The Meaning and Translation of "Hilasterion" in Romans 3:25

Paul's Letter to the Romans is a key part of the New Testament, the letter in which the gospel or good news is given its fullest explanation. Within this letter, the section in Romans 3:21-26 is central to the meaning of the doctrine of salvation and within that section verse 25 is a key verse. 

The focus of our discussion is on the meaning and translation of this word "hilasterion" in this verse. 

1. Description of the Possible Translations

While we confess that ‘all Scripture is God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3:16) meaning that all of Scripture comes from God, we recognise that not all the God-breathed Scriptures are equally important. Obviously, for example, the crucifixion and resurrection narratives of the Gospels are more important to the people of God and the message of salvation than say a genealogy of names in Genesis or Chronicles. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is one of the most important books in the New Testament because it is where we find the fullest exposition of Paul’s gospel. Within Romans, chapter 3 verse 25 is a key verse. And within that verse the key word is ἱλαστήριον (hilasterion). This word is the focus of this paper.

The verse reads as follows (author’s translation)—from verse 24 to give the context:

24 Being declared righteous freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a hilasterion, by his blood, to be received through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins committed beforehand.

The correct translation of this word "hilasterion" into English has a long history of controversy and debate. English translations of the word divide into five main categories as explained below.

a. Mercy Seat or Atonement Cover

The first group of translations sees hilasterion as a direct reference to the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, traditionally known as the ‘mercy seat’ or other more descriptive translations such as ‘atonement lid’ or ‘atonement cover.’ 

This view sees hilasterion as the direct Greek equivalent of the Hebrew, כַּפֹּרֶת (kapporeth) which is the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, commanded by God to be made (Ex. 25:17 ff.), the place where God’s presence would rest and make atonement for the sins of his people. 

Translations taking this approach include the following:

God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith (CSB)

whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood (Darby)

whom God publicly displayed as the atonement seat through faith in his blood (EHV)

God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith (NET)

Whom God hath set forth as a propitiatory covering, through faith in his blood. (Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible)

Whom God purposed for a Propitiatory shelter, through faith in His blood. (Concordant Literal Version)

This interpretation sees Paul’s argument being that just as the mercy seat on the ark was the place where the people’s sins were taken away, God’s wrath removed, and God’s reconciliation with his people established, so the cross of Jesus Christ was the reality of that Old Testament type. It should be noted that the last two translations above make it explicit that the kapporeth being referred to is much more than merely the lid of the covenant box or ark, it has deep theological meaning—it is a propitiatory shelter or covering—meaning it is the place where God’s wrath against sin is dealt with and taken away or removed.

b. Propitiation

The second group of translations does not link hilasterion directly to the mercy seat, but instead sees it as a reference to the means or place of propitiation (the means by which or place where sin is taken away, wrath turned aside and justice is satisfied). The translations which take this approach includes some of the most commonly used literal translations in English, as follows:

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. (KJV)

whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood. (ASV)

whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith. (NKJV)

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (ESV)

whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. (NASB 1995)

whom God put forward as the means of propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Moffatt)

Two versions agree that the hilasterion is a propitiation, but rather than use this technical term which would doubtless be difficult to understand for many English readers, they explain the concept of propitiation:

God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath taking away sin through faith in his blood. (NIV 1984 marginal reading)

For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. (NLT 1996)

c. Expiation

Some English translations, particularly it must be admitted, translations at least influenced by liberal theology, which have a tendency to deny or play down the concept of the wrath of God, see in hilasterion a reference to the taking away of sin, but not the turning aside or satisfying God’s wrath. For these translations, rather than use ‘propitiation’ with its connotation of appeasing or satisfying wrath, they use the word ‘expiation’ which connotes only to the taking away or removal of sin, without reference to wrath.

This position is found in the following versions:

whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (RSV)

For God designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his death, effective through faith. (REB)

whom God set forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood. (NABRE)

d. Reconciliation

A few English translations take hilasterion to refer not to the expiating of sin or the propitiating of wrath, but to the end result of expiation and propitiation, which is the reconciliation of God and sinners and believe this was Paul’s point in Romans 3:25. These versions include the following:

Whom God hath set forth to be a reconciliation through faith in his blood. (Geneva)

For God showed him publicly dying as a sacrifice of reconciliation to be taken advantage of through faith. (Goodspeed)

whom God purposed for reconciliation through faith in his blood. (Jubilee Bible 2000)

e. Other ‘Non-Committal’ Options

Finally, some translations, either for reasons of simplicity for the reader or from a desire to avoid the controversies surrounding the historic and ongoing ‘expiation vs propitiation’ debate, opt for a more general translation such as ‘sacrifice of atonement’ which could allow for either expiation, propitiation, or indeed reconciliation, which ‘sacrifice of atonement’ at least hints at.
    Versions taking this approach include the following:

Through his faithfulness, God displayed Jesus as the place of sacrifice where mercy is found by means of his blood. (CEB)

God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. (NIV 1984 main text)

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. (NIV 2011)

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. (NLT 2004)

whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. (NRSV)

2. Assessment of the Translation Options

Of these five possible approaches, I think there are three we can dismiss quite easily and two that have strong claims.

