A Grateful Affirmation by Dave Andrews

The Apostle Paul tells us that, when Jesus died on the cross, he died ‘for’ our sins.[i] However, the critic A. S. Byatt observes ‘God sent his “only beloved Son” into the world to die “for us”; but the story d(oes) not make it at all clear what “for” meant.’[ii]

We know that, when Jesus died on the cross, he died ‘for’ our sins, in the sense that he died ‘because of’ our sins – because we killed him. Yet Paul insists that he not only died ‘because of’ our sins, but he also died ‘on behalf of’ our sin – for ‘the sake of’ our sins.[iii]

The question is – what was it that Jesus did on the cross for ‘the sake of’ our sins?

This question is not very easy to answer because, as the beloved Scottish theologian, William Barclay, says, ‘the church in its wisdom has never had any official doctrine of the atonement. The church has left every(one)’ – including critics like A.S. Byatt – ‘to find (their) own way to salvation through the life and death of Jesus.’[iv]

Nevertheless, this question demands, and deserves, an answer. For, as H.E. Turner says ‘no doctrine can represent the fullness of Christian tradition which does not explain how the world is made better by the cross.’ [v]

To tell you the truth, I don’t have the answer to this question. But I do have an answer – my answer. And it is my hope that as you reflect on my answer to the question it will help you consider your own answer to the question.

The Will Of God.

In order to try to understand what Jesus did on the cross ‘for’ our sins, we need to read the story slowly, noting the images that are used to describe the event in the narrative.

John the Baptist introduces Jesus at the beginning of the story as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’[vi] We know the word ‘Lamb’ is not meant to be taken literally. Jesus was a ‘Man’ not a ‘Lamb’. However, the word ‘Lamb’ is used to describe the kind of ‘Man’ that he was. He was a ‘Lamb’ of a ‘Man’ – pure and peaceable – as opposed to what many of us would call a ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ – duplicitous and dangerous.

According to John the Baptist this ‘Lamb’ of a ‘Man’ was also the ‘Lamb of God’ who would somehow or other ‘take away the sin of the world’. John doesn’t explain how he expects Jesus to do this; but, in the mind of the people to whom he spoke, there was a very strong association between the figure of a lamb and the ritual of sacrifice, as the people regularly presented a ‘lamb without blemish’ as an ‘offering for their sin’.[vii]

Jesus describes the ‘sacrifice‘ of his life in terms of a ‘ransom’ that he is going to pay. He says to his disciples, ‘You know the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their officials expect people to take their orders. (But) the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve – and to give his life as a ransom for many’.[viii]

I was brought up to believe the ‘ransom’ that Jesus paid was a ‘literal payment for sin’. As ‘only a few find it’,[ix] only ‘a few would be saved’ by it. So I thought Jesus must have only paid the price for ‘a few’ – the ‘elect’ who were predestined to be saved’

I had big problems with this notion of ‘limited atonement’. Not the least was that Jesus contradicted it when he said that he was giving his life ‘for many’ (not just a few). And his cousin, John the Baptist, seemed to suggest that ‘for many’ meant ‘anyone‘. After all, Jesus was ‘the Lamb of God’ who would take away the sin ‘of the whole wide world.’[x]

When I talked to a theologian in my home town about the problems I was having with the notion of the ‘limited atonement’ in the light of texts that seemed to imply the notion of an ‘unlimited atonement’, his comments only helped to compound my problems.

He said, ‘Dave, what you have to realize is that God doesn’t only have one will, he has two – a “revealed will”, and a “secret will”. His “revealed will” is that “all can be saved” but his “secret will” is that “only some – the elect – will actually be saved”.’

To my shame I must confess that for a while I actually took this belief on board as a way of resolving the contradictions inherent in the notion of the ‘limited atonement’ that I subscribed to at the time. But this belief almost totally destroyed my faith in God.

For if it is true, that God has a “revealed will” and a “secret will”, then what God says can not be taken at face value. And, if it is true, God’s “revealed will” is that “all can be saved”, but God’s “secret will” is that “only some will be saved”,’ then I think, in the final analysis, God can not be trusted.

The mistrust that this belief insinuated into my soul slowly undermined my trust in God.

And I was on the verge of chucking in my faith completely when I decided to revisit the gospels one last time to reevaluate this belief in the light of the bible.

