Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed concerning the Atonement. Now, this is going to be just a very brief overview hitting the high points, because to do justice to the subject, I would really need to write a book. But before I explain to you the early Christian view of the Atonement, I first want to talk about the model of the Atonement that you and I have grown up with.
It's known to theologians as the satisfaction theory or model or the penal model of the Atonement. Now, most Bible-believing Christians think that the satisfaction model is what Christians have always believed. In fact, that's what I had always thought until I first read the early Christian writings. But in fact, it isn't. This view that we accept as the norm actually dates back no further than the 11th century. It was developed by the Roman Catholic theologian named Anselm, who was the archbishop of Canterbury.
And he laid out his model of the Atonement in a book entitled" Why Did God Become Man?" And he wrote the book explicitly to criticize the historic view of the Atonement that the Church had held up until that time and to replace the original model with his new model on the Atonement. In its original form, the satisfaction model represented the thinking of medieval chivalry. Let me just give you a brief summary of what Anselm said.
He said," Man had offended God through sin." And I think we're all in agreement on that point. He said," Sin dishonored the majesty of God, and he said an individual can forgive an insult, but the sovereign of a state cannot. Appropriate satisfaction must be offered." Yet the insult of our sin is so great that only someone who is divine could provide the needed satisfaction. And yet it was man who insulted God, so the satisfaction could only be made by a man.
Therefore, the only one who could provide the needed satisfaction to God was someone who was both divine and human, who was both God and man. And of course, this was Jesus Christ through the incarnation. And Anselm's view became the primary Roman Catholic view of the Atonement. Well, then 500 years later, the Protestant reformers basically adopted wholesale this Roman Catholic view of the Atonement that they had grown up with, and it was this same satisfaction model of Anselm.
Now, the Reformers modified Anselm's model a little bit. They expressed it more in legal or penal terms. God the Father had decreed that man must die for his sins. Now having decreed that, he couldn't turn around and simply forgive man for his sins. The punishment had to be paid. So Christ received God's punishment in our place. God punished Him instead of us. In fact, the Reformers talk about God's wrath being poured out on Christ instead of on us, and that Christ's blood appeased the anger of the Father.
Now, today, this is still the prevailing view among Bible-believing Western Christians, and as far as I know, among Roman Catholics as well. Although today it's maybe expressed a little bit more delicately than what the Reformers expressed it in, but it's still basically the same model.
The satisfaction theory is what I grew up believing, and it's become so widely accepted in the West that most of us aren't even aware that there could possibly be another view, at least another view, that would be based solidly on Scripture. And I don't personally feel any big sense of mission to change people's understanding of the Atonement. I feel the essential thing is that we believe that Christ Jesus died for our sins, that He redeemed us, and that we are cleansed and saved through His blood.
At the same time, the satisfaction model does have some weaknesses, one of which is that it's not sufficiently comprehensive. Now, it's easy to grasp because it reduces the Atonement to a very simple model, which is quite understandable to us. But I think perhaps it's overly simplistic. The early Christians saw the Atonement as encompassing many, many things in both the earthly sphere and the heavenly sphere, in both the material world and the spirit world.
So now let's look at these two different models for understanding the Atonement. The satisfaction model, which is the prevalent view, and the early Christian model, sometimes referred to as the classic model. We're going to see where they're in agreement and where they differ. The first issue I want to look at is the question, did God forgive mankind their debt that was owed to God, or did somebody else pay our debt for us? Now, the satisfaction model basically states that God could not simply forgive our debt.
Just say," Okay, I'll cancel it. Don't worry about paying it." Rather, it teaches that our sins have been remitted not because God forgave them, but because Jesus paid the debt for us. So the Father didn't forgive our debt. He simply received payment from someone else, the Son. I remember once hearing a Bible teacher say," God is not merciful. God is just." Now, I was quite surprised to hear such a statement because this brother was a fairly sound Bible teacher in most areas.
But you know I thought about it, and I realized the truth is, that is essentially what the satisfaction model teaches, that God wasn't merciful. He didn't say," Okay, this is what should be done, but I'm going to go ahead and let you off." Instead, no, he said," My justice has to be satisfied. Somebody's going to have to pay. And if it's not you, then it'll have to be someone else." All right, in contrast, the early Christian model says that God forgave our sins, our debt.
He didn't receive payment for our debt from the Son. Well, which view is correct? Well, let me read to you a Bible passage and then you tell me. This is from Matthew 18, and we're going to read verses 21 through 27.
It says," Then Peter came to him, him meaning Jesus, and said,' Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him up to seven times?'" Jesus said to him," I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven." Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents.
Now, a little aside here, it's my understanding that 10,000 talents would be the equivalent of a million or two million dollars today. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying," Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all." Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.
I think most of you know the rest of the story. That same debtor went out and found a fellow slave who owed him a very tiny amount of money, and he wouldn't forgive his fellow slave and had him thrown into prison. And so when his master, the king, heard about it, then he canceled the forgiveness of his debt and handed him over to prison himself.
But the point of the passage that I want to get across now is, did the king who would represent the Father, did he forgive that servant's debt, or did somebody else come in and pay the debt for the servant? Well, see, it says that the king simply forgave it to him. And so I feel the Scriptures support the early Christian model better than it does the satisfaction theory. God forgave.
I mean, if God can't forgive, if he says," I'm sorry, if you owe it, you have to pay it." It would be contrary to my sense of justice if I just simply forgave it. Well, then on what basis can we humans forgive our fellow man? I mean, why can't we say the same thing," Hey, I'd like to forgive you, but that would be unjust.
Justice requires that you pay what you owe me or that you make up for this injustice or this wrong that you have done." But see, the Bible says," No, we are to freely forgive."" Lend to people not even asking back," Jesus said." Forgive people their debts." The other thing that I think is very important from this illustration that Jesus gave of how the Atonement works is that God's forgiveness is conditional. And so if we don't forgive others, then He retracts His forgiveness of us.
