The saving work of Jesus is central to the Christian faith. But how does it actually work? The subject of the Atonement is one that has been wrestled with for millennia, theologians traying to make sense of the many ways that scripture explains the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. How does this God-man's existence translate to eternal salvation for humanity? And who's included? how far does it stretch? Join Alex, Chris and Jo (and maybe some special guests along the way) as they examine the many theories and understandings of the Atonement, and what that can mean for us today.
The saving work of Jesus is central to the Christian faith. But how does it actually work? The subject of the Atonement is one that has been wrestled with for millennia, theologians traying to make sense of the many ways that scripture explains the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. How does this God-man's existence translate to eternal salvation for humanity? And who's included? how far does it stretch? Join Alex, Chris and Jo (and maybe some special guests along the way) as they examine the many theories and understandings of the Atonement, and what that can mean for us today.
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Welcome to our first episode of our new series on Bible streams: “High and Lifted Up.” We're going to be speaking about the atonement for a significant period of time, and we're pretty excited to jump in. My name's Jo. I'm joined by Chris. Welcome.
Hey, how you doing?
Great. And we're starting our series sans the third leg of our tripod.
Yeah, very sad. The venerable Alex Walker is currently indisposed but will be with us before long into our next episode.
So you get the intro with Chris and I, but we are starting a new series. We're going to spend some time talking about this whole idea of Jesus's atonement.
What is that, Jo?
That is a great question. And I think as the person who intro, I get to ask you, Chris, tell us about what the atonement is.
Well, before we spoil it and tell you what it is, we want to spend some time exploring Jesus, what he did for us on the cross, how that impacts our lives and the very many theories of this whole thing that have sprung up across the last 2000 years of church history. That's right. So, but it does all begin with. What do we mean when we say the atonement?
Yeah, well, I mean, if you've been around church for any length of time, you might have heard someone say occasionally that Jesus died for your sins.
It's come up in worship songs lately. Yeah. Atoning for us. Yeah, I think the line is, yeah, there you go. So, I guess this whole series is unpacking.
What does that even mean?
Correct. And look, we'll probably assume some knowledge, like, you know, kind of what sin is. Go back and listen to our Genesis series. We talk about sin a lot.
That's always a great one. Have you done a series on the gospels before?
We've done a kind of high-level one episode per gospel. Yeah.
So, if you're not familiar with the gospel narratives and, in particular, the passion narrative, we're going to assume some of that knowledge.
Yes, but go back and listen to those. And the passion being the events around the crucifixion and the first Easter. Yeah. So, really, what the atonement is is this idea we'll get very literal. Etymologically.
It is actually derived from an old English term, which is at onement. Onement being a legit word, apparently. Great. Which sounds.
I just thought that was a preacher's way of explaining.
No, at onement, onement on its own is apparently a real thing, but not anymore, which means unity; it means connectedness. And so atonement means a reconciliation, a drawing back together of two things that were separated and are now one. Now, what does that mean in a more precise biblical sense, I guess, is open to debate. We will spend the next five-plus episodes talking about what that means. Yeah, but at a very general level, this is the idea that sin has separated humanity from God, and there are various consequences and ramifications of that, not least of which is that we die.
But God's plan for the world is to reconcile us and the entire world in terms of his creation back to himself, to deal with the problem of sin somehow to overcome death. The major consequence of that. So that we, as his creation, as people made in his image, can fulfil that function and fulfil it for eternity in relationship with him. Correct. Yeah.
Good answer.
Thank you.
Great. So this is Mark. So this whole idea is that if Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection under some of the models that we'll talk about somehow achieves that reconciliation for us on our behalf, how?
How does that work? I guess is the question that will be wrestling with. Yeah, and Paul probably sums up the high level really kind of eloquently as he does, and for once, doesn't mix a metaphor in the passage. But 2 Corinthians 5, he said all of this, what he's been talking about, this kind of new life in Jesus. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us this ministry of reconciliation, which he then defines as in Christ.
