Savior 5: Jesus Makes You Clean

My uncle Orville was a mechanic. If he wasn’t reaching down into, or up into, a car or truck at work, he was restoring an old tractor at home. Because of his passion for all things mechanical, Orville’s hands were always dirty. They were black around the fingernails and black in the creases and whorls of his fingers and palms. As often and as hard as he washed his hands, he could never get them clean. The grease was ground in too deep.

In the Broadway version of “South Pacific,” Mary Martin sings, “I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair.” You feel so refreshed stepping out of the shower. It’s like making a new start in life. Don’t you wish you could take care of problems, and problem people, so easily?

When Lady Macbeth shrieks, “Out, damned spot!” she’s not talking about a ketchup stain. She’s talking about blood she has shed. The Roman governor Pilate thinks he can wash his hands of the blood of Jesus, but no whitewashing of history can erase his treachery.

We’ve all got stains that we’d like to wash away, and no amount of soap or scrubbing can remove them. Scripture tells us that only the blood of Jesus can wash us clean.

Friends, we’re in the fifth week of Lent and nearing the end of our study based on the book “Savior,” by Magrey deVega. We’re exploring various ways of understanding just how it is that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). Today we’re talking about being made clean.

In Jesus’ day, it is assumed that disease is a sign of sin and alienation from God. In the gospel of Mark, we read about a man who has a skin disease similar to leprosy. He falls to his knees before Jesus and begs him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus reaches out and touches him, and says, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And immediately, we’re told, the man is cured of his disease and made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)

We don’t all suffer from a dread skin disease, but we all sin because of our alienation from God. Our sin stains everything we do, and we all need to be made clean. In the book of Revelation, people wear robes with colors that are symbolic of their spiritual state. Unrepentant sinners wear dirty robes, while Christian believers wear robes that are sparkling white. Why are they so white? Because they’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

It is very much a paradoxical image. Just about everybody knows how hard it is to get a bloodstain out of clothing. So how is it that robes washed in the blood of the Lamb are so pure white?

The gospel of John proclaims Jesus to be the Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36). Revelation pictures him as a suckling Lamb that has been slaughtered (Revelation 5:6). That image, of course, comes from Temple sacrifice. John’s gospel makes the association clear. According to John, Jesus is crucified at the same time that Passover lambs are sacrificed in the Temple.

The Passover lamb was not sacrificed for anyone’s sin, but as a means of obtaining the freedom of enslaved Israel. Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul calls Christ “our Passover lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The book of Hebrews, meantime, says the one-time sacrifice of Christ does what the death of no amount of other lambs could ever do. It is a one-time sacrifice for all sins (Hebrews 10:12).

So it is we can say that “the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

So far, so good. But how exactly does that happen? Now we have to briefly drop deep into the weeds to undo several centuries of Bible abuse.

If you have an ear trained in traditional versions of the Bible, some of the Bible quotes you are hearing today will sound strikingly different from what you’re used to hearing. You may especially note the absence of two key words: “propitiation” and “expiation.” These are not words you hear in normal everyday conversation. They are the weasel words that some Bible translations use to promote a certain vile interpretation of scripture.

First up is “propitiation.” It is all about the pacification of an angry deity. Remember the movie “King Kong”? Kong is this giant gorilla, and the local population has learned that the only way to satisfy the blood lust of this monster is to sacrifice a virgin to him every now and again.

In some segments of Christian thought, Jesus is sacrificed to satisfy the wrath of his Heavenly Father against sinners. We deserve to die, Jesus takes our place, and God’s blood lust is satisfied. I think King Kong theology is despicable. God is not angry with you or eager to do you in because of your sin.

We’ve talked about this before. God’s wrath is not about zapping you with thunderbolts or flaming arrows. It is letting you go your own way and suffering the consequences of your sins. In other words, Christ sacrificing himself for you is not saving you from God’s anger. It’s saving you from your own folly.

The second weasel word you’ll often hear in these verses is “expiation.” “Expiation” is basically “propitiation” lite. It is sometimes translated as “atoning sacrifice.” What it really means is to cleanse, to forgive, to wipe out, to remove. It’s about how God deals with our sins.

