God in Christ
God in Christ
Our substitute, then, who took our place and died our death on the cross, was neither Christ alone (since that would make him a third party thrust in between God and us), nor God alone (since that would undermine the historical incarnation), but God in Christ, who was truly and fully both God and man, and who on that account was uniquely qualified to represent both God and man and to mediate between them. If we speak only of Christ suffering and dying, we overlook the initiative of the Father. If we speak only of God suffering and dying, we overlook the mediation of the Son. The New Testament authors never attribute the atonement either to Christ in such a way as to disassociate him from the Father, or to God in such a way as to dispense with Christ, but rather to God and Christ, or to God acting in and through Christ with his whole-hearted concurrence.
The New Testament evidence for this is plain. In surveying it, it seems logical to begin with the announcement of the Messiah’s birth. The names he was given were Jesus (‘divine Saviour’ or ‘God saves’) and Emmanuel (‘God with us’). For in and through his birth God himself had come to the rescue of his people, to save them from their sins (Matt. 1:21–23). Similarly, according to Luke, the Saviour who had been born was not just, in the familiar expression, the Christ of the Lord, the Lord’s anointed, but actually ‘Christ the Lord’, himself both Messiah and Lord (Luke 2:11).
When Jesus’ public ministry began, his personal self-consciousness confirmed that God was at work in and through him. For though he did speak of ‘pleasing’ the Father (John 8:29) and ‘obeying’ him (John 15:10), of doing his will and finishing his work,55 yet this surrender was entirely voluntary, so that his will and the Father’s were always in perfect harmony.56 More than that, according to John he spoke of a mutual ‘indwelling’, he in the Father and the Father in him, even of a ‘union’ between them.57
This conviction that Father and Son cannot be separated, especially when we are thinking about the atonement, since the Father was taking action through the Son, comes to its fullest expression in some of Paul’s great statements about reconciliation. For example, ‘all this is from God’ (referring to the work of the new creation, 2 Cor. 5:17–18), who ‘reconciled us to himself through Christ’ and ‘was reconciling the world to himself in Christ’ (vv. 18–19). It does not seem to matter much where, in translating the Greek, we place the expressions ‘through Christ’ and ‘in Christ’. What matters is that God and Christ were together active in the work of reconciliation, indeed that it was in and through Christ that God was effecting the reconciliation.
Two other important Pauline verses forge an indissoluble link between Christ’s person and work, and so indicate that he was able to do what he did only because he was who he was. Both speak of God’s ‘fullness’ dwelling in him and working through him (Col. 1:19–20 and 2:9). This work is variously portrayed, but it is all attributed to the fullness of God residing in Christ – reconciling all things to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross, resurrecting us with Christ, forgiving all our sins, cancelling the written code that was against us, taking it away, nailing it to the cross, and disarming the principalities and powers, triumphing over them either ‘by it’ (the cross) or ‘in him’ (Christ).
Anselm was right that only man should make reparation for his sins, since it is he who has defaulted. And he was equally right that only God could make the necessary reparation, since it is he who has demanded it. Jesus Christ is therefore the only Saviour, since he is the only person in whom the ‘should’ and the ‘could’ are united, being himself both God and man. The weakness of Anselm’s formulation, due probably to his cultural background in medieval feudalism, is that he overemphasized the humanity of Christ, since man the sinner must pay the debt he has incurred and repair the damage he has done. But the New Testament emphasis is more on the initiative of God, who ‘sent’ or ‘gave’ or ‘delivered up’ his Son for us,58 and who therefore suffered in his Son’s sufferings.
George Buttrick wrote of a picture which hangs in an Italian church, although he did not identify it. At first glance it is like any other painting of the crucifixion. As you look more closely, however, you perceive the difference, because ‘there’s a vast and shadowy Figure behind the figure of Jesus. The nail that pierces the hand of Jesus goes through to the hand of God. The spear thrust into the side of Jesus goes through into God’s’.59
We began by showing that God must ‘satisfy himself’, responding to the realities of human rebellion in a way that is perfectly consonant with his character. This internal necessity is our fixed starting-point. In consequence, it would be impossible for us sinners to remain eternally the sole objects of his holy love, since he cannot both punish and pardon us at the same time. Hence the second necessity, namely substitution. The only way for God’s holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed towards us in forgiveness. The substitute bears the penalty, that we sinners may receive the pardon. Who, then, is the substitute? Certainly not Christ, if he is seen as a third party. Any notion of penal substitution in which three independent actors play a role – the guilty party, the punitive judge and the innocent victim – is to be repudiated with the utmost vehemence. It would not only be unjust in itself but would also reflect a defective Christology. For Christ is not an independent third person, but the eternal Son of the Father, who is one with the Father in his essential being.