As I read the text again I became convinced that when Jesus said ‘Come unto me all you are weary, and I will give you rest’, he really meant ‘all who are weary’ to come.[xi] And when one of his disciples said, ‘The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’,[xii] he meant God’s ‘secret will’ and God’s ‘revealed will’ were really ‘one and the same will’ – that ‘all can be – and all should be – saved’.

With a great sense of relief, I realized that we really could trust God as he comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no ‘secret will’ at variance with his ‘revealed will’. His ‘secret will’ is his ‘revealed will’. He says what he means, and means what he says.

He says he ‘did not come to be served, but to serve – and give his life as a ransom for many’ – and he means it – his life is a ransom for ‘many‘ – not just a select, elect ‘few’.[xiii]

Gradually I came to recognize that my problem was not with what Christ had done on the cross, but with my understanding of what Christ had done on the cross.

I had interpreted the metaphor of ‘ransom’ literally, rather than poetically, and conse-quently interpreted the ‘sacrifice’ Christ made on the cross as a ‘literal payment for sin’. Believing the scripture said in the end ‘only a few would be saved’, [xiv] I concluded that Christ must have only ‘paid the price’ for ‘the ‘elect’, rather than the ‘whole wide world’.

A literal interpretation of a poetic metaphor led me to misread what Christ actually did on the cross to such an extent I totally failed to grasp the magnitude of his grace. And I knew that if I was going to grasp the magnitude of his grace again that I would need to handle the old-world metaphors of ‘ransom’ and ‘sacrifice’ a lot more carefully in future.

Christ As Our Ransom.

Paul says ‘There is one God, and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.’[xv] And Peter says that ‘you were ransomed from the futile ways you inherited from your ancestors, not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.’[xvi]

The word ‘ransom’ means ‘the price paid for the emancipation or liberation of a person’. In the old world it was the price that was paid to free a slave. While in the modern world it is usually the price that is paid to free a hostage. In both cases the person, for whom a ‘ransom‘ has been paid, has been ‘bought with a price’ – a phrase that is repeated like a refrain throughout the epistles.[xvii]

The image of Christ as ‘ransom’ was a powerful metaphor in the first century. Prisoners captured in battle were often taken as slaves and a ‘ransom’ was the price that had to be paid in order to secure their freedom. Everyone knew that unless someone paid the price a slave would never be set free. Everything depended on the ‘ransom.’

Unfortunately, during the intervening centuries, people pushed the metaphor too far. To begin with they held the poetic image of the ‘ransom’ gently in their hands, and contem-plated the implications of the ‘ransom’ for themselves as ‘slaves to sin’. It was a dream come true. It meant freedom, from sin, forever! But after a while they took the poetic image of the ‘ransom’ and turned it into a soteriological category, which they used to construct a sophisticated theology of salvation. The dream became a nightmare. And freedom from sin got all tied up in philosophical knots.

The big issue was no longer heartfelt appreciation of the One who paid the price, but heady speculation about the one to whom the price was paid. The smart money was on the Devil. Bernard of Clairvaux argued that the Devil is the ‘God of this world’, people are ‘slaves of the Devil and his works’, so the ‘ransom’ must have been paid to the Devil to set us free from sin. He says that because people sinned they are ‘justly given over’ to the Devil; but because of the price that was paid we are ‘mercifully delivered.’ And, he adds, there is ‘a certain justice in the very deliverance’, since, by paying the ‘ransom’, the Deliverer employed ‘justice’ in dealing with the Devil, ‘rather than power.’[xviii]

Reformers like Martin Luther came along saying that it was impossible to conceive of the Deliverer dealing with the Devil as an equal. The ‘ransom’ was not the bargain the Devil thought it was. It was, instead, a rather diabolical trick. Luther says that ‘God acts like a fisherman who binds a line to a fishing rod, attaches a sharp hook, fixes a worm, and casts it into the water. The fish comes, sees the worm but not the hook, and bites, thinking he has taken a good morsel, but is caught.’ The hook is Christ’s divinity. The worm is Christ’s humanity. When the Devil tries to snap Christ up, he is caught. ‘For Christ sticks in his gills, and, even as he chews Him, the Devil chokes, and is slain.’[xix]

As Peter the Lombard says, ‘the Cross was a trap baited with the blood of Christ.’[xx]

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I must confess it makes me feel a bit sick. It makes grace seem so grotesque, that I am repelled by it, rather than attracted to it.