Now see, He could not do that under any kind of legal model if Jesus, the king's son, had come and paid the servant's debt because then the debt would be paid. The king couldn't say," Oh, I'm going to reinstate this now." He couldn't. The debt would be over with. But see, it wasn't ever paid. It was simply forgiven. And because no consideration, this is a legal term now, was given to the king, he had the right to reinstate it. And now let's move on to the second issue, which concerns to whom was the ransom paid?
Because both the satisfaction model and the early Christian model teach that Jesus died as a ransom for our sins, because that's, after all, what the Bible says.
For example, Matthew 20:28 says," The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many." 1 Timothy 5:6 says," For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all." But the question again is," To whom was this ransom paid?" Now my dictionary defines ransom this way.
It says," It's the redeeming of a captive by paying money or complying with other demands." Now, under the satisfaction model, the ransom was paid to the father. But let me ask you a question. When someone is kidnapped, to whom is the ransom paid? To the child's parents? Of course not. It's the child's parents who pay the ransom. It's paid to the kidnapper, to the one who is holding the child or the adult as a captive.
Now, the early Christians and the hearers of Jesus were very familiar with this imagery of paying a ransom because unlike in our society today, it was an extremely common practice because you had pirates out in the waters. If you were sailing in a ship, you carried a big risk that pirates would come and take over your ship, take everybody who was on the ship as captives, and then sell you as a slave unless someone came and redeemed you by paying a ransom.
Now, the Roman Navy did a lot to eliminate that, but it still was around. Then you had raiders, sometimes just irregular soldiers from other countries. They would come into an area that wasn't closely guarded, raid a hamlet or a village, and take everybody captive. And then if you wanted to see your loved ones again, you had to pay a ransom to get them back. Else, they were sold into slavery.
Also, invading armies would often take thousands, tens of thousands of people captive, and again sell them into slavery, and you would have to pay a ransom to get them back. So Jesus hearers were familiar with what a ransom was all about, and they knew you don't pay a ransom to the parents of a child who's been taken by raiders. You pay it to the raiders, to the bad guys. That's who you have to give the ransom to. So under the early Christian model, the ransom was paid to Satan, not to the Father.
This is how they understood it. By choosing to heed Satan rather than to listen to God, Adam and Eve chose Satan to be their master. As a result, the entire human race came into bondage to Satan and also to death. And Satan did have a lawful right over mankind because we voluntarily chose to follow His way, not God's way. And that's why Satan could offer Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world. Because the whole world was in bondage to Satan and to the powers of darkness.
And it's why the New Testament speaks of Satan as the God of this world. However, Satan was willing to release mankind to give up this legal right that he had over us if he could have the Son of God in our place. Instead of killing us, he would kill the Son of God. Because he said to Himself," If I kill the Creator, the Son of God, then the whole world will always be in my power." So the ransom price that Satan demanded was the life of Jesus, and Jesus paid that price for us.
So both models, the satisfaction model and the early Christian model, speak about Jesus paying the penalty for our sins. But under the satisfaction model that we've all grown up with, the penalty is something that the Father is demanding be paid. And so He paid the penalty to the Father. But under the early Christian model, the penalty that is owed was a penalty that was the natural consequence that flows from sin. Let me give you an illustration.
Suppose a person who is grossly overweight is visiting their doctor and the doctor tells them and has told them in the past," You've got to quit eating so much and you need to exercise a lot more." But the person isn't really doing that. And so the doctor tells them," Now, look, if you don't start exercising daily, and if you don't start cutting back on the amount you eat, you are going to pay the price." Now, what does he mean by that?
That someone's going to come up and say," Okay, now the price for this is X number of dollars, and you're going to have to pay that because you ate no." No. He's saying there's going to be a natural consequence from your lifestyle, and the price you'll end up paying is going to be probably an early death, a heart attack, or something like that. If nothing else, it's going to be that you're going to be grossly overweight.
Well, see, that's how the early Christians understood the penalty of sin, that there was a natural consequence there, that we had come under bondage to Satan, and somebody was going to have to pay the price. Either mankind would be forever under Satan's bondage, or that we would be released because somebody, Jesus Christ, paid the price to release us. C.S.
Lewis gives an excellent illustration of the early Christian model of the Atonement in his book entitled" The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Now, I'm not necessarily endorsing that book. I'm not comfortable with all of C.S. Lewis's imagery because he likes to use imagery that's based on mythology. But I'm sure that many of you have read the book at one time or another, like I have. And for those of you who haven't read it, let me just briefly relate the story as it applies to the ransom.
The story involves four children who have entered this mythical world of Narnia. And one of the children, they're all brothers and sisters is named Edmund. And he becomes acquainted with the villain of the story, the White Witch. But she appears to him as this kindly queen who wants to do good things. So he ends up doing her bidding and becomes a traitor to Aslan. Now, Aslan is the lion who obviously pictures Jesus Christ, who is the ruler of the land of Narnia. Edmund would picture Adam or Adam and Eve.
And of course, the white witch would picture Satan. Well, in the story, the White Witch decides to end up killing Edmund, and she's about to do so, but then Edmund is rescued by the forces of Aslan. Well, it looks like," Okay, everything's going to be great." But then the White Witch comes to Aslan and says," You can't do what you've just done by the laws of Narnia. Every traitor belongs to me.
Edmund is a traitor, and so I have the legal right to him, and you cannot deny me that right." Well, Aslan realizes that she's right, but he says," Let's talk a little bit." And he makes an agreement with her that if she will release Edmund, that he will die in Edmund's place. And the White Witch agrees to that, and she ends up tormenting Aslan and then putting him to death.