What we see, then, in the drama of the cross is not three actors but two, ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God-made-man-in-Christ (the Son). Hence the importance of those New Testament passages which speak of the death of Christ as the death of God’s Son: for example, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son’, ‘he...did not spare his own Son’, and ‘we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son’.60 For in giving his Son he was giving himself. This being so, it is the Judge himself who in holy love assumed the role of the innocent victim, for in and through the person of his Son he himself bore the penalty which he himself inflicted. As Dale put it, ‘the mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering’.61 There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy. For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy.
Seen thus, the objections to a substitutionary atonement evaporate. There is nothing even remotely immoral here, since the substitute for the law-breakers is none other than the divine Lawmaker himself. There is no mechanical transaction either, since the self-sacrifice of love is the most personal of all actions. And what is achieved through the cross is no merely external change of legal status, since those who see God’s love there, and are united to Christ by his Spirit, become radically transformed in outlook and character.
We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ which does not have at its centre the principle of ‘satisfaction through substitution’, indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution. The cross was not a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one which tricked and trapped him; nor an exact equivalent, a quid pro quo to satisfy a code of honour or technical point of law; nor a compulsory submission by God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape; nor a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father; nor a procurement of salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant Father; nor an action of the Father which bypassed Christ as Mediator. Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character. The theological words ‘satisfaction’ and ‘substitution’ need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstances be given up. The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.
The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.
If the essence of the atonement is substitution, at least two important inferences follow, the first theological and the second personal. The theological inference is that it is impossible to hold the historic doctrine of the cross without holding the historic doctrine of Jesus Christ as the one and only God-man and Mediator. As we have seen, neither Christ alone as man nor the Father alone as God could be our substitute. Only God in Christ, God the Father’s own and only Son made man, could take our place. At the root of every caricature of the cross there lies a distorted Christology. The person and work of Christ belong together. If he was not who the apostles say he was, then he could not have done what they say he did. The incarnation is indispensable to the atonement. In particular, it is essential to affirm that the love, the holiness and the will of the Father are identical with the love, the holiness and the will of the Son. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
Perhaps no twentieth-century theologian has seen this more clearly, or expressed it more vigorously, than Karl Barth.62 Christology, he insisted, is the key to the doctrine of reconciliation. And Christology means confessing Jesus Christ the Mediator, he repeated several times, as ‘very God, very man, and very God-man’. There are thus ‘three Christological aspects’ or ‘three perspectives’ for understanding the atonement. The first is that ‘in Jesus Christ we have to do with very God. The reconciliation of man with God takes place as God himself actively intervenes’ (p.128). The second is that ‘in Jesus Christ we have to do with a true man....He is altogether man, just as he is altogether God... That is how he is the reconciler between God and man’ (p.130). The third is that, although very God and very man, ‘Jesus Christ himself is one. He is the God-man’ (p.135). Only when this biblical account of Jesus Christ is affirmed can the uniqueness of his atoning sacrifice be understood. The initiative lay with ‘the eternal God himself, who has given himself in his Son to be man, and as man to take upon himself this human passion... It is the Judge who in this passion takes the place of those who ought to be judged, who in this passion allows himself to be judged in their place’ (p.246). ‘The passion of Jesus Christ is the judgment of God, in which the Judge himself was the judged’ (p.254).
The second inference is personal. The doctrine of substitution affirms not only a fact (God in Christ substituted himself for us) but its necessity (there was no other way by which God’s holy love could be satisfied and rebellious human beings could be saved). Therefore, as we stand before the cross, we begin to gain a clear view both of God and of ourselves, especially in relation to each other. Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place. Hell is the only alternative. This is the ‘scandal’, the stumbling-block, of the cross. For our proud hearts rebel against it. We cannot bear to acknowledge either the seriousness of our sin and guilt or our utter indebtedness to the cross. Surely, we say, there must be something we can do, or at least contribute, in order to make amends? If not, we often give the impression that we would rather suffer our own punishment than the humiliation of seeing God through Christ bear it in our place.
