2. How many sayings of Jesus on the atonement there are and where they are found.
It is true that there are fewer sayings than we might have wished. However, the amount of information in them is marked by variety, fullness and range in meaning. They are to be weighed rather than counted. Their wide implications need to be traced rather than simply counting them in a series. Much more important than the mere number is their comprehensiveness, force and fullness of meaning. On examination they will be found to contain, if not expressly at least by implication, almost every
blessing that is connected with the atonement. The apostles do not so much develop it as apply it to the various ideas and practices found in the churches. So, for example, the legalism of Judaisers brought out one application in Galatia and the incipient gnosticism
in Colossse and Asia Minor, another. We cannot, in this book, investigate all the applications of this great teaching woven into the New Testament letters. Here we are simply going to look at the Lord's own sayings on the subject, something that needs a careful investigation.
Before the event no-one could have predicted what the exact nature of Christ's testimony to his sacrifice might be. Nor could it be predicted in what precise form it would be presented to his hearers. Usually he alludes to it in connection with some fact in the story, some Old Testament type or some particular title or name that he claimed for himself with its roots in prophecy. All of the sayings are pointed and memorable. They embed themselves in your mind by alluding to something otherwise very ordinary.
He spoke of the atonement in line with his hearers' openness and lack of prejudice or love of truth and ability to receive it. The story of Nicodemus is an example. What was said to him had the happy effect of preparing his mind to understand the nature of Messiah's death so that he would not take offence when the hour came.
We often think at certain points that an allusion to Christ's atoning work would be appropriate. We expect it. It is a surprise to see with what reserve such a central teaching is announced. It seems strange, for example, that while parables such as that of the Pharisee and tax collector or the two debtors that Jesus spoke about in the house of Simon the Pharisee, clearly teach acceptance by grace they make no allusion to the atonement. Some, opposed to the teaching that Christ died in the place of sinners, think they can find support for their views in this fact. However, a little reflection should be enough to satisfy us that Jesus had reasons for his silence. The idea of a suffering Messiah had been forgotten. His priestly office mentioned in Psalm 110 was ignored. Apart from people like Simeon and Zechariah, John's father, most were unfamiliar with the idea.
More than that, the people needed first to learn, as they did from John the Baptist, that the Law is spiritual, one of the burdens of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Jesus found it absolutely necessary to awaken a spiritual sense of the things of God; to awaken conscience and preach repentance because the kingdom was near. He needed to attack their hollow and merely external forms and their neglect of the weightier matters of the law. He needed to explode their empty trust in being Abraham's descendants and their futile expectation that they would take part in Messiah's rule just because they were Jews. He had, in a word, to turn them away from thinking only of how they looked in men's eyes, caring only about how the outside of the cup or dish looked. Before they would be ready to hear about the atonement they needed to see their need as sinners, recognise their defects and be awakened to a desire for pardon.
Only then could he announce God's kingdom as having come and begin to explain its nature and excellence, the character of its subjects and its other aspects. He had to show what his God given mission was and prove it by his many miracles. He had to show his more than human dignity, his divine Sonship, his sealing and sending, his unique position in the world as the Great Deliverer and the object of promise, the long-desired one Moses wrote about and who Abraham longed to see. He aimed first at confirming people's faith in him as the promised Christ, attaching them to his person by a bond that would be strong enough to bear pressure, while yet avoiding the danger of offending them with something that any Jewish mind would be offended by. He wanted, first of all, to bind his disciples to him and deepen their faith in him. This was his first and most basic aim as he spoke to his disciples from day to day.
At this point a new difficulty presented itself. The disciples, now attached to his person and accepting him as Saviour, did not want to hear about his death. They would not believe it. They could not take it in. At the time when Peter, in the name of the rest, declared his belief that Jesus was Messiah and the Son of God (Matthew 16:16) we might have expected full submission to every part of Christ's teaching. Surely the Lord's own explicit statement about his death given at this auspicious time would be accepted without demur. On the contrary, Peter began to rebuke Jesus for what he had to say about his death. That is how much their own ideas had possessed them and how hard it was for Jesus to direct their thinking into a new channel. The way they saw it, the kingdom is eternal and he would enter into it at once without any atoning death for a basis and reason. They dreamed of places of authority, rank and honour in the kingdom. Constantly they were pre-occupied, even at the Last Supper, with who would be prime-minister and who would hold the most power. Even true disciples mingled alien ideas with their understanding of the kingdom. And so, to keep his cause free from the risk of the political commotion that an open announcement of his Messiahship would have given rise to, in a community where the true idea had been lost, and conscious that he must die at the hand of that very community, we find that our Lord spoke sparingly and with reserve about the atonement. Indeed, on one occasion he made his disciples get into a ship and be gone when otherwise the excited crowds would have taken him by force and made him king.
