Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09

Transcript

Welcome to the Doctrine of Salvation. This is Module 9, the Effects of Jesus' Death and Atonement. Isn't it
amazing that one day in the history of the world has affected not only the world, but our thinking about the
world, and our thinking about the divine world, so much. So we're going to spend an entire module on this great
question that has consumed our minds for years, and it has every right to. So let's do it together.
Number 1: The meaning of Jesus' suffering and death -- and here we go again, in the sense my burden in this
entire course is to keep moving from left to right without undoing the story from the other direction. So this is
just an appeal, my first proposition. The meaning of Jesus' suffering and death must be determined "according
to the Scriptures -- First Corinthians 15 -- matching the substance of the biblical story described from left to
right. If I can't find it over here, then I'm not going to say it over here. Is that fair enough?
So we have seen this before, but that idea of Jesus paying, I think, is -- well, it's very hymnic, right, it's in a lot of
our hymns and things like that. It's never in the Bible. It never says -- I looked this up once, and it's not hard to
do if you want to try it, just type in the word "pay" or "paid," and let your Bible program search for it. You'll
never see any reference to Jesus about paying for anything. So that's a simple way of searching, maybe unfair
to some degree. But the idea of purchasing or buying has a very transactional, mechanical feel to it, and the last
thing you'd ever want to do for a friend is pay to get his friendship. I'm not interested in that kind of friendship.
So the question is, would God pay, or need payment for, shall we call, the greatest relationship possible? It does
make me nervous that we all have allowed it to turn into a payment kind of language. I understand it's, like I
say, hymnic, and even romantic. The question for our study is, is it biblical?
I've said this, too, before, that my theory is that we think in terms of payment at the end, and then, well, we go
back and say, that's what sacrifices thus must have been. And we think of the sense of temporariness, and so
then we stretch that back across to the right and say, what Old Testament did temporarily, New Testament does
permanently. Then we realize, I hope we realize, wait a second, we just started with a presupposition that ran
that whole story without really any biblical merit.
Number 2: Faithful New Testament translations -- this is interesting, now, again, "trinity" is not in your Bible,
but it's true, as we say. You can have words that we create theologically that are not in the Bible. But did you
know "atonement" is one of them? Faithful New Testament translations avoid the word "atonement." It is an
Old Testament word, clearly, "kaphar," but it's not in the New Testament at all, because there is no Greek
equivalent for the Hebrew term, "kaphar." So you're never going to hear the word "atonement" in the New
Testament, even though, again, we make it part of our theology. Where we do find it once is in the Old King
James, so if you grew up in the King James, you memorized it this way: "Through whom, or by whom, we have
now received the atonement." The problem is, again, the King James translators did a great job in 1611,
translating for King James English at that time. But if you go even to the new King James version, it changes from
the word "atonement" to "reconciliation," and they did that fairly, because the word "katallage," every time it's
used in the New Testament, katallage, and it just means re-establishment of an interrupted, broken relationship,
it is used always in the terms of reconciliation. So the idea of atonement is not even in that word. And fair
enough, I think a lot of times what we'll do is, we'll say "atonement," that comes from the English word, at one
meant thus it's a reconciliation -- wait a second, again, we're taking an English word and then writing theology
based on the meaning of an English word, which you can't do. You have to go by the Scripture and the original

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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language to do any kind of theological work like that. So we're going to come back upon this verse at the end,
and you'll see how that fits into New Testament doctrine, not about atonement, but about reconciliation.
Proposition 3: We learned in the Old Testament -- we've just, again, been through this, but I want to make sure
we see where we're going -- that atonement ritually cleansed a righteous person drawing near to sacred space.
Big sentence, a lot of meaning, but that's the history of it. All I'm asking for is to be fair to the story. Jesus'
atonement must do the same.