The translations I would set aside first are the last three. To take the last one first, translating "hilasterion" as "sacrifice of atonement" is only a very broad attempt to explain the concept behind the word. Although "hilasterion" does imply an atoning sacrifice, this does not adequately explain the word's meaning and could be viewed as something of a "cop out".

Likewise, although the "hilasterion" can lead to reconciliation between the offended and the guilty party, the word does not itself refer to reconciliation.

Finally, the translation "expiation" or "expiating sacrifice" should be rejected as it does not cover the full menaing of "hilasterion". Expiation refers to the removal of guilt, but that is only half of the meaning of "hilasterion". As has been well-explained by Leon Morris, John Stott and others writing on the atonement, "expiation" has been favoured by theologians who do not believe that the atonement involves dealing with the wrath of God against sinners. But one of the key aspects of a "hilasterion" is appeasing or satisfying God's wrath.

It is for this reason that the word has traditionally been translated as "propitiation" (meaning either the means of propitiation or the place of propitiaiton). Propitiation implies both expiation (removal of guilt for sin) and the turning aside of God's wrath against sinners. For this reason, "propitiation" or an explanatory phrase meaning the same found in the NIV 1984 margin or the 1996 NLT is a good translation as far as I am concerned. The only problem with it, it might be argued, is that the word is not well understood by many readers. Chambers Dictionary defines "propitiate" as meaning "to appease or placate (an angry or insulted person or god)" and it is this appeasing, placating or satisfying divine anger or wrath that is the key aspect of "hilasterion" that most other translations omit or downplay.

Some scholars believe that Paul was not referring to a place or means of propitation in a generic sense, but rather they see this as a clear alluding to the Old Testament "mercy seat" or "atonement cover" - the lid of the ark of the covenant, the place where the people's sins were taken away and the wrath of God averted or appeased or placated. Some translations use "propitiatory cover" or "proptiatory shelter" to try to cover both concepts.

It is a difficult judgment whether to translate in a more general sense of "propitiation" or the more specific sense of "mercy seat" or "propitiatory cover". We cannot be entirely certain which of the two Paul had in mind. The difference is a translation problem, but not a theological one because both have the same meaning: the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross took away the guilt of sin and turned aside the wrath of God against sin by taking the punishment directly in his own flesh. 

If I had to pick one, I would go with the more general term "propitation" as I am not certain Paul was solely making an Old Testament allusion to the "mercy seat" when writing to a largely Gentile church in Rome. Although "hilasterion" was used in the Greek Septuagint as the translation of the mercy seat (the atonement lid on the ark of the covenant), "hilasterion" is a broader theological concept than the noun for the covenant box lid, and so on balance I think the wider theological term "propitiaton" or an explanation of what "propitiaiton" means is preferable in our English translations, with the single word "propitiation" being more suited for formal equivalent translations and a phrasal explanation such as "the way of turning aside God's wrath and taking away sin" being more suitable for functional equivalent translations.

The King Dies

Please read Matthew 27:33–53
 
Today is Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Christian year when we mark the crucifixion and death of Jesus. At a purely human level, the cross remains a shocking and sad event. The death of a young man, murdered by his powerful enemies, convicted of a crime he didn't commit, tortured to death, an idealist who paid the ultimate price for this principles of love, justice and freedom. Because of all this I hesitated to say that Christians "celebrate" Good Friday. We commemorate it and we are profoundly moved by it, but it is hard to celebrate a man's bloody and brutal murder. These are what we might call the "human interest" elements to the story and they tend to be the focus of dramatic treatments of Christ's death whether in paintings or in cinema.

Yet the Bible's focus is not so much on the human interest elements as on the theological meaning of the death of Jesus. It is in the profound spiritual truths of what Christ's death accomplished as atonement or reconciliation with God, expiation of sin, propitiation of wrath, redemption from slavery, victory over Satan, release from punishment and deliverance from death (to name just some things that the New Testament says the cross of Jesus Christ has done for us) that the death of Jesus finds its true meaning. It is because of what the cross means for broken and guilty humanity that it is transformed from the waste of a good life to the greatest use of a good life that has ever or could ever happen.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.

The question the death of Jesus poses to you today is this: will his death have been in vain for you or not? Because the true meaning of the death of Jesus can only be fulfilled in the lives of those who are in spiritual union with him, and the benefits of what Christ has achieved on the cross are only shared with those who want them. Do you want forgiveness for your past and transformation for your future? Do you want a relationship with God through Jesus? That's what Christ is even now offering you through the cross. To accept it he only looks for you to trust and follow him in faith. This Good Friday, let the King's death change your life forever.

The James Bond Gospel

I don't know if you like Bond movies? They used to be a staple on British television over the festive period, though maybe not so much these days. The plot in most of the Bond films is quite straightforward. For me, Goldfinger is the archetypal Bond film and most subsequent Bond films use the same basic plot. An evil genius has a plan to take over the world and James Bond has to stop him (or her? though I don't think there has been a female Bond villain yet).