But just as she's about to kill him, she says," I want you to know that not only are you going to die, but your death is not going to save Edmund because I'm going to kill him anyway." And with that, she then kills Aslan. But Death cannot hold Aslan, and so he comes back to life the next day, and he ends up conquering the White Witch, and so everybody is safe.
Well, Lewis obviously based the whole model of his book on the classic model, the early Christian model of the Atonement, and I think it's a great illustration of it. Let me read you just a few quotes from the early Christians so you can hear it from their mouths how they're understanding the ransom. Origen wrote," Christ is our redemption because we had become prisoners and needed ransoming." It's in volume 9, page 318.
So it wouldn't matter that we need ransoming from the Father, from an angry Father who wouldn't forgive us. No, we were prisoners of somebody else. Origen wrote again talking about Jesus, He submitted to death, purchasing us back by His own blood from Him who had got us into His power, sold under sin. So He didn't purchase us from the Father, He purchased us from Satan. That's volume 9 page 377. Irenaeus wrote," For at the first, Adam became a vessel in Satan's possession, whom he did also hold under his power.
That is, by bringing sin on him unjustly, that is, on man, and under the color of immortality, he brought death upon man." Volume 1, page 456. Just a couple more I want to read. Again from Irenaeus said," Jesus gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity.
The apostasy that means Satan and all those who went along with him tyrannically and unjustly ruled over us, and it alienated us contrary to nature, for we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, rendering us its own disciples, for the apostasy had obtained dominion over us at the beginning when it snatched away what was not its own. It's in volume 1, page 527. Then one final one from Cyprian. He said," He who is freed owes obedience to his deliverer." Volume 5, page 432.
See, that was the concept of people at that time. If you were taken captive by raiders or pirates or sometimes sold into slavery because you couldn't pay your debt, if somebody then paid your debt or somebody paid the ransom to the raiders to get you released, well, then you owed your obedience to that person who released you. You didn't just say," Well, hey, thanks a lot. Now I'm going on my way." No, now you are obligated to that person. So they understood we now are slaves of Christ. We are owned by Jesus.
Our allegiance, our total obedience is owed to Him because He redeemed us, ransomed us from captivity to Satan and the forces of darkness. Notice what the Scriptures say. Galatians 1, 3, and 4." Our Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us." Deliver us from what? It says," From this present evil age," or other translations, say," This present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father." See, we weren't delivered from the hands of an angry father.
We were delivered from the forces of darkness, this whole evil world, and its master, Satan. Another verse I want to look at is Acts 20:28, where Paul told the elders or overseers," Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among whom the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood." So it says that Jesus Christ purchased the church with His own blood, but He purchased it from whom? The Father?
Well, if the Father already owned the church, why would Christ have to purchase it from Him? That doesn't make sense. On the other hand, if we had sold ourselves into bondage to Satan and the forces of darkness, then indeed we did need to be repurchased. And the price for that purchase? It was Christ's own blood. Well, I think now you can see that under both the early Christian model and the satisfaction model, there is a substitutionary atonement. Christ died in our place.
But under the satisfaction model, the substitution was God was going to punish us, and He punished His own Son instead of us. Under the early Christian model is that we were in bondage to Satan and the powers of darkness, and Jesus died in our place. He accepted the punishment, the penalty that Satan would have delivered onto us. A third aspect of the Atonement I want to talk about now is the sacrificial death that Jesus incurred.
Both the satisfaction model and the early Christian model recognize that Jesus died a sacrificial death. When the Scriptures teach this, it says," This man, Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God." That's Hebrews 10: 12. Or again, John 10:11, Jesus said," I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep." Those are basic concepts of Christianity that we all believe we're all familiar with.
But now the satisfaction model and the early Christian model think about Christ's sacrifice in two entirely different ways. The satisfaction model views his sacrifice more as a ritualistic sacrifice. I don't mean to denigrate the satisfaction model, but I think if we're honest, the kind of sacrifice it teaches is something very similar to the pagan sacrifices that they made to their gods.
They believed that their gods would be appeased by the shedding of blood, so they offered sacrifices to appease their angry gods. Under the satisfaction model, it's virtually the same thing. There is this angry father who cannot forgive mankind, but he's appeased by his son's dying. Someone has to die to satisfy God's penal justice. And Christ's death therefore brought a sense of satisfaction to the Father. His shed blood had an appeasing effect on the Father.
But see, the early Christians didn't see it that way at all. They didn't understand his sacrifice to be a ritualistic sacrifice. They saw it as an heroic sacrifice. Let me give you some illustrations to explain the difference. We all know the ritualistic sacrifice. It's the image that I think first comes to people's mind when you say the word sacrifice. Person being laid out in an altar or maybe an animal or something else and being killed in their blood running down the altar.
But the heroic sacrifice would be when somebody gives up something, including their life, in order to help other people. In simple everyday terms, I grew up in the 1950s and baseball was the king of sports back then. And after school, it seemed like every day we were playing softball. Well, it was a very common expression that we used in baseball that somebody would hit a sacrifice fly. What that would mean is you had a runner on third base who could come home, and so the batter would hit a deep fly downfield.
He knew it would be caught and that he would be put out. He would give up his right to get to first base. But the third base runner could tag up and get home before the outfielder could get that ball back to the catcher. So we call that a sacrifice fly. And there were other similar terminology, a sacrifice bunt, or grounder, or something like that, where you hit the ball in a place where you would get out, but you would allow somebody else to get in. See, that's another kind of sacrifice.
There's two uses of the word. Now, bringing it down to involving someone's life, think of a child who's out on a highway, and here comes a car about to hit the child. And the child's father or mother sees this and quickly runs out into the road, pushes the child to safety, but gets hit by the car as a result and is killed. See, we would say that that parent sacrificed his life or her life for their child. They gave up their life so that their child could live. I'll give you another illustration.
