5. Representation and Redemption
REPRESENTATION AND REDEMPTION
INTRODUCTION
Two further facets of the biblical doctrine of the atonement, to which we have already alluded and so which may be treated more briefly here, are representation and redemption.
REPRESENTATION
In Paul’s theology Christ serves as our representative before God. But already in some of the Levitical sacrifices, the motif of representation is present.
Levitical Sacrifices
If I am correct that the hand-laying ceremony that featured in all the personal animal sacrifices was meant to symbolize the offerer’s identification with the animal and its fate, then the animal in some sense represents the offerer before God. The animal is not just a substitute for the offerer, something killed instead of the worshipper, much less a payment of some sort akin to a monetary ransom. By identifying himself symbolically with the sacrificial animal, the offerer comes to share in the animal’s fate of dying and being offered to God. Because the offerer has identified himself symbolically with the animal, the animal’s death represents the offerer’s death, the just desert for his sins, and the animal’s being offered to God represents the offering of the worshipper’s life to God.
In addition, while the daily sacrifices were killed by the offerer himself, on the Day of Atonement access to the Tabernacle was permitted to the high priest alone, who therefore had to act as the people’s representative before God, bringing the sacrifice for them and then confessing their sins over the scapegoat (Lev 16:17). Here we have the priest acting as a personal representative on behalf of the people. We should not think of the scapegoat as a representative of the people, for it is merely the symbolic vehicle for carrying away their sins, out of the community into the desert. Its being driven out does symbolize and in that sense represent the removal of the people’s sins, but it is not a representative of the people themselves, as though they were being symbolically driven from the camp. But personal representation is clearly present in the high priest’s acting on the people’s behalf in doing what they were not authorized to do, to approach the place of atonement in the innermost sanctum of the Tabernacle with the atoning blood.
Christ Our Representative
Paul characterizes Christ as our personal representative before God in two ways. First, there is the corporate solidarity of all mankind with Christ, who is the antitype of the first man, Adam. In the fifth chapter of Romans Paul states, “As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18-19). Notice that Christ’s atoning sacrifice is here conceived as universal in its scope. There is no exegetical basis for thinking that Christ died only for the elect. The representative nature of Christ’s death becomes clear in Paul’s statement “we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died” (2 Cor 5:14). Christ did not simply die in my place; rather what my representative did, I did. Christ’s death was representatively our death.
Paul thus makes an advance over Isaiah 53 by clarifying that the Servant suffers not merely substitutionally for the many but representatively. Some biblical scholars have mistakenly claimed that the sort of substitution (Stellvertretung) envisioned in Isaiah 53 is exclusionary (exkludierende) rather than inclusionary (inkludierende). But this is a false dichotomy. The Servant’s suffering may not be described in inclusionary terms, but that does not imply that it is exclusionary. It would be very natural to take the Servant of the LORD to be a representative of the many before God, rather than a mere whipping boy, and so to include them representatively in his suffering. Indeed, this is precisely the move that Paul made.
Second, there is the union of believers with Christ, whereby they become the beneficiaries of his atoning death. In Romans 6 Paul describes the means by which we appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atoning death on our behalf:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (vv. 3-11)
No universalist, Paul believed that “those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:17). The way in which we appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atoning death is by faith culminating in baptism. We thereby come to identify with his death and resurrection.
This section of Paul’s letter is thus not about Christ’s representing us on the cross but about our faith union with him as Christians. Paul says that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Rom 6:3); therefore “we have died with Christ” (v. 8), “crucified with him” (v. 6). Similarly, by his resurrection we “have been brought from death to life” (v. 13). Because of our union with him, his death and resurrection are ours as well (cf. Col 2:12, 20; Gal 2:19-20). God appointed Christ as our human representative, but we benefit from his atoning death only insofar as we are “in Christ.” “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). We are in Christ through faith culminating in baptism, by which we identify with his death and resurrection. We, in effect, thereby accept his representation of us. Those who reject Christ reject his representation of them and so are not united with him and do not share in the benefits of his atoning death.
It is in this light that we should understand the ministry of reconciliation which Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. In verses 14 and 19 he speaks of the universal scope of Christ’s atoning death: “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. . . . God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” But in verses 17-18 and 20 he speaks more narrowly of those who are “in Christ” and so have become new creations: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” This appeal to be reconciled to God and become a new creation different from the world makes no sense if we think that Christ’s death on the cross accomplishes everything pertaining to salvation and does not need to be applied or its benefits received through faith. Paul clearly believes that there are people in the world who are as yet unreconciled to God, despite Christ’s death on their behalf, and so need to hear the message of reconciliation and respond to it.