God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, and then giving us this message. So this is the high level. But how does that actually work? How does someone dying on a cross actually clear your sins? How does that restore relationship?
Is it just the death? Is it the resurrection? Is it the living before? Is it the ascension afterwards? What's happening?
Who's doing what to who and how? And who's getting paid? What if they're being paid? It's all very complicated, so there's a lot to unpack around that. That's the first of our technical terms.
That's right. That's it. And I think it's important as we do go through this. Like this is a question that has occupied theologians and, pastors, and everyday people for the entirety of church history. Since pretty much Jesus left from the Mount of Olives, everyone's been thinking, okay, what does all this mean?
How does this work? What does what he did do in my life? But, and there is a but despite it being a very occupying, diverting topic. There's never really been a consensus. There's never been a point either.
In the very early church, you know, when councils declaring doctrine was a terrific fad to today.
Those were the days.
Those were the days, even to today, you know, where we have perhaps quite diverse schools of Christianity. Even within those, there's a real lack of consensus on the specifics of this. So I think it's important to say that while this is a very, very important topic, the orthodoxy is Jesus died for your sins.
Beyond that, that's a wrestle that we'll have with each other, and we'll have with God. But where we land, as long as we. I think we affirm that core. That's the important bit in all things charity. Yes.
So, yes, which I think is actually a really fascinating part of this whole discussion. Is that how you see what Jesus did on the cross can make a lot of difference in how you conduct your life? Absolutely. Yet, at a base level, he did something on the cross which has changed your life. And so we do have all of that in common.
And it is fascinating to see how these things intersect and how they play out. So it does, and it doesn't matter. Yeah. Well, at no point do I want to say it's not important to to try and understand, to plumb the depths, to really wrestle with some of these concepts because, like you said, how you think about them or maybe the multiple ways you think about them really does change what you do day to day and also how you communicate the gospel with other people. And that's critical because if part of our mission is to share the good news, at some point, someone's going to ask you, how does that work?
Right. And the answer that you have for them is going to be important for, I suppose, how you disciple them and how they respond to Jesus. Because I'm just thinking of, like, it's not a passage that we'll use a different passage later from this chapter. But even in 1 Corinthians 15, there's just a lot of general language which kind of assumes a lot or leaves so much scope, so simple things like Paul writes for, I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with, like.
Yes, but what does it mean? How does it accord with the scriptures? Yeah. And tell us and, why is dying for our sins important? And what happens when, like, it's so, there's so much like ambiguity in these things which are kind of written like this is full stop, answered, question answered.
And for many people, that's enough. That is enough. But as we love to do, we want to unpack and go deeper and dig a little into, well, what's really going on and why is this important, and what is the mechanism by which God affects the dying for our sins, and what difference does that make on the other side? Absolutely. And, you know, as a Bible podcast, you know, we should talk about these.
We're committed to the truth and good inquiry. So, you know, that's fun, too. That's also the daily bugle of Bible podcasts. Good. So there are probably some other terms and definitions that, if we're not going to answer them right away, we'll at least flag things, concepts that will come up as we go through.
Correct. So we're going to talk about these things called, variously, models or theories or metaphors of the atom. Metaphors. It's an interesting one. Yeah, we'll get to that.
I think it's (Michael) Bird who calls them modes of the atonement, which McGrath calls them. Types. Yeah, there's many different, which, you know, really at the court, these are explanatory frameworks. Correct. I like that.
For how the atonement works is basically what we're doing. So if you hear us talking about this model or this theory, we're talking about the same sort of thing, the various ways of giving explanatory power to the words Jesus died for your sins. So we've got atonement, we've got models. What are some of the other big words, big technical terms that are going to come up that we need to kind of maybe understand to begin with? Yeah.
So we've got, throughout some of these things that we start to talk about, there are what I called objective and subjective components of the atonement. Think about your grammar and your. I love my grammar. Oh, that's good. Sorry, it's been a while.