During wartime, you have the same sort of thing that happens all of the time that soldiers will undergo a certain mission. And in doing so, they may even know they do not have a chance that they are going to die. But by undertaking the mission or by holding their position of protection as long as they can, they enable others to live. They lay down their lives for others.
Here in Texas, we all know about the story of the Alamo, where a very small handful of men stayed there in what was actually a mission and held off the Mexican army for quite a number of days, even though they knew their situation was hopeless. They were going to be killed. But instead of surrendering when they could have and maybe spared their own lives, they decided they would give up their life so that others could live.
And the result of it was it gave the rest of the Texans time to put together an army, and the Texas army did eventually win and win its independence. Okay, the early Christians saw Jesus' sacrifice see in that sense, in that heroic sense. He allowed Satan to kill him in order to free us from Satan's bondage. He sacrificed his life so that we could live.
And it's true that this sacrifice was pleasing to the Father, not because he gets some kind of horrible satisfaction out of seeing shed blood or to see his son being crushed and tortured. Those things were painful to the father to see his own son have to undergo that. And he received no pleasure or appeasement from his son having to die.
But at the same time, he was proud of his son for going through with this incredibly noble act, suffering and dying so that we could be freed from Satan and from the world of death. And that's what the Father wanted his son to do. It was a sacrifice that they both made. I think harder sometimes on the parent, the parent would rather lay down his life than to see his own son have to lay down his life.
If you find it hard to think of sacrifice in those terms, I'm curious what you do with Romans 12:1, where Paul says," I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, your reasonable service." Now, do you think God wants us to be sacrificed on some literal altar somewhere when we're told to offer our bodies a living sacrifice? Do you think that would bring him pleasure?
Or is it more reasonable to believe that God wants us to devote our lives to Him, laying down our lives in His service, and if necessary, dying His martyrs? Isn't that what Paul is really talking about there in Romans 12:1?
It's the same as what he said in Philippians 2:17." If I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all." One area where the satisfaction model and the early Christian model differ, or I should say another area where they differ, is that the early Christians believe that a major part of the Atonement was Christ's victory over Satan. Notice what the Scriptures teach.
Jesus said," How can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house." The early Christians understood that to be a reference to the fact that Jesus would bind Satan and plunder his goods. That is, all the captives who were held by him would be released. And that's something we had no power to do. Only Jesus could bind Satan.
Or again in Hebrews 2:14 and 15, we read," He Himself, talking about Jesus, likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy Him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and released those who through fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to bondage." See, I mean, it's right there in the Scriptures that part of the Atonement, part of the redemption of mankind was defeating Satan, binding him so that we could be freed. Let me read to you a few quotes from the early church.
Melito wrote this," When our Lord arose from the place of the dead and trampled death underfoot and bound the strong one and set man free, then the whole creation saw clearly that for man's sake, the judge was condemned." Saint volume 8 page 756, Irenaeus wrote," Christ fought and conquered. That is because he was man contending for the fathers. Through obedience, he completely did away with disobedience, for he bound the strong man and set free of the weak.
He endowed his own handiwork with salvation by destroying sin. For he is a most holy and merciful Lord, and he loves the human race. Therefore, as I have already said, he caused man to cleave to and to become one with God. For unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately conquered. So he's saying, again, part of our redemption was Jesus defeating Satan, binding him. But this had to be done by a man. And this was one reason for the incarnation.
Because obviously, God Himself had the power, and the Son of God in His heavenly existence had the power, but it had to come through a man. Methodius wrote," With this purpose, the Word," that's Jesus, assumed the nature of man, so that having overcome the serpent, he might by himself destroy the condemnation that had come into being along with man's ruin. For it was fitting that the evil one should be overcome by none other than man, whom he had deceived, and of whom he was boasting that he held in subjection.
Volume 6, page 319," It brings to mind the prophecy in Genesis that you will bruise him talking to the serpent. You will bruise him in the heel, but he will bruise you in the head." And that's what happened, not as much through the death of Jesus, but through His resurrection. And so in the early Christian model, the resurrection is an intricate and key part of the Atonement. In the satisfaction model, it's not so important. The point is, he died, he shed his blood, and so the penalty was paid.
I mean, it would almost seem like under the satisfaction model that if he had never been resurrected, we would still be free. But not under the early Christian model. There has to be the resurrection. Otherwise, it would be like Aslan in C.S. Lewis' story when the White Witch killed him and said," I'm not going to release Edmund after all." It'd be the same way with Satan. He would quickly ensnare us again, even though he had been willing to let go of his claim over us. But no, Jesus had to come back from the dead.
And by his going down into Hades, he introduced life into the realm of the dead and shattered it, broke it open, and led captives out of the lower regions of Hades. Victorinus wrote, since volume 7 page 355," The devil, the traitor angel, thought that all men would perish by death." However, because Christ was not born of human seed, he owed nothing to death. Therefore, the devil could not devour him, that is, he could not detain him in death, for on the third day he rose again.
Alexander of Alexandria, the one who was the opponent of Arius at the Council of Nicaea, he wrote," As we have said, when the body of the Lord was hung upon the cross, the tombs were opened, Hades was unlocked. The dead received life again, and the souls were sent back again into the world. For the Lord had conquered Hades. He had trodden down death, and he had covered the enemy with shame. Volume 6, page 3 or 1.
And one last one, Ignatius wrote," Jesus crucified my sin along with the one who was the inventor of it." That, of course, is Satan. Christ is condemned all the deceit and malice of the devil under the feet of those who carry him in their hearts. It's volume 1, page 129. This theme or motif of Christ's victory over the devil as a key element of the Atonement was emphasized by a Swedish theologian named Gustaf Alin, who wrote a book in the early part of the 20th century entitled Christus Victor, Christ the Victor.
