Episode 138 - What If Atonement Must Change God Too

The cross gets smaller the moment we force it into one tidy explanation. I take up J I Packer’s classic lecture “What Did The Cross Achieve?” and use it as a set of navigational tools for anyone trying to make sense of atonement, substitution, and what reconciliation with God actually requires.

We walk through Packer’s three major orientations of the cross: accounts that say Christ’s death works by changing us, accounts that say it works by defeating hostile cosmic powers like death and the devil, and a deeper account that insists our plight ultimately sits under divine judgement. That third strand brings us into the thorny but biblical language of holiness, wrath, acceptance, propitiation, expiation, and satisfaction, and it raises a serious question many modern approaches dodge: does God have a real problem with human evil that must be dealt with, not merely reinterpreted?

Along the way I reflect on how Schleiermacher’s influence still shapes Western theology, why substitution is wider than penal substitution, and why representation and champion imagery matter for how salvation is shared.

If you want Christian theology that refuses reductionism and lets the cross remain as big as Scripture, this is a strong next step. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review telling me which of the three models you’ve heard most.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Setting A Base Camp

Rev Dr PRB 0:30

Welcome to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, and we're continuing our deep dive into the atonement, and there are so many things we need to address in this subject, and so I thought what might be a good next base camp to establish is some of the categories of ways that people speak about the atonement, and this will enable us to then examine Schleimacher's account of the atonement, and then from that, seeing some of the problems in that, we will go back to this. Is my intention anyway, to then go back to Genesis and see how Schleimacher's account and with him a whole kind of way of approaching the atonement struggles to match up to the kinds of concepts in the Bible, not just about atonement, but of a variety of things. So, what I want to do this week is look at a lecture that was given by J.I. Packer in I think it was 1973. Let me just check. 1973, his lecture for the Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, and it's entitled What Did the Cross Achieve? This is a really brilliant piece of work, and I've read a lot of essays and articles on the atonement blog pieces and so on in the past few weeks, but this is categorically above nearly everything else I've read. Just the thoroughness of the article. Try and find it if you can. One of the great things he does is looks at the rationalist criticisms of the doctrine of atonement that was articulated at the Reformation and what consequences those criticisms had on the way that the doctrine was formulated later. But what I want to do specifically now is examine one particular quotation, and it's a it's relatively lengthy quotation, but I want us to just explore this for the next half hour. And what Packer does here is he is categorizing the different accounts that there are of the death of Jesus, and how there's three kinds of accounts of the death of Jesus, and again, then a person isn't necessarily to hold one of these views doesn't exclude you from holding the other views, and I'm hoping as we get to the end of this journey, we'll see that we need to hold, if we're going to give a full account of what is accomplished by the death of Jesus, and in fact by his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, all of this, we need to encompass many, many, many things that are accomplished. But even just in his death, many things are accomplished. And if a person says, I think the death of Jesus accomplishes this, if they think that's the only thing, whatever it is that they say, if they think that's the only thing accomplished, then they are hopelessly inadequate. Now, going back, I'm gonna I'm gonna read this quotation, but then I'll keep stopping at different points for us to meditate on and explore what he says. So here we begins. He says, Broadly speaking, there have been three ways in which Christ's death has been explained in the church. Each reflects a particular view of the nature of God and our plight in sin, and of what is needed to bring us to God in the fellowship of acceptance on his side and faith and love on ours. Now let's just stop there because what he's just said there is immensely important straight away because Packer is stating what is necessary for there to be at one moment, atonement. And I and in all the different ways that people account for what is what is achieved in the death of God, the death of Jesus on the cross, they will tend to perceive what what is the pro we have together, what is it that is causing the lack of at one moment? Why why is the living God in his holiness, love, majesty, transcendence, whatever attributes are relevant to this, that living God is separated from humanity? What is the reason for that? Now, if you notice there, what James Packer says, he says, What is we need to just determine like the nature of God, and we'll see how relevant that is. What is the nature of the problem of sin? And then he says, What is needed to bring us to God in the fellowship of, notice the things that are required, acceptance on his side, and faith and love on ours. So he's stating that the problem is not entirely one side or the other. Now, many, many people, when they're trying to account for the work of Jesus, assume that whatever needs to be done is must be done entirely on our side. Humanity needs to be addressed or changed or given a different perspective or persuaded to accept things or view things or feel things or whatever. And so they'll say humanity is exiled from God, and therefore, if some change is brought about in humanity, then there is atonement, then they are God, because God it is completely forward-leaning in the relationship. That's the idea. But is that