Ahead, Not Instead | Atonement Explained Series

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For 10 weeks I've been telling you atonement is not God's wrath being pacified by death. Atonement is the holy life overcoming the forces of death. Atonement is cleansing. The Sancta Atonement is the holding together of the relationship between heaven and earth so that God's presence can dwell with his people. Yeshua is the atonement for the whole world. John says, because his indestructible life is [00:00:27] Speaker B: the answer to the death dealing condition every human being lives in. [00:00:33] Speaker A: He is the cleansing. He is the consecration. He is the living water. He is the meeting place where heaven and earth come together. That is more than enough. And that is more atonement than penal substitutionary atonement ever offered. And some will say this is absolute heresy. This is, this is. You're going to answer for this one day. This is a demotion of Jesus. You're pulling back his glory. You're softening the cross. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Hear what I actually said. His obedience was real. His faithfulness was real. [00:01:13] Speaker A: He merited the fullness of the spirit by walking the path that no one else could ever walk. He confronted the forces of death and overcame them. His life is indestructible. He's the cure prepared before the wound. He's the atonement for the whole world. That's not a smaller Jesus, that's a larger Yeshua. The Yeshua that most people have been given is a Jesus whose primary function is a get out of jail free card. [00:01:45] Speaker B: Well, let me say that if you are visiting for the first time, I hope that in preparation for your visit, you spent the last 10 weeks listening to the sermon which we are concluding today, a series called Atonement Explained. So it's kind of the end of a road, but not really. You'll see at the end. Here's the story. [00:02:12] Speaker A: You were under the wrath of God. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Your sin demanded a penalty. God's justice required payment before he could forgive. [00:02:21] Speaker A: And in mercy, he sent his son [00:02:23] Speaker B: to take that penalty. In your place, Jesus absorbed the wrath. Jesus paid the price. Jesus took his punishment. Your punishment that was rightly aimed at you. And because of his blood, you go free. That is the Gospel as most people received it. That is also what penal substitutionary atonement is. And the question I have been asking is, is that the story that the Bible has been telling is telling? Or is that a story we have been telling about the Bible and about God? There are two roads here. They do not lead to the same place. One road says quite plainly that God needed someone to Punish. And that penalty had to land somewhere. So God aimed it at his son instead of you. Substitution in place of the cross is the place where divine wrath was finally satisfied and forgiveness became legally possible. The other road says that God so loved the world that he sent his faithful Son into the very place where death had ruled into sickness, into shame, into violence, into the grave. And the Son walked that road faithfully all the way through and emerged from it with a life that death could not hold. In the words of Andrew, he went ahead of us, not instead of us. His life now becomes the path we are called to walk. That is participation. Following those two roads, substitution and participation do not produce the same disciple. They do not read the same Bible. They do not honor the same Yeshua. Substitution ends at the cross. Participation begins at the cross. And now at the end of the series, I want you to see why. That second road is the road that the Scriptures have walked us down all along. So now more than ever, I don't know if you noticed, but every single previous message ended with a phrase. Now more than ever, stay with me. There is a verse that is cited, probably more than any other, for the substitutionary view, which is found in Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 21. For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God made him to be sin. Read with substitutionary lens. That verse sounds like a celestial transfer. [00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeshua was innocent. Sin gets imputed to him. God treats him as if he were sin itself. [00:06:05] Speaker B: The penalty falls, the transfer is complete, you go free. [00:06:09] Speaker A: But that is not what Paul is doing. If we read 2 Corinthians, that text [00:06:16] Speaker B: with the rest of the Pauline letters [00:06:19] Speaker A: open at the same time, you're going to notice that for Paul made him to be sin is not a courtroom transaction. It is naming full participation. And we can skip on over to Romans 8:3 to hear more. Paul, when he says, God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh. Now you read that carefully. God did not condemn Jesus. He condemned sin in the flesh, the flesh. That Yeshua had taken on the same human condition that every one of us lives in. Yeshua entered the realm that sin had ruled, and from inside that flesh, he condemned the power that had been ruling it. Substitution says Yeshua, took something that we never had to experience. Participation, says Yeshua, entered the experience we were already in, and from inside it defeated the power that had been ruling it. That is what made him to Be sin means in Corinthians not that God transferred guilt onto an innocent victim, but that Yeshua entered the sphere, the condition, the very realm in which sin had dominated solidarity, participation, not punishment. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Swap. [00:07:56] Speaker A: And so the verse 2 Corinthians 5:21, that's supposed to be this substitutionary slam dunk. When we read it alongside its Romans verses and other Paul verses, it actually turns out to be one of the clearest participatory statements in the whole Pauline corpus. If you want to know what Paul actually does with the cross, it's best not to start in 2 Corinthians 5. 21. We can start with Romans 6, where Paul writes, all of us who have been baptized into Messiah, Yeshua were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Messiah was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we might too walk in newness of life. Life. Romans 6. Baptized into death, buried with him, raised with him, walking in newness of life. That language is the opposite of substitution. Substitution says, he did it all instead of you. Romans 6 says, you have died with him. You are walking with him. You will be raised with him. Paul keeps going. We know that our old self was crucified with him. Co crucified. The Greek is sostaurothe. That sus, which we read there is the word syn, Syn, not s I n. It's the word for with. Tucked in there, the word. That word sostauroche, already existed. It just meant crucified alongside someone, the way that the two men were crucified, crucified alongside Yeshua. But Paul takes that word and turns it into a claim about us not next to him. Co crucified with him. And that's not just a little one off Paul thing. Paul uses these syn compounds, these with words throughout his letters. He coins some of them himself. Co buried, co raised, co alive, coheirs, co sufferers. [00:10:30] Speaker B: The vocabulary itself is participatory. [00:10:33] Speaker A: And then in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Messiah. It's no longer I who lives, but [00:10:39] Speaker B: Messiah who lives in me. Crucified with, lives in. That is the grammar of participation, not of substitution. Paul is not saying that Yeshua died, [00:10:59] Speaker A: so you don't have to. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Now you can immediately come up with all kinds of rebuttals to that. [00:11:04] Speaker A: But listen, Paul is saying, yeshua died. Your old self has also died with him, and you are now called to walk in the newness of life that comes on the other side. That is everywhere. In the New Testament, Romans, Galatians, Colossians 1, John, 1st Peter, we died with him, we will live with him. His blood does what it does because his life was poured out and we receive. And this people don't love the same calling in our lives. [00:11:41] Speaker B: So here is what the New Testament is doing. [00:11:44] Speaker A: There is a two way participation in the Gospel. First, he participates in us. He enters the death dealing condition, carries the sicknesses, bears the sin. He walks the paths we couldn't walk. He goes ahead the second direction, often under emphasized or completely ignored because it doesn't preach well. We participate in him, we are baptized into his death, we share in his sufferings. We bear in our bodies the dying of Yeshua. So the life of Yeshua may also be manifested. I'll come back in a conclusion to what our life should look like. But for now, the cross is the meeting place of those two directions. He came down into our condition that we might be raised up into his to follow after him. There's a beautiful representation of what and how Yeshua accomplished this. In John 19:34. You will remember this scene. The soldier pierces his side and out comes what? Blood and water. Now you can say, so what? That's in us. We have blood and water in us. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Big deal. [00:13:13] Speaker A: You could say, well, John wrote that because he wanted to as a detail, a forensic note for future pathologists so that they'd know he was actually dead. John was a careful writer. He didn't do it for that he gave you blood and water. Why? Because the Gospel writer is signaling both directions of the participation at once. You may not have thought of it this way, but blood. How much time have we spent talking about blood and water? Blood, covenant blood. The blood at Sinai that bound a people to God. The blood of the new covenant Yeshua named at the table, the blood that consecrates us for service and water, the water of life from Ezekiel 36, the living water he promised in John 7 that would flow from the believer's heart. The mikvah waters of cleansing that we walked through weeks back, blood and water. Out of his side comes both the covenant and the cleansing. This consecration and the renewal that is the Gospel writer saying, look at what's [00:14:35] Speaker B: happening at this cross in this man. The crucifixion is the demonstration of Yeshua's faithful obedience. But as I've said time and time again, it is the life that he brings. [00:14:55] Speaker A: The blood placed on the heavenly Sancta that Hebrews talks about is not proof of death. It is a seal of resurrection. Life that walked through everything death could do here and emerged with life, indestructible life. Hebrews 7. When Hebrews uses this sacrificial language, [00:15:27] Speaker B: It says that Yeshua's lifeblood functions on analogy to water. It purifies. It washes those who are made. [00:15:36] Speaker A: You remember what we said about the blood at Sinai, the ordination of Aaron's sons, Yeshua's encounter with the Metzorah, with the leper. In each case, the blood isn't paying for something, it's creating something, a new identity. The common becomes holy. The disciples become priests. Yeshua's blood, it says it. Peter says it. A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Yeshua's blood has done for his people what the consecration blood did for the sons of Aaron. He made priests out of disciples. So when we sit at the Lord's table, what are we doing? [00:16:20] Speaker B: Many of us were taught that the meal is the memorial of his death. [00:16:26] Speaker A: And in some ways it is. Do this in remembrance of me. We remember the suffering, we remember the cross. None of that goes away. But the meal is doing so much more than memorializing a death. The meal into life. 1 Corinthians 10. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Messiah? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Messiah? Remember that teaching on the Lord's Supper? The meal doesn't point you back to a transaction that closed 2,000 years ago. This meal memorializes the accomplishment of his life, and it points you forward into your calling as a disciple of Jesus. 11 weeks ago, 10 weeks. We started with chain. Chain, the merited favor that flows through faithfulness, the standing of the righteous one. And we've spent a lot of time there. But for the chain pattern to hold, for the participation framework to work, for everything we've been saying about the servant to make sense, we have to say [00:17:45] Speaker B: something carefully about Yeshua himself. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Most of us were taught a picture of Jesus where the emphasis on his deity made his humanity feel incidental. A divine being walking around in human form. He looked like a man, he hungered like a man, he wept like a man. But underneath, he was God, making decisions God makes with knowledge. God has the power God uses, with outcomes that were never actually in doubt. And of course, I understand the impulse behind this, the desire to honor him, the fear that any acknowledgement of his real humanity will somehow take away from his glory. Wars of theology, literal death, have occurred throughout history with arguments about this kind of stuff. [00:18:46] Speaker B: But hear me, [00:18:51] Speaker A: If the Obedience was not real obedience. [00:18:57] Speaker B: His merit is not real merit. [00:19:02] Speaker A: If his temptation could not actually have [00:19:05] Speaker B: pulled him another way. [00:19:09] Speaker A: The faithfulness is not the kind that [00:19:12] Speaker B: we've been describing for 10 weeks of chain. [00:19:16] Speaker A: If the prayer in the garden could only have ever ended one way, then [00:19:22] Speaker B: the prayer in the garden is not [00:19:24] Speaker A: that big of a deal. And if any of that is true, [00:19:32] Speaker B: the entire chain framework collapses, because chain [00:19:36] Speaker A: is favor that flows through demonstrated faithfulness. And demonstrated faithfulness requires the demonstration to be real. [00:19:48] Speaker B: I am not denying his Deity. [00:19:53] Speaker A: The fullness of Deity dwelt in him bodily. What I'm asking you to do is [00:19:59] Speaker B: to take seriously what Hebrews says when [00:20:03] Speaker A: it says he was tempted in every [00:20:04] Speaker B: respect as we are. [00:20:06] Speaker A: What Philippians says when it says he emptied himself taking the form of a servant. What Luke says when it says he grew in wisdom and stature with the favor of God and man. We are saved by the faithfulness of Yeshua. And that language only works if his humanity is real. All the way down. [00:20:34] Speaker B: There is a beautiful rabbinic idea, an axiom that God creates the cure before [00:20:41] Speaker A: the wound, that before sin entered the world, before the human condition went off the rails, the answer was already prepared. The rabbis spoke of the Spirit of [00:20:54] Speaker B: Messiah as being from before the foundations of the world, not the man Yeshua of Nazareth, but the Spirit, the Mashiach [00:21:06] Speaker A: principle, the Spirit of Messiah, the plan, the preordained answer to a wound that had not yet been struck. Peter uses the same logic in 1 Peter when he says, yeshua was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but manifested in these last times before the world was made. The plan was already there. The cure was in place before the wound. And then, in the fullness of time, a particular man born of a particular woman, born under Torah, lived a particular life of faithful obedience to the Father. And on a particular day, at a particular river at the Jordan in the Judean wilderness, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice said, this is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. And the Spirit of Messiah that had been waiting from before the foundations took up its rightful residence in Yeshua of Nazareth because he had merited it, because his life of obedience had made him fit to bear it. The cure had been waiting before the wound came, was now living, and a man in a body and a name [00:22:38] Speaker B: walking the roads of Galilee. [00:22:45] Speaker A: In the inherited picture, many people have [00:22:47] Speaker B: divinity descends and humanity is along for the ride. [00:22:52] Speaker A: In this picture, the eternal plan finds its perfect vessel in the faithful one in whose obedience makes him Capable of bearing the fullness of God from the Jordan moment forward, Yeshua, filled with the spirit of God, confronts the forces of [00:23:13] Speaker B: death wherever he meets them. [00:23:15] Speaker A: The lepers, the matsora, the bleeding woman, the dead daughter, the widow's son, Lazarus, the cross itself. Everywhere death has ruled, he steps in and life flows out. Not because he's performing