It goes back to the long and complicated specifications in the book of Leviticus about how animals are to be slaughtered and their blood spattered on the altar and on the Ark of the Covenant. (By the way, cleaning those things must have been a really tough job – especially cleaning the Ark, because if you touched it, you died.) Anyway, the point is that these sacrifices remove sin. They wipe it out. And so it is with the sacrifice of Jesus.

One quick example, and we’ll move on. 1 John 2:2, from the New International Version: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” Now from the Common English Bible: “He is God’s way of dealing with our sins, not only ours but the sins of the whole world.”

Hear the difference? The key word, sometimes translated as “expiation” or “propitiation,” actually means “to be gracious to,” “to show mercy to.” That’s how God deals with our sins – by graciously showing us mercy and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.

Let’s turn to Psalm 51, the Psalm we often recite on Ash Wednesday as we begin our Lenten journey.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. (Psalm 51: 1-2, 7, 9)

Sound familiar? That’s how God deals with our sins.

One more obscure point, for those of you reading the book by Magrey deVega. He wants to make Jesus a scapegoat, as described in Leviticus 16. The New Testament frequently refers to Jesus as the Lamb, but never as a scapegoat. There is a modern theory of atonement, taught by Rene Girard, that does make Jesus a scapegoat. We may return to it at another time. But for our purposes right now, Jesus is not a scapegoat. He is the Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sins of the whole world.

For all the Sundays of Lent, I have introduced our “theme song” of “Lift High the Cross” by showing you a painting of the crucifixion. It shows Jesus in grotesque suffering, but there is something even more striking about it that you really can’t see unless you get really close to it.

The painting was done in 1513 by the German artist Mathias Grunewald. He was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the chapel at a hospital. This hospital served destitute victims of the Black Death. The disease was noted for its oozing black sores. Grunewald painted Jesus covered with sores of the black death. He wanted those in the hospital to know that Jesus shared everything with them. Dying for their sins, he even shared the plague that was killing them.

We are all dying of a plague called sin. We all are covered with sores that will not heal. We all have stains that we cannot wash away. But there is a truth greater than these. Let’s claim this truth by owning it for ourselves and putting ourselves into these phrases from scripture.

Ownership: If I confess my sins, the Lord who is faithful and just will forgive my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

Amen.

This message was delivered March 21, 2021 at Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, from 1 John 1:5-2:2.

Savior 4: Jesus Restores Relationships

What is most important to you? Is it the title of your job or the esteem in which you’re held in the community? Is it the size of your salary or your retirement account? Is it the spaciousness and elegance of your home, or the beauty and horsepower of the vehicle you drive?

Or is it none of these things at all? Isn’t what is most important to you a network of relationships, family and friends, people who mean more to you than any thing in the world?

If life and events have not warped you beyond recognition as a human being, then relationships are most important to you. Those other things are nice, but remember what everyone says when a fire destroys their home and everyone escapes unharmed: “Things can be replaced. People can’t.”

I have said this before, and I don’t think I can say it too many times. From start to finish, the clear testimony of scripture is that life is all about relationship – and when things are said and done, relationship is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

At the conclusion of his famous “Love Chapter” in First Corinthians, the Apostle Paul says that in the end only three things endure. These are faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Friends, on this fourth Sunday of Lent, we continue to explore how the death of Christ saves us – what it saves us from, and what it saves us for. We’re following the outline of the book Savior by Magrey deVega. In all, we’ll look at six theories of atonement, six models, metaphors or analogies, six ways of explaining how we’re saved.

Today we’re focusing on reconciliation, the healing of relationships. I must admit from the start that of all models, this is my favorite. That’s because my theology is thoroughly relational. My thinking about God and creation starts and ends with relationship, and anything that cannot be explained in terms of relationship probably isn’t important.

God created all humans to live in relationship with God and others, but sin separates each of us from God and others. Sin is the state of separation in which we all live. Sins are those acts that create and perpetuate the separation – acts of unkindness, cruelty, hatred and violence.