Christ As Our Sacrifice.

Offering a ‘sacrifice‘ was a tradition for the Jews that went all the way back to Abraham himself. They had the view that without a ‘sacrifice’ for sin there could be no salvation.

The Jews said that ‘without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sin’.[xxi]

Messianic Jews, like Peter, saw ‘the precious blood’, that was poured out on the cross, as the perfect ‘sacrifice’ for sin. [xxii] They poignantly alluded to the ancient prophecy of Isaiah[xxiii] saying: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to their own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ They went on to say ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: upon him was the chastisement that made us whole – and with his stripes we are healed.’[xxiv]

There is much about this metaphor that we as Gentiles, or non-Jews, find very difficult to understand. But the idea, that someone would be willing to ‘sacrifice’ his life for us, is a very powerful story. It touches us with love, in the deep, dark, hidden recesses of our soul, where we feel most unloved, and most unlovable. However, the way this story has often been told, has left many people seeing Jesus as loving – but not God.

According one version of the story, Jesus ‘sacrifices’ himself on the altar in order to appease God’s anger against sinners who have flagrantly disregarded his holy laws.

Ambrose said, Jesus ‘underwent death to give satisfaction for those who were under judgment’.[xxv] Anselm said this ‘satisfaction’ was a form of ‘compensation’ that had to be paid to God before he could set us free from paying the penalty for our sins ourselves. [xxvi] David Smith sums up this version, when he says, ‘we lay, by reason of our sin, under the wrath of God, sentenced to an eternity of torment; and that doom would have been executed upon us, had not Christ offered himself, and suffered in our stead the stroke of God’s wrath, and thus appeased his anger and satisfied his justice.’[xxvii] (See Notes)

For many evangelicals this particular version of events is the correct version. It is ‘the gospel’. In my opinion It may indeed be ‘good news’ for sadists and masochists. But it is not ‘good news’ for people who desperately need to be able to believe in a loving God.

The problem with presentations of a ‘gospel’ like this is ‘that, in some sense, God and Jesus are opposed. God demands sacrifice; Jesus gives sacrifice.’ William Barclay says presentations such as this ‘tend to set Jesus in opposition to God, and they go on to say that something Jesus did in his life – and especially in his death – changed the attitude of God towards (us), and made it possible for God to treat (us) in a different way.’

‘When they are stated in their crudest way – when the implication is that God laid on Jesus Christ the punishment which should have been laid upon (us) in order that the divine justice might be maintained – then these interpretations do something even worse. They represent God as protecting his justice by the most monstrous act of injustice the universe has ever seen or ever can see; for he laid on the sinless one the punishment of sin. Even if it be argued that the acceptance by Christ of that situation was completely voluntary and spontaneous, the terrible injustice remains!’

‘The result of this is, that almost inevitably Jesus is seen in terms of love, and God is seen in terms of justice’. Which is ‘why a great many people who have been brought up on these interpretations either consciously, or unconsciously, love Jesus but fear God – (they) feel at home with Jesus, but (they) feel estranged from God’.[xxviii]

The Cross As Revelation.

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, let me say, that ‘I am convinced neither death nor life, angels nor demons, the present nor the future, the powers above nor the powers below, nor any theology at all, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ [xxix] If our theology of the cross stands in the way of our appreciation of the love of God that is revealed so powerfully on the cross then its time to get rid of our theology.

Many of the interpretations that we have encountered indicate important directions for inquiry. But none of the interpretations, of Christ as ‘ransom’, or Christ as ‘sacrifice’, that we have considered, accurately reveal the love of God that was demonstrated in Christ on the cross without some serious distortion. However there is still one more interpret-ation that we might want to ponder. It was put forward by a man named Abelard.

Abelard was born in Brittany in 1079 and died in 1142. He held that Christ did not die, because a ransom had to be paid to the Devil, or because a sacrifice of the blood of an innocent victim was required to appease the anger of God. He held that Christ died as ‘a supreme exhibition of love’ that ‘might kindle a corresponding love in (our) hearts’ and ‘inspire (us) with the true freedom of (becoming sons and daughters) of God.’