So if we were a member of the story, if we were already righteous, number one, we love Yahweh, then we want
to go into sacred space, we would clean up, number two. So this is the atonement portion, the second of two
steps in a process of salvation, this whole picture would be their model of salvation. Again, Old Testament, we
have not looked at all these texts before us, I can show you four, how common this conversation of approaching
went. When you talk about atonement in that period, or holiness, sanctification is the term to be holy, which is
a ritual term, not a behavioral term. Again, I don't get into this here in our discussion too much, but the whole
doctrine of sanctification, I find, is turned into this idea of being a better person, or acting better over time. It
can sometimes be slipping into that model of thought. The Bible knows nothing of sanctification being anything
other than a ritual cleansing on the way -- this is sanctification right here. You're moving into sacred space, and
you're getting cleaned. So to be consistent theologically, never use sanctification outside of the biblical meaning
of ritual sanctification.
But notice how it's used in the Old Testament, and I'm just going to highlight where this approaching idea comes
in. To be clean means I can come near, I can approach. I'm consecrated -- same word as cleansing -- and I came
near. Purify themselves, offer the Lord -- I make my offering after I get purified. So again, the point is, we want
to think biblically in terms of how Jesus' offering of himself will be a means of entry into his sacred space.
You know, Dr. Mike said this a lot, that he's just connecting dots; he's not trying to create new things, of course,
horrors that we'd ever try to be new or unique. I was just reading the other day this -- and again, it's in the
middle of the book, of a very long book -- so here would be someone, John Goldingay, who has said what I'm
going to say. Everything that I'm going to say in the next 20 minutes, he said right here, and he said this 15 years
ago. So just one of those dots, again, that we're all connecting. He said this, "One significance of sacrifices in the
First" -- or Old -- "Testament is that they were God-given means of cleansing" people from stain, or the idea of
chattah -- the New Testament takes up that reality in dying. Jesus was acting on God's behalf by providing a
means of cleansing in the form of a metaphorical sacrifice where we could be cleansed. He said it, all there. So
I'm just taking that dot that John Goldingay has said already, and presenting it again as part of a story.
Well, number 4: While it is common to speak of a concept of "getting across," you've seen tracks like this, getting
across a divide when defining the idea of atonement, I'd recommend a better word picture is thinking of getting
in. So just think visually for a moment, the idea of hell, or actually we're here and hell's in the middle, and we
want to get over there to heaven, or God. So the concept of getting across, I grew up with this, and of course
what we put in the place of that would be the cross so we can go across the cross, and thus become, well, saved.
I'd recommend that, again, that whole concept, or that picture is not how the Old Testament will work. Think
atonement, just again, how do we get to the word "in?" Well, we are ritually unclean, we touched a carcass, we
have a discharge, and we want to go to sacred space. If we didn't want to go, by the way, we wouldn't have to

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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worry about this whole thing, we'd just stay on the farm, right, after we touched the carcass. But if I want to go
see God, I'm going to go to him -- well, I can't. I'm stuck. I need to get clean. So I sacrifice, I atone, I get cleaned
up, and then I -- there it is, I get in. So change out the getting across story for the getting in story, and I think the
Bible will make a lot of sense as you read, especially in the New Testament about Jesus' death. So first you get
right, then you get in. There's your New Testament Doctrine of Salvation.
Number 5: Many New Testament passages, then, and really, what I'm just going to do is just drop these in, just
say, look at this. Look at this, it's not a hard doctrine, but now that you have a concept visually of where to put
these passages, I think they'll make sense. They connect Jesus' death to the privilege of "drawing near" to God,
identifying that second step in our doctrine of salvation. So all I'm going to do here is just show you the texts.
And notice we equate this to salvation in Hebrews 4, but it's not talking salvation. Hebrews is written to people
who already believe. So why would he be talking about this as though this is a good thing or a great thing, which
it is, to people who are already saved? Because they need this, they need to come in. How do I get in, especially
if I live outside of Jerusalem, and I have no hope of getting to the temple. Well, guess who did it? Jesus does this
now for me. Jesus is taking the place of that sacrifice right there. I don't just sneak my way into the throne room,
I come boldly, because Jesus is my sacrifice that I don't have otherwise.