Sentences have objects and subjects. It's true. And so does the atonement. The objective components are the things that God as the object, the one who instigates the atoning work, the things that he does. That's objective.
The object is God's work. And then subject, the subject of the entire is us, people, and I suppose to a broader extent, the creation. So, the subjective components depending on your model. That's right. The subjective components of the atonement are the things that affect us, the people who receive the work that's being done.
Okay. So the other ones that come up a lot two very technical terms, expiation and propitiation. They come up a lot in these conversations, which probably worth defining some of those things up front. So expiation often is a synonym of atonement, which essentially means kind of make amends for or. Yeah.
To take away wrongdoing and guilt and brokenness and sin. That's right. To remove. Get rid of, take away. As I remember the difference between these, I think expiation is like expunge.
It's like a cleaning, taking away. And propitiation is the pleasing or appeasing or the thing you have to do to make everything right again. Yes. One's removing, one's bringing something back. And specifically in the context of, I suppose, broader, especially pagan, atonement-type theory, it's appeasing wrath.
Yes. Yeah. The angry God who needs to be made not angry by whatever I do. Give him something so that he's not going to sink your boat or something. So, propitiation has got maybe a level of satisfying something in its conceptual framework.
Yes. So not then, that. Obviously, as you'll find out in the episodes to come, there's a whole model based around this idea of satisfying things. Yeah. And it can be quite confusing because as we go through the same act or the same thing can perform both of these functions, which is just, you know, unhelpful, but yes.
And so then there'll be a bunch more probably technical terms that we unpack, which are often the names of the different models are quite technical, and so we'll unpack those things as we go. But is there anything else? Not really. There's things like substitution and recapitulation. I think we'll pick those things up as we go through.
Well, even that. Spoilers that'll come up in the PSA episode. So, hopefully, if you're not familiar with many of these terms, this is helpful. We will try and pick up these things as we go as well. But that probably brings us to the end of the glossary section.
So those of you who were, like, didn't like grammar at school, you can re-tune in again. Now, what we should probably do is spend a little bit of time of actually jumping into scripture. We are called Bible streams, after all, for a reason. The Bible has a lot to say about what is happening in Jesus’ death and resurrection and his saving work on the cross. This is the realm.
This is an intersection of a number of different realms of theology. So theology as a whole is the study and understanding of God, but theology has within it all these kind of sub-disciplines, so we have one called Christology, which is the understanding of who Jesus is, was, and all that he did that intersects with this idea of soteriology, which is salvation, and the mechanism by which God sets people free or reconciles them to himself. It kind of also then connects in with eschatology, which is the end times and how things will be all resolved. Is there any other ologies that kind of come into it all should feed into our ecclesiology, too, but that's the conversation. No, that's right.
Ecclesiology is one of them. And ecclesiology is the things of the church, the way the church operates. Yes. So all of these things kind of get impacted. So, all of these things come up.
But it all is founded in scripture, and scripture has some specific things to say from the beginning to pretty much the end, which we will probably unpack now. So, let's take a short break, and then we'll come back and dig deep into the word.
So we are going to jump into the word, as Jo said. We're just gonna, I suppose, cherry-pick a little bit because there is so much that is to be said; it's not gonna fit very well into a single introductory episode. But rest assured dear listener, we will go into greater depth and more passages as we hit up the various models, but just do a little bit of a survey of what scripture has to say about, I suppose, not just the specific work of Jesus, because that only gets really unpacked around the middle of the book or towards the end, the last little bit. But there are illusions, there are preparatory things. This whole idea of God bringing reconciliation and what has been separated by sin back to himself starts in the first book of the Bible in Genesis.
So just go back and listen to our last series, and we'll move on. No, Genesis three. A lot of hours to listen to. That's right. Genesis 3 is pretty famous.
That's where we have falling and cursing and all these horrible things happening. So many people walking down the stairs in my house in the morning. Now, Jo, not me. I didn't say me. It's the unredeemed elements of my.