Abelard ‘refused to accept any interpretation of Jesus Christ’s life and death, which is based on the idea of ransom. Ransom to the Devil is unthinkable. Ransom to God is

unnecessary.’ Abelard argued that everything was an expression of the love of God. ‘The incarnation of Jesus Christ is an act of pure love. God is righteous, but his right-eousness is his love’.

The problem, as Abelard saw it, ‘is that sin has separated (us) from God.’ And the solution, as far as Abelard was concerned, ‘is to bring (us) back into a relationship of love, and trust, to God. There is no necessity for Christ to assuage the wrath of God, because God’s attitude to (us) is not wrath but love. In order to win (us) back to this relationship to God, Jesus Christ has given to (us) the most unanswerable proof of love, a proof of love which so moves (our) hearts that (we) are enabled to enter into the relationship of love with God’. The death of Christ on the cross is not some technical transaction; ‘it is rather the supreme evidence of that love which is demonstrated in the life of Christ from the beginning. This love calls forth love, so that we come to “love him because he first loved us”.’

Abelard went on to say ‘that when this love is awakened in our hearts, God forgives us and reckons the merit of Christ to us, in that Christ is the head of the new humanity which begins in him. But the merit of Jesus does not lie in any accumulation of deeds which he did; the merit of Jesus is his obedience to God, and his service of utter love’.[xxx] 

Abelard’s interpretation of the death of Christ on the cross emphasizes the fact that it was essentially a revelation of the extent of God’s love for us. It was his view: that when God came to us in Christ, and laid down his life for us on the cross, it showed that God loved us so much that there was not anything that he was not willing to do in order to secure our salvation. And this amazing love is the assurance of our hope of salvation.   

The Revelation Of Salvation.

There are of course no perfect metaphors, no perfect interpretations, and no perfect explanations for what it was that Christ did for us on the cross. Each of the metaphors and each of the interpretations are finite attempts to plumb the depths of an indefinable event that defies full explanation. So, while we should be suspicious of explanations that claim to be true truth, we should learn as much as we can from these explanations, in order to seek to understand more truly what it was that Christ did on the cross for us.

I feel we have much to learn, and much to re-learn, from the Abelard’s interpretation of the death of Christ as a revelation of the extent of God’s love for us. But we don’t have to throw out the metaphors of ransom and sacrifice – like Abelard did – in the process.

The scriptures are quite clear on this point. Christ is our ransom. Christ is our sacrifice. So instead of rejecting the metaphors, we would be better off if we were to reframe our interpretation of ransom and sacrifice in the light of the revelation of God’s love for us.

The metaphor of Christ as our ransom was a powerful metaphor in the first century. Prisoners captured in battle were often taken as slaves and their ransom was the price that had to be paid in order to secure their freedom. They knew that unless someone paid the price for their salvation they would never be free. So they prayed for someone who would be willing to pay their ransom more than they prayed for anything else.

During the Battle of Adrianople, in the fourth century, many prisoners were captured. A message about their plight, with a plea for help, was sent to Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. Ambrose lived simply, having already given away most of his possessions to help the poor, but he was determined to raise the money needed for a ransom to secure their release. So he took the sacred vessels of the sacrament from off the altar of his church, melted them down, and turned the gold and silver containers into gold and silver coins. He then went and spent all the money he’d collected to ransom the captives. Inevitably there were parishioners who accused Ambrose of acting sacrilegiously. But the Bishop answered his accusers, by saying that the people – for whom Christ’s body was broken and Christ’s blood was shed – were much more precious than the vessels that carried the symbols of his sacrificial love for them.[xxxi]

Now, whenever I tell this story, no one ever says to me – ‘tell me, Dave, who was it that they paid the ransom to?’ No one is interested in that. Because that’s beside the point.

Instead, everyone says to me, ‘tell us, again, who was that guy who paid the ransom?’ Every one is interested in that. Because that’s what the whole point of the ransom story is. The ransom story is all about someone who is prepared to give everything he’s got to save someone else. Which is why the ransom story is such a beautiful picture of what God did for us in Christ.

The metaphor of Christ as someone who was willing to sacrifice himself on our behalf can be as powerful a metaphor in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century.

There is much about the way the Jews might understand this metaphor that we, as non-Jews, find very difficult to understand. But the idea, that someone would be willing to ‘sacrifice’ his life for us, is a very powerful story. That touches us with love, in the deep, dark, hidden recesses of our soul, where we feel most abandoned, and most alone.

