What Jesus Accomplished (Midweek Message)

Fr. Tony’s mid-week Message

What Jesus Accomplished

February 3, 2016

As we prepare to enter into the observance of a Holy Lent, it is useful to remember scriptural teaching about what Jesus accomplished in dying on the Cross and coming forth from the tomb on Easter morning.  The New Testament uses many differing metaphors to describe what Christ accomplished for us and in us:  

·      justification (declare or make morally upright; Romans 3:20-26),

·      salvation (rescue on the field of battle; 1 Corinthians 1:18, 21),

·      reconciliation (restoring a personal relationship; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19),

·      expiation (driving away ritual impurity or ‘covering over’ guilt; Romans 3:25),

·      redemption or ransom (purchasing someone back from slavery

         or prison into freedom; 1 Corinthians 1:30),

·      liberation to freedom (restoring full-citizenship to someone; 2 Corinthian 3:17)

·      new creation (being made anew; Galatians 6:15)

·      sanctification (being made or declared holy; 1 Corinthians 1:2)

·      transformation (changing shapes; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

·      glorification (being endowed with the light 
              surrounding God; Romans 8:30)

None of these are completely adequate descriptions of what “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3) means.   But they all agree that Jesus’s death and resurrection is the great victory over what is wrong with us and the world, a mystery just too glorious to reduce to a single image.   Their combined strength cannot and should not be reduced to a wrong-headed and simplistic doctrine of transferred divine punishment and bloody sacrifice. 

The “wrath of God” describes more how our relationship with God feels to us when we are alienated from God than it describes God’s heart.   It is we human beings who tend to think that violence can make things right, not God. 

In this light, our belief that Christ “died for us” takes on deep meaning. In Jesus on the Cross, we see God suffering right along with us, dying as one of us; in Jesus in Gethsemane, a human being alongside us, praying fervently with us, and, like us, not getting what he asks for or deserves. 

As we prepare our Lenten observances, let us remember what Jesus did for us, not focus on beating up on ourselves for being human beings, glorious creations of God, yet now in some ways apart from God and somehow flawed and broken.

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+