The unredeemed offspring, home, community. I say nothing in the grounds they may incriminate them and myself. What does it say in Genesis three about this? So you have people being disobedient, sin entering in the world, and God coming to sort of pronounce the consequences of that, which is primarily death, but a whole host of other problematic things that will make life tough, which, again, is quite nuanced. As well.
So we won't unpack all of that here. But there is a scene so you recall that the serpent is the one that tempts Eve and then Adam into the disobedience that leads to sin. And so there's this little scene where the kind of future fate of that tempting serpent and the woman in this case, you know, arguably representing all of humanity, what God intends for them to play out. So Genesis 315 and 16 says, I will put enmity between you and the woman. This is to the snake.
I put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So there's this idea that there's going to be this clash, this ongoing battle, struggle between evil, the temptation, and what was good and has now been corrupted. But God also on that side of the goodness that will take its toll on both parties. There'll be some sort of, what do you call it?
Bruising this. Yeah, yeah. Some. Some kind of. It's gonna hurt.
Yeah. It's not gonna be easy. The negative event that good is going to triumph over evil. Yes. But this idea.
Yes. That. This. This idea that it will all come to a head, pun intended, at some point. I see what you did there.
Thank you. Very good. That's really good. Yeah. And so, as we said back when we unpacked this at great depth, it's not probably as blatantly a Christ-focused prophecies we maybe tend to make it because it doesn't very clearly say he will win and the enemy will lose, but it is painting the picture of conflict and of the need for resolution, but also some kind of suffering, some kind of negative experience, which is part of this enmity and paints the picture of the need of reconciliation.
Definitely. I think it's creating the gap that God then, as we spoilers see, fills in Jesus. Absolutely. Yes. Which brings us to another picture of suffering.
Yes. We'll skip a long way forward. We'll skip many, many books and chapters. That's right. To Isaiah.
There is a lot of conversation in between there, and we get lots of types, which were Alex here; he would probably take some exception to us skipping all the way forward to Isaiah in one leap, but he's not. So we will. We get a fascinating picture of probably a bit more of a familiar picture to people as well, of this suffering servant who. Yeah. Stands a little bit more of a picture of how God is going to bring about this bridging this gap and deal with the problem of sin, which is kind of the core problem that keeps God and his people separated.
So this is the correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's the fourth servant song in the book of Isaiah, I think so four or five, I think, and picks up in chapter 52 of Isaiah around verse 13, runs right through to the end of chapter 53, which is verse twelve. So we'll just read some sections of it. Would you like to do the honours, Christopher? Oh, sure.
So I'll go. I'll start from chapter 52, verse 13. See, my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted, just as there were many who were appalled at him. His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man, and his form marred beyond human likeness.
And so I'm just going to jump ahead. Pretty descriptive of what's going to happen that might be ringing some bells, and I'm just going to jump ahead just in the interest of time, but it is very important. So go back and read the rest of 52 and the start of 53 yourself. But I'll go to 53. Four.
Surely he, the servant, took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds, we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray. And each of us has turned to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
And as a sheep, before her shearers is silent, so he did not open up his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people. He was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich. In his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth, yet it was the lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days. And the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied by his knowledge.
My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Mmm hmm. Lots of concepts and themes coming up in this amazing passage of scripture.
The idea that there's someone who stands in the place of us for our sins and iniquities and transgressions. There's this idea of sacrifice, some concept of punishment, this idea of the conflict taking its toll. It's not an easy resolution. It's a difficult one. Very reminiscent of scenes we see, particularly in Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy, about the sacrifice of animals and animals being connected with some kind of reconciliation and atonement, as we said before, with God.
But, yeah, something like that. There's a whole year of sheep and being slaughtered and that kind of stuff in there. And then also this idea of final vindication after all is done, after this struggle, the toll price being paid, the standing in the gap, the one that endures, this thing will also be exalted, will be somehow. Yeah. Receive all the things that were apparently denied to him.