Telemachus was a monk in the fourth century that lived more or less contentedly in a remote Asiatic Christian community. Then one day, Telemachus sensed that the Spirit was encouraging him to leave his community and go to Rome, which at that time, was like the capital of the world. When Telemachus arrived in the so-called ‘heavenly city’, Rome was celebrating a recent victory of its powerful legions over the troublesome Goths, and so, for the holiday festival, a circus was being staged for the jubilant multitudes.

Telemachus didn’t know where he was going. But he allowed himself to be swept along by the crowds on their way to the Coliseum for the circus. When the crowds arrived at the Coliseum they began to get excited at the sound of the lions roaring their challenge and the gladiators preparing for combat. Telemachus didn’t know what he was doing. But he followed the crowd into the Coliseum, where, to his horror, he was confronted with gut-wrenching carnage, as gladiators fought one another to the death, slaughtering their hapless foes, without pity, as a red-blooded entertainment for the blood-thirsty crowds.

It was all too much for Telemachus. He felt that he had to do something. He simply couldn’t stand by idly and do nothing while human beings were being beheaded, dis-emboweled, and dismembered before his very eyes. So Telemachus ran down the steps of the stands, leapt into the arena, and began darting, back and forth between the fighters, crying, ‘Forbear. Forbear. In the name of Christ I beg you to forbear.’

When the crowd saw the scrawny figure of the monk, running frantically about the arena, ducking and weaving between the combatants, to start with, they took Telemach-us to be a bit of welcome comic relief, and roared their approval. But as time went by, some of the people in the crowd began to hear what ‘the mad monk’ was saying, and, as more and more of the crowd came to realize that Telemachus was actually trying to spoil their bloody fun, they turned against him, hissing, and booing, and bellowing at the top of their voices for his quick dispatch.

What happened next no one seems to know for sure. We do know that the gladiators lunged at the monk with thrusts from their swords; and we do know that the audience buried the monk under a hailstorm of stones. But we do not know for sure whether it was the gladiators, or the audience, that killed him. All that we know is that, when the furor was over, Telemachus lay dead in the middle of the arena.

Then a strange thing happened. In the silence that ensued, it was if the monk’s last cry echoed eerily around the arena once again: ‘Forbear. Forbear. In the name of Christ I beg you to forbear.’ Overcome with shame, the spectators departed, leaving the circus empty, never to return. Never again did an audience gather to watch people butcher each other at the Coliseum in Rome. All brutal gladiatorial battles were banned. And Telemachus was written into the pages of history as the hero who, single-handedly, brought the era of slaughter as entertainment to an end.

Probably, the declining power of the empire, resulting in diminishing numbers of recruits for gladiatorial schools, and decreasing amounts of funds available to stage gladiatorial contests, were also very significant factors in putting an end to the circus; but Telemachus will always be remembered as the man who, in the end, was actually prepared to sacrifice his life to save people in the arena from slaughter.[xxxii]

When I talk to people about this story, the issue of ‘who the sacrifice was made to’ never comes up. Because it is not the issue. An issue that does come up is ‘who the sacrifice made was for.’ Because that is obviously an issue of importance in the story. The story is about saving people in the arena from slaughter. However, the issue that comes up for discussion most of the time is ‘who the guy was who made the sacrifice.‘ Because the sacrifice story is all about someone who is prepared to lay down their own life to save the lives of others. Which is why sacrifice is such a magnificent picture of what God did for us in Christ.

Thus, if we reframe our interpretation of the metaphors of ransom and sacrifice in the light of the revelation of God’s love, what God did for us on the cross in Christ is clear. On the cross God proved to us, once and for all, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he is the kind of person who is always prepared to give everything he’s got to help some- one else, even to the extent of laying down his own life, to save the lives of others.

This is the gospel. This is the good news. That God is indeed good. So good, in fact, that he is far better than we could have ever imagined that he might be. He is actually willing to give everything he’s got in order to help us – even to the extent of being willing to lay down his own life for us. Jesus’ life and death is God’s guarantee of our salvation.

But the question remains – why the necessity of this sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins? – why the necessity of having to pay such a heavy price, in blood, to ransom our souls?

There is no biblical evidence to suggest that the ransom was the price paid to the Devil.

