Atonement Archives - Jack Kilcrease

August 4, 2024August 7, 2024

Christ’s Priestly Atonement as Fulfillment and Transfer of Righteousness

Jesus’s sacrifice of himself on the cross fulfills the three main functions of sacrifice in the Old Testament: praise, atonement, and covenantal ratification. First, Jesus was able to fulfill God’s law as the one true and obedient representative human. He accomplished this purely as an act of praise to the Father and not out of compulsion or obligation.

Christ possessed the fullness of divine glory and was therefore completely free from the law. Consequently, he was uniquely capable of fulfilling the law as a sacrifice of praise. Jesus is the perfect person of faith (Heb. 12:2-3) who trusted that he shared all things with the Father (Phil. 2:6-7). Therefore, he could perform obedient service not because he had to redeem himself or curry favor with God, but only to glorify the Father: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (Jn. 17:4).

Christ’s Death as Atoning Sacrifice

Secondly, Jesus’s death was an atoning sacrifice for sins. Under the old covenant, sin entailed death. As St. Paul wrote: “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:32). Sin necessarily calls for retribution proportionate to the crime in the form of lex talionis. For example, under the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9, taking life must result in the murderer forfeiting his life (Gen. 9:6). Likewise, under Levitical law, the same principle holds true: “you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exod. 21:23-25).

August 1, 2024August 3, 2024

Christ’s Offices and the Foundational Nature of Substitutionary Atonement

Christ’s work of atonement and reconciliation is threefold because His offices of king, priest, and prophet are threefold. In his work Christus Victor, Swedish Lutheran theologian Gustaf Aulén famously outlined three major atonement motifs: Conquest, Substitution, and Moral Influence.¹ The conquest, or Christus Victor, motif deals with Christ’s conquest of demonic forces (sin, death, and the Devil).² The substitution motif deals with Christ’s payment for sins (whatever form that may take) in the place of fallen humanity.³ Finally, moral influence theories of the atonement deal with Christ being a good example or making a transformative existential gesture to humanity.⁴

Throughout the history of Christian thought, theologians have often chosen one motif and excluded the others. Therefore, we should recognize that all three motifs have a valid basis in the New Testament. Moreover, each motif corresponds to an office of Christ: as king, Christ wages the Father’s apocalyptic war; as priest, Christ atones for sin; as prophet, Christ reveals the testament of the gospel to humanity, and gives humanity the Spirit. The Spirit, in turn, helps believers follow the moral example of faith and self-sacrificial love Jesus revealed on the cross.

July 13, 2024July 15, 2024

God Reconciles All People Objectively and Universally

Christ’s work reconciles God and humanity. This occurs both objectively and subjectively. Moreover, since each person of the Trinity is involved, reconciliation takes on a threefold movement. This threefold movement can be summarized in the distinctive realities of atonement, justification (both objective and subjective), and election.¹ The New Testament distinguishes each aspect of reconciliation from the others, although theologians have often confused them throughout Church history.

The event of atonement constitutes the first movement of reconciliation, or redemption, as already examined in the last section. The movement of atonement proceeds from the Son to the Father. Having received all things from the Father, the Son is capable of returning himself to the Father in the power of the Spirit….

Universal Objective Justification

The second movement of reconciliation is universal and objective justification.² Universal objective justification is the Father’s response to the Son’s payment for the sin of the whole world. The Father declares the whole world forgiven on the basis of the Son’s objective atoning work. Objective atonement and objective justification are therefore distinct and should not be confused with one another: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom. 5:18, emphasis added). And “. . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them [i.e., justification]” (2 Cor. 5:19, emphasis added).

June 20, 2019June 20, 2019

The Imputation of Righteousness and our Future-Present Justification

Although justification is pronounced objectively in the resurrection (Rom. 4:25), it is received subjectively through faith that hears the promise: “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved . . . [And] faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:10, v. 17). No one can have faith apart from the electing and regenerative work of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14, 12:3, Gal. 3:2). Christ makes intercession on behalf of believers in heaven, on the basis of his sacrifice on the cross (Rom. 8:34). The Holy Spirit, the who is the spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), makes the fruits of Christ’s intercession – justification – present in the heart of the believer (Rom. 10:6-13) through the hearing of the Word (Rom. 10:7, Gal. 3:2). Much as the elect representational persons stood in the place of Israel in the Old Testament as mediators, so too Christ and his righteousness stand in for the unrighteousness of the unbeliever through an act of imputation (Rom. 3:25, 4:9, v. 22, 8:10, 1 Cor. 1:30, 2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:6, Phil. 3:9). The concept of representation that we see in the Old Testament therefore makes sense of Paul’s language of imputation in atonement and justification. In atonement, Christ is imputed with human sin, and in justification humans are imputed with Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).

It is important to notice that Paul uses the term eschatological term “justification” for what happens proleptically (in the future) to believers in the present. As we observed earlier, for Second Temple Jews, at the end of time God would “justify” (judge righteous and vindicate) those who had adhered to the covenant and usher them into the kingdom. For Paul, Christ is the object of election and justification. He is one the one who has adhered to the covenant and be vindicated on the eschatological day of his resurrection. Therefore, in the present believers can proleptically receive through Christ what they will receive at the end of time through faith in the promise (i.e., election and justification). This is because the eschaton has already happened for Christ, and therefore when believers enter into him the eschaton happens to them as well. Outwardly, believers remain in the current age weighed down by sin and death, but in the inner being they already have been ushered into the kingdom of the resurrected: “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).