Yeah. Like, it's very clear. Like his grave. There's a grave there. It's with people, maybe unexpected, but there's a grave and death, and yet he'll see.
He'll see life and death and life. All of this stuff. Divided spoils have a great portion among the nations. Yeah. Yeah.
So a lot of concepts which are very familiar, obviously, when we've read the end of the gospels, but all being alluded to, and these are all significant passages which help kind of map out what's going on in Jesus's death and resurrection. So, yeah, so maybe we should jump ahead again. And there is much in the prophets to unpack as well. Much, much. But we don't have the time.
Zechariah is one of my favourite sections worth reading, but we won't talk about that now. Yes. I also like Malachi. Yeah. The greatest of the Italian prophets.
That's good.
We'll jump ahead to the gospels. Yes. This is a very good place to go. Yeah. So we start to see within Jesus earthly ministry, he starts to make illusions, drawing very, very heavily on this imagery that we've already explored just briefly in the Old Testament, to talk about, to reveal aspects of his mission, who he is, and how maybe he's going to start to deliver on some of these promises.
Yeah. So probably one of the most familiar ones of these is John three, but not just in 16, but going back a little way. In fact, John very much connects with a lot of Isaiah. So the whole idea of. And John's amazing how he plays on words constantly and draws kind of allusions, literary allusions, to what's happened in the Old Testament.
We find in chapter three, he gets. Actually, he drops the allusions altogether and just is quite explicit and connects the dots. He says in John 314, we'll read from 14 through 17. And as Moses was as sorry, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. Sounds like the son of Isaiah, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life or life of the age to come.
It says this in verse 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Yeah. So there's that connection with Isaiah.
There's also connection with the, you know, specific scene in numbers where there is a literal snake being lifted up. Bronze snake on a pole. Yeah. To somehow provide healing. Everyone who looks to the.
To the lifted up object would be saved from being bitten by a snake and dying. Yeah, yeah. And we see elsewhere in the gospels, too, Jesus making allusions to that role as the serpent. And this idea of standing in on behalf of us is how this might be achieved. So in Mark, chapter ten, verse 45, we've got for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
This idea of.
I'm just going to use the word substituting. Somehow. You have to use the word spoiler alert. This is an English word that we can use his life for what perhaps was owed by others. And then we get a really interesting, just constant play on a lot of these concepts.
So as we go through the crucifixion narratives, the passion narratives, Jesus is crucified, and Barabbas the criminal, is set free. So, like, they can choose, you can get one or the other. And Jesus takes the place of the convicted criminal. It's pretty clear. Yeah.
That is doing this, that, however he says, this is all. I'm just kind of going through the end of John's gospel here, but it's in many of them, there's all sorts of different illusions. Jesus is very clear as he's talking to Pilate, that he is, however, not having his life taken from him, but he chooses to give his life, to lay it down, and he's going to choose to take it up again. So there's this intentional volitional act of Jesus to do this. There's written above him as he's crucified that he is the king of the Jews.
This idea of his enthronement, which plays into some of these models as we see them later on. There's also then what happens at his death, where he finishes something, it says it is finished. Tetelestoi, I think, is the Greek word. He dies, he is then buried, he rises from the dead, he's risen from the dead, resurrected. There's appearances, there's all these things that play into what I read earlier, which Paul writes later about.
This is all happening according to scriptures. This is all to fulfill something, this is all achieving something which the people at the time didn't really understand, but which even Jesus himself alluded to in the gospels earlier, saying, the time is coming where the son of man will give his life up. You must take up your cross. There's all these allusions to that. This is a significant act which is going to change the way people live.
Yeah. Which is the passion narratives. And you should read all four of them. Absolutely. They're all significant and slightly different and all add to the picture that we're trying to map out here as we look at what Jesus actually achieved through these acts.
