spoke about in one of his discipleship sessions.

In summary form, I see the issue as not one of our choosing to use our right-handed power or our left-handed power.  Instead, God is offering me to be enabled by His right hand!  So the focus is not on my power but upon His power. Here are some thoughts from that session:

In Biblical culture, the Right hand is the hand of blessing, the holy arm. 

“For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou had a favor unto them.” Psalm 44:3

“O sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.” Psalm 98:1

“Now know I that the Lord saves his anointed: he will hear him from his holy heaven with the saving strength of his right hand.” Psalm 20:6

The notion of the right side of the body presented through scripture is one of strength, power, salvation, control, will, kingship, holiness, correctness, correction, honor, and wisdom. The right-handedness of man is symbolic of the scepter of man’s kingdom, dependence upon his own strength, his own wisdom, his own will-power, his own effort to rescue himself upon this earth. If a man refuses to relinquish this “right side” of his being unto God, he is despising the offer of God’s strength, power, salvation, control, will, kingship, holiness, correctness, correction, honor, and wisdom and is determining to seek those things by means of his own resource.  So the right side of one’s being must be willingly relinquished in order to become as he ought to be. The branch grown out of the root of our selfishness is pulled up and the Holy Spirit is planted within us, the righteous strength of Almighty God enabling us to experience and “live loved” in the life of the Trinity.

Jesus demonstrated how a right hand must be used, must be surrendered, must be consecrated.  Though He was God, he was “found in the fashion of men, he humbled himself and became obedient”, in order to demonstrate perfect right-handedness by exhibiting the power and glory of God’s right hand.  Philippians 2:6-11

What I am seeing here is that the option is not about declining to use my own right hand and instead, use my left handed resources.  Both of those sources of power are mine, limited and humanly frail at the core.  Instead, God is offering me to lean on His Right arm!  I wasn’t designed to operate alone, as my own source of power!  The process God has used to bring me to a deep realization that my right arm is not sufficient is a story of His kindness and love.  The drama has not been pleasant but the fruit is truly worth the pain of being confronted with the limitations of my own right arm to sustain me.

I suggest that we look at this metaphor as a choice between trusting in our own right arm or trusting in His right arm.  I think it is a much better choice than even using my own left arm!  As for me, I’m delighted to be “leaning on the Everlasting Arm”!

The indented material is almost all extracted from a teaching on Right Handedness by Eric Ludy, a young man with a fierce devotion to God and a poetic pen.  This teaching is available on his website as a download of MP3 audio and PDF notes.  The series is number 5. http://www.ericludy.com/ericludy.com/Discipleship.html

Do you ever feel God owes you a life free from suffering?

One of the questions that came up in my study group at church last Thursday night has prompted me to think a bit about hope and about suffering.  Here’s the question that came up:

“Deep down, do you ever feel God owes you a life free from suffering?”

Not any more. I came to the conclusion a few years ago that we are not going to get out of this life alive. And along the way to that inevitable end, there is bound to be suffering of some kind. There is not enough Ibuprofen, family counseling, and prayer intercession to counteract the suffering that is part of our lot in life as humans. I didn’t always think that way…

Young adulthood has a way of seducing us with the sheer ecstasy of our own possibilities; seducing us with the naive hope that we can navigate our way through life in such a manner as to avoid the ditches and potholes along the way. I am learning that even “Most Outstanding Boy Graduate of the Class of 1972″ can’t expect to get through unscathed. 

There is a crisis of grief I’ve felt in the depth of my soul. These are sobering realizations that have crept in over the years as life’s events have unfolded and begun to form an undeniable pattern. The pattern is that even my best efforts, my most heartfelt, sincere desire to walk uprightly before God hasn’t shielded me from suffering. I guess He’s not in the business of “casualty and life insurance”. 

So somehow I got the wrong idea about the deal God was offering us regarding suffering. Without going into an analysis of how I embraced that wrong idea regarding what to expect, I am recognizing that an accurate perspective about reality was in some other explanation. That recognition came over time, not through reasoning of new facts, but of experiencing a new relational reality. When suffering occurs, God has been there in the midst of it with His comfort! Instead of feeling abandoned and estranged in the midst of suffering, I have experienced God’s presence more keenly and His encouragement more confidently. I am seeing a pattern that has its own seductive invitation to intimacy. My hope is becoming grounded in the unfolding experience of living in the embrace and fellowship of the triune God! 

I am in the midst of seeking a clear understanding of the part that we must individually play in the process and the part that the ever-active Holy Spirit takes. I am seeing that we definitely need help with the process! Letting go is hard; too hard alone; too hard without the refining fire that is applied to the glue that connects us to our “worldly goods”. Somehow the activity of the Holy Spirit enables us to relinquish our hold on this world and reach for Him. Suffering and pain are the elements of the fire that God uses to help us loosen our grip on the worldly things we hold onto as our hope for fulfillment.

Where was my hope before? It was in the bloom of becoming capable as a young adult, in the exhilaration of accomplishment, in the satisfaction of fruitful service to my family and friends. Largely, these are things that I was doing for God that He was blessing. Now I am seeing my hope grounded in my being in relationship with God. While life in recent days hasn’t been noticeably exhilarating, satisfying, or fruitful in the doing part, the being part of my experience has been flourishing! 

To conclude, here is a quote from Peter Kreeft’s Back to Virtue book:

Hope is a virtue of the soul. It is not something we can create by an act of our will, but (in large part) an emotional response to experiencing the love of God in our hearts.

