As a Christian, you know the Gospel story. You’ve heard how Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice in order to pay for your sins. He took the punishment that you deserved, and now you can be saved. You are probably so familiar with this story that you are already bored. Let me tell you something interesting: the story you have heard so many times may, in fact, not be true.
Did you know that this explanation is only about a thousand years old?
A quick summary of the Gospel, the Good News Story, as most of us have been taught, could go something like this: every human has sinned and so we were all separated from God (Romans 3:23). Our sin formed an insurmountable wall between us and a holy God (Isaiah 59:1-2, Habakkuk 1:13). However, even though God must judge sin (Romans 6:23), He loved us so much that he sent His Son Jesus to earth to get rid of that wall (John 3:16)! Jesus lived a perfect life and then died on the Cross as a substitute for us (Isaiah 53:4-6). He suffered untold physical, emotional and spiritual pain for all of us on the Cross and, some say, later even in Hell. Jesus suffered, in fact, more than, as one popular radio host puts it, the “cumulative sufferings of all mankind.” He had to suffer more than we all together would have suffered in Hell for all eternity in order for his sacrifice to be valid! He suffered this all in our place, the punishment we deserved. The debt is now paid. It is finished (John 19:30).
That is supposedly the good news. We are told that we must believe it if we are to have any hope of being saved. Does this really sound like good news to you? The best news you’ve ever heard? Not to me. It sounds to me more like a legal transaction than good news. I’ve struggled all my life to believe this story with my whole heart. As I read the Bible, it seemed like the writers are saying something different. Something more. Something just out of my reach. Some of you, my readers, may have felt the same uncomfortable “is this all there is?” feeling about the Gospel we’ve heard. Or, maybe you’ve struggled to feel anything at all about it.
Substitutionary Atonement Theory
Anselm of Canterbury first wrote down the substitutionary explanation of the atonement (the bringing together of God and man) in his book Cur Deus Homo? in 1097 AD. The setting for Anselm’s explanation was the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. The story was based on two beliefs. The first was penance, that sin could be “paid for” by suffering. This is where flogging yourself or throwing yourself down the stairs in order to pay for your sins came from.
The second belief, which many still hold today, was that we have to do a certain amount of good in order to go to Heaven. The belief is that at the end of our lives, the good we have done will be weighed against the bad. If there is more good, we will go to Heaven. If not, we will go to purgatory (temporary Hell) until we suffer enough to pay for our balance of sin. Saints were people who had done so much good in this life that they were not only saved, they had a lot of good works “left over.” So, Christians could pray to the saints and ask for a little of their good works in order to balance their own scales. (Of course, if you had money, you could avoid all of this by simply buying an absolution.)
These two ideas naturally led to the concept of Jesus living a perfect life, storing up a huge amount of good works, and then dying on the cross in unfathomable amounts of pain. Sin was paid for and everybody could now receive some of Jesus’ overabundance of good.
As you can probably guess, neither of these ideas have a firm basis in Scripture. These beliefs, along with many others, fell during the reformation. It is interesting that we still accept the same story of salvation even though we no longer hold to the same beliefs! Is it because we don’t know of any other explanation? Do we even dare go against “official church doctrine” and think that there could be another explanation? I believe we must! After all, what did Christians believe for the first thousand years following Jesus’ death and resurrection? What did the church leaders like Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine and others teach? How did they tell the Good News story?
The Original Story of the Atonement
The setting for first version of the Good News story is in first century Israel, not Europe in the Middle Ages. The setting is vital to understanding the story. The nation of Israel was waiting for a Messiah, a savior, to free them from the Roman occupation. Those who truly believed in God, had every reason for this hope. The central theme of the Old Testament is the exodus from Egypt. Over and over this event is recalled in prayers, psalms and prophecy. God’s messengers told the Jews that He would again visit His people and free them, just as He had done in Egypt. He would send a Messiah.
Because of the Old Testament teachings, every generation in Israel looked forward to their salvation from whatever oppression they were experiencing at the time. Every child was taught to wait for the Messiah. In the first century, all the Israelites were naturally expecting the Messiah to come and free them from Rome, but they were in for a surprise.
Jesus was not what they thought a Messiah would be. He was more. He came to free them from something deeper than just the Roman oppression. He came to free them from the very reason there is any oppression on earth. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21)
Look at what Jesus quotes about himself at the start of his ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Luke 4:18-19)
Jesus came to free His people from oppression of all kinds:
- Physical oppression of sickness, blindness, or paralysis.
- Oppression of society for those who had incurable diseases, had committed unforgivable sins, and the poor, who were supposedly cursed by God.
- Demonic oppression
- Religious oppression of the Pharisees, who put burdens on the people. They were his greatest enemies.