And he pointed out in it how the early church understood the Atonement largely through this victory of Christ over our enemy, over our captor, Satan the devil. Another issue concerning the Atonement I want to throw out is the question," Does Christ's blood actually cleanse us from sin or does His blood simply pay the penalty for our sin?" Now, the satisfaction model of the Atonement essentially says that the barrier in the relationship between God and man was primarily on the part of God.
To remedy the alienation between God and man, someone had to change God's heart towards mankind. And so Christ's death on the cross didn't change mankind. It changed God's view of mankind. Because prior to Christ's death, His justice would not allow Him to simply forgive us. So until the penalty was paid, we remained alienated from Him. Once Jesus paid God's imposed penalty, then God could be at one with us again.
So under the satisfaction model, man is no different after the Atonement in reality than he was before. He still lives in sin, but he now has a new legal standing before God because the price for those sins have been paid. There's a popular bumper sticker I see around here a lot. It says," Christians aren't perfect. They're just forgiven." And the message behind that little slogan is," Yeah, Christians sin like everybody else." The difference is we're forgiven.
Well, as we've talked about, really, it's not even forgiveness according to the satisfaction model. It's that Christ paid the price God had imposed for our sin. So we still sin, but they're not counted against us because Christ paid the penalty. I've heard preachers say that justification means that our status is just as though we never sinned. I mean, we still do sin, but it's just as if we hadn't sinned. That's what the Atonement is all about. It's a legal transaction that took place.
Well, the early Christian model says," No, it's not that at all." It wasn't God's heart that needed to be changed. It was our nature that had to be changed. God always stood ready to forgive, and in fact, He did forgive those who repented of their sins. The problem, according to the early Christian model, is that sin, by its very nature, alienates us from God. Let's picture that your best friend has just been sprayed by a skunk, but he wants to come over and have fellowship with you.
Well, you may feel fine towards your friend. You still love him. You like being around him. But until something changes, you're not going to be able to invite him in your home. There's going to be an alienation, but the alienation isn't because you have an attitude towards him. Something has to be paid to you, is that he needs to get cleaned up because we can't have close fellowship if you smell like a skunk. You've got to go and get cleaned up first. Well, that's the way sin is with God. We needed changing.
We needed cleaning up. God didn't need to change, but a holy God can't have close fellowship with a person who is unholy. God loved us. He was willing to forgive us. But that sin in us made a barrier between us and him because, as I used in the illustration, we smelled like a skunk. As James tells us, James 4:8," Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." See, it's us who have to move towards Him. God hasn't moved. We're the ones who've moved away from Him.
He continues," Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." See, that's what enables us to draw close to God, is when we get ourselves cleansed from sin, that we turn from unholy living to godly living, through the grace of God and through the power of Jesus' blood. So Christ's blood, according to the early Christians, doesn't change the ledgers of heaven. There's no bookkeeping thing that went on here that shows that our sin debt has been paid.
Rather, his blood cleanses us from sin. We're actually without the stain of sin, not just there's been a ledger entry in heaven that shows that we're clean when we really aren't. The issue under the early Christian model isn't having a new legal standing before God. It's actually being cleansed, being transformed through Christ's blood. Now, His dying was a propitiation for our sins because it rendered a change in us. It cleansed us. It made us able to stand before God. So now we can be reconciled.
We can be whole with Him. As the Scriptures say 2 Corinthians 5:19," God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." See, the Scriptures don't say," Christ was reconciling God to the world." No, it was reconciling the world to God. Or again, Paul writes in Colossians 1:21 and 22," You once were alienated and were enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death." So the problem was us. We were alienated and enemies because of our wicked deeds.
Ephesians 2:13," Now in Christ Jesus, you who once were a far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Mankind was far off from God. He didn't need moving. We needed moving. And that would apply also to the Gentiles who were far off because of the law and Christ's death also fulfilled the law and removed that issue as well.
Again, Hebrews 9:14 says," How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Katie, did you see again the message? It says it cleanses our conscience. It doesn't say it just covers over it. You may be wondering where it says He offered Himself without spot to God. As we have said, yes, it was an offering. God wanted him to come to earth.
God sent him here in order to help us in our lost condition. And so His death was not just a sacrifice that benefited us. It was an offering to His Father. It was an act of obedience and love towards His Father and their mutual love towards us. Again, Hebrews 10:14," By one offering, He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." Okay, we're being perfected. We're being sanctified. It's not just a penalty having been done away with.
One last verse, Hebrews 13:12," Therefore, Jesus also that He might sanctify the people with His own blood suffered outside the gate." Okay, so you see what the Scriptures are saying," We are cleansed by His blood." It's not just an issue of the penalty being remitted. Let's read just a few quotes from the early church to illustrate what I'm saying. Hermas from volume 2, page 35, says," He Himself purged away their sins, having suffered many trials and undergone many labors.
For no one is able to dig without labor and toil. He himself then, having purged away the sins of the people, showed them the paths of life by giving them the law which he received from his father." And again, Cyprian from volume 5, page 476," It is coming, the Lord cured those wounds that Adam had borne. He healed the old poisons of the serpent. Thereafter, he gave a law to the sound man and bade him to sin no more, lest the worst thing should befall the sinner.
Those sins that had been previously committed are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Origen volume 4 pages 316 and 317 for the death of Christ reduced to weakness those powers that war against the human race. And it set the life of each believer free from sin through a power beyond our words. He takes away sin until every enemy will be destroyed and death last of all, in order that the whole world may be free from sin.
Therefore, John pointed to him and said," Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Have you ever thought about the words there of John the Baptist," The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." See, the satisfaction model changes that to," Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the penalty of sin." But that's not what He said. He said He takes away our sin. He cleanses us and transforms us if we are truly born again and are walking in the light.
