Here is a nice quote from Scot McKnight’s book A Community Called Atonement. This appears on page 69, at the end of Chapter 9 on the Crucifixion theme in the New Testament account of atonement. I changed the formatting so that the first part appears as a list.

I suggest that we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions:

• Jesus dies “with us” — entering into our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way;
• Jesus dies “instead of us” — he enters into our sin, our wrath, our death; and
• Jesus dies “for us” — his death forgives our sin, “declares us right,” absorbs the wrath of God against us, and creates a new life where there once was only death.

Not only is this death saving, this same death becomes the paradigm for an entirely new existence that is shaped, as Luther said of theology and life, by the cross. A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others, and the world. And a life shaped by the cross sees in the cross God becoming the victim, identifying with the victim, suffering injustice, and shaping a cruciform pattern of life for all who follow Jesus. The cross reshapes all of life.

 

Tags: atonement | Cross | forgiveness | Scot McKnight | sin | the Cross | wrath