Have you ever read the gospels in this light? It is an amazing experience to think of Jesus in the Gospel stories as an actual savior from all the things and people that oppressed them, and us. Then, Jesus’ life culminates in one final push to rid the world of the greatest oppressors of mankind: sin, death and Satan.
This is where the two stories that explain the Gospel really diverge. In Anselm’s explanation, Jesus is a sacrifice to appease God’s wrath. God demands punishment for sin, and so somebody must suffer. In the story of the first century, this is nowhere to be found. In the original story, Jesus offered his life as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:1-2). Some of the first church leaders taught that it is not God who demanded payment, but Satan!
Some versions of the story say that Satan was the lawful master of the world because of sin. When a person sins, they automatically enter Satan’s domain. Other versions of the story say that Satan had no real right to mankind, but that he “kidnapped” man and demanded a ransom. Either way, the stories tell how Jesus offered his own life as payment for mankind. His life for our freedom. Satan went for it and killed Jesus. Since Jesus died bearing our sin, being our sin, and went to Sheol (sometimes called Hell), the place of the dead.
Of course, Jesus did not enter Satan’s domain as sinners go to Sheol. Ancient writers imagine how he marched into Hell holding a banner high and freeing the captives. He preached to the spirits who were in Hell (1st Peter 4:6) and freed those who believed. Jesus shook the very foundations of Satan’s domain and graves literally burst open and many were physically raised from the dead! (Matthew 27:52) Satan and all his army were defeated. (Colossians 2:15) Sin, the power of Satan, was vanquished. (Hebrews 9:26) Finally, death itself, defeated but not yet destroyed (I Corinthians 15:26), lost its grip on Jesus, and He rose triumphantly!
Some say that Satan never knew that Jesus was God and so was tricked. Others say that he knew Jesus was God but thought that once he had him in Sheol, he would be able to hold him. The same pride that got Satan thrown out of Heaven was his downfall once again. Whatever the case, Satan has regretted killing Jesus ever since (I Corinthians 2:8). The day of Satan’s seemingly greatest triumph, became a day of defeat, sealing his fate.
Jesus is the victor. The champion. The savior. This is the good news.
For the first century Church, the focus of Jesus’ story was not the cross, but the resurrection. Understanding this is a crucial key to unlocking the mystery of the atonement. Paul goes so far as to say that without the resurrection everything else is worthless. (I Corinthians 15:17) Look back at the first paragraphs in this article, did you notice when you first read it that no mention is made of the resurrection? The unfortunate fact is that most people today think the good news is that Jesus suffered what we deserved so that we can have what he deserves.
This Changes Everything
A good friend recently told me “if this version of the Gospel story is true, it changes everything!” And, if Jesus truly was victorious over everything that oppresses us, including our own sinful nature, then this message is life-changing! But where is that freedom in our lives today? Where is this victory that Jesus won for us?
We have the victory. We just need to mop up the enemy (usually our own sinful nature), but the victory is ours. We have everything we need to live the way God wants us to, the Holy Spirit living in us. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. II Peter 1:3
The only way we can be defeated is if we don’t know that we have the victory or if we choose not to fight. We can fear death, or we can believe that we will never really die. (Hebrews 2:15) We can live under the oppression of the Law (which was originally intended for good) or we can believe that the very Law was also defeated at the cross. (Colossians 2:14) We can choose to be slaves to sin, or we can have the victory. (Romans 6:15-18) It is our choice. The choice that Jesus bought for us with his own blood.
We’ll never have the victory if we don’t believe this. The “we can never stop sinning” mentality may have some truth to it, but is probably to blame for much of our defeat as Christians. We forget that we already have the victory in Christ.
Be a Savior
Freedom from oppression is something everybody desires, even if they don’t think they want God or religion. They do want freedom and that is what we can offer. After all, Jesus invaded our world to free us. We need to invade the worlds of those around us. Sometimes telling them the Good News is enough. Sometimes it is not enough, because we need to free them from what is oppressing them: poverty, loneliness, sickness.
Have you ever wondered why perfect religion in God’s eyes involves helping orphans and widows? (James 1:27) Now, it starts to make sense, doesn’t it? We must bring them the truth and free them from the sin that is holding them in bondage. Their master will be their own sin, and they will have to take ownership of that sin and repent of it. Often there will also be sin that other people have committed against them where they need to forgive in order to be free of it. But usually there is more than that. Are you willing to fight to free them completely?
In the allegorical movie, The Matrix, the elder character Morpheus explains to the hero what the Matrix is all about: “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” “What truth?” asks Neo. “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch.” But the truth doesn’t stop there. The truth is also that you can be free!
Jesus did not die just to pay for your sins. He died to free you from them. If any of us is living today believing that we are saved from Hell, but not saved from the power of our sins, we are dangerously misguided. My brothers and sisters, let’s take hold of the freedom that Jesus won for us. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1
Originally published in Faith21 Magazine (www.faith21.org)