The seven statements of Christ from the cross serve as a reminder not only of what is important to Christ as He contemplates and evaluates the cross, but they also serve as an anchor for our faith, directing us to the truths to which we must hold fast in defending that faith.
For instance, the truth about Christ enduring the wrath of God (and correspondingly, God pouring out His wrath on Christ) has been called “divine child abuse.” Those who do not understand the willingness of Christ to embrace the cross would suggest that what happened was not God pouring out His wrath on Christ, but man pouring out his wrath on Christ (thus rejecting the essential doctrine of the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ). Yet if the latter is true, then no divine justice has been met, no sin has been expiated by Christ, and no righteousness has been imputed to those who believe. It leaves man hopeless, for he must then attempt to pay the debt of his own sin, which he cannot do. And that leaves him to suffer God’s eternal wrath.
Moreover, God’s wrath cannot be called child abuse, for Christ’s purpose was always to go to the cross; in fact it was a joy to Him. And even more, He was in full control of the events of the cross, not subject to the whims and anger of the disgruntled and hostile religious leadership.
It is not just the substitutionary atonement of Christ that is rejected by critics of orthodox statements of faith, however. Those who do not agree with penal substitutionary atonement also attempt to redefine the very definition of the gospel:
I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel.’ It is implied by the gospel; when the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people. But ‘the gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved.
If we come to Paul with these questions in mind — the questions about how human beings come into a living and saving relationship with the living and saving God — it is not justification that springs to [Paul’s] lips or pen. [N. T. Wright, quoted in The Future of Justification.]
So the gospel isn’t about the salvation of men from the wrath of God and justification is not what Paul thinks about when he thinks about salvation. Hmmmm.
That statement then begs for these follow-up questions: Just what is the gospel? And
of what benefit is it (what does it do)?
Another writer offers this:
Do we believe that Christ’s death on the cross has any relevance or significance beyond the individual eternal destiny of his followers? What does the atonement mean for the wider affairs of our communities? What direction can our understanding of the atonement offer as we think about the global challenges faced by humanity at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Does the atonement speak to our government’s foreign policy, the future of the Middle East, the war on terrorism, the challenge to the market economy of ethical trading, people trafficking and climate change? Does it address the hopes, ambition, and fears of our generation? Undoubtedly, a weakness of some modern theologies of atonement has been that they have simply failed to speak to, engage with, or challenge our culture in any significant way. I suggest that the penal substitutionary theory of atonement has failed us in exactly this way. [Steve Chalke, in an essay in The Atonement Debate.]
It is too much to detail here, but what Wright and then Chalke ultimately are desiring is an atonement that is more accessible and less exclusive — an atonement that will embrace more people of more faiths. In fact, they want the atonement to deal more with temporal issues and less with the spiritual sin of individuals. If they can make the atonement do that, then more people are “in the kingdom” and less are “out of the kingdom” (those are my summary statements, not theirs).
Of course, the problem with that is that Christ never speaks in terms of the atonement addressing governmental foreign policies, market economies, climate change, or the like. The atonement is always spoken of in terms of man’s desperate condition before God because of his sin.
The atonement is always about sin. The cross is always about Christ absorbing God’s wrath for those who will trust Him. And that’s why we’ve been in this series for three months. The cross and salvation and heaven and hell hang in the balance.
Words of Grace 