And so very quickly, within a few years to a couple of decades, the early Christian community latch onto this idea that the problem of sin that we read about way, way back in Genesis that's dogged Israel this entire time has been dealt with somehow by Jesus death standing in the place of Israel and of maybe all humanity, because as the Gentiles start to be welcomed in as well. And so within the letters in the New Testament, we see these kind of creedal ish. Some of them are recognised as official Christian, early Christian creeds, and some of them kind of have that flavor that really just lay this out that don't necessarily know how. Yeah, they don't go technical, but they just. But this idea that Jesus has saved us from sin by his death and by his resurrection starts to just be.
The point is made over and over and over again. So we've got. Where should we start? Let's just pick a couple. I got Colossians two here.
Yeah, nice. Colossians 213 says, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Yeah, awesome. That's one of them.
And we've got 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3 and 3 to 5, we've got. For what I received, I passed on to you a first importance. So this is like a core teaching that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve. And similarly kind of in the same vein as the Colossians one, the opening lines of Galatians, chapter 1, verse 3 to 4, grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and father. Paul makes some really interesting comments about what's been overcome at the end of chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians.
I read that bit before because I thought you were going to do this later bit where it talks about that the sting of death is sin and the power of the sin is law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. So death, this whole thing of dying, is now beaten, and that's happened through the victory that Jesus won. So there's this overcoming sense here of death and sin. So they're all connected. Yeah, I got Romans 4:25, Jesus our Lord, who has delivered up for.
Who was. Sorry, let me say that again. Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our sins and raised for our justification. So there's delivery and then resurrection, and it's around sin and justification. Yep.
And then we've got this really cool passage in Philippians 2. One of my favourites running from verse 5. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who in being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness and then being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the father. I love how this, like, obviously, therefore, what do you mean, therefore?
How do those two things equate? Galatians one, three and four? I read that one already. Did you read that? Yeah, I did.
I snuck it in there. Oh, sorry, mate, that's already. You have my finger in the place and everything. What was I doing? I must have been reading through Corinthians, I think.
Yeah, yeah. Flipping ahead to the end of Corinthians 15. Well, in that case, then. Oh, you could do the Hebrews one. Well, I was going to go to revelation while you look up Hebrews, Revelation, because I said before, it is all the way from the beginning to the end.
And in Revelation there's this beautiful moment where. Let me just try and find it in chapter five where there's this whole, like, the scrolls that have to be opened. And John is really upset because he can't find anyone to open the seals, says in chapter five, verse three. And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll. And so John began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.
And one of the elders said, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered, and so he can open the scroll and seven seals. That sounds all great, but John says this. I saw then a lamb standing as though it had been slain. And then this lion of Judah is actually a lamb who has been slain.
So we get this idea of the Sacrifice, which is right back in Isaiah, like a lambda led to the slaughter, like a sheep before its shearers is silent. So we get this kind of illusion that the setting right and the unveiling, the eschatological pieces, is all connected to this sacrificed lamb who's also a conquering king. It's all kind of conflated together. Yeah. And then Hebrews, HebRews has just got a bunch of it.
It's all the way through. But there's a little bit at the start in chapter two that kind of alludes to this Victory Theme from verse 14. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were being held in slavery by their fear of death. And then later on in chapter nine, we have another bit about how this blood sacrifice kind of purchases freedom from guilt or covers over guilt, that sort of expiation. Piece of.
Wipes away the record. What have we got? We've got. I'll do the bit from verse eleven, maybe. So when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is, not man made, that is to say, not a part of this creation.
He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, which is what was required by the Old Testament law. But he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, having attained eternal redemption. And maybe I'll just fast forward a little bit to the end of that chapter. Here we go again. So in verse 24, for Christ did not enter a man made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one.
He entered heaven itself now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again the way the high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood that is not his own, then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. And he will appear a second time not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
So good. There's so much in Hebrews, like chapter ten. And by that, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. In verse eleven, every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices—verse twelve.
But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sits down at the right hand of God. It says one of my favorite bits is chapter twelve of Hebrews, which is, again, just a beautiful picture. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race that set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising its shame and seated at the right hand of God. So this idea that the cross is this mechanism by which we then can live differently, like Jesus is doing something on the cross and it keeps going, and that the cross itself is joy.