That he might bring us to God -- Ephesians brought near -- notice the drawing close language again by the blood
of Christ -- notice the recipients -- very carefully, again, what Paul's doing, he's writing to Gentiles most
commonly, who don't have access to a temple. They don't have access to atonement. That's beautiful language
to a Gentile who is a Christian, because now they can come near -- this is all metaphorical language, of course -
- come near God through the blood of Christ. Again, that boldness to enter the holy of holies.
Number 6: When Jesus is said to "die for our sins," then -- again, a very common question I get -- well, wait a
second, Ron, Jesus died for my sins. And I start naming all the sins I've done that are going to send me to hell if
I don't get them atoned or forgiven. I'm going to recommend in Module 11, two modules from now, there's a
whole string of presuppositions that goes into that conversation that we need to be fair about with our
audience. If I'm going to tell someone that their sins take them to hell, I need to explain logically, well, biblically,
how did I come to that view? And once I put them on the screen, you're going to realize, wow, we are thinking
down a path that really the Bible never goes down when it comes to the problem to be solved. Again, it's not
sin that's unforgiven.
So let's talk about this. What does it mean to have Jesus die for our sins, then? Well, basically, it means it's
referring to what Jesus did to get me to draw near. That whole picture again of Jesus being the sacrifice is the
means by which I have that second step. So watch again how the text works. God proves his love for us, and
that while we're still sinners. Christ died for us -- and again, notice he's talking to Gentiles there in Rome, a
classic Old Testament term of a sinner is a Gentile, so I think he's actually using the editorial "we" -- while we --
and there's a long conversation I could have here about defending the editorial "we" use of Paul in his letters, a
lot of studies been done on that where Paul will put himself in the position of a Gentile. He's an apostle to the
Gentiles, and he'll talk as a Gentile for their sake. And I think he's doing this here with Romans 5:8. "I'm a Gentile
who has no access to the temple, oh yes I do, Jesus died for us." Again, what sins is he dying for? It's those sins
of touching the carcass and all those things that keep me ritually unpure. So you can't just grab a word like this

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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-- there is that English word, remember, in, what was it, Module 5, I believe, we talked about the definition of
sin is a different word in English than Hebrew and Greek. We have to be careful that we're not just throwing, or
putting into that word anything we want. We could do this again and a again, but here's another: "Who bore
our sins in his own body on the tree," and we are -- again, notice we don't go to heaven because of this, we get
healed. There's another metaphorical use. "Clean" is a synonym for this in the New Testament. By him we are
healed, and we can answer into God's holy space.
We have redemption through his blood -- notice again who he is writing to; these are Gentile believers in the
cities of heavily Gentile areas. I think what's happening here is, this word "redemption" is not a payment word,
it means "deliverance." And Israel had in Genesis or Exodus 13 and 14 in that passage, several times it talks
about the redemption out of Egypt. And the idea of Israel not being paid to get out of Egypt, of course, they
were redeemed or saved by Moses and God. So Jews have a great story of redemption that they love to recall
and replay. Does a Gentile have a story of redemption? Now he does. He is my means of redemption, and he is
my means of access. Not only here, but even if I want to put myself midrashically into the story of the sacrifice
of, or the story of the Exodus, now I have my means.
Well, moving right along -- the "sanctification" language that we often hear can be very specific and heavy on
the details. So I'm going to show you some verses that, again, if you're quick with them, you may misuse them
into a storyline that the Bible never intended. But generally speaking, sanctification language is all about ritual
purity. The New Testament writer, when he's talking sanctification, is simply showing how Jesus makes us holy
or ritually clean, which is such an important idea to that world. "And you, who were once alienated, and enemies
in your mind" -- there's the Gentile, right? They are the bad guys. Paul wouldn't put himself in that "you" there.
This is Gentile language. "Yet now, he, Jesus, has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present
you, Gentile no, holy, blameless, and above reproach." You get to go through this process and become someone
in God's mind that is holy and blameless. Again, those are ritualistic terms.