And there is no biblical evidence to suggest that the sacrifice was offered to God to give him his ‘pound of flesh’ before he was willing to forgive us. Quite to the contrary. The scripture says God is always more than willing to forgive and being willing to forgive means being willing to relinquish any right to retaliation – the opposite of demanding any kind of vindictive satisfaction. So to say that God required some kind of bloody vindictive satisfaction before he could forgive us is not only totally untrue – but also utterly absurd.

So why, we may well ask, the need for Christ to be ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins?’ [xxxiii]

My view is that there never was, and never will be, any forgiveness without sacrifice. Forgiveness, by definition, means making the sacrifice that is necessary to accept an injustice without demanding satisfaction in return. The greatness of any single act of forgiveness consists in the greatness of the sacrifice that a person is prepared to make in relinquishing their right to restitution or retaliation in order to restore a relationship. The greatness of forgiveness is in exact proportion to the greatness of the sacrifice.

It is my view that throughout the ages God had always been prepared to suffer greatly to forgive greatly. But because God was invisible, no one saw the tears that God cried.

Only the prophets, who lived in sympathy with the heart of God, had any appreciation of the greatness of his grace. Until, at the right time, God stepped onto the stage of human history, visibly, as a human being, and, in Jesus, shows us just how great his grace is.

God’s grace is great enough to embrace our pain, absorb our rage, forgive our sin, and encourage us all towards completely revolutionary personal growth and social change.

In Jesus on the cross, we can see that God embraces our pain. Frederick Beuchner tells a story that he says is ‘a peculiarly twentieth century story’. And you only have to hear the story once to know it’s just the kind of story that Jesus himself might have told. ‘It’s a kind of parable of the lives of all of us. It’s about a boy of twelve or thirteen who, in a fit of crazy anger got hold of a gun and fired it at his father, who did not die straight away but soon afterward. When (he) was asked why he had done it, he said that he could not stand his father, because his father demanded too much of him. And then later on, after he had been placed in a house of detention, a guard was walking down the corridor late one night when he heard sounds from the boy’s room, and he stopped to listen. The words that he heard the boy sobbing out in the dark were, “I want my father, I want my father”. ‘Our father’, Beuchner says, ‘we have killed him, and we will kill him again.’[xxxiv] But Jesus, on the cross cries out, as one of us, saying “Father. Forgive them. For (I know) they know not what they do”.

In Jesus on the cross, we see God not only embraces our pain, he also absorbs our rage. As Gale Webbe, in The Night and Nothing, said, ‘There are many ways to deal with evil. All of them are facets of the truth that the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living, human being. When it is absorbed there, like a spear into one’s heart, it loses its power and goes no further.’[xxxv] As Scott Peck says in The People Of The Lie , ‘The healing of evil can only be accomplished by love. A willing sacrifice is required. The healer must sacrificially absorb the evil’.[xxxvi] Jesus on the cross absorbed our evil. He took into his heart as assuredly as the spear that was thrust into his side. And, it went no further. There was no reaction. No demand for restitution. No demand for retaliation. The cycle of violence stopped right there and then, with him, forever.

In Jesus on the cross, we see God not only absorbs our rage, he also forgives our sin. ‘One thing I know’, William Barclay says, ‘that because of Jesus Christ and what he did (on the cross) my relationship to God is changed. Prior to Jesus Christ (we) did not fully know what God was like. The holiness of God (we) did know; but the marvel of the love of God (we) had never dreamed of. When Jesus healed the sick, comforted the sad, fed the hungry and forgave his enemies, he was saying, “God loves you like that. Nothing that (you) can ever do will stop God loving (you).” Because of Jesus Christ I know God is my friend. He is no longer my enemy. He is no longer even my judge. There is no longer any unbridgeable gulf between him and me. Daily, and hourly, I experience the fact that I can enter into his presence with confidence. (And as a result) I am more at home with God than I am with any other human being in the human world’.[xxxvii]

Last, but not least, in Jesus on the cross we see God not only forgives our sin, he also encourages us all towards completely revolutionary personal growth and social change.

When I gaze at Jesus on the cross my heart is strangely moved. Someone dying for a cause doesn’t make it right. But a manifesto of love written in blood can not be easily dismissed. A movement, which has proved to be worth dying for, may lay claim to be worth living for. The martyrdom of Jesus lights a beacon for compassion – an inexting-uishable fire that scorches the apathy and hypocrisy hidden in the dark corners of my soul. His agony breaks my heart, and, in the process, breaks down some of my barriers I have erected in my heart against my own humanity. His anguish brings the sound of others crying to my ears which otherwise I would not hear, and brings the sight of others suffering to my eyes which otherwise I would not see. For me, the death of Jesus is not the end, but the beginning – of a whole new way of life committed to the way of Jesus.

