Now after completing a trek, like that, through the Scripture and explaining that God has a plan to redeem cities it would be easy to mistake me for something I am most definitely not. There is a popular brand of theology going around today which looks at the cross of Christ as absorbing human evil and giving men an example to follow in their overthrowing the powers of darkness. Now at one level this is all true and important. But making this the sole or even central picture of the cross is to have a deeply flawed theology of redemption. There has been good criticism of this view recently.[1] I want to be clear and say that I agree with those critics. But believing that cultural renewal is part of God’s plan I have been forced to ask, then, how the atonement relates to that subject and particularly how it relates to that subject within a Biblical theological framework. That is my goal in this next section. The atoning work of Christ is at the very heart of all my theology as a Christian, and that includes God’s love for the city.
Sin Is The Central Issue
It is agreed upon by all that sin is the central issue in the discussion. What’s wrong with the city, what makes it in need of redemption? Sin. The matter of debate turns on how we define, or more particularly where we root, sin. For some sin is a social evil (exemplified in communal acts of genocide, environmental destruction, and the like), it is not so much a personal moral perversion or orientation. What this does is cast sin in terms of injustice in the world, offense against fellow men, offense against creation, and nearly completely avoids the Scriptural conclusions that sin is our offense against a holy God. What this means for the gospel, then, is that Jesus’ death is an answer to the social evils of the world, not necessarily an answer to my alienation from God. This line of thinking follows very much the Christus Victor view of the atonement. This model of the atonement, which is indeed true, says, “That through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, God defeated the devil.”[2] Greg Boyd elaborates on this view by saying the following:
According to the New Testament, the central thing Jesus did was drive out the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31). He came to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). He came to “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” in order to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Jesus lived, died and rose again to establish a new reign that would ultimately “put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25) … In a word, Jesus came to end the cosmic war that had been raging from time immemorial and to set Satan’s captives free (Luke 4:18; Ephesians 4:8).[3]
What Boyd has written here is indeed in Scripture and is indeed true of the work of Christ. Jesus did come to overturn the power of evil and to restore the world to its pre-fall state. In this regard I agree with him. But his theology, as with many others who view cultural change as of great importance, lacks the distinctive explanation of our role in this world’s evil. It is not simply that we are slaves to Satan and bound to do his evil will. The Bible teaches as well that we are inherently sinful and, by our very nature “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). It is this latter part that is so often overlooked in the equation. Many are readily willing to recognize the evil inherent within the “world,” but it is the insinuation that humanity itself is evil that seems to be lacking in their theological equation. We are more victims than rebels, as they see it. So Boyd again writes, “Salvation clearly involves forgiveness of sins, but this forgiveness is itself rooted in a person getting freed from Satan’s grip, and therefore freed from the controlling power of sin.”[4] Note the manner in which our relationship to sin is discussed. We are described as captives of Satan, rather than as those whose very nature is to rebel against God. I am not denying our bondage to sin, I fully believe this, but I am saying that by overlooking our corrupt nature Body and others like him have missed the heart of the gospel. So Tom Schreiner rightly perceives, “Boyd also claims that the Scriptures depict sin as a power that enslaves and does not focus on individual behavior. He is correct in saying that sin is a power that overwhelms us, but he downplays, perhaps inadvertently, the notion of individual responsibility.” He continues:
Even though sin is a power that holds us in bondage, such a reality does not lessen individual responsibility. Paul believes we are sinners in Adam and under bondage to sin, but Paul also maintains that we are fully responsible for the sins we commit.[5]
Finally, Schriener observes how much more explanation is need for Boyd’s theory to give full balance to the language of Scripture, he writes:
Boyd also lacks clarity in explaining how Christ’s death led to triumph over demonic powers…Boyd says Christ’s solidarity with us in his radical love defeated the power of evil. This contention is not worked out with any exegesis. It is asserted rather than demonstrated…Jesus did not conquer the devil merely by showing us how much he loved us. The Scriptures are more specific than this. The devil’s hold over us was broken when our sins were forgiven on the cross by virtue of Christ taking our place and suffering our punishment.[6]
It is the same with someone like N.T. Wright, who claims that salvation is the declaration that Jesus is King. He states it plainly when he says, “The gospel’ itself refers to the proclamation that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is the one, true, and only Lord of the World,” and, “That the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead; that he was thereby proved to be Israel’s Messiah; that he was thereby installed as Lord of the world.”[7] This is all well and good, but, as John Piper points out, Jesus Lordship in and of itself is not good news. Piper comments:
Coming at Wright’s claims about the gospel from another angle, they do not fit real life- neither Paul’s nor ours. The announcement that Jesus is the Messiah, the imperial Lord of the universe, is not good news, but is an absolutely terrifying message to a sinner who has spent all his life ignoring or blaspheming the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and is therefore guilty of treason and liable to execution.[8]
You see what’s missing from this equation, by whomever is perpetuating it, is any notion that man must have his guilt before God dealt with at the personal and individual level.
