All four written Gospels portray Jesus Christ as the world’s true Saviour, Lord and King by telling his story — strangely, yet most significantly — as centred upon his suffering and death.

We certainly do not understand him until we appreciate the crucifixion.

Everything Christ is to us is built upon, and concentrated in, his cross.

Everything Was Put Into That

All that he was on earth, and all that he now is in heaven, was put into what happened there.

To understand him rightly, we must follow the guidance of Scripture itself. As Calvin counsels: ‘none will ever learn what Christ is, or the purpose of his actions and sufferings, save by the guiding and teaching of the Scriptures. So far, then, as each of us desires to advance in the knowledge of Christ we shall need to meditate industriously and continually on Scripture.’¹Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 54.

Yet Scripture’s own account of Christ’s saving work is many-sided. There is no single answer to the question of why Jesus died.

Consideration of all the biblical categories and images is vital, because no one way of looking at the cross — or indeed at Jesus’ entire life — tells the whole story.²Morris, Atonement; passim; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015), passim.

Calvin’s Range

Robert White’s summary of Calvin’s approach illustrates that breadth well:

‘In explaining the significance of the cross, Calvin does not go beyond biblical categories of thought. Why did Christ die? He died … to show the gravity of man’s sin and God’s abhorrence of it. He gave his life as a ransom, to deliver transgressors from the guilt and power of sin and to relieve them of the curse which the law pronounced on them. His blood was shed as a sacrificial offering, perfect and complete, to atone for sin, and by the washing of the Holy Spirit to sanctify the sinner. He died in our stead, the just for the unjust, that we might be counted righteous in God’s sight and fully reconciled to him. He died to demonstrate God’s love and pity for the lost, and to destroy the works of the devil.’³Robert White, ‘Introduction,’ to John Calvin, Crucified and Risen: Sermons on the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth Trust, 2019), xv.

Count the answers in that paragraph. Six or seven distinct things, none of them optional, none of them reducible to the others.

Not Even the Cross Alone

Michael Gorman broadens the point still further — that Christ’s saving work can’t be confined to the cross alone, still less to any single category such as substitution or sacrifice:

‘Christ does not do his work alone: the Father and the Spirit work in and through him. Nor can Christ’s work be separated from his person. Christ’s work is astonishingly multifaceted. It is not encapsulated by one single idea, such as substitution or sacrifice. It takes the length and breadth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, to perform his work. Christ’s work does not only refer to his death but to everything he does. Jesus’ work includes mediating creation and new creation. He inaugurates God’s rule. He welcomes the poor and vulnerable into the kingdom. He forgives, delivers from sin, and conquers evil, Satan, and death. He brings God’s peace, God’s shalom. He offers himself as a sacrifice for sin. He creates the community of the new covenant. Jesus’ ultimate work is to reign as Lord.’⁴Michael J. Gorman, ‘The Work of Christ in the New Testament,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2015); online version. See also John Webster, ‘The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology,’ in the same volume.

Aspects, Not Models

Having recognised how many-sided Scripture’s testimony to the cross is, we can draw those threads together into a preliminary overview of the atonement’s principal aspects.⁵Refer to Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 1-18.

Note the word choice, because it matters. ‘Aspect’ is preferred to ‘model.’

‘Model’ suggests personal choice, and by its nature tends toward the self-contained — and therefore toward the exclusion of other important features of the biblical presentation. Pick your model, and you’ve quietly ruled out the others.

‘Aspect,’ by contrast, indicates that the reality under examination admits of no simple or exhaustive description in a single term. It is polyvalent — having many different functions, forms or facets — and each aspect inherently makes room for the others.

The term also invites integration at a level beyond that of the terms themselves.

Six Recurring Descriptions

The order and structure of exposition isn’t hard and fast. But in the New Testament we can observe a number of recurring descriptions of the scope and depth of Christ’s atoning work in his death and resurrection — aspects identified and expounded throughout the history of biblical interpretation.⁶Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for elaboration here. See also, Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 271.

They may be initially identified as follows:

1. Satisfaction of God’s justice — penal substitution (Gal 3:13; Heb 10:1-10)
2. Solidarity of Christ, in his incarnation, with the race of Adam, and our union with Christ by faith (Rom 5:12-21; 6:5-11)⁷On this particular point (2), see Ivor J. Davidson, ‘Atonement and Incarnation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 35-56.
3. Enlightenment — to reveal God to humanity (John 1:1-13; 1 Cor 1:18-2:5)
4. Cleansing for worship — to provide a great high priest for humanity (Heb 4:14; 1 John 1:9)
5. Conflict and victory — to defeat demonic power (Col 2:13-15; 1 John 3:8)
6. The example and paradigm for Christian living — a template of abundant human life (Mark 8:34-38)⁸On this particular point (6), see Adam Kotsko, ‘Exemplarism,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 485-88.

These aspects have long been held together — and are rarely held apart — in the church’s better preaching and teaching.⁹Among a multitude of sermon examples that could be cited, see Leon Morris, The Story of the Cross: A Devotional Study of St. Matthew, Chapters 26-28 (Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1957; and Timothy Keller, Kings Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013). For a sample of technical studies of approaches to the atonement (of varying orthodoxy) see the following essays in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement (T & T Clark, 2017): Stephen B. Chapman, ‘God’s Reconciling Work: Atonement in the Old Testament’; Oliver D. Crisp, ‘Methodological Issues in Approaching the Atonement’; Joel B. Green, ‘Theologies of Atonement in the New Testament’; Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine’; Andrew Root, ’ Ministry.’

Why the Plurality Matters

It’s worth being clear about what this plurality is and isn’t.

It isn’t vagueness, or a refusal to commit. Each of those six aspects is stated with precision and grounded in specific texts.

What it reflects is the size of the thing being described. A sinner needs justice satisfied — and also needs joining to Christ, enlightening, cleansing, delivering from an enemy, and giving a pattern to live by. Those are genuinely different needs, and the cross meets all of them.

Which is why reducing the atonement to a single favoured idea always costs something. Whichever aspect you elevate, the others don’t simply become less prominent. They go missing.

—

• 1
  Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 54. ↩︎
• 2
  Morris, Atonement; passim; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015), passim. ↩︎
• 3
  Robert White, ‘Introduction,’ to John Calvin, Crucified and Risen: Sermons on the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth Trust, 2019), xv. ↩︎
• 4
  Michael J. Gorman, ‘The Work of Christ in the New Testament,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2015); online version. See also John Webster, ‘The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology,’ in the same volume. ↩︎
• 5
  Refer to Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 1-18. ↩︎
• 6
  Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for elaboration here. See also, Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 271. ↩︎
• 7
  On this particular point (2), see Ivor J. Davidson, ‘Atonement and Incarnation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 35-56. ↩︎
• 8
  On this particular point (6), see Adam Kotsko, ‘Exemplarism,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 485-88. ↩︎
• 9
  Among a multitude of sermon examples that could be cited, see Leon Morris, The Story of the Cross: A Devotional Study of St. Matthew, Chapters 26-28 (Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1957; and Timothy Keller, Kings Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013). For a sample of technical studies of approaches to the atonement (of varying orthodoxy) see the following essays in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement (T & T Clark, 2017): Stephen B. Chapman, ‘God’s Reconciling Work: Atonement in the Old Testament’; Oliver D. Crisp, ‘Methodological Issues in Approaching the Atonement’; Joel B. Green, ‘Theologies of Atonement in the New Testament’; Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine’; Andrew Root, ’ Ministry.’ ↩︎