Atonement analogies

How does the cross of Christ save us? How do we understand atonement?

1. In sacrificial terms? Was Christ offered in our place, to appease God’s anger?
2. In judicial terms? Was Christ condemned as the penalty for our pardon?
3. In financial terms? Was Christ paying the debt he did not owe, the debt we could not pay?
4. As a ransom? Was this the price God paid to redeem us from sin and death?
5. As spiritual conflict? Did Christ die in a battle against the prince of this world?
6. As moral influence? Was Christ setting the example of a nonviolent response to those who wanted him dead, calling us to take up our crosses too?
7. As the act of a king? Was he crucified as “the king of the Jews,” and then raised up as Lord of all, introducing heaven’s reign so earth would come to life in him?
8. As an act of faith? Was Christ remaining faithful in the face of death, trusting his Father to raise him up?
9. As the expression of God’s love? Was Jesus revealing how the Heavenly Father reconciles his children to himself in his beloved Son?

All those images and others have been used to explain the atonement. There’s not one right choice, of course. It’s a mistake to think that your favoured view is the only one.

Gustaf Aulén wrote a book called Christus Victor. For him, the victory Christ won was the significance of the cross. He’s right, but that isn’t the whole story.

For many, the judicial view is primary. The cross is about penal substitution, resulting in justification. Those metaphors are helpful, but they’re not the whole story either.

So, which of these metaphors might you meditate on? Could the ones you understand least enrich your appreciation of who Christ is and what he achieved for us at the cross?

Metaphors can also be misunderstood. If someone tenderly tells you, “Your eyes are like pools,” don’t respond with, “Wet and salty?” Well, you could say that if you’ve had a particularly “mystifying” day, but you know what I mean. It’s easy to misapply an analogy.

Take the ransom metaphor for example. It’s been a favourite for the centuries. but it doesn’t work if you ask, “Who did God pay the ransom to?” Any picture of God paying off the devil doesn’t fit the way Scripture reveals God’s sovereign authority. The redemption metaphor begins with God emancipating slaves (Exodus 15:13). It’s like buying their freedom, but God made no literal payment to Pharaoh. The evil ruler’s claim was bogus. That’s the point of, “Let my people go!” Any picture of God handing his Son over to the devil to pay for us seriously misrepresents God.

The same can be said of other analogies. If we speak of sacrifices, take care not to import aspects of pagan sacrifice. If we speak of divine judgement, take care not to project human views of justice onto God.

So how do we get it right? How do we avoid misapplying analogies? The same way we get anything else right in Christian theology: focus on the God revealed in Christ. Any image that doesn’t match the picture of God we see in Christ is inadequate.

That’s especially important with the Old Testament imagery of atonement. Atonement, justice, sacrifice, redemption, conflict, kingship, covenant faith and divine faithfulness: they’re all concepts from the Old Testament. In many times and in various ways, the revelation of God came through prophets from Moses to Malachi.

But that revelation was partial and incomplete. The definitive revelation of God arrived in the Son who inherited the promises he created. He radiated divine splendour, embodying the essence of God’s being. These are the opening statements of the book that, more than any other, reframes atonement imagery around Christ. The Book of Hebrews masterfully manages our expectations of how the Old Testament metaphors of atonement become living reality for us in Christ.

So, what do you think? Which analogies of the atonement could help you understand what God has done in Christ? Which other metaphors could enhance your understanding of how God reconciled heaven and earth in this Son?

After all, that is what atonement means: to make at-one.

What others are saying

I. Howard Marshall, Aspects of the Atonement: Cross and Resurrection in the Reconciling of God and Humanity (Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2008), 1:

How are we to understand the significance of the work of Jesus Christ that is the basis of the salvation of sinners? And how are we to explain it in our presentations of the gospel to our contemporaries? These two closely related questions are probably the most important that can be put to us as biblical scholars and theologians by the church today.

Michael J. Gorman, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 1:

For most Christians, from professional theologians to lay women and men, the word “atonement” refers to the means by which Jesus’ death on the cross saves us and reconciles us to God. Was that death a punishment? a sacrifice? an example? a victory over powers? Some people have insisted strongly on one of these perspectives, often over and against the others.

Patrick Henry Reardon, Reclaiming the Atonement: An Orthodox Theology of Redemption: The Incarnate Word volume 1 (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2015), 67:

Anselm’s “satisfaction theory,” then, though thoroughly comprehensible, is scarcely comprehensive.

Joel B. Green, “Kaleidoscopic View,” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 157:

The significance of Jesus’ death can be grasped neither apart from its historical context in the Roman world nor apart from the expansive mural of God’s purpose in creation and redemption. … On its own no one model or metaphor will do when it comes to the task of articulating and proclaiming that significance in the world today.

Related posts

• The rich texture of atonement (Mt 18:23–35)
• How Jesus explained the cross (Mt 20:17-19)
• The meaning of the cross (Mt 27:32–44)