"To the church of God which is in a Gentile area" -- again, notice Corinth, that's probably Gentiles that are getting
most of his thoughts here, "who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy ones." Remember, Jews are holy
ones, Gentiles are unholy ones, generally. So how do you get to be a holy person? In this story, you're called --
God says, I'm going to take you, Gentile, and turn you into a holy one. It's going to be my call on this, because,
again, this is all up to God here and how he does it, and of course he happens to work through Jesus to do it.
"To all who are in Rome," Gentiles mainly, "beloved of God, you're called," you're not a holy one by nature, you
have to be asked by God, as it were to be included in this group. And that's all, of course, done through Jesus.
"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, because again, as Ephesian Gentiles, you are called -- you
know, the blind ones; remember Philo calling Gentiles "blind"? "That now what is the hope of his calling" -- same
idea, God calling a Gentile to be something he wasn't. And notice what you get -- again, what a lot of people will
say to this conversation, I'm hearing when I've talked about it is, "Well, this isn't big enough. Jesus making us
ritually pure isn't big enough." Well, wait, you're not understanding the import of ritual purity in the days of the
early church, and again, we're getting there with Cornelius and Peter. If I don't get ritually cleansed, I don't get
resurrected, because that means I'm not into the family, and the family has the inheritance, and the inheritance
is resurrection. So there's a whole line of thinking here that starts with ritual purity and ends with resurrection,

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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and I'm going to have to have Jesus to get there, so goes the story of the New Testament. So once I'm called to
be holy, now I get the inheritance of the holy ones, and that's quite a privilege that these Ephesians are starting
to learn about.
So you get this kind of language, the holy ones and the faithful ones. My guess would be, this would be Jews --
they always think of themselves as the holy ones, and the ones who are simply included in there because they're
being [INAUDIBLE] to Jesus. Think of the difference here, and this is both Colossians and Ephesians, that one
gets to be called "holy" because that's just their culture. The other side, it's, like, all they have to give. All they
have, I'm a Gentile, is to give my loyalty to Jesus -- it's all I got. And Paul says that's exactly who I'm talking to.
As long as you're faithful to Jesus, you are part of this family that God is putting together.
Now here's where it gets one verse, for example, in Romans 3 is -- well, it's not confusing, it's just texturally
careful. "Whom God, Jesus, set forth as a" -- and I'm going to leave it Greek because it's been translated in
various ways, "as a hilasterion by his blood." Well, what in the world is a hilasterion? This is a fun verse, because
he's trying to think -- well, in fact, let's read it. "Through loyalty, to demonstrate his" -- God's -- "propriety," the
word is righteousness, meaning he's just right, he's showing how right he's been, how, "because in his
forbearance" -- think about the story of the Old Testament, "God had forgiven the sins that were previously
committed. God is all about forgiving the sins of a David, Josiah, Moses and Abraham -- anyone who's in
covenant, God has been forgiving sins since the beginning of the story. Well now, I'm a Gentile here in the story,
and I'm asking, well, where's my forgiveness? How come they got to have a ritual purification system that would
let them have access to God? Forgiveness of sins usually -- again, we're talking about the kinds of sins that you
would go through every day, touching the carcass and stuff. Well, where is mine? How come I can't have it? And
Paul's point is, well, to demonstrate God's own -- or God demonstrates his own propriety by giving you,
hilasterion, you Roman Gentiles. What is a hilasterion? It's the mercy place. It's the very word in the Septuagint
translated holy of holies, the holy place, the lid on the Ark of the Covenant. It's called the hilasterion, in Greek.
So it's a midrashic, fun, theologically deep idea that Jesus -- I'm, again, a Swede, Jesus is my Ark lid -- well, again,
when's the last time I thought of that? You know, shooting hoops. But the idea is, if I want to get in and be
cleansed and be on good terms with God, I need a holy place, and Jesus is that for me. So that's, again, a little
deep, but that's how Paul thought for these Roman Gentiles. Again, the language can be confusing, or at least
convoluted, but Titus -- same idea, that he might deliver us -- notice that's paired with "purify for himself" -- this
is still purification language. And much the same with Hebrews again, that he entered into the holy place
bringing eternal deliverance. It's not, again, a payment word, it's just one of those concepts that match the story
of atonement.