Thus, Paul’s atonement doctrine has a strong representational aspect to it. Like Adam, Christ represents every human being before God and dies for him. Additionally, those who by faith receive God’s forgiveness and gift of righteousness thereby become the actual beneficiaries of Christ’s death and resurrection on their behalf. Christ’s atoning death is thus offered on behalf of all mankind, represented by Christ before God, thereby making divine pardon and justification available to all, but actual redemption of various individuals takes place over time throughout history as people come to place their faith in Christ and receive God’s gift of righteousness. The universality of Christ’s representation and the particularity of its efficacy is best explained by understanding atonement as achieved potentially at the cross and actualized historically through individual acts of faith.
REDEMPTION
While there are many other facets of the NT doctrine of the atonement, we shall mention but one more: redemption. In the ancient world the notion of redemption had to do with the buying of prisoners of war out of captivity or the manumission of slaves out of slavery. The payment could be called a ransom (lytrōsis). NT writers prefer the unusual compound word apolytrōsis for Christ’s redemption of us from sin, perhaps as a way of underlining its extraordinary nature.
As we have seen, ransom was implicit in the blood sacrifices’ liberating people from their sins. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to ransom your lives; for it is the blood that ransoms by means of the life” (Lev 17:11). Moreover, for certain sacrifices a monetary ransom might be substituted for an animal sacrifice as a means of atonement. It is noteworthy in passing that the ransom is paid to God to gain forgiveness and cleansing. God both supplies and receives the ransom that redeems us.
In the LXX lytrōsis words translate Hebrew words from three different groups: g’l, pdh, and kpr. The first word group has to do with discharging familial obligations such as securing the release of persons or property by means of a payment. The second group has to do with nonfamilial situations in which money is freely paid to redeem a person or animal. The third group is used for ransom payments that anyone might make for his deliverance, such as the blood sacrifices. All three word groups are used with respect to God’s redemption of His people (e.g., Exod 6:6; Neh 1:10; Isa 43:3-4). The LORD is called Israel’s Redeemer, and His great redemptive act in the OT is the Exodus signaled by the Passover. In the case of God’s redemptive activity, no ransom payment seems to be involved. Although Morris tries to find the analogue of a ransom price in God’s case in the effort it costs Him to liberate Israel, he is probably straining too hard to import a ransom price into the picture. God is, after all, almighty, and He does not pay anything to anyone for Israel’s manumission. In the case of Christ’s redeeming us, however, a price is very clearly present: our liberation comes at the cost of his blood, his life.
As we have seen, Jesus described his mission as giving his life as “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). His life served as a payment for our liberation from sin’s captivity. Similarly, NT authors did not think of our redemption as costless: “you were ransomed . . . with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish” (1 Pet 1:18-19); “In him we have redemption through his blood” (Eph 1:7); Christ offered “his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:12). Paul could therefore remind the Corinthians, “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23).
The author of Hebrews echoes Jesus’ words at the Last Supper in seeing his redemptive death as inaugurating a new covenant and forgiveness of sins: “he is the mediator of a new covenant, . . . since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant” (Heb 9:15). In Revelation 5:9-10 John describes his vision of worship of the exalted sacrificial lamb:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;
you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,
and they will reign on earth.”
Thus is fulfilled the frustrated intention of the old covenant: “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6).
A biblically adequate atonement theory must therefore include as one facet the way in which Christ’s death serves to set us free from sin and its consequences. Christ’s life, sacrificed on our behalf, will be that which serves to ransom us from bondage.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In part 1 of this work, we have surveyed some of the principal motifs that constitute the biblical doctrine of the atonement. We have seen that the most important motif is sacrifice, the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrificial offering to God. On the pattern of the Passover and Levitical sacrifices described in the OT, Christ’s death serves the twin purposes of expiating our sin and propitiating God. Divine forgiveness is thus won by Christ’s sacrificial death on our behalf. We are cleansed and God is satisfied. More than that, the NT writers see Christ’s sacrifice as truly efficacious and final. Animal sacrifices need no longer be offered. Indeed, they were not really efficacious to begin with but were a provisional arrangement graciously instituted by God until Christ should come. His decisive sacrifice is now sufficient for the sins of all persons throughout history.