George Bernard Shaw, who had considerable insight into the subtleties of human pride, dramatized this in his comedy about the Salvation Army entitled Major Barbara (1905). Bill Walker, ‘a rough customer of about 25’, arrives at the Army’s West Ham shelter one cold January morning drunk and infuriated because his girl-friend Mog has not only been converted but ‘got another bloke’. Bill’s rival is Todger Fairmile, a champion music hall wrestler in Canning Town, who has also been converted. Accusing Jenny Hill, a young Salvation Army lass, of having set his girlfriend against him, Bill first seizes her by the hair until she screams and then strikes her with his fist in the face, cutting her lip. The bystanders mock him for his cowardice. He attacks a girl, they say, but he would not have the courage to hit Todger Fairmile. Gradually Bill’s conscience and pride nag him, until he can no longer bear the insult. He determines to do something to redeem his reputation and expiate his guilt. He says in broad Cockney:
‘Aw’m gowin to Kennintahn, to spit in Todger Fairmawl’s eye. Aw beshed Jenny Ill’s fice; an nar Aw’ll git me aown fice beshed...Ee’ll itt me ardern Aw itt er. Thatll mike us square....’
But Todger refuses to co-operate, so Bill returns shamefaced:
‘Aw did wot Aw said Aw’d do. Aw spit in is eye. E looks ap at the skoy and sez, “Ow that Aw should be fahnd worthy to be spit upon for the gospel’s sike!”... an Mog sez “Glaory Allelloolier!”.’
Jenny Hill says she is sorry and that he did not really hurt her, which makes him angrier still:
‘Aw downt want to be forgive be you, or be ennybody. Wot Aw did Aw’ll py for. Aw trawd to gat me aown jawr browk to settisfaw you – ’ Because that way has failed, however, he tries another ruse. He offers to pay a fine which one of his mates has just incurred, and produces a sovereign.
‘Eahs the manney. Tike it; and lets ev no more o your forgivin an pryin an your Mijor jawrin me. Let wot Aw dan be dan an pide for; and let there be a end of it....This bloomin forgivin an neggin an jawrin...mikes a menn thet sore that iz lawf’s a burdn to im. Aw wownt ev it, Aw tell yer....Awve offered to py. Aw can do no more. Tike it or leave it. There it is’,—and he throws the sovereign down.
The proud human heart is there revealed. We insist on paying for what we have done. We cannot stand the humiliation of acknowledging our bankruptcy and allowing somebody else to pay for us. The notion that this somebody else should be God himself is just too much to take. We would rather perish than repent, rather lose ourselves than humble ourselves.
Moreover, only the gospel demands such an abject self-humbling on our part, for it alone teaches divine substitution as the only way of salvation. Other religions teach different forms of self-salvation. Hinduism, for example, makes a virtue of refusing to admit to sinfulness. In a lecture before the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda said: ‘The Hindu refuses to call you sinners. Ye are the children of God; the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a man a sinner. It is a standing libel on human nature.’ Besides, if it has to be conceded that human beings do sin, then Hinduism insists that they can save themselves.63
As Brunner put it, ‘all other forms of religion – not to mention philosophy – deal with the problem of guilt apart from the intervention of God, and therefore they come to a “cheap” conclusion. In them man is spared the final humiliation of knowing that the Mediator must bear the punishment instead of him. To this yoke he need not submit. He is not stripped absolutely naked.’64
But we cannot escape the embarrassment of standing stark naked before God. It is no use our trying to cover up like Adam and Eve in the garden. Our attempts at self-justification are as ineffectual as their fig-leaves. We have to acknowledge our nakedness, see the divine substitute wearing our filthy rags instead of us, and allow him to clothe us with his own righteousness.65 Nobody has ever put it better than Augustus Toplady in his immortal hymn ‘Rock of Ages’:
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to your Cross I cling;
Naked, come to you for dress;
Helpless, look to you for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.