On Aug 1, I will release the second edition to my first book, the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus. A few days ago I posted a section on the severity of sin—that it isn’t simply brokenness, but active, willful rebellion against God and vandalism of His shalom. As I said, “Sin isn’t merely brokenness, but a deliberate, active posture of rebellion against God and the active, deliberate vandalism of the way things are supposed to be. It is not a passive state of affairs, like a shattered teacup at the hand of a clumsy fool. Sin is active and it is violent.”

Real objective realities—evil, sin, and death—have stolen into the world because our original ancestors. And because these objective realities are part of our reality, something had to “happen” with them to solve for them. That something was the cross. While wrapping up the revising and editing process I came across another passage that I thought I would share, a section from my chapter on “our rescue.” The section is somewhat a response to those who deny the substitutionary aspect of the cross and also emphasizes the need to deal with our three objective “somethings.” (It is also a section from a smaller, $2.99 ebook I launched earlier in the week to help people share the gospel.)

Amazingly, this aspect of what happened at the cross—substitution—has been rejected wholesale by historic and contemporary liberals. In fact, some people suggest substitutionary atonement amounts to “divine child abuse” ((Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossy-Bass, 2003) 102. )) (e.g. Brian McLaren), suggesting this view of the cross makes God the Father out to be a blood-lusting, masochistic monster. I find this characterization at best childish and uncharitable and at worse a failure to give due diligence to the biblical and theological realities of evil, sin, and death that a holy God had to deal with. How do such people view the cross instead, and why is it problematic?

People who wholesale reject the penal substitution theory of God’s act of rescue, however, usually believe the event of the cross either simply signified the subversion of Imperial powers or provided a moral example of love. On the one hand, Jesus is a revolutionary who confronted the earthly powers of Rome and Jerusalem by becoming weak and subverting their system of domination and violence. In the words of Shane Claiborne, a Christian social activist: “The cross is the culmination of all that the empire had to offer, where all the wrath of the world was poured out on God. And it is on the cross that we can see the ultimate power standoff. On the cross we can see what love looks like when it stares evil in the face.” ((Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus for President (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 131.)) While I generally appreciate Shane’s Imperial perspective, the cross is not the culmination of all that empire had to offer, it isn’t the focal point at which the wrath of the world was unleashed, and it is not simply a portrait of love.

The event of the cross is the culmination of the punishment for which we humans, as individuals and as a collective whole, were and are responsible because of our rebellion against God. It isn’t that the Roman powers unleashed the full weight of Empire on this local upstart prophet as punishment for His rabblerousery. Rather, God Himself unleashed the His full wrath upon the loving, gentle, caring Jesus because of our countless individual acts of un-love. Rome didn’t kill Jesus. He willingly went to the cross to experience what we should have endured. Rome isn’t responsible. We are. Rome didn’t unleash their wrath upon Jesus at the cross. God unleashed His wrath and poured out His judgment upon the loving, gentle, caring Jesus as punishment for your rebellion and mine. At the cross, evil and sin and death were defeated, which ultimately is what provides the hope for resurrection and re-creation.

On the other hand, some suggest the Jesus Story and event of the cross is more about His powerful example and model of love than about God objectively dealing with the three “somethings” of evil, rebellion, and death. A recent postmodern Christian author essentially said this in his explanation of the Story of Jesus. In his book, A Christianity Worth Believing, Doug Pagitt dismisses the penal substitutionary aspect of atonement:

The early evangelists recognized that they could help the Jesus story make sense if Jesus was seen as someone who was chosen to appease the wrath of God…the Gentiles thought of Jesus as saving them from the punishment that was due them. Jesus became the substitute, the stand-in. He was the special, innocent one chosen by God to pay the price for sins of humanity. That’s what the up-and-out, distant, vengeful God demanded.” ((Doug Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 181.))