Okay, one last quote from Irenaeus, Volume 1, page 493. He said," So it lasts by means of the new man," that's Jesus," All who from the beginning were His disciples, having been cleansed and washed from things pertaining to death, can come to the life of God." At this point, I think you can see that there's quite a few differences between how the early Christians looked at the Atonement and how the Roman Catholic Medieval Church, and then later the Reformers looked at it.
But one of the biggest differences is that the satisfaction model focuses almost exclusively on Christ's death. We hear a lot of talk about Christ died for my sins, and that is a basic Christian truth that is equally true under either model. But under the satisfaction model, the incarnation was necessary only because the penalty had to be endured by a human, or the debt had to be paid by a human. It couldn't be paid by God or by the Son of God in His divine character.
But in the satisfaction model, in the model that most of us have grown up to believe, the incarnation itself really plays no redeeming role in our salvation. But in contrast, the early Christian model sees the incarnation as an essential part of the Atonement. There's redemption in the incarnation, totally apart from the death of Christ. Let me ask you a question. What did God tell Adam would happen if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad?
Didn't God tell him in the day that you eat of it, I shall surely kill you? Is that what he said? No, he didn't say that, did he? He said," In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." Now, that statement of God in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, could mean one of two things. It could mean in the day you eat of it, I will slay you because you've eaten of it.
And I think, essentially, that's how the satisfaction model understands it, that God was sentencing them to be killed if they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. But there's a second way to understand God's statement. And I'll give you an illustration to explain it. Let's say that a father is on some kind of very strong medicine. Perhaps he has some ailment that requires him to take potent medicine that would be harmful to a small child.
And so one day he shows their little four-year-old this bottle of pills that the father takes, and he tells him," Listen, I don't want you ever, ever to take these pills. Don't eat of them. Don't even come and touch this bottle because if you eat these pills, you're going to die." Now, see, he's saying the same thing that God said in Eden, but he means it in an entirely different sense than if you eat of these, I'm going to kill you. He's telling the child that this will result in your death.
This isn't meant for a child. It is deadly for you to take it. And so the early Christians tended to understand God's statement at Eden in that fashion. He wasn't telling Adam and Eve," I am going to kill you if you eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil." He was telling them," If you disobey me, and if you eat of it, you're going to die." Number one, as newborn humans, you're not ready to eat of this tree.
Perhaps it was something that they would have eaten of years or centuries millennium down the road, but it was not something that their bodies at that time could assimilate. Or secondly, he could have been explaining to them that disobedience would bring them under bondage to Satan, and it would introduce corruption into their physical bodies and into their souls. And that corruption would cause their death. And that corruption would put a wall between them and God.
Not because He couldn't forgive them, but because as we talked before, there would be something in their nature now that would make it very difficult for God to have a normal relationship with them, like the good friend who's been sprayed by a skunk. I should also mention that many of the early Christians saw death and mortality as a blessing. Otherwise, sin could exist eternally.
For example, Methodius wrote," We were emptied of the divine inspiration and filled with carnal desires which the cunning serpent infused into us. For that reason, God invented death for our sakes, that He might destroy sin. Otherwise, if we were immortal and sin rose up in us, sin would be immortal as well. Find that quote in volume 6 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, page 372.
All right, so now looking at it from this early Christian perspective, that there's a natural consequence that's going to come with your disobedience that will cause you to die. So what is the remedy then for man's condition? Well, see, under the satisfaction model, we're understanding that God says," I'm going to kill you," and that the only way that penalty could be removed was for somebody either all humans to die or for Jesus to die in our place.
And so once that penalty had been endured by Jesus Christ, then man was open for salvation because all that had ever happened was a legal decree against us that had now been removed. But see, the early Christians are saying," No, disobedience not only put us under bondage to Satan, it introduced this moral and physical corruption into our very nature." Man certainly deserved punishment, and God certainly punishes us for disobedience.
I don't want you to walk away thinking that I'm saying or that the early Christians were saying that," Oh, God doesn't punish." He's just one of these doting parents who always says," Oh, that's okay. Even though you've done this, Johnny, that's okay. Daddy still loves you." You know, God does punish. But God had no problem forgiving and saying," Even though you deserve punishment, even though I've said I'm going to punish you, I can forgive you if you repent." I mean, this is what happened to Nineveh.
God said," I am going to destroy the city of Nineveh because of their wickedness." But even though he had said that, when they repented, he forgave them, and he didn't do what he had already declared he would do. So the early Christians were seeing the problem wasn't with God and His lack of forgiveness. It was that we needed healing. We were like someone who had contracted cancer. And it wouldn't do just to say," Hey, look, I forgive you. Everything's fine. No, I've got cancer. This cancer has to be healed.
We had corruptibility in our nature. We could not possibly save ourselves." So the only remedy was for a second Adam to appear because all we could inherit from the first Adam now was corruption. And the second Adam had to be incorruptible, beyond corruption, and without sin. And then we could descend from him rather than from the first Adam. And that's why to the early Christians, the incarnation was so important. We had to have this second Adam that we could become the descendants of.
We needed new genes, so to speak. I'm talking about G-E-N-E-S genes. Because in Adam, we could only die. We needed this second Adam. But you may object, but we're not descendants of the second Adam. How does his becoming incarnate help us? He didn't marry and produce children, so we were not born from him. Oh, see, that's the whole reason that we have to be born again.
Why Jesus said," Lest you are born again, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." Because without the new birth, if all we have is the birth from Adam, we're still helpless descendants of Adam. The new birth makes us descendants of the second Adam. And in the new birth, Christ actually dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. But there's even more to it than that, according to the early Christian understanding. And this deals with their grasp of communion.
