Study of the Confessions, Study 6: The Centrality of the Cross

One of the greatest hymns of the church is “Lift High the Cross.” Its greatness lies in its ability to focus the worshipers’ attention on the crux of Christology: the cross of Jesus Christ. The words highlight the centrality of the cross, the real substance of the gospel: “For Thy blest Cross which doth for all atone, Creation’s praises rise before Thy throne. Lift high the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim, Till all the world adore His sacred name.”

The earth and the other planets orbit around the sun, thus making the sun the center of their orbits. In the same pattern, all aspects of Christian theology orbit around Christology, the doctrine of the person of Christ. Christology is the touchstone of theology because how one regards the person of Christ determines every other facet of theology. Contemporary theologian I. Howard Marshall rightly claims, “By their Christologies ye shall know them.”1

Crisis of Christology

In an age of linguistic ambiguity, we can no longer safely assume that when a thousand people use the word “Christ” they all mean the same person. It has now become necessary to define the meaning of “Christ” in much the same way the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) found it necessary to define the content of the word “Christ” by writing the Nicene Creed.

Contrary to the spirit of the Nicene Council which adopted a unified, orthodox view of the person of Christ, the spirit of our age seems to favor the dictum of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600): “There is in the universe neither center nor circumference.” The result is a plethora of Christologies.

This theological pluralism is exalted as the virtue of diversity: each one is free to choose any planet around which one wishes to orbit and continue to call oneself “Christian.”

This theological confusion has created the crisis of Christology, requiring those who profess faith in Jesus Christ to articulate in a fresh way the doctrine of the person of Christ.

Sources of Competition

In our day and time there are several reigning paradigms that compete with biblical Christology. These paradigms are popular worldviews that misrepresent or depart from Scriptural teachings, exaggerating the optimism about human nature and trivializing the person of Jesus Christ. Luther strongly rejected this trivialization of God, “Man is not ‘able by nature to want God to be God;’ indeed, he wants himself to be God and he does not want God to be God.”2

These competing paradigms seek the allegiance and loyalty of professing Christians, recruiting them to ignore the sun and to orbit around other competing planets. These competing ideologies include universalism, relativism, reductionism, experientialism and humanism.

(1) Universalism

This ideology promotes the concept that salvation is available to and effective for all regardless of faith in Christ.3 All roads lead to Rome and all religions lead to heaven. Since Christ died for all, all shall be saved regardless of the absence or presence of saving faith. All people being entitled to salvation, diversity and inclusivity are enshrined as dogmas.

(2) Relativism

This worldview gives Jesus Christ some respect, but when other sources of authority, such as the dominant cultural trends, the scientific community, and the individual’s rights and entitlements, clamor for our attention, our views of Jesus Christ must be revised to accommodate these other sources of authority.

(3) Reductionism

This is a truncated view of Jesus Christ which accepts Christ as Savior but not as Lord. An example is liberal theology which “places a high premium on personal autonomy and freedom. It is characterized by an appeal to interior norms, such as conscience and religious experience. It is disposed to view Jesus as a moral ideal or symbol of divine love instead of a sin-bearer and mediator. It sees the value of religion mainly in its ethical and social fruits.”4

(4) Experientialism

Human experience, instead of divine revelation in Christ and Scripture, is the final authority. Human experience, whether it is spiritual, moral or mystical, determines the kind of Christ who commands human attention and allegiance. Christ therefore becomes a religion textbook that is subject to revision at all times.

(5) Humanism

Christ is not seen as a personal Savior who lived in a particular time and place and at a particular moment in history accomplished a particular work of salvation on the cross. Instead Christ is a “salvation principle;” salvation is not a crisis of faith but a process of personal development. “The Bible tends to be treated as a text book on religious and moral evolution.”5 The orientation of humanism is not so much theological as psychological-anthropological.

The Core of the Gospel Message

The above worldviews all compete for the title “Gospel”; they all claim to be the good news for humankind. How does one discern which gospel message is truly “the good news?”

The litmus test for the Gospel message lies in the doctrine of atonement. The meaning of the cross is “the pivotal doctrine in Christian theology.”6 To eliminate the atonement, the cross, is to erase the Gospel message altogether. The apostle Paul sums up the Gospel message in a nutshell, “…we preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23). He also writes these clear teachings about the heart of the Gospel message, “But now a righteousness from God… comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus…God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:21-25).

The New Testament teachings on Christ and his cross contrast with liberal theology. Liberal theology teaches that salvation, properly speaking, does not lie in the cross of Christ but in his person and his exemplary life. It also teaches that the purpose of the incarnation is the deification of man, the imparting of Christ’s divine nature to humankind. Christ came as a human being in order to be a transforming leaven, and the resulting transformation constitutes redemption.

Indeed, Marshall is correct in his claim, “By their Christologies ye shall know them.” In the same vein, one can also claim, “By their doctrine of Atonement ye shall know them.” Echoing this, James Denney regards the Atonement, not the Incarnation, as the “center of gravity” in the New Testament.7

The Meaning of the Cross

Consistent with the New Testament emphasis on the atonement, the catechisms and confessions assign the “center of gravity” to the cross. Through his cross and resurrection, Christ the Victim emerges as Christ the Victor, winning victory over sin, death and the devil. Christ was given as a ransom price to the prince of darkness in exchange for the souls who are barred from fellowship with God (1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Corinthians 1:17; Hebrews 2:14).