Like, it's just. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. Mmm.
Weird. Lots. Lots in there. So. So the narrative of scripture that the big picture of it, it's kind of embedded the whole way through the.
Yeah, but it's painted of lots of different pictures. Right. Which is the cool thing. How many different words did we use to describe it there? Right.
Like. Yeah, too many. Yeah. And they all come up. Yeah.
And they all get made into technical terms to describe a particular model. That's right. Which we will touch on in a second. But hopefully, that gives you a bit of a sense of. Yeah, this, why this subject, why this topic is just so incredible, why it takes up so much of theologian’s time, but also why it should take up more of our time.
Like, it's just absolutely sprinkled and embedded throughout the entire narrative of scripture. And clearly, the apostles, the early church and everyone since thought it was really, really important to wrestle with, to understand that Jesus did die for our sins. That in itself is such a crucial component of our faith and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But how that works, all the different pictures that make that up reveal other small, cool little things about Jesus and God themselves, himself, but also about the ways in which we can follow and emulate them as well, because it does, like, a lot of questions are posed by these things we just read out. Right.
Because they bring in so many. And you're right. Like the core of it is what has been done. But the ways that the different authors are writing and describing and using pictures and historical incidences to describe all this get very confusing and sometimes even seem contradictory. Like, is he the priest who offers sacrifice, or is he the sacrifice?
Can you be both at the same time? If Jesus is God, who's offering the sacrifice, and who is the sacrifice? And then, is he doing it to himself? Or how does this work? And how does this whole trinity thing work?
And he's a victorious king, but he dies. And so, like, these things all seem to be contradictory. And so this is why there's so many models because I got to wrestle with all these different words and images, and is it literal? Is it metaphorical, is it figurative? Is it representative?
All of these different things? How does one person do it for everyone? Is it for everyone who's included in that? Like all of these questions come up as we hear all these passages, which is why, for the last 2000 years, people have wrestled through these things because Paul uses multiple different images to describe it. The gospels use multiple different images to describe it.
The prophets in the Old Testament to talk about it different ways. How it actually rolls out is different for depending on what your worldview is of what scripture is trying to actually do. So it's very complicated. So that's why we want to unpack it a bit for you to start to give you some kind of. Some handles to hold onto as you read the Bible and go, oh, okay.
This might be what's happening here. This might be that, that might be that. We'll start to throw. This might be that kind of propitiation thing. This might be that Christus Victor thing.
This might be that representative thing that they're talking about. This might be the substitution part. Oh, like, what do all these things mean? So people have come up with concepts and models to try and help us get our head around it so that we understand what God's done for us so that when we live this out in the world, it changes how we see the world. So that's fair enough to say.
That's a good place. Yeah. To take a break, take a breath. Questions? Yeah, excellent.
Well, we'll leave there for a moment. We'll be back with giving you a bit of a headlines of what's to come.
Okay, so hopefully, you've kept up. You kept your bible running shoes on as we ran at a rapid pace through Genesis, through revelation. We'll put the references in the show notes, and you can. What I hear is Jo will write out the references and put them in the show notes. No, we'll get as many of them as we remember in the show notes.
But what I wanted to just kind of preview now is what we're going to cover. So, if you are maybe enough of a nerd that you already have a position or a perspective or a preferred model of atonement, you'll hear when yours is coming up. If you don't, you go, oh, okay. I don't know what any of these things are. Maybe I'll learn something.
I take that as an excuse to just skip to the one you like. No, you'll have to wait anyway because I'm not telling you when they'll come out. They will come out. Right, okay, fair enough. As we like to do, we like to keep people guessing, you know, keep people hungry for more.
So, after this initial kind of introductory episode, we're going to look at the model that is commonly called Christus Victor. So, if you didn't already think Christ was maybe Jesus second name, his surname now is Victor, part of his name, too. So, the Christus Victor model, we will look at that. Following that, we'll look at a fairly broad model, which is almost an umbrella term, which is the substitution model and all of substitution models. Models and all the different models that sit in that.