a transaction, but because he is the cure walking the world. [00:23:40] Speaker B: And that life has been flowing out ever since, through the apostles, through the [00:23:46] Speaker A: witnesses, through every generation that has followed him all the way to you. There is something else that this changes because Moses asked God to show him his glory. God passed by and said, adonai, Adonai el rachum v' chanun Adonai. A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That's how God answered when Moses said, who should I tell them you are? Mercy, grace, slow to anger, steadfast love, forgiveness. Now ask yourself, is that if that is who God is? What kind of cure would God prepare [00:24:47] Speaker B: before the wound came? [00:24:50] Speaker A: A cure that required violence before any [00:24:54] Speaker B: mercy could show up? [00:24:57] Speaker A: A cure that demanded blood before forgiveness was legally possible? A cure that required God to vent his wrath on a substitute before he could declare his love for the world he already declared he loved? [00:25:16] Speaker B: Or a cure that looked very much like the mercy he had already named himself by. A cure that entered the wound, carried the sickness, walked the death, and on the other side poured out forgiveness and healing and water and spirit on all those who would come. [00:25:41] Speaker A: The picture of a wrathful God who [00:25:43] Speaker B: needed someone to die before he could love is not the picture Moses saw on the mountain. It is not the picture Yeshua taught when he said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. It is not the picture John the Baptist preached at the Jordan where forgiveness was already flowing through repentance and immersion, [00:26:08] Speaker A: and there had not even yet been [00:26:10] Speaker B: a single drop of Yeshua's blood that had been spilled. The God of mercy was always the God who was going to save the cross. Is the faithful demonstration of that mercy not the price of it? Now, hear me carefully. I am not saying there is no atonement in the Gospel, John, John writes, [00:26:41] Speaker A: he is the atonement for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole cosmos. [00:26:47] Speaker B: John says, we're not going to have any teachings about universal salvation right now. [00:26:52] Speaker A: But the academics debate this. That language is biblical. This atonement it runs from the gospel, from the beginning to the end. The question has never been ever about whether atonement is real, has always been here. What is atonement? For 10 weeks I've been telling you atonement is not God's wrath being pacified by death. Atonement is the holy life overcoming the forces of death. Atonement is cleansing. The sancta atonement is the holding together of the relationship between heaven and earth so that God's presence can dwell with his people. Yeshua is the atonement for the whole world. John says, because his indestructible life is [00:27:45] Speaker B: the answer to the death dealing condition every human being lives in. [00:27:52] Speaker A: He is the cleansing. He is the consecration. He is the living water. He is the meeting place where heaven and earth come together. That is more than enough. And that is more atonement than penal substitutionary atonement ever offered. And some will say this is absolute heresy. This is. [00:28:19] Speaker B: You're going to answer for this one day. [00:28:21] Speaker A: This is a demotion of Jesus. You're pulling back his glory, you're softening the cross. [00:28:28] Speaker B: Hear what I actually said. His obedience was real. His faithfulness was real. [00:28:36] Speaker A: He merited the fullness of the Spirit by walking the path that no one else could ever walk. He confronted the forces of death and overcame them. His life is indestructible. He's the cure prepared before the wound. He's the atonement for the whole world. That's not a smaller Jesus, that's a larger Yeshua. The Yeshua that most people have been given is a Jesus whose primary function is a get out of jail free card. He died so you wouldn't die. He took the punishment so it wouldn't fall on you. The whole point of him is what you escape because of him. The Yeshua scripture, the scripture that Yeshua actually gives us, actually gives us his primary function, the way a calling. [00:29:37] Speaker B: He died and you are called to die with him. He rose and you are called to walk in the newness of life. [00:29:46] Speaker A: He suffered and you maybe, probably will [00:29:53] Speaker B: be called to suffer faithfully when faithfulness costs you something. [00:30:00] Speaker A: He confronted death and you are called to confront death wherever you meet it because he lives in you and his life is stronger than the death that you're looking at. Which one of those Yeshuas is smaller? The one whose job is to keep you out of hell or the one whose call is to make you the [00:30:24] Speaker B: kind of person in which heaven can dwell? You have sat here, some of you, many of you, you too. You have walked the road with me. And once you see what the sacrificial system did and what it did not, once you really hear what blood means [00:30:49] Speaker A: in Leviticus, once you understand what it means for him to be made sin, and what with crucified means and what indestructible life mean, tell me which picture is more powerful. Tell me which picture is more accurate. And tell me which calling is more worthy of the years you have left. [00:31:24] Speaker B: This is the narrow path. Yeshua said it himself. The way is narrow that leads to life, and few there are who find it. The way is wide that leads to