This plot line is actually a pale reflection of the reality of what the Bible tells us has happened to the world. An evil super-villain, a spiritual being called the devil or Satan, rebelled against God at some point before human beings came into existence. Later, when the first human beings were created, he schemed successfully to lead them into rebellion against God as well and give up their position of God's stewards and viceroys over creation to come instead under his evil influence, control and ownership as slaves of sin. Satan's work was like unleashing a terrible virus into the atmosphere that would then infect and poison the whole of creation.

Something is wrong with the world and with us. Deep down we know it. All human beings are "not quite right." We're not the people we feel we should be. Often we're not the people we even want to be ourselves. The Bible tells us we're right to feel that way. We're not imagining it. And the Bible calls the thing that's wrong with us is a deadly disease called "sin."

Sin is like a virus that infects and affects every part of us - our bodies, our brains, our hearts - and all their functions including our thoughts and our feelings. It is a disease that is, humanly speaking, incurable, and it only has one prognosis - death. In biblical terms, "death" is not just physically dying, but an eternal state of "un-life." Not only that, the symptoms of this disease ravage our behaviour and manifests as pride, cruelty, anger, hatred, lust, envy and many other utterly horrible human traits. All the particular evils trace their origin back to the disease of sin that has infected humanity, and we every single one of us catches the disease from birth. It is inevitable for everyone born into this world that they will be infected, even if there is a latency period during childhood before the disease goes "full blown".

Another horrible aspect of the disease is that it is completely debilitating. We are paralysed by sin. Unable to find a cure. Unable to even want to be cured.

That's the position we all find ourselves in. That's the way the world has always been right from the earliest period of human history.

The story of the Old Testament in the Bible is largely about God calling on one nation, Israel, to be the people through whom the disease of sin would be dealt with and through whom the world would be put right. It is also the story of how that people failed again and again in their mission, finding out that they themselves were infected with the same disease as all the other nations.

The New Testament tells the story of how God came to earth himself, which it turns out had always been the plan, in the person of his Son, his "second self" who was born and lived as a faithful Israelite called Jesus of Nazareth. He showed the character and the wisdom of God, and then in his death he took on himself the entire disease, to rid the world of it once and for all, thereby defeating the Evil Mastermind who was behind it all. He rose from the dead so that not only would the disease have no more power over him, but that the cure he had created and the immunity from it he had gained could be passed on to everyone who wants it for themselves. Not only that, but once we are given the medicine, the power of the disease is broken and we start the long process of recovering from the effects of the disease, knowing that one day we will be totally free of it and able to live forever, even though our body goes through death.

So how do you receive the cure? It's very simple. You trust in Jesus to save you and ask him come into your life and cure you. When you ask him, he will do it. Then you become his friend and stay in a loving friendship with him forever, getting to know him, learning to see what a life without the disease looks like and trying to copying him in your life. You'll also find that there's a great crowd of people who have also been saved and now live in a new kingdom. The group is called the church, which means "the gathered ones." The church gets together to thank Jesus, meet his Father who is now our Father too, and to be energised by his Spirit to live as we should and deep down really want to live. Among other things, we continue to work to help other victims of the disease in practical ways in this world and spread the good news that there is a cure available for everyone.

The Gospel and the Message of Salvation

You would think that one of the simplest questions that any evangelical Christian would be able to answer is this: What is the gospel?

After all, isn't that the very defining aspect of everyone who identifies himself or herself as an evangelical, that they are committed to the evangel, the gospel?

A number of scholars have pointed out that what evangelicals usually call "the gospel" is not quite the same as what the biblical writers meant by "gospel". Examples of this would include N. T. Wright and Scot McKnight among others. Evangelicals tend to think that the gospel is exactly the same thing as the message of salvation – a step-by-step guide for how sinners can be forgiven, find peace with God and start a new life – but these scholars distinguish between what is specifically meant by "the gospel" itself in the New Testament and the message of salvation which is always one of the New Testament's great implications of the gospel. But the call to trust and follow Jesus in order to find salvation is not the "gospel" itself as narrowly and specifically defined in the New Testament.

The gospel or good news is the proclamation or announcement of a fact, the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the King of Israel, died for our sins and has risen from the dead to be the rightful the Lord and Saviour of the world. The gospel is in fact the story of Jesus which shows that he is the King and Saviour of the world.

The message of salvation is obviously closely linked with the gospel, but not identical to it. The message of salvation for us flows out of the story-fact that Jesus came to earth as Saviour and Lord.

The salvation message is that no one is right with God as they are, everyone needs Jesus to save them because he is the King and Saviour of the world, and Jesus is willing to save anyone who comes to him. The gospel or good news is the proclamation of who Jesus is and what he has done. Both parts are important because it is only because of who he is that he could do what he did and it is only because of what he did as well as who he is that his gospel can then become our gospel – good news for people like you and I who are not right with God and need salvation.

In my place condemned he stood

For me no verse of any hymn quite sums up what Good Friday is all about for the Christian believer better than this one from Man of Sorrows by Philip P. Bliss:

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned He stood;
sealed my pardon with His blood:
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!