This exchange transaction is the pivotal transaction which purchased salvation for humankind. The catechisms and confessions teach several characteristics of this historic transaction of exchange:

(1) Eternal Exchange

The transaction that took place on the cross was a final exchange, a once-and-for-all transaction. God intends the new covenant to be final, permanent and eternal. There is no other transaction necessary to restore humans into fellowship with God.8 “Christ died for sins once for all, and the man who believes in Christ and His death has his relation to God once for all determined not by sin but by the Atonement.”9 The one historic sacrifice of Christ made on the cross is good for all people at all time (Hebrews 9:12, 13:20).10

(2) Exclusive Exchange

Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The exchange transaction he accomplished on the cross is the only transaction capable of securing for us the forgiveness of sins. No other exchange is effective for the same purpose. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). God is willing to turn away his wrath (propitiation) and annul our guilt (expiation) solely on account of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.11

(3) Exact Exchange

Exact Price

The death of Jesus Christ, signified by his blood, constitutes the exact price paid as penalty for our sin. It is not so much the presentation of an exemplary life, but the termination of life, the infliction of death that atones by paying the exact price.12 This explains why Jesus said, “It is finished” as he was breathing his last breath on the cross.

Costly Exchange

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ represents the death of the innocent for the sake of the guilty. “The salvation which Christ effects is not thought of as brought about with effortless ease. On the contrary, it is purchased at great cost, at the price of His blood.”13 For this reason, to regard Jesus Christ as a mere moral example is hopelessly inadequate because it trivializes the tremendous cost of the exchange.

(4) Substitutionary Exchange

Christ’s death is not a mere representation, but it is also a substitution.14 He not only died “on behalf of” all humankind, but he also died “in place of” all humankind. “When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). He bore “the wrath of his Father which sinners had deserved” so “that we should be absolved.”15 Denney writes, “God condones nothing: His mercy itself is of an absolute integrity. He is a righteous God, even in justifying the ungodly; and the propitiation which he sets forth in Christ Jesus, dying in His sinlessness the death of the sinful, is the key to the mystery. Once more, is not the word which spontaneously rises to our lips to express this the word substitution?”16

(5) Necessary Exchange

The atoning death of Jesus Christ is a necessary and indispensable sacrifice. His death is not optional for two reasons. First, humans are unable to break their own captivity and second, God’s holiness and justice require an exact price to be paid for human unholiness. The New Testament writers regarded the death of Christ as necessary for the forgiveness of sins so that his death is not just incidental to, but integral to the establishing of the new covenant.17 Indeed, the writer of Hebrews clearly states that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).18 Denney also asserts that when Christ contemplates his identity as the Messiah, “the divine necessity for a career of suffering and death is primary.”19 To deny the necessity of the atonement is to deny God’s holiness and human depravity; it is also to deny our utter dependency on God for salvation. The denial of the necessity of the atonement amounts to “putting Christ out of the Christian religion altogether.”20

(6) Purposeful Exchange

When Christ died on the cross, he not only made the forgiveness of sins available to humankind, but he also opened a way for women and men previously under the control of sin to come under the new ownership of Christ to live new lives as new people (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 7:22-23; 2 Corinthians 5:17). Christ paid the price for these express purposes:

• To set us free from slavery to sin so that we may become slaves to God;
• To change our old identity of “slaves to Satan” to our new identity of “sons of God”;
• To empower those previously made powerless by sin to live the new life in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).21

Morris explains the purpose of redemption clearly and eloquently: “The redeemed are paradoxically slaves, the slaves of God, for they were bought with a price… Believers are not brought by Christ into a liberty of selfish ease. Rather, since they have been bought by God at a terrible cost, they have become God’s slaves, to do His will.”22 For this reason, substitution is not merely an external transaction “which stops when it sees the wages of sin borne by the Substitute. Rather it reaches its consummation only when the sinner has become one with the Substitute, and therefore has come to view sin with the same mind as his Substitute.”23

Conclusion

In the same way that Christology is the touchstone of Christian theology, the doctrine of the Atonement is the touchstone of Christology. The meaning of the cross defines our beliefs in the person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel message is truly good news only when the church of Jesus Christ faithfully preaches the cross as an exchange transaction which is eternal, exclusive, exact, substitutionary, necessary and purposeful. This is the only basis for our “blessed assurance:” that Christ has indeed completed his transaction to purchase our freedom, and that we indeed have reason to hope for transformation.

Questions

1. Why is the cross central to the Gospel message?
2. When the cross is not given its proper place in preaching, what problems can arise in these areas:
   • Assurance of salvation
   • Sanctification: Growing in holiness
   • Our day-to-day relationship with Jesus Christ
   • Our relationships with believers and non-believers
3. From your personal experience and your network of relationships, identify some examples of these worldviews: universalism, relativism, reductionism, experientialism and humanism.
4. Is it possible to profess faith in the Christ of Scriptures while at the same time embrace the competing worldviews? Why and why not?
5. Contrast the Nicene emphasis on theological unity and the 20th Century emphasis on theological diversity. In what ways do our cultural values of diversity and pluralism cause the church to compromise our preaching of the cross?

This study first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Sep/Oct 1998).