Scarcely less important is the NT identification of Jesus with the suffering Servant of the LORD described in Isaiah 53. Here Christ’s substitutionary suffering, already implicit in the Levitical animal sacrifices, comes sharply to the fore. Christ, though innocent and righteous, becomes our sin-bearer, that is at least to say, he endures the punishment that is our just desert for sin. The death that we deserve he suffers, that we might be freed from our liability to punishment and be constituted righteous by him. In dying in our place to pay the penalty of our sin, he inaugurates a new covenant between God and man, a universal covenant replete with the knowledge of God and the forgiveness of sins.
Christ’s bearing the suffering that was our just desert satisfies God’s justice. Propitiation of God’s righteous wrath is at bottom a matter of the satisfaction of divine justice. As the righteous Judge and King, God does not blink at sin, even if in His mercy He stays for a time His judgment; rather, every sin receives its just desert. On the basis of Christ’s satisfaction of the demands of divine justice, God can not merely forgive sinners but legally pardon them and declare them righteous before Him. Just as our sins are imputed to Christ, so God’s righteousness is graciously imputed to us.
Finally, Christ acts as our representative before God. What he suffers we suffer because he acts on our behalf. His representation is universal in its scope but must be individually appropriated by personal faith in order to be efficacious. By placing our faith in him we come to appropriate the benefits of his death on our behalf. His life given in sacrifice to satisfy the demands of divine justice redeems us from sin’s bondage and perdition and sets us free. Grace does not come cheap; it is costly.
Any adequate theory of the atonement, if it is to commend itself to us as a Christian atonement theory, must make peace with these biblical motifs. As we turn to survey the history of dogma regarding the doctrine of the atonement, we therefore do well to keep in mind Farmer’s comment: “Some exegetes appear to . . . think of Christian doctrine as having come into being largely through church councils later in the history of the church. The truth is that Christian doctrine begins with biblical texts and with the earliest interpretations of those texts, which we find in the New Testament itself.” The adequacy of dogmatic theories of the atonement will need to be evaluated by those very biblical texts.
This may also be the import of the author of Hebrews’ words: “that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one” (2:9). In Hebrews Christ is not only the high priest who represents us before God but he is also the sacrificial victim who dies our death. The substitutionary nature of Christ’s death is neglected by David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 42, who sees Jesus’ death as merely initiating the process that will lead to atonement and that serves as an example of righteous suffering. Moffit is setting up a straw man when says that Jesus’ death can be seen as “the first element in the larger process of blood sacrifice, without being conflated or collapsed by the author [of Hebrews] into the central act of offering that effects atonement. In the author’s schema, Jesus’ death is therefore necessary, though not by itself sufficient, for the atonement he procured” (285). No one is suggesting such a collapse or conflation or trying to isolate Jesus’ death from his offering his blood to God. The majority view of Hebrews is that the author describes Christ’s death and ascension as the analogues to the killing of a sacrificial animal and the presentation of its blood in the Holy of Holies. One can appreciate Moffit’s emphasis on Jesus’ resurrection as an entailment of his ascension to heaven without denying the atoning significance of Christ’s death.
See, e.g., Otfried Hofius, “The Fourth Servant Song in the New Testament Letters,” in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (1996), trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 170. Hofius adopts the distinction made by Hartmut Gese between einschliessende and ausschliessende Stellvertretung (Hartmut Gese, “The Atonement,” in Essays on Biblical Theology, trans. Keith Crim [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981], 106). Critical of Hofius’ exclusionary interpretation of Isaiah 53 is Bernd Janowski, Stellvertretung: Alttestamentliche Studien zu einem theologischen Grundbegriff, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 165 (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1997), 91. For discussion see Daniel P. Bailey, “Concepts of Stellvertretung in the Interpretation of Isaiah 53,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, ed. William H. Bellinger Jr. and William R. Farmer (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 223–50.