This is why what would otherwise be the darkest day in history is forever "Good" Friday to the faithful, the day our salvation was achieved through the cross. And the darkness merely proved to be the prelude to the brightest day in history when Christ rose from the dead three days later on Easter Sunday.

Simply Jesus

Simply Jesus
Tom Wright
SPCK, London 2011

I can't help but thinking that N. T. Wright is getting distracted from finishing the long-awaited massive volume on Paul in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series as writes more and more popular level books. So far we've had Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, Virtue Reborn and several volumes to complete the New Testament for Everyone series. Now in that same vein comes Simply Jesus.

The book aims to answer three simple, yet central and profound questions for the Christian faith: who was Jesus, what did he do, and why does it matter?

There is little new here for those who have read some of Wright's previous work, but it was still gripping reading to see the arguments laid out in such a straightforward manner in this book.

For Wright, Jesus is very much the Jewish Messiah who "embodied Israel's God" (I think that's a direct quote - if not, Wright certainly says something very similar). He came to do for Israel what Israel could not do for itself - namely be God's light for the Gentiles and the rightful Lord and King of the whole world. Through this, he is able to bring salvation to everyone who has faith in him.

As we might expect, Wright takes the historical background to Jesus' life and ministry very seriously. He talks about a "perfect storm" in the form of a combination of Jewish expectations of deliverance by the Messiah, the power of imperial Rome, and God's strange and powerful purposes for history all coming together at the time of Jesus' life and shaping Christ's life, death and resurrection.

One thing I noted in this book is how firmly Wright seems to have moved towards the Christus Victor view of the atonement as the primary view, although not denying that penal substitution is also a motif in the New Testament, though a secondary one. I would perhaps take issue with this. I do not think Christ could be victorious without penal substitution.

Though most of the book explores who Jesus is and what he came to do, I actually found the short third section on what it means for us to say that Jesus is the king of the world in practical terms to be the most challenging and interesting part. Perhaps this is because I was already familiar with most of what Wright says in the earlier sections from his other books. But this third section where Wright begins to apply his views to normal life was new to me and fascinating. I was certainly excited by Wright's invitation to join in and play our part in God's work of building his kingdom.

In the end, it still seems to me that Wright says the very same things that thoughtful evangelical Christians have always said, but it's as if the thoughts are translated into a different language, using different words at times. This explains how he can both be lambasted by conservatives as a closet liberal and by liberals as a closet fundamentalist! Truth is he is neither, but in good Anglican tradition, he occupies middle ground, yet middle ground much more familiar to evangelicals than liberals I would say as he always seeks to honour what the Bible teaches over all traditions. This is very evident in the extended metaphor of the perfect storm he uses in the first part of the book, where he seeks to show that neither the liberal Jesus of social action, nor the conservative Jesus of deity and salvation in heaven do justice to the New Testament's full-orbed doctrine of Christ and his work.

The Cross of Christ

The Cross of Christ
John Stott
Inter-Varsity Press 1986

I first read this book on many aspects of the Cross of Jesus Christ by John Stott about 20 years ago, not that long after he wrote it in the mid-1980s. It was in the first handful of serious Christian books I read as an earnest young Christian in my late teens and as such it had a big impact on my views then. Re-reading it now with a lot more theological and biblical reading under my belt, I still felt this is one of the best books on the meaning and implications of the Cross available and it well-deserves the epithet "classic".

The book teaches the penal substitutionary view of the atonement though there are chapters that deal with the truths in the Christus Victor and Moral Influence theories as well. One of the strengths of the book is that as well as the theoretical side of things, Stott devotes a section to "life under the cross" and this section is really excellent.

Stott is brilliant in his expositions of Scripture and how careful he is when outlining the fact that Christ's death is both substitutionary and a satisfaction. It struck me how close some of what Stott writes is similar to what Steve Chalke got into so much trouble for saying in his book The Lost Message of Jesus. Stott equally will have no truck with crude versions of penal substitution that envisage a cruel father venting his anger on his innocent son. He points out that the atonement starts not with an angry God but with a God who so loved the world. He points out that on the cross God the Father suffered and the atonement involved God substituting himself on the cross and in a sense punishing himself in Christ.

This book deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Christian and can be read with much profit wherever you are on your Christian pilgrimage.

The Cross of Jesus

The Cross of Jesus
Leon Morris
Paternoster Press 1988

In the run up to Easter this year, I've read several books that focus on the cross of Christ, which seems a very suitable area of study and reflection in this season of Lent and the preparation for Easter that comes to a climax this weekend with Good Friday tomorrow and then Easter Day on Sunday. Of the various books I've read, this little gem by the great Australian New Testament scholar, Leon Morris, is one of the best.

It was fascinating to read Morris's book just after Holmes's recent book The Wondrous Cross. I could hardly believe how closely the thoughts of Morris shadow those of Holmes. Perhaps it is because Leon Morris has impeccable evangelical credentials that the thoughts are somehow easier to accept from him, but essentially he says the same thing as Holmes does. He argues that all the main theories of the atonement are aspects of the truth and appeal at different times to more or less people. He argues that no one theory (i.e. neither Christus Victor or Penal Substitution) contains all the truth about the atonement or what Christ's death achieved in terms of salvation.

