MODERN MEN REGARD the Incarnation and the Atonement differently. They may believe in neither, but they would like to accept the Incarnation. They are attracted by the story of the little baby born in Bethlehem and the “peace on earth, good will toward men” that they link with his birth. They enjoy the traditional Christmas and would relish a historical basis for it.
But the Cross is different. They can accept this in the sense that a certain Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion early in the first century. But if this is seen as anything more than the execution of an innocent man who died heroically, they will have none of it. When Christians talk about the Atonement they are simply repelled. They do not see how the death of a man in first-century Palestine can possibly have any effect now. And they do not want to see. The thought that a modern person’s salvation depends on the blood that flowed so long ago they find simply repulsive. There is nothing beautiful about the cross as there is about the Christmas story. So people reject it. And in rejecting it they reject the heart of Christianity.
Before the modern difficulty arose, the centrality of the Cross was so widely recognized that it influenced our language. We use the noun “crux” and the adjective “crucial” without stopping to think that the former is simply the Latin word for “cross” and the latter a derivative of the same word. Whenever we say “The crux of the matter is this,” or “That is the crucial point,” what we are really saying is, “Just as the cross is central to Christianity, so this point is central to my argument.”
This is not simply a habit of speech but a reflection of the New Testament. There the Cross dominates the whole. It occupies a disproportionate amount of space in the Gospels, disproportionate, that is, if we are thinking of the Gospels primarily as historical documents. And a good deal of what follows is taken up with the preaching of the Cross or with its interpretation. It is the death of our Lord Jesus Christ that is the significant thing for the New Testament writers.
This is so for an understanding of the way salvation is brought about. Human beings are saved not by some divine fiat or by their own best efforts but by what Christ’s death accomplished on their behalf. This is brought out in a variety of picturesque descriptions of what Christ’s death accomplished. Sometimes it is viewed as a process of redemption, the payment of a price to set men free, the price, of course, being the death of Christ. Or it is the means of reconciliation whereby persons whose sins had alienated them from God, made them His enemies, are now made one (Eph. 2:16). Sometimes salvation is viewed in legal terms as a process of justification, a declaration of acquittal. This is on the basis of Christ’s death (Rom. 5:9), as is the propitiation whereby the wrath of God is turned away from sinners who so justly deserved it (Rom. 3:25).
From the present point of view one of the most important ways of viewing Jesus’ death is that which sees it as the means of establishing a new covenant (Mark 14:24), for the whole Jewish religious system depended on the covenant. Israel was bound to God by a covenant (Exod. 24), and the whole of the Old Testament presupposes a people in covenant relationship with God. The same of course may be said of the New Testament, though there the people of God are viewed somewhat differently. In fact, it is a question whether we might not do better to speak of “the old covenant” and “the new covenant” as the divisions of our Bible rather than the old and new testaments. So when we have Jesus’ death referred to in convenantal terms we are dealing with something that goes to the heart of the matter, not anything peripheral.
We might go on, for there are other such terms. But it is not simply a matter of vocabulary. It is impossible to read, say, the Epistle to the Romans without seeing that for its author the Cross is right at the center of things quite apart from his exact choice of words to express this conviction. It is not easy in these days to put forward a theory of atonement that will command general assent. Indeed, it may be that in the end we may be inclined to say that no theory is adequate and that we need the contributions of quite a few theories to express something of what the Cross meant to the men of the New Testament.
But our inability to formulate any one theory of the Atonement that satisfies us should help us to see the importance of the Cross, not cause us to downgrade it. The modern impatience with theories of the Atonement is not necessarily a sign of spiritual greatness. It is much more likely to represent a refusal to think through an aspect of New Testament Christianity that is not congenial to persons of our culture. But we must be on our guard against allowing our cultural prejudices to dictate our understanding of theology. If we are to take our New Testaments seriously we will see the Cross as at the heart of a great salvation.
We will see it also as at the heart of the living out of that salvation in our day-by-day life. Jesus called on all who follow him to take up their cross daily and follow in his steps (Luke 9:23). The Christian sees everything in the light of Christ’s cross. Because his Saviour bore a cross, he is ready to take up one of his own. The Christian must begin his thinking on any aspect of the Christian life from the fact that he is one who had been died for.
That is why the Christian has a different idea about humility, for example, from that held by others. In the first century, men did not commonly regard humility as a virtue. A man who was really a man would stand up for his rights and make sure that people appreciated his merits. Not so the Christian. He could not see himself as deserving of praise on account of an exemplary life. He could not claim credit for having earned his salvation. Rather he saw himself as a sinner, one who had caused the Son of God to die. In the light of that dreadful responsibility how could he be other than humble?
Similarly, the Christian took his understanding of love from the Cross. “Herein is love,” wrote John, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We can never understand love if we start from the human end. We must start with what God has done, with the Cross. Then only do we know real love.
For the believer, the cross has transformed everything. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