Sin creates a vast divide between us and God, and others as well. This chasm is so deep and so wide that we cannot cross it on our own. We cannot repair all our broken relationships by our own efforts. We cannot repair all the damage that we’ve done. Only God can fix things, and God is eager to do it.

Here’s an illustration that states it plainly. Sin separates us from God. Christ bridges the divide and reconciles us with God. We’ll return to this illustration momentarily.

In the following scriptures, I invite you to listen for words about reconciliation, the overcoming of alienation, and the offering of forgiveness.

Colossians 1:20-22: Through Jesus, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”

Ephesians 2:1 & 5: “At one time you were like dead persons because of your sins and your offenses against God. … However, God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of our transgressions. He did this because of the great love that he has for us. You are saved by God’s grace!”

“Christ is our peace,” Paul continues. We who once were far away from God have now been brought near by the blood of Christ. We were hostile to God, but God reconciles us through the cross. (Ephesians 2:13-16)

You will notice that nowhere is it said that God was ever our enemy, or that God was the one who created the gulf between us. No, we are the ones who moved away from God. We were enemies of God. It’s our hostility to God that put Jesus on the cross. It’s our hostility to God that is ended at the cross, through the sacrifice of Jesus.

The result is transformation. We who once were enemies of God are now allies of God. Indeed, Paul says, we become ambassadors for God. We become God’s representatives, sent out into the world to carry God’s message of reconciliation to others.

Here’s how Paul works it out in 2 Corinthians chapter 5:

“So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived! All of these new things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.

So we are ambassadors who represent Christ. God is negotiating with you through us. We beg you as Christ’s representatives, ‘Be reconciled to God!’ ” (2 Corinthians 5: 17-20)

Talk about a transformation! Paul maintains that Christ’s death not only changes our relationship with God, it changes us as well. We were created in God’s image, but sin has so distorted and smudged that image that we are poor reflections of God’s love to the world. When we come back to the Lord, Christ’s death renews us in the image of Christ, who is the spitting image of his heavenly Father. (Genesis 1:26-27, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Colossians 1:15)

God does this, Paul says, by causing one who knew no sin to become sin for our sake so that through him we could become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus so identifies with us that he becomes one with us in our sin, and through his identification with us and sacrifice for us, he bridges the gulf between us and God.

Reconciled with God, we are justified before God, returned to right relationship with God – in Paul’s words, made holy in God’s sight, “without blemish and free from accusation.” In fact, we represent God’s righteousness so well that we can be God’s envoys to the rest of the world that has not yet been reconciled with him.

How precisely Christ’s death accomplishes all this, Paul is not crystal clear, and maybe that’s just fine.

Some other models of how Jesus saves us involve a transaction. In the penal substitution model, we deserve to die but Jesus dies in our place. In the ransom model, Jesus’ death ransoms us from our sin.

No exchange is involved in the moral example model that we looked at last week, or the reconciliation model we’re looking at today. This model does not speculate about how Christ’s death accomplishes what it does. It simply states that God’s great power and God’s amazing grace make it happen. That may not be enough for the scholastics and academic theologians, but it’s good enough for me.

Let’s return to that illustration that I showed you earlier. It’s been around since Saint Augustine came up with it in the fourth century, though Augustine probably never drew it on a restaurant or airline napkin, as so many evangelicals are prone to do.

It states the case clearly. Sin separates us from God. Christ bridges the gap. The cross is the means. You can devise all manner of explanations for how Christ does this, but they’re not what’s most important. What’s most important is that Christ does it.

If you think that’s too simple, or not possible, let me ask you this. How does God work in your life? How has transformation occurred in your experience? It’s unlikely that you were just sitting there praying, and God zapped you into a new way of seeing things. Most likely, you saw the power of God working first in others, and then you came to realize that this same power was available to you, too.

In other words, it’s most likely that God transformed you through your relationships with others. That’s how God does most everything, isn’t it? That’s how God saves you, too, through your relationship with God and others. Transformation always occurs through relationship.

The basic Christian assertion is that God is your primary relationship, and you need to love God with every fiber of your being, and once this primary relationship is right, you are liberated to love others as God’s ambassadors to them.