In fact, in a passage that could have come from Holmes's book, Morris writes:

Despite the centrality of the cross from the earliest days of the church, there has never been agreement on the way the cross saves us. The New Testament has a great deal to say on the subject of salvation through the death of Christ, but it never explains precisely how that death works. [emphasis added]

He goes on to say that there are three basic views of the atonement and all three are true. In simple terms, Morris describes them as:

• The Bearing of penalty
• The Demonstration of God's love
• The Victory over evil

Morris then goes on to describe a number of other achievements that he sees in the cross. He points out that in the cross is the answer to such modern problems as the apparent futility of life, ignorance, loneliness, sickness and death. These chapters form the main section of the book.

Along with Morris's two other classic books on the cross and the atonement, namely The Cross in the New Testament and The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, this little book of only 118 pages is well worth acquiring and reading for any Christian. It is not a difficult read, though it is a very thought-provoking one.

The Wondrous Cross

The Wondrous Cross
Stephen R. Holmes
Paternoster 2007

The Wondrous Cross is a short book which tries to steer a middle course between affirming the traditional evangelical doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) and modern attacks on this doctrine and the promotion of alternative theologies. Holmes seeks to do this by arguing that the penal substitution model is merely one of many "metaphors" or "stories" that the Church has and still tells to convey the mysterious truth that Christ died to save us.

I enjoyed the reading the book. It is well written. It is clear. It is fair to all sides and has a calm and peaceful spirit. "Irenic to a fault" was how another reviewer accurately summed it up. But then - as that reviewer also said - Holmes can afford to be like this when PSA is just one of many helpful ways of talking about the cross. If, on the other hand, PSA is the objective truth and the foundation for all the other ways of viewing the cross, then it is difficult to be quite so calm when the truth is undermined, especially when done by those within the evangelical camp.

Personally, I find Christus Victor immensely helpful in tying in the cross with the incarnation and Christ's earthly ministry. The Lord was battling the evils of sin, death and the devil from the moment he was born of the Virgin Mary through to when he cried out "It is finished" on the cross and died. But without the objective reality of penal substitution in the cross, we cannot really explain how the cross works. The truth is that Christ defeated evil on the cross by expiating the guilt of sin, satisfying the justice of death and propitiating the wrath of God - and by so doing he liberated us from the hold of the devil. Does that mean all the different facets of the atonement need to be stressed? Does that mean that none are to more privileged than any other? Emphatically not! Here I think Holmes goes too far.

One reviewer praised Holmes for basing his theological conclusions on exegesis. Actually I found his interaction with Scripture one of the weakest parts of the book. I know it is a short volume barely more than a hundred pages, but he really does not do justice to the biblical texts. If he had, I think that in examining the biblical evidence he would find a preponderance of material teaching that Christ died in our place (a substitute) and that Christ's death was a judgment and punishment on sin (penal).

To argue otherwise is like saying that a recipe is just one way of describing what a cake is. Other ways might include the cafe menu, a compliment from a happy diner to the baker, a restaurant review or a nutritional report. True these are other ways of talking about the cake, but without the recipe, there would be no cake to list on the menu, or eat and enjoy, or write about, or analyse for its nutritional content. That's how I feel about PSA and the other ways of looking at the cross. There are many ways to talk about what the cross achieves, but really only one way to talk about how it achieves it. Holmes however seems to think the recipe for the cake is acceptable to talk about, but no more fundamental than any of the other things. But unfortunately for Holmes, as the proverb goes, you can't have your cake and eat it.

Christus Victor

Christus Victor
Gustaf Aulen
Wipf and Stock Publishers 2003
(Originally published 1931)

I suspect Christus Victor is one of those Christian classics that more people have talked about than actually read. It is often referred to as the classic book on the theory of the atonement that bears the name Christus Victor, which is essentially that the on the cross Christ defeated and triumphed over all principalities and powers including sin, death, hell and Satan.

Aulen was a Swedish historical theologian in the Lutheran tradition. His thesis in this book is that the dominant "Latin" theory of the atonement that finds its key exponents in Anselm and Aquinas has got it wrong. The Latin theory is similar in many respects to the evangelical Protestant view of the atonement known as penal substitution - that Christ was punished in our place on the cross which enables God to forgive us and accept us into this people.

Aulen goes back to an earlier tradition found in the Church Fathers, and which he also believed was taught by Luther, though not by subsequent Lutherans, which he calls the dramatic or classical view of the atonement. This is the view now known as Christus Victor - that Christ is conqueror, fighting and defeating his enemies through his death and resurrection.

It must be said that the Church Fathers did not all have the same view, nor were their views exactly the same as Aulen's. In the early writers, the dominant theory was probably that Christ defeated evil by paying a ransom to the devil. Aulen moves away from this idea. Rightly so. He sees in Luther the best advocate of this point of view. However it remains controversial whether Aulen actually reads Luther correctly or fairly (or at least completely).