So there's things like the ransom model, the satisfaction model, the penal substitutionary atonement model, the PSA. Yes. There will be a public service announcement warning everyone in that one. Following that, we'll look at the representation or the representative model, which has a few under, again, models. Yeah.
So there's something that's called recapitulation, which, you know, is not just a musical term for Alex to explain to us but is a model of the atonement as well. And then there's a couple other ones that sort of fit under this idea, too. There's one that's called the. The governmental view, which, to be honest, I don't know a lot about. So we'll learn about it.
Yeah. Alex will know all about it, surely. I'm sure he does. We'll give him that homework. And then the last sort of broad umbrella category is this idea of sort of moral influence or moral example.
There's a couple of different sort of sub-ideas that fit within that category, and we'll probably kind of pick up anything we've missed on the way through that kind of fit in that space. There's all sorts of different models, crazy little niche ones that we might come across. Yes. So if there's one that you would love to hear us cover that we haven't actually talked about yet that sits in there and, you know, and the other thing that might come up, I mean, it's sort of. It's an adjacent discussion to the models.
But it is important and comes to be quite defining when it comes to your particular Christian tribe that you identify with. And that is the scope or the extent of the atonement, not just how it works, but kind of how far it goes, who it affects, and these questions around the sovereignty and will of God in the atoning act and the, I suppose, will or role or agency of us as the ones who receive that atonement. So you might have heard the traditional sort of Calvinist versus Armenian kind of Armenian, Armenian, Armenian sort of. Not people from the country, Armenia, headline debates. And to be honest, if you've only sort of seen those in passing, you've probably only ever seen caricatures of them.
But this debate over, you know, how far does God act and is effective in this atoning work, how far do we cooperate or participate in that work is the subject of some debate. So we might go there. We'll try and wrap that in, maybe into models as we look at them. Because they're different depending on the model and the scope and the extent of the toning work of Jesus, don't want to many angry emails.
So no. And we may or may not come down on our personal preference. And, of course, as always, if you're part of our Riverlife church family, we're not telling you what to believe. We're encouraging you to learn how to learn and believe about what you think about these things. We have this beautiful the personal lordship of Christ and the conscience of the Holy Spirit working in us.
We get to discern what we think is right. Yeah. Generally, if you've ever heard of the general or specific Baptists, you know, that leans into the extent of the atonement, there's all sorts of different things. So we'll kind of pick those things up as we go through. And if we miss anything, please let us know.
We will try and wrap it in at some point. Yes. So you can contact us. We are responsive, sort of. You can email us@podcastsiverlifechurch.org.
dot au dot. I get that, right? Yeah, you did. Oh, nice. Yeah.
You can also reach out to us directly via our social media channels. So Bible streams can be found under the name Bible streams on Facebook or Meta or whatever you call. Well, that covers Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, yeah. And threads as well.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, we're on X. We are on X, too, you know. Do we have threads? No, we're not on TikTok yet.
We didn't do enough video about to be banned. Right. So it depends where you are in the world. Yes. Reach out to us, please.
We'd love to hear from you. I'd love to see your TikTok Bible streams content. Oh, you just wait. The world's not ready for it. The world is not worthy of it.
I'll catch it two weeks later on Instagram reels. That'll be fine. We'll just cross post it. It'll be fine. Thank you so much for joining us for this first foray into a very deep and wide field.
And so hopefully you'll join us as we journey further, as we kind of uncover some of these things. We will be back next episode with our 1st 1st model of the atonement, which is the Christus Victor model. And so get ready, read up, get your bibles out and get your notebooks ready and your pens and pencils sharpened and ready to write because we'll dig in deep, and hopefully, you'll learn a little. Thanks, Chris. Thank you.
We'll be back next time. Alex will be with us, and we'll unpack high and lift it up—conversations in the atonement.