People who who were thinking like that were hardly ready to hear about the atonement. These two ideas - the Messiahship and the possibility of his death - seemed to them highly incompatible. They were unwilling to consider even for a moment that the conqueror could himself be conquered. They ruled out any enquiry and so proved themselves unqualified for further teaching. They did not come to him with teachable minds and ask for the information that he would willingly have supplied. It was possible, therefore, for him to leave a record in their memory only in a more indirect and incidental way. He did it by means of his sermons in Galilee and in Jerusalem (as recorded in John 6 and 10) and more obviously when he introduced this truth in connection either with events in his own life or difficulties in theirs. However, it must be allowed on all sides, that while the disciples felt their life was bound up with him, they pushed out of their minds by means of their own explanations the unwelcome fact of his death, even though he frequently mentioned it. Even though it formed the only topic of conversation on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses, Elijah and Christ, the disciples contrived, somehow, to explain away the fact. When the Lord took them aside and solemnly announced what was at hand, they were very sad indeed but, as if they had found out some way out, were soon found engaging in their old dispute again. The abject dejection into which they were thrown by his actual death, shows how ill prepared they were for it and how little they understood its meaning. All this goes to show that as the disciples were unable to listen calmly and without prejudice when the topic was raised until they were in a position to look back on the event as an accomplished fact, so Christ's teaching could not possibly be given then with the fullness and freedom that it could be after his resurrection.
We often think at certain points that an allusion to Christ's atoning work would be appropriate. We expect it. It is a surprise to see with what reserve such a central teaching is announced. It seems strange, for example, that while parables such as that of the Pharisee and tax collector or the two debtors that Jesus spoke about in the house of Simon the Pharisee, clearly teach acceptance by grace they make no allusion to the atonement. Some, opposed to the teaching that Christ died in the place of sinners, think they can find support for their views in this fact. However, a little reflection should be enough to satisfy us that Jesus had reasons for his silence. The idea of a suffering Messiah had been forgotten. His priestly office mentioned in Psalm 110 was ignored. Apart from people like Simeon and Zechariah, John's father, most were unfamiliar with the idea.
More than that, the people needed first to learn, as they did from John the Baptist, that the Law is spiritual, one of the burdens of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Jesus found it absolutely necessary to awaken a spiritual sense of the things of God; to awaken conscience and preach repentance because the kingdom was near. He needed to attack their hollow and merely external forms and their neglect of the weightier matters of the law. He needed to explode their empty trust in being Abraham's descendants and their futile expectation that they would take part in Messiah's rule just because they were Jews. He had, in a word, to turn them away from thinking only of how they looked in men's eyes, caring only about how the outside of the cup or dish looked. Before they would be ready to hear about the atonement they needed to see their need as sinners, recognise their defects and be awakened to a desire for pardon.
Only then could he announce God's kingdom as having come and begin to explain its nature and excellence, the character of its subjects and its other aspects. He had to show what his God given mission was and prove it by his many miracles. He had to show his more than human dignity, his divine Sonship, his sealing and sending, his unique position in the world as the Great Deliverer and the object of promise, the long-desired one Moses wrote about and who Abraham longed to see. He aimed first at confirming people's faith in him as the promised Christ, attaching them to his person by a bond that would be strong enough to bear pressure, while yet avoiding the danger of offending them with something that any Jewish mind would be offended by. He wanted, first of all, to bind his disciples to him and deepen their faith in him. This was his first and most basic aim as he spoke to his disciples from day to day.
At this point a new difficulty presented itself. The disciples, now attached to his person and accepting him as Saviour, did not want to hear about his death. They would not believe it. They could not take it in. At the time when Peter, in the name of the rest, declared his belief that Jesus was Messiah and the Son of God (Matthew 16:16) we might have expected full submission to every part of Christ's teaching. Surely the Lord's own explicit statement about his death given at this auspicious time would be accepted without demur. On the contrary, Peter began to rebuke Jesus for what he had to say about his death. That is how much their own ideas had possessed them and how hard it was for Jesus to direct their thinking into a new channel. The way they saw it, the kingdom is eternal and he would enter into it at once without any atoning death for a basis and reason. They dreamed of places of authority, rank and honour in the kingdom. Constantly they were pre-occupied, even at the Last Supper, with who would be prime-minister and who would hold the most power. Even true disciples mingled alien ideas with their understanding of the kingdom. And so, to keep his cause free from the risk of the political commotion that an open announcement of his Messiahship would have given rise to, in a community where the true idea had been lost, and conscious that he must die at the hand of that very community, we find that our Lord spoke sparingly and with reserve about the atonement. Indeed, on one occasion he made his disciples get into a ship and be gone when otherwise the excited crowds would have taken him by force and made him king.
People who who were thinking like that were hardly ready to hear about the atonement. These two ideas - the Messiahship and the possibility of his death - seemed to them highly incompatible. They were unwilling to consider even for a moment that the conqueror could himself be conquered. They ruled out any enquiry and so proved themselves unqualified for further teaching. They did not come to him with teachable minds and ask for the information that he would willingly have supplied. It was possible, therefore, for him to leave a record in their memory only in a more indirect and incidental way. He did it by means of his sermons in Galilee and in Jerusalem (as recorded in John 6 and 10) and more obviously when he introduced this truth in connection either with events in his own life or difficulties in theirs. However, it must be allowed on all sides, that while the disciples felt their life was bound up with him, they pushed out of their minds by means of their own explanations the unwelcome fact of his death, even though he frequently mentioned it. Even though it formed the only topic of conversation on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses, Elijah and Christ, the disciples contrived, somehow, to explain away the fact. When the Lord took them aside and solemnly announced what was at hand, they were very sad indeed but, as if they had found out some way out, were soon found engaging in their old dispute again. The abject dejection into which they were thrown by his actual death, shows how ill prepared they were for it and how little they understood its meaning. All this goes to show that as the disciples were unable to listen calmly and without prejudice when the topic was raised until they were in a position to look back on the event as an accomplished fact, so Christ's teaching could not possibly be given then with the fullness and freedom that it could be after his resurrection.
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