The book is not easy reading, but I found it rewarding. There are few evangelicals who would dispute that Christus Victor is a biblical idea and certainly part of what the cross achieved. Some of us would question if this is all the Bible teaches about the cross however. Aulen fails to explain exactly how the cross works to defeat evil and liberate mankind. The strength of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) is precisely that it focuses on the how question. Perhaps when the two theories are held together - one focusing on the how, the other focusing on the why - we may get a more rounded picture of the New Testament's teaching. For raising the issue at all, and in such a short and relatively accessible book, we are all in Aulen's debt, even though his claims are in the end unproven. I tend to agree with Henri Blocher whose article "Agnus Victor" seems to me to demolish a lot of Aulen's arguement. Blocher argues that though both Christus Victor and PSA ideas are present in Scripture, the primary idea is PSA and only through PSA can Christ's victory be explained.

N. T. Wright on the Atonement

Interesting article on Theologia: "N. T. Wright on the Atonement" http://ow.ly/4pDFE

The Suffering of the Cross

The following is a sermon preached on Good Friday, 23 March 2008. The text has been lightly edited before being put on the Web.

I wonder if I start by asking a question. What does the cross mean to you?

All this week we’ve been looking at the Cross of Jesus Christ from different perspectives. Like a precious jewel with many facets, the cross can be looked at from a number of different viewpoints. We’ve looked at how the cross was always the fulfilment of God’s plan to save his people, how the cross shows God’s love, how Christ’s death was a sacrifice, how Christ’s death is the basis of our justification, among other things. And now we come right to the heart of what the death of Christ means as we look together at the suffering of the cross.

If you read the New Testament, even the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion such as we read this evening, actually it is striking that the physical suffering that Christ endured is not really the primary focus. Our minds fill in the blanks a bit, don’t they? We see Christ’s torn flesh from the floggings, we see the nails being hammered in, we hear his groans and cries as the cross is lifted up and he hangs there, in unbelievable physical pain and suffering. And maybe every reader who has ever read this passage in Matthew has filled in those blanks. Maybe Matthew felt he didn’t need to spell out the details – everyone would get it. But I don’t think it’s just that.

The focus in the Bible is not on the physical suffering, as if that were an end in itself. It certainly isn’t. Christ wasn’t a masochist and God the Father is not sadist. As the hymn puts it:

“Inscribed upon the cross we see,
In shining letters, ‘God is love’.”

And in the Bible, the focus on the cross is on the spiritual meaning of that suffering that Christ endured.

Tonight, I want to look at three aspects of the suffering of the cross we find highlighted in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion.

First, that the suffering of the cross is a suffering that Christ chose to bear. It is suffering by divine choice and not merely by human infliction.

Second, that the suffering of the cross is inflicted on Christ in the place of sinners. That Christ suffered as our substitute, in our place, on the cross.

Third, that the suffering of the cross satisfies God’s justice and turns aside God’s wrath against sin, so that sinners can be saved.

So first, that the suffering of the cross is a suffering that Christ chose to bear. Yes, Christ was taken and put to death by wicked men, but he was always in charge of events. He was put to death because he allowed that to happen to himself and for no other reason. The right perspective on the cross is not Christ as hapless victim caught up in events beyond his control. No, the right perspective is captured in the words of the hymn:

“For Christ the cross ascended,
To save a world undone.”

He went to the cross like a king ascending his throne as God’s anointed King and the Redeemer of his people, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and chosen as that Lamb from before the foundation of the world.

Christ predicted his death many times to the disciples before it happened. The night before the crucifixion, he told them about it when he instituted the Lord’s Supper with its symbolism of broken body and blood poured out, and then later that night he prayed in the garden, asking God to take away the cup of suffering he knew he was about to drink, but also saying “yet not my will, but yours be done.” He knew what was coming. He knew what was coming from the day he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey. Indeed he knew for a long time before that what was coming. He from eternity, when he and his Father God entered into a covenant with each other for the Father to give the Son a people to be his very own, and for the Son to agree to come to the earth as a man to rescue and save them. He always knew it would come to that day when he would go to the cross. He knew and he chose the path of suffering deliberately and with tremendous courage and integrity and his eyes wide open to what would happen and what he would achieve by it.

We even see glimmers of it in our passage tonight if we look at some of the details.

Verse 34 – “There they offered Jesus wine mixed with a bitter substance; but after tasting it, he would not drink it.”

They were offering the victim of the execution a drink laced with a drug that would dull the pain – from Mark’s gospel we know the drug was myrrh – a natural pain killer that would lessen the suffering, but Jesus wouldn’t take it. He wouldn’t take it, because he knew what his suffering was going to achieve, and he knew that in order to bear the punishment in the place of those for whom he died, he couldn’t lessen his own pain and suffering. What does that tell you about the strength of will and courage and the greatness of our Lord’s love for us? He chose to suffer to the uttermost for our benefit.

Then again in verses 39 and 40 where the crowd stand around jeering him. “Save yourself if you are God’s Son! Come on down from the cross!” they shout. And in verse 41 even the so-called religious leaders join in: “He saved others, but he cannot save himself…If he comes down off the cross now, we will believe in him!...let us see if God wants to save him now!”

And whether they realised it or not, they were closer to the truth than they realised. If Jesus had wanted to, he could have come down from the cross. He could, with a word, have summoned an army of heaven’s angels to come down and save him. He chose to remain on the cross to save us, rather than to save himself.