Christianity is about a new way of living that starts with a new relationship with God that is so exciting that it’s contagious – so contagious it’s even more powerful than COVID-19, so contagious we just can’t help from spreading it, and in spreading it we create a new community whose powerful witness change the world.

Let me share something I read just a day or two ago in the daily blog of Richard Rohr, the Benedictine contemplative. Everything is connected, he says.

“What you do to another, you do to yourself. How you love yourself is how you love your neighbor. How you love God is how you love yourself. How you love yourself is how you love God. How you do anything is how you do everything.”

And if our lives are anchored in relationship with God, we are ambassadors of God’s love to all the world.

Let’s own this model of reconciliation by putting ourselves into these assertions.

Once I was alienated from God, but God, who is rich in mercy, has reconciled me and brought me close through the blood of Christ and made me alive together with him (Colossians 1:21, Ephesians 2:2, 4).

This message was presented March 14, 2021, to Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, from Mark 12:28-31.

Savior 3: Jesus Shows You How to Live

Have you ever known someone, either personally or second-hand, and said to yourself, “That’s the kind of person I want to be” like?

We make a habit of recognizing such role models. On All Saints Sunday and Memorial Day, we bring to mind those people whose extraordinary lives helped shape our lives.

Many of these were followers of Jesus who showed us by their example how to live a Christian life. We consider others our heroes for other reasons, too many to list here. What matters is that they matter to us, and we want to be like them. Not that we necessarily want to do what they did, but something about the way they lived inspires us and makes them our mentors and exemplars.

On this third Sunday of Lent, we continue a series of messages looking at some of the ways Jesus saves us. One of those ways is by offering us an example to follow.

1 Peter 2:21 calls us to endure suffering. Why? “Because Christ also suffered, for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

Jesus himself fells us, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He follows that up by saying, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

1 John 3:16 brings it full circle. “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

So there we have it. Jesus loves us enough to suffer for us, and we ought to love others enough to suffer for them. It’s not a happy vision of the Christian life, and the suffering part of it can be emphasized way too much, but the essence of it is clear. As Christians, we are called to a life of sacrifice because Christ sacrificed for us.

What besides suffering is involved in the Christian life? What are the key elements to such a life? These are among the questions we’ll glance at this morning – and only glance at, I assure you, because our focus is elsewhere.

We’re in part three of a six-part series based on a book titled Savior by Magrey deVega. One of the foundations of our faith is the statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3 that “Christ died for our sins.” But what exactly does that mean? How does Christ’s death save us?

In previous weeks we’ve looked at two explanations. Penal substitution theory says that we deserve death for our sins and Christ died in our place. Ransom theory says that sin enslaves us and Christ pays the ransom for our liberation.

Both of these explanations involve a transaction in which Christ offers himself in exchange for us. The example theory involves no transaction. We are saved because Christ died, but his death buys us nothing. Instead, it offers us an example of the right way to live. We don’t have to go to a cross, but we do need to give ourselves for others as Jesus gave himself for us. We are so influenced by knowing him that we want to follow him and be more like him. We are changed by our relationship with him.

This moral example theory stands in deliberate contrast to the substitution and ransom theories, and in fact was created as a reaction against them. Its creator was the 12th-century French philosopher Peter Abelard. Abelard says that whether Jesus dies in our place or to buy our freedom, two wrongs do not make a right; one sin cannot correct another.

After all, if salvation is about God’s forgiveness, what can payment have to do with it? No, Abelard says. Jesus’ death is all about showing us the real, relational, cost of sin, showing us what love looks like and showing us how we ought to live and love.

It all goes back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis, where it’s said that humans are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1.26-27). If God is love, as 1 John 4:7 says, then we are created to be loving like God. But sin makes us unable to be good image bearers who fully reflect God’s love to others. Jesus shows how to live and love and empowers us to follow his example.

Christ took upon himself our human nature, Abelard explains, because we need a spotless exemplar to show us how to be who we are meant to be so that our hearts are set ablaze with God’s love and we live as people who are marked with God’s imprint. Salvation involves becoming more able to love the way God loves and forgive the way God forgives.

