Abiding in what we believe about … the Cross

The fourth in a seven part series by Lora A. Copley

Feb 14, 2022

The Cross- On Your Terms

I was in a book study for denominational women in 2019 and read these words of counsel: “understand the cross on your own terms and not those set by ecclesial, doctrinal commitments.” (1)

Because the book understood the cross as situated in problematic assumptions of power, abuse and weakness, women were urged to reconsider “privileging the cross.” Less than “the primary location of atonement,” the cross should be valued “as a critique of the abuses of power, empire and those in power… It can be true that salvation is located and known in the very act of critique itself.” (2)

This message is not unique. The cross, and the meaning of the cross in the historic doctrine of atonement, is under strong suspicion of no longer being good or acceptable for 21st century people.

There’s a reason Synod has been overtured about this very issue. (3)

Of First Importance

In contrast to what this book suggested, Scripture joyfully privileges the cross. In fact, the very first Christian creed proclaims it is “of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” (4)

Christ died for our sins. We call this atonement. Atonement is to cover over a wrong or a debt so to make separated parties "at one" again. Atonement refers to how the cross makes us right. (5)

The Diamond and its Facets

I loved the class in seminary when Dr. Ron Feenstra explained atonement as a beautiful diamond—with many facets showing off its inestimable beauty. There’s the facet of God…

pardoning a sentence,
purifying a heart-pollution,
pulling us close in love,
prevailing over Satan,
and paying sin’s price.

There’s the facet of…

fulfilling ancient promises,
influencing us to “take up our cross,”
re-doing obedience as the Second Adam
and disarming the powers and authorities.

So many facets. Each facet is part of what makes atonement of infinite salvific value.

The Crucial Facet

And yet, in gem-cutting, there’s one facet more important than all the others. It’s the facet that all the light must pass through to refract and direct the light to all the other facets. It’s called “the table facet.” It’s the one facet most responsible for giving the whole diamond its sparkle and beauty.

In Christian doctrine, the table facet of the “atonement diamond” is substitution.

Contrary to the oft-heard contention, substitution is not some late invention of the medieval era. Not something Anselm just cooked up from the ingredients of feudal violence and scholasticism.

Substitution was there in the garden, when God graciously covered over our nakedness by an animal skin. Substitution was spread over every Passover doorpost. Substitution was dripping in Isaiah’s words and proclaimed over the beginning of our Lord’s ministry: “Look, the Lamb of God!”

This table facet was not only written in our first creed in 1 Corinthians 15, but it continued, an unbroken theme, as Nicaea wrote “for us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven… and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.”

So, no, we don’t get to “understand the cross on [our] own terms.” In fact, we never could. We could never ever, on our own, come up with anything “so marvelous, so wonderful” as this:

Christ suffered—the Just for the unjust-to bring you to God.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us.
The punishment that brought us peace was on him.
God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so we might become the righteousness of God.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed! (6)

The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power

It is these truths that change us. To see God Incarnate bear the penalty we deserved, to see perfect justice and amazing love kiss in the holy blood of Jesus—for us and for our salvation!- what can we say but “thank you” and “rule me!”

Perhaps salvation “located and known in the very act of critique” has the power to turn people into activists but I don’t see how it can transform the fundamental structures of the heart. Salvation located and known in the substitutionary blood of Christ can go all the way down; it alone can “turn a slave into a son and duty into choice.” (7 ) This substitution changes everything.

Quick example. The early church was seeped in a culture of sexual perversion, permissiveness, and pain. And yet, the church become a sexual counterculture amidst all that mess. It was attractive precisely because it was transformed, a signpost of something different – holy and whole.

Where did the early church get that kind of power? It was not from “an act of critique” or from each person understanding the cross “on their own terms.”

The power came because the church knew and proclaimed “that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.” The power came because the church had been born again. Utterly changed by the truth of a Substitute. Oh, the blood of Jesus!

Woos and Weds

When I sat in Dr. Feenstra’s class, I was just newly married. I looked down at that ring on my third finger as I wrote in my Soteriology notes, “this atonement diamond is how God woos and weds us! Never lose it. It changes everything.”

May we be changed to be a counter-cultural signpost.

And may we always be “privileging the cross.”

Notes

1.Lewis, Karoline. She. Pg 46. Lewis makes the cross optional for salvation: “it is essential that you come to terms with how the cross of Christ plays a role in your understanding of God’s salvific activity (or if it does not).” (emphasis mine)

2. Lewis, Karoline. She. Pg 46. Nowhere in Scripture, as far as I can tell, does “sozo” get “known in the act of critique itself.” I’ve seen sozo mean rescue, restore, make whole, forgive, deliver, keep safe, heal, and pardon but “salvation by critique” is one I’ll need some Scriptural evidence for. One wonders if that understanding of salvation is shaped more by a “critical theory” analysis than by Scripture?

One reason the author argues for a different story for the cross was because “for our sisters in faith who are not Christian, privileging the cross makes relationship and discourse more challenging.” (pg 47) First, may I point out that “sisters in faith who are not Christian” is not a thing. For Christians, faith depends on acceptance of Jesus. He is the content of faith, the Rubicon between belief and unbelief. The only “sisters in faith” that Christians have are those who belong to Jesus Christ. Second, for people who resolve, with Paul, “to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified”, “privileging the cross” is the point. Yes, the cross being “foolishness and a stumbling block” means it will be a challenge as well. But we must never abolish “the offense of the cross.”
In defense of those who recommended this book, my understanding is that the recommenders had not fully read the book when endorsing it. However, I was troubled that one denominational leader after reading it, still advocated for it, seeing “no red flags” in its content.

3. See Agenda for Synod 2020, Overture 12. (Call we embed a link in here?)

4. Underscore these four non-negotiable for Christians in this passage are

Christ “died… and buried” -- ie. Jesus is a real person
Christ “died for our sins” – ie. substitutionary atonement
Christ “was raised on the third day” – ie. a historical resurrection, Jesus’ claims validated by God

“according to the Scriptures”, twice said – ie. Scriptures are trustworthy and authoritative

Note: even skeptics like John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar place this creed only a few years after Jesus resurrection. Four huge doctrines established from the beginning of Christianity. Click here for more

5. Progressive thinkers typically make much of the English word “atonement” as “at-one-ment”. This etymology is true (though the panentheistic take unfounded); the English word points toward the effects of the cross – that the cross is what God uses to make us “at one”, or reconciled, with himself. However, it’s worth spending time studying the Hebrew and Greek words for atonement to understand how the original readers saw the means of how atonement happens, namely through a debt getting paid or a wrong getting covered.

6. Scriptures in this bulleted list are: 1Peter 3:18, Galatians 3:13, Isaiah 53:5, 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24

7. From hymn by William Cowper. “No Strength of Nature Can Suffice.” “To see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear His pardoning voice, turns a slave into a son and duty into choice.”