true? And what we're gonna, if we if we're able to continue with this exploration as we intend, we might need to address this question, or we're definitely gonna have to address this question. Is that is is does the living God have a problem with us such that he does not wish to have contact with us uh unless certain things are addressed. So that it's not that he he is leaning forward, but that there's there's this at the very least a kind of reluctance to be at one with us. And if that's so, why would the living God be reluctant to be at one with us? Or even stronger, why may he? And this is genuinely picking up language of the Bible. The Bible suggests that he is angry every day, angry with humanity, and again, there's a whole f niche of Christian theology that denies that God is angry with humanity, but and and and I may do an entire episode on this one question, but I would invite you to simply gather together. This is an exercise I often do on many subjects when I come to examine them, but I simply go through the entire Bible collecting relevant verses and stories that say take this that mention the idea that God is angry or indignant or wrathful or whatever. And there's different kinds of ways of describing this, and again, I don't if we do such an episode, we'll get into all the different language that's used, but it isn't a rare thing in the Bible, it happens quite often that the Lord is described in such a way, so that it is not merely now. Again, we did a whole series about the emotional that included examining the emotional life of God, and there are those who say, no, he doesn't have any feelings of anger or or love or anything like that. It's more that because they, you know, there are those who take a view of immutability and impassibility such that they they have got themselves into a position where they don't they cannot believe they cannot take that language of scripture at a prima facie level. And so they say all that that means that that when it's described as God is angry and so on, it we are it's a kind of analogical way of speaking, and that what it really indicates is that God has a policy, like a an emotionally neutral his his view, his policy towards a variety of things is strong resistance kind of or whatever, or or rejection and so on. But let leaving that aside, even if that were the case, what if if the Lord God say is angry or hurt or grieved or well we'll leave it at that for now. What if he if the that is true to describe God, what must be done to remedy that condition of God? If God sees sin and cannot be at peace with evil, because God is holy, or and and and again that's something that we might wish to explore, but if God is holy and righteous and has a genuine hatred of evil, and if humanity is evil and commits evil, and that there is this indignation and anger, wrath, fury against humanity for being the very thing that he hates most, something that provokes in him nausea and such that he vomits, says the scripture. It's like he vomits in in when he when he contemplates, or that he cannot even look at humanity in our sin. If all this is true, how can what can change him so that he is not so distressed about sin, but that he is peace peaceful about it, and therefore is willing to be at one with those who are sinners, those who commit evil, who are evil. What must be done so that he is no longer, so that he is changed in some way? That's I'm deliberately using that language because you know to highlight what is at stake here. So Packer is saying he needs to, on his side of this at one moment, he needs to get to a point where he accepts us. And the implication is he does not do that, he does not accept us without this atonement. And then on our side, he isolates faith and love. That from our side, there is this requirement of trust, and he also wishes love, and those are things that we will also explore. And then I'm going back to the quotation now from Packer, and he says, It's worth glancing at these different ways to see how the idea of substitution fits in with each. And again, that's an interesting comment because sometimes people assume that the concept of substitution only were is only relevant to one particular way of thinking of the cross of Jesus. But in fact, I d I I have hardly I don't think I've come across any description of the death of Jesus that is serious, that does not deploy some form of substitution. Right, let's go back to Packer. This is this is the next bit. He says, There is first the type of account which sees the cross as having its effect entirely on humanity, whether by revealing God's love to us, and and in that one, and just pausing again, Schleimacher, who we're gonna do a deep dive on in a future episode, this is very much what he thinks. So go back to Packer now, whether by revealing God's love to us, or by bringing home to us how much God hates our sins, or by setting us a supreme example of godliness, or by blazing a trail to God which we may now follow, or by so involving mankind in his redemptive obedience that the life of God now flows into us, or by all these modes together, and again I just footnote there we'll see that Schleimacher, and this is he's from 200 years ago, but his his hand is very, very heavily felt on nearly all Western ways of thinking about theology, and particularly things like the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus, even from people who've never heard of him, who even think they would oppose him, you find that in so many ways his legacy remains, and we'll we'll we'll see that. Okay, back to Packer. It is assumed that our basic need in this so this is in this first type of account in which the cross has its effect on humanity. It is assumed that our basic need is lack of motivation, Godward, and a lack of openness to the inflow of divine life. All that is needed to set us in a right relationship with God is a change in us at these two points, and this is what Christ's death brings about. The forgiveness of our sins is not a separate problem because as soon as we are changed, we become forgivable and are then forgiven at once. This view has little or no