According to Doug, this isn’t the God we see in the Holy Scriptures, but is instead a Greek impostor. Instead, the Jewish God of the Bible is like “a loving father figure, the down-and-in God who provided for the people and called them to join in with God’s work in the world.” Jesus wasn’t a substitute on the cross that did something with evil, sin, and death for all humans, but was instead “their map, their guide to what true partnership with God looked like.” ((Pagitt, Christianity, 181.)) To what was Jesus the map, guide, and moral example? Love and peace. Here is what Doug says Jesus did:

Jesus was not sent as the selected one to appease the anger of the Greek blood god. Jesus was sent to fulfill the promise of the Hebrew love God by ending human hostility. It was not the anger of God that Jesus came to end but the anger of people. The world God created is one of peace and harmony and integration. Through Jesus, all humanity is brought into that world. And that is the point of the resurrection.

When Jesus was resurrected from the dead, life won out. The power of God’s love for humanity proved stronger than our capacity to hate one another. Jesus’ death was about war, about violence, about destruction. But His resurrection was about peace, compassion, renewal.

Jesus is the core of Christianity because it is through Jesus we see the fullness of God’s hopes for the world. [Jesus] shows us what it means to live in partnership with our creator. He leads us into what it means to be integrated with God. Jesus was resurrected with scars. The scars weren’t simply a reminder of the past; they were the pathway to the future. They were there to show that the cause of death had been consumed. The hatred of death had been healed over by the love of God. The scars gave testimony to the power of death. Death gave Jesus its best shot; it laid it all on the line and accomplished its goal. But life overcame death. Love overcame hate. Peace over came war. The resurrection life needs death to remind us that the call to love our enemy not only means loving in the midst of scars but loving those who cause them. Because in Jesus, love wins. ((Pagitt, Christianity, 194-195.))

While I affirm some aspects of Doug’s understanding of God’s act of rescue, like the defeat of death through resurrection and our ability to reconnect to God through Jesus, it isn’t clear how the cause of death has been consumed and hatred of death has been healed over by the love of God. How exactly did that happen if the mechanisms that ushered in death (sin and rebellion) were not atoned for, if the consequences that resulted from the “cause of death” (sin and rebellion) were not objectively dealt with in some way?

Unless something happened on the cross, we still have the three “somethings” and we are still in big trouble!

I am not at all persuaded that the cross was simply about ending our hate, war, violence, and destruction nor am I convinced Jesus is the center of Christian spirituality because he shows us through the example of His life and death how to partner and be integrated with God. It isn’t that love and peace won out over hate and war, but that Jesus took upon Himself the punishment we deserved for our rebelliously hateful and waring actions, actions of un-love primarily directed toward God and His Rhythm of Life. Jesus isn’t the center of Christianity because He shows us how to be integrated and partner with God, but rather because He drank dry the cup of wrath that was stored up for all humanity. Because of the three “somethings” of evil, sin, rebellion, and death, Jesus died upon that old rugged cross, not simply to show us how to end human hostility and hatred, but to take upon Himself the punishment we deserved for our hostile, hateful, rebellious acts.

Unless something happened to the objective realities of evil, rebellion, and death, humans are still screwed! Unless something was done with evil, sin, and death on the cross, ending human hostility and hatred is not possible. Thankfully, through the resurrection Jesus triumphed over all three, including the evil powers. Jesus endured the punishment we all deserved because of our willful vandalism of shalom and deliberate rebellion against God and His Rhythm of Life, providing rescue and defeating the dark powers of the world.

The cross wasn’t a middle finger to Rome.

It wasn’t merely the culmination of a loving life-example.

It was the point at which God the Father dealt with our three objective “somethings” by sacrificing His Son on the very blood-soaked boards of execution that held His limp, lifeless body—where Jesus suffered and died to pay our price, in our place.

Unless something “happened” on the cross, we’re in big trouble. To put it more baldly: unless something actually happened on the cross with our three objective realities (evil, sin, and death) on our behalf, we’re all still screwed. Unless Jesus’ death was an atoning death—rather than simply a modeling death—we’re still screwed. Unless Jesus stood in our place as our substitute, we’re still in big trouble.

Elsewhere, I show how theological liberals transform the cross into merely a symbol of the highest human ideal—love—and provide no compelling reason why Jesus had to die. For them, the work of Jesus is His life, rather than His atoning death. Which, if true, means sin still has power, we are still God’s enemies, and we’re still guilty for our rebellion.

In other words, we’re still screwed.