You can do this all through your New Testament. What we're doing with this module is, we're just saying, folks,
when you get to Jesus and his effect of death, it's everywhere, but put it into its proper context, and I think it'll
make good sense. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law" -- remember what that was, we'll talk
about it in a minute -- the curse of the law is that if I'm a Gentile, I can't go into the tabernacle. The curse I'm
under does not allow me to go in. While Christ became a curse for me, notice how that ends -- "so that he
blessing of Abraham could come upon the Gentile." This line right here proves what the curse was. The curse
said I can't be in the family. Oh, yes I can, because of what Jesus has done.

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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I'm not going to take the time to explain this, but here's the argument from Acts, oh, about 10 through 15 or so,
takes a big chunk of Acts, says, how in the world can I go to a Gentile if I'm a Jew, and offer him salvation? He
can't go in the temple, and yet, oh yes he can. So the story of how God has given to us, the Jews, the same gift
that we have now, that he is giving to them. And notice what you get, repentance, or change of situation to
resurrection. Now Gentiles get to resurrect, be part of the resurrected family because they're part of the family
that is purified. So, a lot going on there, packed into very few words, which Paul is good at doing, right?
We talked about that curse of the law. Think again of how they thought of it. I am part of the blessed family.
The Gentile is part of the cursed family. Part of the story, again, of what God is doing through Jesus, is that he's
putting together these two families, the blessed and the cursed family come together into one. And so you'll
have numerous passages of the New Testament come right out and say the reason that Jesus died, Caiaphas
unknowingly prophesied that Jesus would die. Here's what he did in that death; he brings two families together
-- so it's all part of, again, the same story line.
A "new man from the two, reconcile them both to God in one body." You couldn't get more clear than that. And
here is that reconciliation verse that we started with in Romans 5. This isn't atonement, this is getting together
as one family, when you used to be two. Again, I said this, but Christianity is the first religion in the history of
the world that is not ancestral in nature. And even a secular historian would tell you that. This is big news to
that world.
"God forbid that I should boast except in the cross" -- why? The cross is what says circumcision nor
uncircumcision doesn't mean anything more." See how he's connecting the death of Jesus to combining into a
new family, a new creation. That's talking about the new family, not the persons themselves, but the family that
has been created.
Well, how you are doing? That's a lot of text there. I'd recommend taking your own time with your own
Scripture, and going through and just reading the story now of Paul, talking about the death of Christ with that
"in" picture in mind, access, approach, boldness, those kind of words. I think it'll make good sense to you. I don't
want to spend, for time, a lot of discussion on this question, but I want to give you my opinion. Was Jesus's
sacrifice substitutionary? Did it pay a payment? Well, think "story," and I think the answer will be pretty obvious.
Since both of these ideas were foreign to Old Testament descriptions of atonement, the answer is, no. There is
no reason to think as Jesus' death as substitutionary. If you do -- here's my argument -- what is substituting for
what? Sometimes the picture of the Passover, this is argued in books upon books that I read, that the Old
Testament does have a substitutionary flavor to sacrifice, and they'll mention Passover as one of them, that the
lamb substituted for the death of the first born. In application, I think you could say, sure. But was it really
substituting? In other words, I think it's in Charlton Heston's Ten Commandments movie; it's been a long time
since I've seen it, but isn't there a scene where one of the Egyptians puts blood on his lintel in the chance that
it'll save his son? The story goes, if you read it again in Exodus 12 and 13, that the destroyer saw the blood, and
he knew which home to go in or not, and kill the first born. What it doesn't say -- think carefully now, I'm just
trying to be picky -- it doesn't say that the angel was mechanical about this, saying, "I don't care if it's a Yahwist
or not. If I see blood, that's my substitute sign, I'm going to move on." There's a difference between saying that
something substitutes versus that it's a sign for something. Remember what a substitute is. A umpire says, "I

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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want a batter in the batter's box, I don't care who it is. I want a batter." That's a substitute -- pinch hitter. God
doesn't say, "I don't care who dies, I just want death;" that's what a substitute model would be saying. It's God
saying, "I need death. Somebody get me something to kill. I don't care if it's" -- watch how we do this, it's scary
to me -- "I don't care if it's Ron that dies or Jesus that dies. I need someone to die." If that's what we're saying
about substitution, I think we all have to say, whoa, that's going down a path that we don't want to go down.