Grace For The Struggle.

TEAR Australia is an agency that exists to help Aussie Christians struggle with injustice in the world in the light of the amazing grace that God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Through TEAR publications and presentations Aussie Christians are reminded that we do not struggle with oppression and poverty and starvation and war in a vacuum – we are called to struggle with life and death issues in the context of the life and death of Jesus.

Steve Bradbury, the former director of TEAR, says quite unashamedly, ‘We do indeed have good news to share’ with the people who are concerned about saving the planet.

‘Because Jesus came,’ he says, ‘we can know with certainty that the creation, and all who are in it, are profoundly loved by the Creator.’ The ‘God of grace’ revealed ‘in Jesus’ is with us in our struggle against injustice. ‘What is more’, he says, ‘there is great joy in knowing that there will come a time when Jesus will finish what he has begun’, and ‘the sadness’ that we struggle with – day after day – one day ‘will be no more.’[xxxviii]

This is a theme Steve goes back to time and again in his editorials for Target magazine.

In a column entitled ‘That Gentle Heart’, Steve writes: ‘During our summer holiday my wife discovered, in the bookshelves of friends we were staying with, an old book that I had wanted to read for years. “The Christ Of The Indian Road” written by E. Stanley Jones, and published in 1926, is a missionary classic. It really is worth a careful read.

Consider this: “if God thinks in terms of little children as Jesus did, cares for the leper and the outcast, and, if his heart is like that gentle heart, that broke upon the cross, then he can have my heart without reservation”. Jones is describing the God I know (in) Jesus. Were God not like this’, Steve says, ‘I would not want to be found among his worshippers.’ Then, Steve goes on to say, what I have heard others say in TEAR circles round Australia, ‘I want to know Jesus better….The One who was nailed to the cross for the sins of the world, loves the poor and hates the systems which continue to crucify them….I want to follow him more closely, and reflect his love more completely’. [xxxix]

In Brisbane over the last few years we’ve started a number of TEAR support groups that meet regularly to help people draw on the grace of ‘that gentle heart that broke upon the cross’ – that Steve alluded to – to sustain us in our struggle against injustice. Once every four weeks I meet with the Tim Tam group at Brookfield, the Fruit Cake group at Aspley, and the Fatfree Muffin group at West End. We usually start our meetings with a cuppa and a serving of the specialty of the house. Tim Tams at Richard and Trish’s, Fruit Cake at Frank and Val’s, and Fatfree Muffins at Lindsay and Katherine’s. Then, from 7.30 to 9.00 pm, we get down to some serious work, spending the next one and a half hours re-reading the scriptures, re-membering the story, and re-working our responses to issues in the light of the gospel.

At the heart of the process is a story telling segment where someone tells a story of an issue they are struggling with. As this is confidential, I can’t tell who told what story, but I can tell you some of the issues that we are struggling with. As Australians all of us are struggling with the original sin of Australia – the dispossession of Aboriginal and Islander peoples. We are painfully aware of our country’s unwillingness, as yet, to repent of our sin, seek true reconciliation and make real restitution for a crime from which we benefit. Some of us have examined our investments and discovered, to our shame, that some of our superannuation funds have been invested in companies that are manufacturing armaments and destroying the environment. While others, who have gone overseas to work with the poor, are living with the guilt of having returned home safely, to live in relative luxury, while the friends whom we made while overseas struggle to survive.

As we share these stories it is not uncommon for us to feel overwhelmed by the pain.

Without due care our shame can become rage and our guilt can become despair. We can easily become totally debilitated by our unmediated reactions to these issues. But we make sure that we never finish sharing about our stories without praying about our stories. It is in prayer we are able to deal with our feelings with the care they require. We may be tempted to feel totally debilitated, however, through prayer we can process our responses, and make them much more pro-active than re-active. For it is in the light of grace we find that we are able to consider our responses more constructively and productively. Grace helps us acknowledge our faults, accept our limitations and contra-dictions, develop discernment in the midst of confusion, energy when we would have otherwise exhausted our resources and endurance where we would have otherwise run out of patience. It is only through grace we feel we can enter into the struggle for justice.