destruction, and there are many who walk in it. [00:31:43] Speaker A: The wide way says yeshua did the [00:31:45] Speaker B: work, so I don't have to. The narrow way says Yeshua did the work so I would know how to Andrew Rilera, who I am thankful to Dr. Andrew Rilera for writing the book Lamb of the Free that put me on a path of some of the most intense study I've ever been on in my entire life. But I credit him. I thank you, Dr. Relera. He put a phrase in his book that I have etched into my heart here. He says, it's very academic, but I love it. Yeshua's death is soteriologically unique and ethically paradigmatic. [00:32:34] Speaker A: Say it again. Yeshua's life. I mean, I'm sorry. Yeshua's death is soteriologically unique and ethically paradigmatic. [00:32:44] Speaker B: What the heck does that mean? Hear what those two words say. [00:32:51] Speaker A: Soteriologically unique. This means the salvation he brings is his alone. There is no other path. We cannot reproduce it, we cannot replicate it. We can only receive it. Ethically paradigmatic means his death is the pattern, the model, the calling, the shape our own lives are now meant to take. Salvation we receive pattern. We follow both and always both. [00:33:32] Speaker B: The wide way is more popular because it costs you nothing. [00:33:39] Speaker A: It allows you to call yourself a [00:33:41] Speaker B: follower of Yeshua without actually following him. It turns the cross into a transaction you observed 2,000 years ago instead of the path you're walking today. The narrow way is harder. It says you have died with him. [00:34:08] Speaker A: It says you've been baptized into his death. It says, as Paul wrote in Romans 12, you are now called to present your bodies as a living sacrament sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. You hear those two words together. Living sacrifice. That's not supposed to work. Sacrifices die. That's what they do. But Paul says yours does not. Your lives, your life is offered up in the giving of every day, every breath, every choice in how you interact with people, how you repair the world, how you welcome the presence of God into this fallen place. [00:34:53] Speaker B: The cross has not ended your story. The cross begun it. And Paul keeps going. He says, don't be conformed to this world. [00:35:05] Speaker A: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what [00:35:08] Speaker B: is the will of God. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Transformed, not pardoned and left alone. Transformed. The atonement is doing something in us, not just for us. There's a quote from Desmond Tutu that I love. God without us will not. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Just as we without God cannot. You hear both halves of that. [00:35:37] Speaker A: God without us will not. From the beginning, God has expected us [00:35:41] Speaker B: to be partners in creation. [00:35:43] Speaker A: I know it's not popular, but that's the truth of it. God expected in creation and tending the garden and the covenant in the rescue. He will not redeem the world without us. What? He is God, but He will not. He has chosen to redeem the world through his Son and repair it through the people. His Son is gathering. And the second half is just as important. Just as we without God cannot. Without him, we cannot on our own. We do not have the life to do this. We do not have the strength alone. We do not have the new heart. But in Yeshua, he's given us everything we need. Indestructible life in us. Spirit poured out. The new heart promised through Ezekiel, made real that we cannot becomes we can because he has gone ahead. [00:36:50] Speaker B: The redemption of the world is the meeting of those two participations. That is the gospel. He has gone ahead, not instead. [00:37:04] Speaker A: So. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Coming to the end. Here, The favor that flows through demonstrated faithfulness. The standing of the righteous one. The chain of Moses placed on the line for the guilty people. [00:37:24] Speaker A: The chain of Joseph that became the [00:37:27] Speaker B: survival of Egypt, of Israel in Egypt. [00:37:30] Speaker A: The chain of the tzaddik that covers those around him. And so today we close right where we began. Yeshua is the righteous One in Chuin Chuzhain, in Huzchain, before the Father, this [00:37:49] Speaker B: is the ground we stand on. His faithfulness is the merit we share. [00:37:56] Speaker A: In his indestructible life is the life we're called to walk. We sing it every single Saturday for the sake of our Master Yeshua, in His merit and his virtues, In Him [00:38:20] Speaker B: God may we be favorable. Our words, the meditations of our heart. He went into the condition we're already in. He carried it through to the other side. He emerged with a life that death could not hold. [00:38:34] Speaker A: And he turned to us and said, follow me. [00:38:43] Speaker B: That is the atonement that we've been missing. Not God satisfied by punishment, the faithful son, the cure prepared before the wounds. He is the meeting place of heaven and earth. He is the atonement for our sins and for the whole world. And he is asking something of you. Not receiving a transaction to walk a road, to present your body as a living sacrifice, to function in the newness of life, to confront the forces of death where you meet them with that same life. This is the narrow path. This is what the cross was for. He goes ahead, not instead will you follow him. [00:39:36] Speaker C: Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events events and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.