Hopefully, you've already heard the message that I've prepared on what the early Christians believed about communion. If you haven't, I would encourage you to listen to it. But I'll listen to what Jesus said in the Scriptures and how this plays such a vital role in our salvation. He said," Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. See, this is how we get life through the second Adam. We must eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood. Now, Jesus was not speaking in a carnal sense. He wasn't talking about cannibalism. And the Urtic Christians did not normally understand his words to be talking about transubstantiation, that the bread and wine physically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
But no, they did believe that there was, as Ignatius put it, in communion, the medicine of immortality. Because Paul himself said," The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" Through communion, we partake of the divine nature in some way that is beyond our human understanding. But we are actually physically involved now with the second Adam, who is no longer a mere human but now has a glorified body.
And when we think of his body and blood, we have to think of it in his divine nature, not in his human body and blood when he was on the earth. And we shouldn't get sidetracked and think that just partaking of communion will do this. If we haven't been born again, communion does not have this effect on us.
And that was one of the errors of the Roman Catholic Church and the sacramental churches, I think, is that they tend to make it so mechanical that as long as you receive communion from the right priest in the right church that then it has this effect on you of being grafted into the second Adam, but it doesn't if you have not been born again. Let me read you what Peter said, 2 Peter 1:3 and 4.
He says," As His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these, you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. So see, Christ cleanses us. We escape the corruption, and then we become partakers of the divine nature. We actually commune with the body and blood of Christ.
Let me read you just a few passages from the early Christians to illustrate this. Justin Martyr wrote," Corruption became inherent in nature, so it was necessary that he who wished to save us would be someone who destroyed the essential cause of corruption. And this could not be done other than by the life that is according to nature being united to that life which has received corruption, for this would destroy the corruption.
At the same time, it would preserve the body that had received it with immortality for the future. Therefore, it was necessary that the word would become possessed of a body. This was so he could deliver us from the death of natural corruption. For if, as you suggest, he had simply warded off death from us by a simple nod, indeed, death would not have approached us on account of his will. However, we would have again become corruptible for we carried about in ourselves that natural corruption.
And see, that's, I think, a deficiency in the satisfaction model of the Atonement, in that it doesn't destroy the essential cause of corruption. It only removes the penalty for that corruption. Whereas under the early Christian understanding, through the incarnation and through the Second Adam, we get right to the heart of the matter, and Christ destroys that essential cause of corruption. Irenaeus wrote," When he became incarnate and was made man, he began anew the long line of human beings.
And he furnished us with salvation so that what he had lost in Adam, namely to be in the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus." It's volume 1 page 446. The quote from Justin was volume 1 page 301. Again, Irenaeus wrote," The Word of the Father and the Spirit of God had become united with the ancient substance of Adam's formation.
So it rendered man, living and perfect, receptive of the perfect Father, in order that as in the natural Adam, we all were dead, so in the spiritual Adam, we may all be made alive." Origen wrote," Therefore, he came down into our deadness in order that he, having died to sin, we might then receive that life of His, that is forever. For we bear about in our body the dying of Jesus." One last one from Methodius, volume 6, page 378. Origen was from volume 9, page 316.
Methodius wrote," The Word descended into our world and was incarnate of a body. He did this so that having fashioned it into a more divine image, he might raise it incorruptible, even though it had been dissolved by time." So think about how they were understanding the Atonement. The next time you hear some of these familiar passages such as Isaiah 53:5," By His stripes, we are healed." So it's not just the penalty being taken away, but our sinful corruption is healed, is changed.
Whereas Paul said," For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." And so it is written the first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. The first man was of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. There's one other difference between this satisfaction model and the early Christian model that I want to briefly discuss before we close.
That is, in the satisfaction model, Jesus' teachings play no role in our redemption or in the Atonement, other than we might say that he announced the way of salvation to believe in Him. But essentially, under the satisfaction model, Jesus could have simply been born as a human and then on reaching manhood without having any ministry simply have died for us. That's all that we would have needed under the satisfaction model.
He would have paid the price, the penalty owed to God the Father, and we would have been redeemed. He didn't have to teach us anything in order to redeem us. In contrast, the early Christian model says it wasn't enough to have the corruption that we inherited from Adam undone. As newborn creatures, we still have to know the way to go, the way to live. Otherwise, we're going to end up right back under Satan's power again.
See, because the satisfaction model thinks in terms only of a legal penalty, well, if that legal penalty has been removed, then it doesn't matter what happens after that. Christians aren't perfect. They're just forgiven. But see, if we're thinking in terms of sin nature, corruption in mankind, that isn't something that is just quickly done away with instantly so that now we are perfect. It's a process. Let me read to you just a few passages from the early Christians.
Irenaeus wrote," In no other way could we have learned the things of God unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become man, for no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father." So you're saying it was so important that we learn the ways of the Father, that we needed somebody with the same nature as a Father. And that would have to be Jesus Christ. No human, no angel could do that.
But somebody who was truly divine like the Father, who could come and tell us firsthand of divine things. Lactantius wrote," He sent his son as an ambassador to men, so he could turn them from their unholy and vain worship to the knowledge and worship of the true God." He also sent him so that he could turn their minds from foolishness to wisdom and from wickedness to deeds of righteousness. That's volume 7, page 114. Again, Lactantius wrote," He himself is virtue, and he himself is righteousness.
Accordingly, he descended so that he could teach these things and mold the character of man." And again, Lactantius wrote," His teaching was about to have such might that the peoples throughout the world could be given life through the knowledge of the true light. Thereby, they could arrive at the rewards of immortality. For previously they were estranged from God and subject to death." On volume 7, page 128, the previous was volume 7, page 117.