Now in relation to God’s love for the city let me make the connection. God does love the city, and does have a plan and desire to have a city that is filled with people who worship him. But sin has corrupted that plan, not simply by distorting the city, but particularly by manifesting its evil through the willful wrong and rebellion of human beings. Man’s rebellion in the garden and man’s continued rebellion today is what is wrong with the city. One need only remember that God cursed the earth with thistles and thorns as a result of Adam’s sin, as a form of punishment on Adam. The ground didn’t do anything wrong, it is cursed because of humanity’s blatant rebellion against their creator. What we need to see, then, is that God’s love for the city is not somehow detached or separate from God’s redemption of humanity. The former can only happen after the latter is achieved. Any notion that salvation is about us joining God’s mission, misplaces the centrality of the cross in the atonement. As Greg Gilbert has written:
I think there are a few barbs from emergent theology that have managed to hang on in evangelicalism, some of them more worrisome than others. I am convinced that one of those—and without a doubt the most dangerous—is the temptation among many young evangelicals to rethink and rearticulate the gospel in a way that makes its center something other than the substitutionary, wrath-enduring death of Jesus in the place of sinners for their sin. I see that happening in a couple of different ways, depending on what you’re reading—or watching. Sometimes that impulse works itself out in authors simply shunting the cross over and (wittingly or unwittingly) making the center of the gospel story something else entirely. Maybe it’s Jesus’ lordship, or God’s kingdom, or God’s purpose to remake the heavens and earth, or His call for us to join him in his work of cultural transformation. Time after time, in book after book coming off of Christian presses, the highest excitement and joy is being ignited by something other than the sin-bearing work of Christ on the cross, and the most fervent appeals are for people to join God in doing this or that, rather than to repent and believe. In the process, the story of the gospel is made to be (deliberately or not) rather cross-less. That’s one dangerous problem.[9]
We must first have our relationship with God, individually, restored before we can speak of joining God on his mission to restore creation.[10] What this means, then, is that at the heart of our theology of the city must be a proper understanding of the atonement. This is our next subject.
[1] See a couple of articles written by my good friend Greg Gilbert, “Culture-Making and Plant-Growing;” “Not Just Important, Not Even Just VERY Important. ‘Of First Importance;’” and “But HOW is the Evil One Defeated.”
[2] Greg Boyd, “Christus Victor View,” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. Ed. by James Beilby and Paul Eddy. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006. 24.
[3] Ibid. 30.
[4] Ibid. 32.
[5] Ibid. 50.
[6] Ibid. 52-53.
[7] Quoted in John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Wheaton: Crossway, 2007. 82.
[8] Ibid. 86.
[9] “Not Just Important, Not Even Just VERY Important. ‘Of First Importance’” www.9marks.org
[10] As a side note, what I find very disturbing about this view of the atonement is that it makes our salvation rather utilitarian. We are saved merely as a means to God’s greater plan to restore the created order. God does not love us in ourselves, but rather loves us as part of the created world only. He loves us like he loves the trees.
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