room, perhaps, for any thought of substitution, since it goes so far in equating what Christ did for us with what he does to us. So that's a kind of fur comment there that Packer says this has well, I think it's probably fair to say in this approach that the Christ what Christ's death is doing is doing something to humanity to change human beings in the way they think or feel or live. That has the lowest level of this concept of substitution, but you'll see even then it is not entirely absent. All right, back to Packer. A second type of account sees Christ's death as having its effect primarily on hostile spiritual forces external to us, which are held to be imprisoning us in a captivity of which our inveterate moral twistedness is one sign and symptom. Again, let's just pause there. So first of all, the cross, that first model, the cross is aiming at humanity. In this second one, what the cross is aiming at is these external forces, spiritual forces. So here it's the devil, it's flesh as a concept, the world, its spiritual powers, and they have enslaved humanity, the world, the flesh, and the devil in different ways. Because of them, humanity is corrupted and like forced into a slavery to doing evil. So to prevent us doing evil and to prevent us dying, because death, death is is usually it's the devil and death that are the big spiritual enemies that have to be overcome. And because we're enslaved to the devil and death, we therefore commit evil, so to change us from being evil, the the and from falling into death. Although death is in is sometimes seen as the cause of our evil, the fact that we are dying is the cause of our selfishness and flesh-based living. But that these enemies must be defeated to set us free and therefore to enable us not to be evil. Anyway, back to Packet, he says, the cross is seen as the work of God going forth to battle as our champion, just as David went forth as Israel's champion to fight Goliath. Through the cross, these hostile forces, however conceived, whether as sin and death, Satan and his hosts, or the demonic in society and its structures, or even the powers of God's Wrath and curse, or anything else, all of them overcome and nullified so that Christians are not in bondage to them but share Christ's triumph over them. The assumption here is that the human plight is created entirely by hostile cosmic forces distinct from God, yet seeing Jesus as our champion, exponents of this view could still properly call him our substitute, just as the Israelites who declined Goliath's challenge in 1 Samuel 17, 8 to 11, they could properly call David the substitute. Just as a substitute who involves others in the consequences of his action, as if they had done it themselves, is the representative. So a representative discharging the obligations of those whom he represents is the substitute. What this type of account of the cross affirms, though it's not usually put in these terms, is that the conquering Christ, whose victory secured our release, was our representative substitute. Okay, pause there for a second. The this language, substitution and representation, is quite important, and sometimes these two categories are divided from each other, but they are hard to divide too much because in that idea of the champion, so in one category of thought about substitution, Jesus takes our place in receiving negative things, suffering what we could not suffer. But in this other way, it's Christ takes our place to accomplish what we could not accomplish. In both cases, Christ is has that same substitute role, either to suffer what we could not suffer, or to or to win a fight that we could not win, or to accomplish, or do something that we could not do. And so he substitutes himself for us, for humanity as a whole, and does that. And in this second category, where the cross then is facing this concept of cosmic hostile powers, he's the champion. Right, let's go on to the third account back to Packer. The third type of account denies nothing asserted by the other two views save their assumption that they are complete. There is biblical support for all they say in those first two accounts, but this third type of account goes further. It grounds the human plight as a victim of sin and Satan in the fact that for all God's daily goodness to man, as a sinner, man stands under divine judgment. And his bondage to evil is the start of his sentence. And unless God's rejection of him is turned into acceptance, man is lost forever. See, that is so worth chewing on to get that idea that it the condition of humanity as being but enslaved to evil is not though there are cosmic forces that execute that enslavement, but that the it's all imprisonment, let's call it imprisonment, that there like the devil and death are jailers that have imprisoned humanity under the power of the devil, under the power of death. But this third way of understanding what Jesus is doing in his death includes the idea that that imprisonment is authorized and directed by God Himself because it is a it's the punishment authorized by God Himself for our sin and evil. Let's go back to Packer. On this view, Christ's death had its effect first on God, who was hereby propitiated, or better, he hereby propitiated himself, and only because it had this effect did it become an overthrowing of the powers of darkness and a revealing of God's seeking and saving love. So this is tremendously important. So the idea then is God is angry, repulsed by evil and sin, and he knows that if he is going to be at peace with the sinner, something must occur so that sin is confronted, condemned, punished. All these things we need to explore. What is the right vocabulary to describe what it is that the living God must do for him to find peace with perpetrators of evil? And again, I'm always wanting us to think what would you need if you're listening? If someone has perpetrated great evil against you, and you would might say, I could never be friends with that person. I I could not I could not even be in the same room with that person. Okay, but what even if it's only by flights of imagination, could you imagine anything, anything