In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What did Christ accomplish on the cross?”
We have talked about who Christ is – He is the Son of God, He is a man born at a certain place in a certain time, He is the fulfillment of prophecy and a prophet Himself. But it is that last part that we must look to now, not just who He is, but what He has done, and continues to do. We cannot examine the work of Jesus without looking closely at the central focus of His whole life: the cross, His death there, and His resurrection. This was no mere display of power, nor is it simply a tragedy we mourn as unjust. This was the point at which God inaugurated His kingdom, and began the work that will conclude when Jesus returns: namely, the restoration of creation to true holiness, and true and total intimacy between God and His people.
Firstly, Jesus atoned for the sins of His people. There has been much debate over the concept of penal substitutionary atonement and its centrality to what Christ accomplished on the cross, but the testimony of Scripture is clear. All those who draw near to Christ receive the benefits of His atonement, just as all those who drew near on the Day of Atonement each year received those benefits for their sins. The difference is that Christ’s atonement is a better one, for it does not need to be renewed year after year, but as the author of Hebrews says, it is completed and perfect.
The repeated sacrifices of the Levitical priests were given as images to be shown repeatedly to the Israelites, of the evil of sin, and of the way by which God would remove their sin: another would take their place, and receive the punishment they deserved. This is not the petulant malice of a pagan god, but a just and holy expression of love for His people. The church no longer practices these sacrifices, but we do take the Lord’s supper, which serves to display the sustaining and atoning work of Christ’s sacrifice for His people.
Secondly, Jesus inaugurated a kingdom where God and man have true intimacy. The gospel of Matthew says that at the moment of Jesus’ death, the curtain in the temple that divided the Holy of Holies from the rest of the sanctuary, where the Ark of the Covenant would have been kept and where the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement were performed. We are no longer dependent on human priests to perform sacrifices or bring our needs before God, but we have perfect access in Christ. He is our high priest, as the writer of Hebrews says, a better high priest who does not need to atone for His own sins and whose work is complete. In Him we rest and in Him we look forward to sin’s final eradication from all creation.
The church practices baptism to show that we are joined with Christ in his death, and that we are also joining Him in renewed life – spiritually now, and physically in eternity future. No longer are we cut off from God’s presence, but we enjoy the first fruits of the second birth in the work of the Holy Spirit to sanctify our hearts and renew our minds, and we look ahead to the completion of that work when we live on a renewed earth, with the presence of God truly with us.
Thirdly, Jesus destroyed the divisions of humanity and grafted the Gentiles into that kingdom. Paul writes in Colossians 3:5-11:
Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God’s wrath is coming upon the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator. In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.
Paul precedes this section with a call to all believers to rest our thoughts and works on Christ, because we are alive in Him and have died to the world with Him. Because of those things, we seek daily to put to death in our lives the evils that this world takes for granted, and to regard others in the light of Christ. No longer would a believing Jew look to a Gentile and consider him unclean, but he would regard all who are in Christ as his brothers regardless of their nationality or position. A Christian free man would look at a Christian slave and see only a brother. Former enemies are reconciled in Christ, and we are to seek humility with all our hearts in this.
Someone who has been wronged is brought to recognize that whatever evil has been done to them, they must make room in their hearts for the Lord to work within the wrongdoer’s heart. This does not mean, as some have tried to argue, that even the most egregiously wronged victims must forgive and forget with no change on the other’s part, but it does mean that humility in Christ requires even such people to prepare for the possibility that the one who harmed them may someday come to them with a truly repentant heart, asking for forgiveness.
Finally, Jesus defeated the work of the enemy. From the first appearance in Genesis 3 through all of Scripture, the enemy has sought to bring chaos, death, and destruction into the life and order of God’s good creation. He pushes the idea that we should not trust God as God, but follow our own wisdom. Following that lie began the rule of sin and death in this world, and we see the fruit of it around us constantly.
Yet God has been merciful, and through the work of Jesus he has broken the curse of sin and death. In Christ we know that even though this physical life will end, we will have eternal renewed life with Him. And just as Jesus has taken our place in paying the price for our sins, so we receive the benefits of His obedience. In the wilderness when offered the same temptations to faithless lust for power that Adam and Eve endured, Jesus rejected the enemy’s lies and emerged victorious. This too we receive as a benefit in Christ, when we hope in Him.
In Christ we know that suffering, pain, and loss will all find their perfect redemption in Him, both here and in the world to come. And the work of the enemy is reversed in the way we live – for example, as Paul writes in Romans 12:21, “Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.” Jesus conquered the evil of sin by atoning for it through His sacrifice. He defeated death by surrendering to it a holy life unbound by fear of it, and lives again as our hope and great high priest. And so each day, degree by degree, we roll back the evil of our lives through pursuing Christ in our relationships, our work, and our daily hopes, looking to the day when all will finally be cleansed and reconciled in His return.
The work of Christ is our work
We rejoice in the fact that Jesus’ death on the cross atones for our sins perfectly, and that His resurrection is the sign of the conquering of our own deaths at His hands. But we must be careful to not limit the meaning of His work to this. Throughout His time on earth Jesus ministered the gospel to thousands of people, but He also lived the gospel every step of the way. He rejected the lies of the enemy, the false promises of ease, comfort, and power that Israel had failed so thoroughly at resisting in the wilderness, that so many in our world continue to fail to resist to this day. And when the powerful around Him conspired to bring about His murder, He did not resist but walked to it, embraced it. He did not value His life more than obedience to the Father, and in accepting that unjust death He received more than anyone could dream.
When we look at the work of Christ, we see what He finished, but we also see the work that is set before us – to follow Him, to lay our lives down alongside His. This is not an easy idea, but it is one that we are called to practice each day. When we take up our crosses and follow Jesus, we are putting our sins to death. We are putting the needs of others before ourselves. We are not clinging desperately to earthly things like wealth, or comfort, or even our own lives.
And the day may come that we do, truly, have to lay our lives down, just as He did. This often seems theoretical in a West that has had relative peace and prosperity for generations. But the greater point is one of preparing our hearts to endure as He endured, a work that is empowered by the grace of the Father and the ministry of the Spirit in our hearts. So as we get ready to enter each day, let us pray that the Lord will minister to our hearts to be ready to obediently walk in His steps, even and especially when it seems like doing so is foolish in the eyes of the world.
Coronation Radio 