The following is a brief (and grossly incomplete) adaption of an excerpt taken from an essay I wrote for my Systematic Theology II class entitled, "The Relationship of the Incarnation to the Atonement." It seeks to try to answer the question of why Jesus had to die, i.e. why death was the chosen means by which atonement was accomplished.

Question number 1 of the Westminster Larger Catechism asks, "What is the chief and highest end of man?" to which it replies, "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever."

It is true that God has created us to glorify and enjoy Him. Mankind enjoyed a wholeness and purity of relationship with the Triune God in the Garden, and yet, tragically, sin entered into the human equation. Man’s perfect knowledge of God that came from an unbroken fellowship with Him was lost. He became perverted and his heart became curved in upon itself. The life-giving fellowship God has always desired for man was been traded by man for self-interest and death. Death is not necessarily some arbitrary judgment of God for sin; it is the natural result of man’s self-severing of life-giving fellowship with God. What will it take to bring God and man back together in perfect fellowship now that the history and inherited nature of sin is factored into the equation? Nothing other than the selfless act of sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

But this begs the question, “why did Jesus have to die?” Could God not have secured the redemption of man with a simple pronouncement of forgiveness? Could He not simply have dictated a message from heaven declaring mankind free from the penalties of his rebellion? The answer, simply put, is no.

At this point, a typical Western Protestant like me naturally wants to turn to the penal-substitution theory to answer the questions stated above. But I cannot help but think that if we appeal to this theory of atonement alone we might be grossly in error. If this theory alone could explain what is taking place on the cross, I am convinced that it would radically devalue the work that was done there as well as the person accomplishing it. For starters, this theory is amazingly impersonal, plus it does not adequately answer the question of why Jesus had to die. If God is sovereign, could He not reserve the right to just cancel the debt altogether without the needless suffering of Jesus? The classic appeal is always to the satisfaction of God's holiness. But is that all that's taking place on the cross? Retribution? Satisfaction? Appeasement? Or is there something more? If so, then I ask again, why did Jesus have to die?

The answer is found once we recover a relational understanding of God, creation, and sin. God is Life. He subsists as Persons relating to each other face to face in holy love. Therefore, there is life in self-death (not suicide, but in a fundamental disposition and activity of selflessness). It is on the cross of Calvary where this truth is revealed most clearly. The work of the God-man on the cross is redemptive in more than that it makes a payment for what is due. The work of the God-man on the cross is redemptive because it reveals the very heart of God Himself, and this knowledge is redeeming. Everything Jesus does is a revelation of reality, therefore his death, his “hour,” reveals something more to me than that God is offended and wants retribution. His life is always Triune life. The Father, Son, and Spirit are always in one another. This Triune life has always been fundamentally self-giving. Only this self-giving life, a life that predates the introduction of the problem of sin, can come and save me. My entire nature as a human being, as well as my very personhood itself, is utterly decimated because I am obsessed with self. The only life that can redeem me is the one that precedes me and is self-giving. He does not save by power, nor by dictation, nor by mere arbitration, because these things alone are impersonal and coercive. He saves by giving himself away. He imparts Triune life through his sacrifice as theanthropos. “He has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death…” (Col. 1:22) Sacrifice entails something incredibly deep and transcendental about reality. Without death we have no full revelation of God’s heart. The penal-substitution theory is simply not enough to account for who God is and what He has done in the atonement. He died in my stead, and in order to understand who it was that died and why and what it all means, we must maintain an inseparable connection of the incarnation to the atonement.

The work on the cross does not have saving power by virtue of the action/function of what is taking place there. The work on the cross has saving power by virtue of the person (persons) who is at work there. The whole life of the Trinity is embodied in Jesus Christ who died in order to impart life. All he touches he redeems, and as God-man he touches all of our humanity. He is Life. He is Resurrection. He offers atonement because he offers himself, for he IS Atonement.

Labels: theology