We just looked at the radical nature of the revelation that Jesus, though fully man, is indeed the Son of God. As such, Paul’s faith was Christ-centered. Yet he could hold complicated ideas in tension, in harmony, as shown by the fact that his faith remained Father-focused. That is principle 8 for keeping up with Paul as we travel on mission with him.

To better understand this principle, let’s see how it applies to a crucial subject, Jesus’ atoning work on the cross.

Keep this in mind. For the early church, atonement was an experience, followed by, to some degree, attempts to explain it. First, they encountered the risen Jesus in the power of his Spirit. Then, illuminated by the Spirit, they began reflecting on what was happening in Jesus’ work on the cross.

Here is an important distinction. Paul emphasizes God as the subject, not the object, of the atoning act of Jesus’ death.

This critical biblical idea is often obscured or misunderstood. What do I mean? Consider the apostle Paul’s thinking in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19: All this is from God [YHWH], who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

God is actually in on this act of atonement; he was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself. He does not call upon someone else to do it because no one else could. He has to do it, and he does exactly that in the person of his Son. God is the active agent. He is less the appeased party than the one who acts on the sinner’s behalf.

Scholars have a centuries-old dispute concerning the Greek word Paul uses in Romans 3:25, hilastērion: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith (ESV).

Does hilastērion mean the propitiation or the expiation of our sins? Propitiation speaks of turning away a deity’s wrath. Expiation speaks of removing that which offends. In the context of Romans 3, it can actually be interpreted/translated either way. I want to suggest that from a Hebraic point of view, both things are true.

On the one hand, the cross expiated or removed our sins. On the other hand, the cross propitiated or satisfied God’s judgment against sin.

Here is what needs to be clearly understood. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not like a pagan deity. The idea that he is wrathful and vengeful and in some way has to be appeased is foreign to the New Testament, indeed to all of sacred Scripture.

Atonement, biblically speaking, is not something to change God; it is something God has done to bring about change in you.

We do not have to beg him to be forgiving. He is a God who abounds in hesed (covenant loyalty, steadfast love, grace). That is evidenced by a desire and willingness to forgive. He is also a God who is intrinsically holy and cannot act contrary to his nature. At the cross, our great Creator found a way for justice and mercy to kiss, for truth and compassion to come together!

In Jesus’ crucifixion, God’s holy judgment against sin was satisfied (propitiated), and the consequences of our sins were removed (expiated). We are reconciled to our Holy Father. We have been brought into a relationship, into fellowship with Him.

I am simply clarifying and stressing what Paul teaches; God is the subject of atoning actions. He is the agent who deals with both sin and the wrath it evokes (the object of the atonement).

Sin and its consequences could not be ignored, winked at, or deflected. They had to be dealt with. At Calvary, God’s wrath destroyed sin and brought utter destruction to its consequences. Upon Jesus the Son, the wrath of God the Father ran its full course until it utterly exhausted itself and died. It is finished (John 19:30). Selah.

All of this is foundational to a biblical worldview. We must understand the fullness of atonement because it is essential to our daily lives as his children and Jesus’ disciples. All of this is about God’s character and his provision.

• The atonement speaks to what God, in Christ Jesus, has done for us.
• It also speaks to what God, by his Spirit, is doing in us.

I cannot stress this enough. The work done for us at the cross is also meant to be a work done in us. When you accept Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice, the work of the cross for you becomes an ongoing work in you. It is a process in which, again and again, you identify with his death so that you can be raised up in the power of his resurrection: I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Paul makes another remarkable claim about the atonement.

Yeshua’s death was a substitutionary sacrifice: For the love of Messiah controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised (2 Cor 5:14-15).

Now notice 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. Jesus is our substitutionary sacrifice. As a sin offering, he took my sins, iniquities, and transgressions upon himself. He also took upon himself the chastisement due to me because of my sin. The Jews did not kill Jesus; I did. And so did you.

Here is a vitally important point. Jesus substitutes for man—and for God.

Typically we only talk about Jesus as the substitution for man with respect to the holy God. But the fullness of the biblical revelation is that Jesus was also the substitute of God for man. Let me explain. Here is the key terminology: God was in Messiah Jesus, reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). This is the most fundamental revelation in the New Testament.

Stay with me here; this has profound implications for each one of us. I find the word “representation” helpful for understanding “substitution.” On the one hand, Jesus represents man facing God’s wrath against sin and the evil that results from it. On the other hand, he represents God in the face of man’s problem with sin and death. It is a double substitution. One in which we find God’s satisfaction and man’s salvation.

Jesus represents man to God, and he represents God to man.

Jesus represents Adam (mankind, Gen 1:27). And as a man, he became a sin offering. However, he did not become a sinner, which is a crucial distinction. If he had become a sinner on the cross, he would have died and stayed dead as judgment for his sins. But as an unblemished lamb, Jesus, son of the living God, could die on behalf of, or in lieu of, your sins.

The evidence of all this is his resurrection. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (Acts 2:24). And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power (1 Cor 6:14). This is what Paul calls the Gospel of God (Rom 1:1). And the reason he can so eloquently write in Romans 11:33-36:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the LORD, or who has been his counselor?” Or “Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.

Amen.