The Grain of Wheat – a Metaphor of the Enabled Life

The Grain of Wheat – a Metaphor of the Enabled Life

 

I shared for a couple minutes last Sunday morning around the visual image of a grain of wheat being planted into the ground and the transformation that takes place in the process of germination.  I spent some time this week writing out some more thoughts…

 

One of the ways that we can respond to the Agape love of God towards us is to offer our own expression of agape love back towards Him.  Our agape is in the form of submissive trust.

 

Jesus described his own life using the analogy of a grain of wheat being planted into the earth and dying to bring forth new life.  He invites us to follow Him in that process by pouring out our self-contained, self-directed life so that we can exchange that source for a new life lived out of another source, Christ and His Spirit within us.  As a grain of wheat cannot plant itself and initiate the process of transformation, so we are also powerless in ourselves from within ourselves to complete the exchange – we must submit ourselves to Jesus in trusting love so that He can plant us. We express our trusting love to God by choosing to offer ourselves to Him to perform His  transforming work of planting us, watering us, and husbanding us into fruitfulness.    

 

My Prayer

 

“Lord Jesus, I want to identify with you as my source of spiritual life.  Your own story is the prototype for us – freely laying your life down as the grain of wheat, to die and become a source of life.  You beckon us to follow, to present ourselves to you in the simplest sense of our identity, without the trappings of our accomplishments, our personality strengths, or any of the ways we extract a sense of identity from our world.  My spiritual identity is not in what I produce, the significance of my work, my status, my possessions, my network of friends and family.  Those psychological elements of who I am do not comprise my spiritual identity at the core of my person.  As simply as I can, I want to cast my lot in with You and follow you through the narrow gate into the way of Your life.  Plant me as a grain of wheat and then bring forth in me your life: life overflowing, fruitful, abundant, able to share your life with others.” 

 

Quotations from the book, “Let’s Start With Jesus”

Here are some thoughts from Dennis F. Kinlaw’s book, “Let’s Start With Jesus”.  He writes about the design of human persons to be in relationship.  In this section he makes a connection between the design of human persons and the idea of voluntarily yielding our independence in order to be in relationship with God. 

 

“The key to understanding Jesus did not lie in Jesus. It lay beyond him. He lived joyously from Another, through Another, and for Another. Jesus was the divine son of God and a perfect human being, yet he did not find himself complete within himself.  He was not the center of his own chosen existence.  Since Jesus is the original pattern for the human person, it is safe to say that to be a person, even a perfect person, is to be incomplete, that no person is ever complete in himself or herself.  The person’s completeness lies in an other. The Son is not complete in himself. He draws life from the Father and lives life to please his Father.  Like the Son, who is named the first born among many brothers, we find our completeness in relation to our Source and our Sustainer. 

 

The secular world has a different plan for and definition of fulfillment.  That self-contained, self-directed life is looked to as providing the “center” and focal point of meaning, values, and even existence itself.  The elevation of the self to the center of the world leads to the well-being of the self as the goal of living itself in this misdirected view of reality. 

 

Understanding Jesus illuminates personhood’s original meaning, to be expressed in relationship and mutuality.  Modern social science’s concept of the self is at the polar opposite – promoting the notion of the capacity either to mold or actualize oneself.  Like the eternal Son, we find our completeness in relation to our Source and our Sustainer. The person who is alone is not a whole person, because no person is ever supposed to be completely alone.

 

When Jesus begins to speak to his disciples about the cross, he insists that to find true life one must lose oneself.  Self-protection, the refusal to give away oneself, he says, is self-loss and death.  A person as a person, human or divine, finds fullness of life only in one beyond oneself.  Christ came, died, and was raised again to make possible the reestablishment of fullness of personhood in people like you and me.  That Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, wants to raise us from the death of living in and out of ourselves. The Spirit begets the very life of Christ within us.” 

 

More thoughts…

The transaction I am suggesting here, where we express our trusting love to God by choosing to offer ourselves to Him to perform the transformation of planting us, watering us, and husbanding us into fruitfulness, is not expected to occur in the area of our psychological realm.  What I am describing is a transformation that occurs in the area of our spiritual identity.  By responding to God’s initiative toward us and by placing our trusting love in Jesus and His Spirit as our source of life, we are identifying with Him as our Other and, in the process, declining to identify with the old source of our spiritual identity.  That old source of identity is the one we inherited from Adam as a human being, the default mode of all humans to operate in self-directed independence.  That source of identity may seem to hold hope for self-fulfillment and meaning, but the end of that story is death.  That death is a spiritual death because those choices do not bring us into relationship with the One who is the Life. This life is not mere biological life but is the true life, zoe, that ushers us into the Great Dance of participating in the jubilant fellowship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must choose to identify with this God as our source of life!  Our responsive, trusting agape love back towards Him ushers us through the door into spiritual fellowship with His Holy Spirit. That responsive choice will launch us into the journey of a lifetime!

 

Areas for further discussion:

·         Are we really operating as an “independent self” when we function as a self-contained, self-directed person?  What role and influence does “the ruler of this world” have among those who have not entered the Kingdom of Light?

·         The life that happens after the transformation of the grain of wheat coming to life – what does that look like in practical terms for us?

·         What is “the self” that is commonly referred to, with admonitions to “deny the self”?

·         Declining to identify with Jesus as our source of life leaves us to our own resources.  What can we expect to see in our lives as the result of that choice?