Through grace we have managed to stumble slowly, but surely, step by step, towards doing more and more justice to the issues that our groups are concerned about.

Most of us have been involved in the movement of Australians For Reconciliation in one way or another. Arthur managed to get to the Australian Reconciliation Convention. A few of us have joined ANTaR, Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. Peter has helped set up a local group called ‘Pay The Rent’, which not only recognizes prior ownership of the land, but also provides a way for us to pay rent to the traditional owners of the land on which we now live. A number of us also continue to support the ministry of Aunty Jean, a well-known, long-serving Aboriginal leader in our community. While Steve and Emma, a doctor and a lawyer respectively, have chosen to move to Katherine, in the Northern Territory, in order to help provide good quality medical and legal services to local Aboriginal communities in the Territory.

Many of us have reviewed our investments. Helen transferred her investment money into an ethical investment fund, challenging the rest of us to do the same. Some of us signed up with Australian Ethical Investment, which is committed to investments that contribute to a just and sustainable world.

All of us continue to reassess our commitment to the poor each time that we meet. Most of us give to the poor through TEAR. Many of us are partners, giving regularly to TEAR by direct debits from our bank accounts. Ralph and Susan decided to go to Melbourne so Ralph could work with TEAR. Just about everybody has been involved in the Jubilee Drop The Debt Campaign, advocating the cancellation of the unpayable debt of the world’s most highly indebted poor countries. Frank and Val, Allan and Nadine, David and Ruth, Greg and Katie, Brett and Annette, Richard and Trish, Helen, Arthur, and Sannie all ‘did the hard yards’. Meanwhile Mark and Kathy, and Greg and Katie have actually returned to work in India. And Brett and Annette have also decided to work in Delhi for a while. Mark and Kathy are with Servants. Greg and Katie are with Sharan. And Brett and Annette are with Sahara. Frank and Val regularly return to the subcontinent to do locums in hospitals and run support groups for doctors in the Emmanuel Hospital Association. While David continues to work with Bible Societies throughout Asia.

What Love Is This? A Song by Dave Andrews

Excerpt from ‘Crux’ by Dave Andrews

http://www.daveandrews.com.au/crux.html

[i] 1 Cor.!5:3

[ii] A. S. Byatt ibid p73

[iii] 1 Cor.15:3

[iv] W Barclay ibid p95

[v] H.E. Turner ibid p46

[vi] John 1:29

[vii] Lev.4:32-35

[viii] Math.20:25,28

[ix] Math.7:13

[x] John 1:29

[xi] Math.11:28

[xii] 2 Pet.3:9

[xiii] Math.20:25,28

[xiv] Math.7:13

[xv] 1 Tim.2:5

[xvi] 1 Pet.1:18

[xvii] 1 Cor.6:20;7:23; Gal.3:13;4:4

[xviii] W. Barclay ibid p119

[xix] G.Aulen Christus Victor McMillan New York 1969 pp103-104

[xx] W.Barclay ibid p121

[xxi] Heb.9:22

[xxii] 1 Pet.1:18

[xxiii] I Pet.2:24-25

[xxiv] Isa.53:5-6

[xxv] W.Barclay ibid p118

[xxvi] G.Aulen ibid p93

[xxvii] W.Barclay ibid p116

[xxviii] W.Barclay ibid pp122-124

[xxix] Rom.8:38-39

[xxx] W.Barclay ibid pp124-125

[xxxi] W.Barclay ibid p109

[xxxii] D.Andrews The Mad Monk Target Summer 2000 p19

[xxxiii] 1 John 1:1-2; John 3:16-17; 1 John 2:2

[xxxiv] F. Beuchner The Magnificent Defeat Harper Collins San Francisco 1966 p65

[xxxv] G.Webbe The Night and Nothing Seabury Press New York 1964 p109

[xxxvi] S. Peck The People Of The Lie Simon & Schuster New York 1983 p269

[xxxvii] W. Barclay ibid p134,130,129

[xxxviii] S.Bradbury ‘Do Justice, Love Kindess, Walk Humbly With God’, Target No.3 1998 p17

[xxxix] S.Bradbury ‘That Gentle Heart’ Target No.3 1998 p1 (edited)