Jesus himself said in John 10:17-18:

“The Father loves me because I am willing to give up my life, in order that I may receive it back again. No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back. This is what my Father has commanded me to do.”

Jesus could have saved himself, but again and again and again he chose the path of suffering, he chose the suffering of the cross, to complete the rescue mission he had been sent into the world to accomplish.

The second aspect of the suffering of the cross I want us to think about tonight, is that in the suffering he undergoes, Christ is standing as our substitute, as our perfect substitute. For Christ’s suffering on the cross is in our place, a perfect sinless person, dying in the place of sinners. At its most basic level, it is a very straightforward, simple idea. God’s justice demands that sin must be punished, but if someone suitable chooses to receive that punishment on someone else’s behalf, then justice has been satisfied because punishment has been carried out, and this means the person who should originally have been punished is spared the punishment and can instead go free.

The idea that a substitute can be punished in another’s place, is so prevalent in Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, that it’s almost impossible to ignore it unless you throw the Bible away altogether.

For example, substitution, is really the idea that underlies the entire Old Testament system of animal sacrifices. In the Old Testament God commanded his people to make different kinds of animal sacrifices to make atonement for the people’s sins. The first five books of the Bible have many passages dealing with this system of animal blood sacrifices. The New Testament teaches us that these sacrifices were symbols pointing God’s people towards the one true sacrifice that deals with the sins of the world and that’s the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But the animal sacrifices point the way and contain the principle of substitution of one for another – one punished for sin, so that another can go free.

In that great chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah 53, the notion of the suffering servant – one man being the substitute for others – begins to take shape. Here it becomes clear that God’s messiah will take the punishment that should have been inflicted on others, and this idea substitution comes out numerous times.

“He endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne (verse 4)…Because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. (verse 5)…The LORD made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved (verse 6)…He was put to death for the sins of our people (verse 8)…My devoted servant, with whom I am pleased, will bear the punishment of many and for his sake I will forgive them (verse 11), says the Lord.”

Then in the New Testament, the idea again is taught over and over again in a great many passages. How can we understand any of these well-known verses without that idea of Christ dying as a substitute, in the place of others, being very much in mind?

At the last supper, Christ said: “This is my blood, which seals God’s covenant, my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28)

In John 10:11, Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd, who is willing to die for the sheep.”

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us – it while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:6-8).

It always seemed to me that if there was anyone in Jerusalem that day who understood that Christ was dying in his place, that person would be Barabbas. Remember that the Romans had a custom to free one prisoner at the Passover? And Pontius Pilate asked the crowd which of two they wanted to be set free: Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth. Barabbas was a criminal. Under Roman law, his crimes merited the death penalty. He deserved to go to the cross, like the thieves who were crucified with Jesus. But the crowd called for him to be released and so he went free while Jesus Christ died literally in his place.

And again in the mocking of the crowd, there are hints of this idea of Christ the substitute in the passage we read. Isn’t it there in the taunt, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself”? Little did they know that the very way in which he would indeed save others is by NOT saving himself, but being punished and put to death instead of them!

As we sang earlier:

“Behold the man upon a cross,
my sins upon his shoulders;
ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that is it finished.”

So, we’ve seen that Christ chose the suffering of the cross, and we’ve seen that in the suffering of the cross, Christ stood as our substitute, bearing our punishment so that our sins could be taken away.

Third, consider that the suffering of the cross is God’s judgment falling on sin, and that Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice and turns aside God’s wrath against sin, so that sinners can be saved.

I wonder, what makes you angry? For some people it’s not getting their own way or being frustrated that they can’t do what they want. For some people it’s when people hurt them or others they love that they get angry. For some people it’s things about themselves that make them the most angry or things they’ve done in the past that makes them angry.

But God’s anger is different from all these kinds of human anger. God’s anger isn’t God losing his temper. It isn’t God reacting emotionally.

It is something like the anger we might feel when we see animals tortured, or children being allowed to starve, or women raped: it is a righteous anger. Even our “best anger” if I can put it that way is at best an imperfect anger because we aren’t perfect. But God’s anger isn’t a mixture. God’s anger is pure holiness, righteousness and justice in action.

Romans 1:18 says:

“God’s anger is revealed from heaven against all the sin and evil of the people whose evil ways prevent the truth from being known.”

The word in Greek for “anger” here comes from a word meaning “to swell”. It is the same word used to describe the bud on a flower growing and swelling, coming to maturity as it bursts into a colourful flower. God’s anger is like that – imagine the sap of justice rising, and swelling till it comes to a point when it will burst forth in God’s judgment. God’s anger is a constant and settled disposition against evil and a desire to see justice done, not an emotional losing of temper.

Now, what’s all this to do with the cross you might be wondering? Well let’s see.
Sometimes, I think we read the gospels and miss out on a lot of what the gospel writers are trying to communicate to us because often they do not say what they are teaching straight out – they do it more subtly by symbols and images. In the New Testament letters, yes, the teaching is explicit and plainly stated, but in the gospels, it is more often more implicit.

