There’s a shape to Jesus’ life, and once you see it you can’t unsee it.
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.
Athanasius draws a direct line there from incarnation to suffering.
The sufferings of Jesus were, at their heart, punishment — a penalty borne.
From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, the LORD God promised a programme of offensive action for the future.
The fatal blow struck against the serpent is foretold as early as Genesis 3:15.
In the last article we identified five ways the victory of Christ reaches out and embraces us:
The category of obedience helps us grasp what Jesus was doing in his life and death.
Closely connected to Christ’s obedience, though bringing out the meaning of his death in its own distinctive way, is the category of sacrifice.
‘The concept of substitution may be said … to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.’
Christ is the Lamb of God — the one to whom every lamb offered at Israel’s altar pointed forward.
Care must be taken in the wording of Christian songs and preaching to avoid — and indeed to repudiate — any sense that in the God-forsakenness and dereliction of the cross (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34) the Father punishes the Son.
- Essentials
Both the One Who Turns Aside the Anger and the One Whose Anger Is Turned
Our redemption in Christ does not involve the literal exchange of money.
Jesus’ death, an act of extreme violence, was a necessary act of service to his people — taking the form of ‘a ransom’ (Greek lytron; Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45).
The work of the Lord Jesus Christ is, likewise, a work of reconciliation.
‘God reconciled the world with himself, without its assistance, apart from it, without the world contributing anything to it.’
The reconciliation accomplished at the cross cannot be understood as the act of the Son alone, isolated from the Father and the Spirit.
God’s love is certainly good news.
The gospel of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus is partly distinguished from the gospel preached by the apostles in that they significantly expanded on the meaning of his death.
Three voices to close with — a confession, and two reformers — each setting out from a different angle what Christ’s death secured.