So, for Abelard, the cross alone does not make salvation possible. It is simply the clearest revelation of how far God is willing to go to show God’s love for us. In fact, for Abelard, it’s not just the cross that saves us. It’s the very incarnation of Christ, his becoming human for us and everything about his life, from Christmas to Easter and beyond. It’s the whole story of Christ, not just the cross, that’s important.

Abelard’s understanding has some real pluses. It makes it clear that discipleship is about loving God and others, and that it can be cultivated by certain practices, such as prayer, study, and service. Abelard’s theory also refutes the lie perpetuated by other theories that salvation can be achieved only through violence.

But it has some weaknesses as well. It seems a little squishy where it ought to be rock solid. How exactly are we saved by Christ’s example? Can an example ever be enough to save us? Pretty much everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. Why do we continue to do what’s wrong rather than what’s right?

Jesus has been a sterling example of faithfulness to God for 2,000 years, and for all of that time most people have not cared one bit. If Jesus is saving us by example, it’s not working.

We need more than a good example. We need a savior. We are incapable of saving ourselves. We need someone to save us. Jesus does that, and offering a moral example for us is part of that, but it’s not all of it. Of course, none of the theories of atonement that we will look at tell all of the story. We need all of them together to provide a full picture of how we are saved by Jesus’ horrible death on a cross 2,000 years ago.

We Protestants prefer an empty cross, believing that Jesus has conquered death and sin. Roman Catholics prefer a cross with an agonized figure fastened to it, to remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf. It is hard not to be moved by such a sight. The longer I look at it, the more moved I am. But isn’t there more to salvation than me being moved emotionally?

What is there about Jesus that changes my relationship with God? How does it reconcile me with God? And how does it change me?

I am reminded at this point of Junius Dotson, the pastor and national United Methodist leader who died less than two weeks ago of pancreatic cancer.

He is remembered as a visionary leader who had a passion for justice and full inclusion in the church and yet who knew how to work productively with those who represented other ideals. He is praised for his spiritual depth and his great capacity for love, and he is fondly recalled as a loyal friend. Though he struggled for years with burnout and depression, he modeled a path to recovery.

But as good a man as he was, as faithful a follower of Christ as he was, as close to God as he was, I could never have looked at him as a savior, and he would have been horrified by the very thought.

So many of politicians today suffer from a great delusion. They think they are God’s gift to the world. But having a Messiah complex does not make you a Messiah. We’ve got only one savior, and his name is Jesus Christ. He is a great moral example to us, but he is far more than that. His death and resurrection save us. We’ll continue wondering how that works next week.

For now, let’s own what we’ve learned today by putting ourselves into these phrases from 1 Peter 2:21.

For to this I have been called, because Christ suffered for me, leaving me an example, so that I should follow in his steps. Amen.

This message was delivered March 7, 2021, to Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, from John 15:12-17.

Savior – 2: Jesus Sets You Free

Have you ever gotten stuck in the snow or mud, spun your tries endlessly and concluded that you were never going to get out without help?

Have you ever been in debt so deep that you thought you could never get out unless some stranger died and left you a fortune?

Have you ever been enslaved by an addiction to alcohol, drugs, or smoking and knew that nothing short of a full-scale intervention could help you out?

Have you ever known someone who was falsely accused of a crime, spent years in prison and finally was freed when the real offender was identified?

Do you know anyone who is falsely accused of a crime and is still yearning for freedom from the charge?

If any of these things are true, then you can identify with today’s message. Today we are talking about freedom and redemption, or what we commonly call salvation.

We know that salvation comes from Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15:3, we read that “Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures.” It is one of the basic affirmations of our faith. But scripture gives us several ways to understand it.

We call these “theories of atonement” because they help explain what Christ did on the cross to reconcile us with God. None of these ways of understanding it explains it fully, and none alone is universally accepted by the church. That’s why we’re looking at several of them during Lent, as a spiritual discipline to prepare ourselves for what follows.