There are a few clues in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion that tell us what’s going on there on the cross.

For a start, did you notice some of the things that were going on that afternoon of Good Friday? Some pretty strange stuff.

Verse 43 – “at noon the whole country was covered with darkness.”

Verse 51 – “the earth shook, the rocks split apart, the graves broke open…”

These things are full of meaning when we read them in the light of Old Testament prophecy. Darkness and earthquakes in the Old Testament are often events accompanying and symbolising God’s judgment, symbols of the prophets usually call the “Day of the LORD.”

Amos 5:20: “Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light— pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?”

Ezekiel 38:19: “In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.”

So the day of the crucifixion was a day of God’s judgment, God’s anger being poured out. Okay, we might say, “Yes, we can understand that. The Father is angry because of the wickedness of men in putting his Son to death.” That may be an element of what’s going on, but it’s not really an adequate explanation. Because, look at what Jesus says:

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

And it’s in those words – in that agonising cry – that the full, terrible, wonderful picture of what was happening on the cross suddenly becomes clear. Yes, the day of crucifixion was a day of judgment. Yes, the day of crucifixion was a day of God’s anger and fury flowing out to accomplish their holy purpose. But in Christ’s heartbreaking words of abandonment and isolation, we realise that God’s anger and punishment were being poured out not on his murderers, but on the person of his own dear Son himself.

Why did Christ feel for the first time not only in his earthly life, but for the first time ever in all of eternity, that he was no longer the beloved Son in whom his Father was well pleased, that he was separated from his Father’s presence?

It was because at that moment, Christ was bearing the load and the guilt of your sins and my sins on the Cross. It was because at that moment, God’s anger was being poured out on Christ to satisfy God’s justice, so that God could pour out his grace and mercy on us, account us as righteous even though we are by nature unrighteous, so that eternal life in heaven could be given to us, even though we are sinners who deserve to go to hell.

The apostle Paul summed up what the suffering of the cross achieved for us like this in Romans 3:25 (NIV margin):

“God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin, through faith in his blood.”

Our hymn puts it so well:

"How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns his face away,
As wounds which mar the chosen one,
Bring many sons to glory."

I started with a question and I’d like to finish with it too. What does the Cross mean to you? Does Christ choosing to suffer on the cross, in the place of sinners, to take away God’s anger, really mean much to you?

We can ignore the cross. We can be like those people there that day who with chilling words, Matthew tells us sat down to watch Christ on the cross, like people watching a spectacle for entertainment. We can watch and do nothing, or worse turn against Christ and ridicule his cross by our words and our actions.

Sure we can say, “Whatever happened there, whatever it meant, it has nothing to do with me. I don’t need whatever this Jesus claims to offer me.” You can say that. If you do, one day you will stand before God and he will ask you why you didn’t accept his salvation when it was freely offered to you. Can you really claim that you have led a sinless life? Really? Then you’re really trampling the blood of Christ under foot and saying his death wasn’t really necessary. You are saying you can save yourself. I can’t say that – I know I sin every day. I know I cannot go a single day without breaking the two greatest commandments. I don’t love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, and with all my mind. Neither do I love my neighbour as myself. I try to, but I fail. Every day.

Will you be able to look God in the eye and say to him, “I have led a sinless life. I deserve to enter into heaven”?

If you know you won’t be able to say that to God, then you do need the Saviour, Jesus. And the cross has everything to do with you. If that’s you, you need to come to Christ, to trust and follow him, and rely on what he did on the cross to take away your sins and turn aside God’s wrath. You need to be like that centurion in our reading who saw the events of that first Good Friday and came away saying, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” I believe that soldier’s life was never the same again because of the cross and because of the Christ he met that day.

And if you are already a Christian, whose sins Christ has taken away and the Father has forgiven, then aren’t you fired up to rededicate yourself to a life of trust and thankful obedience to Christ? Doesn’t Christ’s suffering inspire you to take up our cross and follow him. Doesn’t it make you want to tell other people about Christ and his cross? Can we really experience the power of the cross and remain unchanged by it, or be content for our church to be unchanged by it in it’s mission to spread the gospel? I don’t think so!

I’d like to share the words of a modern worship song by Stuart Townend with you as I draw to a close. It’s called “The Power of the Cross” and it goes like this:

Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev'ry bitter thought,
Ev'ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
"Finished!" the vict'ry cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

CHORUS:

This, the pow'r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath
—We stand forgiven at the cross.

Let’s pray:
Lord Jesus, thank you for choosing to go through the suffering of the cross for us. Thank you for dying in our place. Thank you for bearing God’s wrath and satisfying God’s justice so that we could be forgiven and saved. Help us to live in the power of your cross always. Amen.

The Centrality of the Cross

This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 16th January 2007.

The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.

The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.

That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.

Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.

The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.

The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.

I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.

We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.

If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."

Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.

In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."

Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.

Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.

And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."

You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.

And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.

In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.

It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.

Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.

Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.

But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.

It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.

And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.

In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."

But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.

But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.

I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.

And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."

In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.

So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.

Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.

Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."

We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.

I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.

The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."

And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"

So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.

Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.

And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.

That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.

If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."

And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.

In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."

And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.