that could be done such that you could be reconciled to that person? Even if to you it would be impossible, and that you'll say, Well, it would require this to happen, but that's impossible. Yeah, okay, maybe, but could you imagine a certain set of circumstances that would bring it about that you could be at peace with a person who has done something truly appalling to you or to someone you love? Now, of course, when we come to the living God, anything is possible. Anything is possible. So the living God can imagine I cannot be at peace with people who are this evil and corrupt and godless and dangerous to me and my kingdom. They're like Ebola virus when you think, oh, Ebola virus, there's we the we must go to extreme lengths to make sure that does not spread into the general population because the consequences will be beyond catastrophic. Yeah, so that's how what if the Lord God sees us like that? Now then, what must he dreams and thinks only something truly extreme would make it so that I could be at peace with sinners, and that I do not feel so angry and indignant and repulsed by evil humanity, and that alongside all those ways that he regards us as sinners, he also has this tremendous love for us, so he loves us, and in big and almost perhaps because he loves us, that's why he takes us so seriously, and that's why he is angry, indignant, repulsed, nauseous, what all these words are in the Bible with respect to how he feels about us. But is that not in itself, or the reason he is like that is because he takes us so seriously and cares about us so much. He doesn't, it's not as if we are meaningless specs that have no impact upon him, he's positioned us as his covenant partners to whom he has pledged he's played he's pledged to marry us, and therefore what when we do evil it strikes at him very, very deeply. Now then, he doesn't need he can anything's possible for him. What is it then that he dreamed, something that would even seem to be impossible, perhaps, and yet he he finds a way to accomplish it so that he can sit down with his enemies and find peace with them. So that's what Packer's describing there, that the Christ's death, so the first view, Christ's death is orientated to its effect on humanity, the second view is Christ's death orientated to its effect on cosmic forces, death, and the devil. But in this third view, we're going, we're like pushing into all this there's truth in those first two things, but in this third view, we're pushing into this deeper thing where we're getting into really deep matters of what it what reconciliation really requires, really requires, and all the language of God's opposition to evil and why that is so fundamental in the Bible. And so Christ's death has its effect. I'll read the sentence again. On this view, Christ's death had its effect first on God, who was hereby propitiated, or better, who hereby propitiated himself, and only because it had this effect on God did Christ's death become an overthrowing of the powers of darkness, view two, and a revealing of God's seeking and saving love, view one. All right, I'm going to carry on with Packer's quote now. The thought here is that by dying, Christ offered to God what has been called satisfaction for sins. Satisfaction which God's own character dictated as the only means whereby his no to us could become a yes. I'll just pause again just briefly to say that word satisfaction is important because sometimes it's construed in an extremely kind of abstract way or in a very legally obscure way. But think of it simply as we were saying. How could I ever be friends with them? Okay, but what what what could be done so that you will be satisfied that this evil has been dealt with, justice has been done. What is it? You you tell me sort of thing, you think, what would I need? Is it would it be things would need to be put repaired, put back to how they were? The person would have to become a good person. I don't know. Think about all those things for you to be satisfied that everything's okay. It's put that like I could even be friends with this person now. What would be what could be done to satisfy you about that? Now let's go back. Packer. And this will try and bring it to a conclusion. Whether this Godward satisfaction is understood as death itself, or death as the perfecting of holy obedience, or is the is the cross of Christ to be understood as undergoing the God forsakenness of hell, which is God's final judgment on sin? Or is it a perfect confession of man's sins combined with entry into the bitterness by sympathetic identification? Or is it all these things together and nothing stops us combining them together? The shape of this view remains the same that by undergoing the cross, Jesus expiated our sins, got rid of our sins, propitiated, made peace with our Maker, turns God's no to us into a yes, and so saved us. All forms of this view see Jesus as our representative substitute, in fact, whether or not they call him that, but only certain versions of it represent his substitution as penal, that is, as the bearer of our punishment. Okay, that's that's it. We're finished with Packer's quote. I recommend you you look up his whole lecture, it's a brilliant lecture, has some fantastic stuff early on about language and and how we formulate models and and and and so on. But there we go. Isn't I find that immensely helpful and a profound piece of work from Packer to look at these three orientations of the cross of Christ, and now I want to argue, of course, that all of those three are true. That yes, the cross of Christ addresses us, teaches us things, gives us example. Yes, death and the devil are confronted and triumphed over in the cross. But the deepest level of what is going on at the cross, the level that makes those other two possible and true is this deep sense in which there's something about the cross that is facing towards God and brings about this difference in God in how He can relate to us, so that he goes from hostility to acceptance. And that may, if you're listening, you may that may raise more questions than it answers, but that's where we've got to so far.