Hofius defines exkludierende Stellvertretung as “one party taking the place of another in such a way that the guilty party is excluded from that obligation or fate” (“Fourth Servant Song,” 170). He regards such a notion as untenable:
Just as it is impossible for people to die the death of others, so it is impossible for them, being sinners themselves, to make the sin of others their own. When this is acknowledged it also forces a conclusion about the fourth Servant Song. What this song says about the Servant’s substitutionary death is theologically incomprehensible as it stands and as it is meant. . . . we must conclude: being freed up from sin and guilt through human substitution is theologically simply unthinkable! (172)
Hofius maintains that the NT authors did not simply take up the fourth Servant song and apply it to Jesus; rather, they completely reinterpreted it as Christ’s taking our place in such a way as to include us. “Christ takes the place of sinners in such a way that he does not displace them (as in the substitutionary model) but rather encompasses them as persons and affects them in their very being” (173). This rather fuzzy characterization of “inclusive place-taking” is said to involve four essential aspects: (1) God Himself, not a mere man, has taken our place; (2) the meaning and goal of Christ’s coming into the world is his vicarious death for sinners; (3) Christ is himself the saving presence of God; (4) Christ has not simply come alongside the sinner in order to take away guilt and sin; he has rather become identical with the sinner, in order through the surrender of his life to lead sinners into union with God. Hofius concludes that what is at issue in inclusive place-taking is the fundamental recognition that only God is able to free sinners from their sin.
As we have seen in chapter 3, Hofius’ assumption that Isaiah 53 precludes the divinity and sinlessness of the Servant is not only gratuitous but even contrary to the evidence. Moreover, it is unclear that divinity is on Hofius’ view a necessary condition of inclusionary place-taking, for Hofius agrees with Gese that the Levitical animal sacrifices were inclusionary! And even if we agree that Christ’s divinity and sinlessness are a necessary condition of his vicariously bearing the sins of others, why think that they suffice to render his vicarious suffering inclusionary? Hofius says nothing to show that divinity and sinlessness are the determining factors in rendering place-taking inclusionary rather than exclusionary. In his encyclopedia article, Hofius plausibly contends that the universality and finality of Christ’s sacrifice are grounded in the fact that it is God Himself who acts in Christ, but he gives no clue as to why divinity renders Christ’s Stellvertretung inclusionary (Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller, vol. 32, Spurgeon-Taylor [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001], s.v. “Sühne IV: Neues Testament,” by Otfried Hofius). Hofius’ point (4), if taken literally, would be absurd, for then only human sinners would exist. Taken figuratively, however, (4) seems to me an effort to capture the idea of representation in contrast to mere substitution by means of the unfortunate dichotomy between inclusionary and exclusionary place-taking. Intriguingly, Hofius elsewhere explains, “God has identified Christ with the sinner and the sinner with Christ. Or in other words: the crucified Christ, who represents [repräsentiert] the holy God, has bound himself inextricably with godless humanity and thereby bound godless humanity inextricably with himself” (Otfried Hofius, “Sühne und Versöhnung: Zum paulinischen Verständnis des Kreuzestodes Jesu,” in Paulusstudien, 2nd rev. ed., WUNT 1/51 [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1994], 46). Would it not be more accurate to say that Christ represents sinners to God and that humanity is therefore bound up with what Christ suffers?
I cannot therefore agree with Hofius when he comments, “The New Testament witness is then fundamentally distorted, when we view the Christ event as merely God’s securing the possibility of reconciliation and the proclamation of the Gospel as just the offer of reconciliation and above all the reception of reconciliation as the realization of reconciliation by faith” (Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller, vol. 35, Vernunft III–Wiederbringung aller [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003], s.v. “Versöhnung: Neues Testament,” by Otfried Hofius [emphasis added]). Even if we hold that the reception of the Gospel is not a free act of the will on the part of those who believe, it is indisputable that those who have not yet come to faith are unreconciled to God and so under divine condemnation until God produces in them saving faith (Eph 2:3). On Hofius’ view Paul’s appeal to be reconciled to God, and, hence, his entire ministry, is pointless and superfluous.
This bears out the truth of Dunn’s remark: “Some who have overreacted against the traditional Reformation focus on justification have sought instead to replace it with a focus on participation. . . . however, what has been too quickly passed over is the fact that Paul held together these two ways of conceptualizing the process of salvation” (James D. G. Dunn, “New Perspective View,” in Justification: Five Views, ed. James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, assoc. ed. Steven E. Eenderlein [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2011], 176–201).
See discussion in Leon Morris, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1983), 11–18.
William R. Farmer, “Reflections on Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins,” in Bellinger and Farmer, Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 275.