We’re following the outline of a book titled Savior by Magrey deVega. Last week we looked at the theory called substitutionary atonement. This week we look at ransom.

Jesus himself tells us that he came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

That’s affirmed in the first letter of Timothy: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all … (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

When we think of ransom today, we normally think of money demanded by kidnappers. That’s probably far from our personal experience, but it’s a standard plot in crime fiction and TV dramas.

It’s also a standard form of international extortion. The rogue leaders of Iran are notorious for kidnapping people and holding them hostage, not for money but for political capital. Even now Iran holds at least one Iranian-American as a lever to get what it wants in negotiations over nuclear limitations.

Debtors prisons are not common today, but they have been around for thousands of years. The idea is that if you owe somebody money, they can get you tossed in jail. There you’ll stay until you work off the debt somehow, or someone pays it for you, or you sell yourself into slavery. If it’s suspected that you’re not as poor as you say you are, you might be tortured until you reveal where you’ve hidden your treasure.

Jesus knew all about debtors prisons, as he reveals in parables in Matthew 5 and 18, and Luke 12 (Matthew 5:25-26, Matthew 18:23-24, Luke 12:51-59). In Matthew 25 he encourages his followers to visit those in prison. And of course in his inaugural mission statement in Luke 4, he says that God has anointed him to proclaim release to the captives (Luke 4:18).

Those captives might be debtors, or they might be slaves. When Jesus talks about giving himself as a ransom for many, he’s speaking primarily about liberating those who are enslaved.

And to what are most of us enslaved? Sin, of course. When we speak of liberation from it, we think of sin as something that holds us captive, something that prevents us from living the way God intends us to live. Jesus sets us free from captivity and enables us to live in freedom and joy.

Romans 3:23-24: All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.

John 8: 34 & 36: I assure you that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. … Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you really will be free.”

Galatians 3:22: The Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Galatians 5:1: For freedom Christ has set us free.

And of course Paul, in Romans 8:1-2: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

It’s clear, then, that Christ frees us by paying a ransom for our freedom. Now comes a tricky question. To whom does Christ pay the ransom? This is where the ransom theory can go off the rails and crash and burn. In fact, we need to understand that all the atonement theories are metaphors, idea pictures, images. If you take them literally or legalistically, you destroy them.

For example, some early Christian thinkers figured that if Christ paid a ransom for us for sin, he must have paid it to Satan. We were imprisoned by Satan because of sin, so Christ must have paid Satan to set us free. This notion may make a certain amount of sense, but at the same time it veers into coarse superstition. It devalues the whole idea of God.

Satan may have us bound, as the song says, but God owes Satan nothing for our freedom. God is God, and God alone. Satan is far from God’s equal. God owes Satan nothing! God pays Satan nothing! When we say that Jesus “pays the ransom” or “pays the price” of our freedom, that’s an expression of the cost to him, not the price paid to any other. No actual transaction takes place. No money or favor changes hands.

But, as Paul says in Romans 8:3, Jesus deals with sin personally by condemning it in his flesh. In that passage from Romans 7 and 8 that we read earlier, Paul lays bare the truth of the human condition as he wrestles with himself.

He says: I do not understand myself. I want to do the right thing, but I just can’t do it. My spirit wants to soar, but my body is a slave to sin. Who can rescue me from this servitude? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ my Lord! Christ set me free!

When Christ pays the ransom for us, what occurs on our end is a relational transformation, an act of freedom inspired by God’s love. Christ sets us free indeed!

Truth is that all of us, to one degree or another, are captive to some sort of sin. If we are honest with ourselves, each of us can identify some force, some influence, some thing that is holding us down.

Something is keeping us from living the way God intends us to live. Like the snow or mud that grips the tires of our car, something is keeping our wheels spinning; something is keeping us from gaining traction.

Like the load of debt that hounds us by day and keeps us awake at night, something is cutting us off from the joy of living.

Like the drug or drink or weed that controls our body and rules our mind, something evil occupies the center of our attention.

Like the false accusation that won’t go away, something keeps us imprisoned.

We all need a savior. We all need to be set free.