So the other one that's often brought up is substitution with Abraham and his son, and the goat that is
substituted for the son. I agree that the goat substitutes for the son, but what is the son substituting for? That's
the sacrifice; Abraham killing his son as a sacrifice, there's no substitution there. The goat substituting for the
son, yes. But notice, you can't take the goat illustration and pass that through the entire New Testament without
-- in fact, the New Testament never mentions, never once mentions, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac having to do
with Jesus at all. So they knew the substitute idea actually is very unbiblical, the idea that God doesn't care who
dies, he just wants someone to die -- that would just not be how the Bible works. And I would recommend,
again, to our answer, no, don't think -- because the original people doing the sacrifice did not think in
substitutionary terms. That's not what they were doing.
Well, getting close to the end. Modern Jews are quick to note -- this is interesting, remember how I have my
Jewish friends, and we sit over coffee and talk? They've been taught this since their days in Sabbath school, that
the Messiah, Jesus, well, he's not the Messiah to them, but they'll say this; when Jesus was killed, he was, think
about it, he was beaten. You can't kill a human, in biblical terms. He didn't die at the temple. He died outside in
a pagan graveyard, basically. So there's all sorts of reasons a Jew would say, Jesus' death doesn't count as a
sacrifice. It just doesn't match when you put all the pieces together. I'm responding to that here. Modern Jews
are quick to note that Jesus was killed in a way which did not accord with sacrifice. Our Christian answer is that
word, midrash. Again, the idea of midrash is to go searching and have -- I almost want to say "fun" with the text
in a good sense -- I love the text so dearly, I love the story so dearly, that I have the freedom, the right, yea, the
privilege to go back into the story and find connections of words and phrases and ideas, even syllables, and see
connections that way. And so here's what they do. Here's what Hebrews does. Hebrews beats us to the punch
when it comes to Jesus dying in a non-biblical model for sacrifice. "Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify
the people" -- I think beyond jut the Jew, but all people -- "with his own blood, suffered outside the gate." Think
about it. And again, he's catching the Jew in his own thinking here. If you think about it, he didn't die at the
tabernacle or the temple, he died outside the gate -- well, what do we do with that? Is our doctrine of Jesus'
death not going to work? No. You simply go on to the next midrashic thought -- well, let's skip the holy place
and, "Go outside the gate. Let's just meet outside the gate and bear his reproach." He died in a pagan graveyard,
let's go out to the graveyard and meet him there. So it's a, okay, understandable issue that Jesus didn't die as a
sacrifice should have died, and yet it's okay with the writer of Hebrews, because you can work around that.
Well, I close with this. If I'm again in Rome, this would have been my concern. I believe in Jesus, the Jewish
Messiah. I want to join the story that he has been telling, and be right with Yahweh by living through his son, by
loving his son, because Yahweh does, by obeying his son, because God has given him authority over the entire
world. In other words, I'm a Christian now, right? My first question will be, well, what do I do next August when
I can't get down to the temple on my visit down to the temple? And then there's that barricade, I can't even get

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 Doctrine of Salvation – Session 09
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through it because I'm a Gentile. Here it is: The preaching of Jesus' death meant the concern that Gentile
converts necessarily had to meet their ritual cleansing, it offered them -- here is the verse that we think up; a
"logical means of worship," absent the temple. "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercy of God, that
you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, which is your [INAUDIBLE]; it can be thought as
logical of spiritual, means what normally would be physical, now you get to do it spiritually from a thousand
miles away.
Well, that's our discussion on the effects of the death of Jesus. Now we're going to move into really the Book of
Acts and [INAUDIBLE] next time, and talk about Jew-Gentile reconciliation, because of the death of Jesus.

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