Now don't take those quotes out of context and imagine that all that was needed was for a great teacher to come and teach us the right way, and then we could be saved. Those quotes have to be taken in the context of all of these other quotes I've given you from the early church that our whole nature had to change. But those ones illustrate that they understood that his teaching played an essential role in our redemption, in our salvation, in the Atonement.
And think what John said, 1 John 1:7, he said," If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." You notice how that's conditioned on an" if" if we walk in the light? Well, how could we know the light unless Jesus had taught us?
That's why His teachings are an integral part of the Atonement because we have to walk in the light after we have been born again or else we will follow the same path as Adam and end up again back into corruption. And you notice how the cleansing is an ongoing process. He doesn't say," The minute we believe in Jesus Christ and accept Him as our personal Savior, boom, we are cleansed from all sin." Now he said," If we walk." Now," walk" is a verb that connotes action. You're moving.
Okay, so this is something ongoing. If we walk, he didn't say if we stand in the light or step into the light that could be interpreted as a one-time thing, but walking is an ongoing process. So the cleansing is an ongoing process as well.
At this point, many of you may be thinking," Yes, David, but what about all the Scripture passages that do teach the satisfaction model of the Atonement, that Jesus was sacrificed for the Father so that He could remit the penalty and all of that?" Well, the answer is that every single passage that you can think of that would support the Satisfaction Model can be read in two ways. It can be read under the satisfaction model interpretation.
And that's why I have no bone to pick with somebody who wants to hold to that because I understand, yes, you can quote Scripture after Scripture, but every one of those Scriptures can also be interpreted under the early Christian model. The problem is we have been so ingrained with the satisfaction model. We've heard it from almost the beginning before we were even a Christian. It was probably presented in the gospel message given to us. So we've always read that into those verses.
We've always had these eyeglasses on called Satisfaction Model. And by now, those interpretations are ingrained in us, and it's very hard to change the way we've always looked at those verses. Perhaps I have an easier time because growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, I reached a point in my life where I had to lay down everything I had grown up to believe and just start with a blank slate. What really is true?
And it's a painful process, but I'm glad that God led me through that process of having to lay things down and look with a blank slate, look and see objectively what do the Scriptures actually say? Can they be interpreted in more than one way? I'm going to give you an illustration. You probably remember the passage in Acts. Paul says," I taught you publicly and from house to house." That was a favorite scripture that we quoted as Jehovah's witnesses, Acts 20:20.
I mean, after all these years, I still remember where that passage is. Well, to us, that passage meant Paul went house to house like Jehovah's Witnesses do, canvassing a neighborhood, knocking on every door, offering them the latest issue of the Watchtower or you know the equivalent of that back in the first century. And it never occurred to us that that verse could mean anything different than that. Paul went house to house. What's wrong with Christendom? They don't go house to house.
We're the only ones who go house to house like Paul did. That's what we said to ourselves. Well, now to most of you, that would sound like a strange interpretation. No, Paul's merely saying that, as Acts said, they broke bread together from house to house, that he taught in their various homes as well out in the marketplaces and in public places. Doesn't say he was out canvassing, knocking on every door in the neighborhood.
Likewise, Matthew 24:14, Jesus said," The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." Now, as a Jehovah's Witness, you understood that to mean that throughout the whole world, there would be people knocking on everybody's door, going house to house, knocking on the doors. That's what Jesus had foretold, the preaching of the kingdom, this house-to-house canvassing.
And again, we'd say," Well, nobody else is doing this work that Jesus foretold except Jehovah's witnesses." Again, you would read that. And in your mind, you'd probably say," Well, he's saying that there would be evangelists. There would be meetings that people would be witnessing to their neighbors. The kingdom would be preached." But you wouldn't imagine that to be specifically saying that there would be a house-to-house canvassing going on. But as I said, we were so used to having it interpreted that way.
It never even occurred to me that you could look at those verses in a different way, not until, like I say, years after I left the witnesses. It's sort of like one of those optical illusions. You look at them one way. I can think of one where it looks like there's stairs going up. They start at the lower left-hand corner of the page, and they go up to the right.
But then if you look away and then look back again at it, well, now it looks like those stairs are going down starting at the top of the left-hand of the page and going down towards the right. Well, it's the same way with all of these atonement passages, you can read either interpretation into them. Which pair of reading glasses is correct? The satisfaction one or the early Christian ones? Well, I don't think any human can answer that with certainty.
I personally think the early Christian model better fits the picture of a loving father than does the satisfaction model. I think it explains more correctly the way of the kingdom and what the Christian life is all about. And I'm also much more inclined to accept the historic view of the church that we can trace back to the early centuries rather than accepting a model that we can't find anybody teaching before like 1,000 years after Jesus died.
Well, in conclusion, I do want to remind you that this has been a quick overview. There's a lot more that could be said on this subject, and maybe someday I'll be able to go into it in more detail. But let's just briefly review the seven things the early Christians saw in the Atonement. They saw forgiveness rather than a payment being made to God. God forgave our debt. Secondly, Jesus ransomed us not from an angry father, but from Satan the devil and from the power of evil of death.
Number three, they saw a sacrificial death. Jesus died as a sacrifice, but as a heroic sacrifice, dying so that Satan would release us, giving up his life so that we could be free. They also saw that an essential part of the Atonement was victory over Satan, that Jesus, through His resurrection, was able to bind the strong man and release the captives in Hades, as the Scriptures say. They saw that His blood actually cleanses us from sin, allowing us to be reconciled to the Father.
The barrier between us and the Father is our sin. He cleanses us from that sin. The sixth point is that they saw that Jesus became a second Adam through the incarnation. And through the new birth, we can tie in as a descendant of the second Adam. And this undoes the mortality and the corruption in our human nature from Adam, the first Adam. And finally, they saw as a part of the Atonement Jesus teaching us and revealing to us the heavenly ways of the Father.