What holds you captive? What chains do you want to see fall away? From what do you need to be freed? For what do you wish to be freed? Once you are freed, what will you do with your freedom?

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,

that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come, O Israel.

Immanuel is here. You are no longer captive. You are free!

If we claim this truth, it’s time to own it by putting ourselves into these phrases from scripture.

Once I was a slave of sin, but Christ Jesus has paid the ransom price to set me free, and I am a child of God through faith. (John 8:34, Romans 3:23, Galatians 3:26)

Aren’t you glad Jesus lifted you?

This message was delivered February 28, 2021 to Edgerton United Methodist Church. The text was Romans 7:15, 18b, 22-25a, 8:1-2.

Savior – 1 : Jesus Takes Your Place

Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures.

That is one of the basic affirmations of the Christian faith. It’s one of the things “of first importance” in the Gospel that the Apostle Paul proclaims to the church at Corinth and to all succeeding generations of believers.

Christ died for our sins.

The statement has a ring certainty to it, a ring of finality that is reassuring but also a bit puzzling. What exactly does it mean to say that Christ died “for our sins”?

How does this work? What does the death of Christ have to do with anybody’s sins, let alone mine? When I call Jesus “savior,” what am I trying to say? What is Jesus saving me from? What is he saving me for? How does his death actually save me from or for anything?

Those are some of the questions we will look at over the next six weeks, during the season of Lent. We explore these questions as a Lenten discipline, a way of preparing ourselves for the joy of Easter.

It’s one thing to proclaim, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” But even a child at some point will ask, “Why did he die?” Cross and empty tomb are firmly linked. Good Friday means nothing without Easter. Easter means nothing without Good Friday. To understand one, we have to understand the other.

So before we proclaim “Christ is risen!” we have to ask, “Why did he die?” We won’t be looking at the historical factors that led Jesus to the cross. Instead, we’ll look at the varied theological explanations that believers have proposed over the ages. We have varied theological explanations because scripture is not definitively clear here. Scripture offers not one but several explanations for how Christ’s death saves us.

The technical name for this kind of theology is soteriology. The name comes from two Greek words: sotēria, meaning salvation; and logos meaning study or word. I want to emphasize that New Testament soteriology offers several differing explanations for how the death of Jesus saves us.

Some faith traditions say there is only one way to understand this question, and of course that is their way. This stance involves a grievous misunderstanding of scripture. As a matter of fact, scripture offers several ways to understand what’s going on when we say, “Christ died for my sins.” We call them theories of atonement, explanations for how Christ’s death saves us from sin and reconciles us to God.

Throughout this series of messages, we’ll be following the outline of two books: primarily Savior by Magrey deVega, but also Dying to Live by James Harnish. They are the current and former pastors, respectively, of Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida.

The first theory of atonement that we are going to look at is the one that’s especially popular in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. It is called substitutionary atonement.

The idea is that Christ literally died in my place. I deserve death because of my sin, but God accepts Jesus as a substitute. Jesus died so that I would not have to die. Jesus suffered punishment for my wrongdoing.

You can see hints of this explanation throughout the New Testament. Today and on following Sundays, you’ll find some of these scriptural citations on the handout that came with your Weekly Update.

Galatians 3:13: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

2 Corinthians 5:21: For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1 Peter 2:24: He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

That quotation hearkens back to Isaiah 53:5, one of the passages where the prophet talks about a Suffering Servant who suffers for all: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

Perhaps the clearest versions of this theory come in narrative form, most notably in the story of Barabbas. He was the leader of a failed insurrection against Rome, and he was scheduled to die that day. Pilate, the Roman governor, offered the crowd a choice: “Shall I release Barabbas, or Jesus called Messiah?” (Matthew 27:17 and parallels)

The crowd yelled for Barabbas, so he was released from custody. The cross that Jesus carried had Barabbas’ name on it. Similarly, the cross of Jesus had our names on it. We deserve to die for our sins, for, as Paul says in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”

Eleventh century theologian Anselm of Canterbury explains it this way. We are sinners. Sin is a violation of God’s intention for us, God’s order, God’s law. Such violations incur a deep debt to our holy God. The debt is so deep that only our death can erase it. Christ pays the debt, thus freeing us from sin and death.

It’s a powerful argument that has moved many over the centuries. But it has some powerful holes in it. Topmost is fairness. Jesus is innocent of any wrongdoing. How can God punish him for acts that other people have committed? Where is the justice in that? Even if Jesus agrees with this and offers himself as a sacrifice for the sins of others, how can any form of substitution, forced or voluntary, be just?

Let’s go back to Romans 6:23 and read the full citation: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It may appear to be a free gift to us, but it represents a ton of suffering for Jesus.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” or – more to the point here – “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Why should God expect us to forgive anyone anything when God is so unforgiving? Why should we be forgiving if God requires blood – especially the blood of God’s own Son?

I cannot tell you how many awful sermons I have heard that go like this: “Would you offer your son as a substitute for sinners? I wouldn’t either. But God did! How much God must love us!”

On the internet you can find the French film titled “The Bridge” and similar accounts. They’re all based on an old story about a railroad switchman who faces a terrible choice. A fast-approaching passenger train is carrying hundreds of people. The switchman must switch the train to another track so it can safely continue on its way. But to his horror he sees that his young son is walking on that very track. If he doesn’t divert the train, it will crash and everyone on board will die. If he does divert the train, his son will die. What must he do?

This is presented as the dilemma God faces. God must sacrifice his Son to save passengers on the train. It makes for some powerful cinema, but theologically it’s thoroughly bogus. The dilemma is full of false equivalences, things that just don’t add up, logically or scripturally.

I have similar complaints against the C.S. Lewis tale The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The idea is that a “deep magic” from the past demands that the Lion Aslan must die to save young Edmund from his sins. But after the White Witch kills Aslan, an even “deeper magic” restores him to life. I’m sorry, there’s entirely too much talk of magic here to suit me.

Both the railroad story and the Aslan story rely on the idea that God is forced by circumstance or some basic law of the universe to sacrifice Jesus. This is utter nonsense. God is the ruler of the universe. There is no “higher law” or “deeper magic” than God. There is no higher force than God. God is not “forced” to do anything.

Whether God offers the Son or the Son offers himself as a substitute, it is a totally voluntary act. God is under no compulsion, not even some imaginary compulsion to satisfy God’s honor or an imaginary rule of justice that actually perverts justice.

Then there’s the whole legalistic flair of this theory. One illustration goes like this: The judge finds the defendant guilty and worthy of the death penalty. Then the judge steps down from his bench and says, “I will take the punishment for this defendant.” That sounds noble, but where’s the justice in that?

And where precisely do we get the idea that our sins require our death? Sure, Romans 6:23 says “the wages of sin is death.” Paul makes that statement in the midst of a complicated argument about the differences between law and grace. He may be arguing that following the law leads you to death but following Jesus leads to life eternal.

In coming weeks we’ll look at other explanations of Christ’s death that have similar problems as this one. That is, they rely on courtroom metaphors. That should not be too surprising, because some key theologians, including John Calvin, also were trained as lawyers. Courtroom analogies came natural to them. That doesn’t make them true.

Substitutionary atonement can be expressed in some fairly sophisticated ways, but it is most effective when it’s expressed crudely. Let me show you. This little ball represents the world. This hammer represents God’s wrath. God wants to smash you because of your sin. But – bang! – Jesus jumps between you and God to save you! That’s substitutionary atonement at its most crude and basic. And at its most crude and basic, it is very problematic for anyone who believes in a loving and just God.

At its most sublime however, remember what Jesus said to his disciples on the night before he died: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

A quick review of substitutionary atonement: Sin is a violation of God’s law. We deserve punishment. Jesus dies in our place.

Now let’s own it, by repeating 1 Peter 2.24, putting ourselves into it.

Jesus bore my sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sin, I might live for righteousness. By his wounds I have been healed.

That’s gospel. Jesus died for my sins, so that I might live for righteousness.

Amen.

This message was delivered February 21, 2021, the first Sunday of Lent, to Edgerton United Methodist Church, from 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.