forgive out of love.” Leon Morris expresses the general con- CHAPTER
sensus of in saying, “The consistent Bible view
is
that the sin of man has incurred the wrath of God. That10
wrath is averted by Christ’s atoning offering. From this The Saving point his saving work is properly called propitiation.” Neither Work ofthe nor the New Testament emptied the force of
as
to its meaning ofThe Bible abandons the crudeness often associated with the word in pagan ritual. The Lord is not a malevolent and capricious deity whose nature remains so inscrutable that one never knows how He will act. But His wrath is real. However, the Bible teaches that God in His love, mercy, and
to His promises provided the means by which to satisfy His wrath. In the case of New Testament teaching, God not only provided the means, He also became the means. First John says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice [Gk.
for our
All the lexicons show that
kipper
and mean “propitiate” and “expiate.” The difference lies in how oneviews their
meaning in the biblical materials that deal withthe Old Testament, references to the wrath of God appear almost six hundred times. In the New Testament, they are less frequent but are still present.
“Hilaskomai,” New International vol. 3, 145-76. C. H.
Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder Stoughton,
82-95, and “hilaskomai,” vol. 3, 310-23
for examples of this view. J. says, ‘Although ‘propitiation’
conveys an important element of truth, it is less satisfactory [than expia- tion]” (Williams, Renewal Theology, vol. 1,361, note 20). Roger Nicole, “C. H. Dodd and the Doctrine of Propitiation,” Westmfnster
57, and Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, chaps. 4-5, for a criticism of Dodd. See also H. C. Hahn, “Anger, Wrath” in New International
vol. 1, 105-13.
G. C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 275-76.
Morris, “Propitiation,” Evangelical Dictfonaty, 888.
Hilasmos and its cognates appear only eight times in the New Testament, but in the Septuagint they occur well over two hundred times, most often related to “cover over with a price,” “pacify,” or “propitiate.” In
the Septuagint, and hilasmos are most frequent.
NIV translates and related forms as “atoning sacrifice,”
“make atonement” (Heb. “atonement cover” (Heb. and “sac-
rifice of atonement” (Rom. It uses neither “propitiation” nor “ex- piation” anywhere in the translation. One can understand the reason for doing so: the terms have no common usage in today’s English.
CHAPTER
10
The Saving
Work of Christ
Systematic Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective
a
atonement. If one accepts w at the Bible says about God’s wrath, a possible solution presents itself. We could see the words as having a vertical and horizontal reference. When the context focuses on the Atonement in relation to God, the words speak of propitiation. But they mean expiation when the focus is on us and our sin. We do not choose either/or but both/and. The historical and literary context determines the appropriate
The question may arise, If He bore the penalty of our guilt by taking the wrath of God on himself and covering our sin, did He suffer the exact same consequences and punishment in kind and degree that all for whom He died would cumu- latively suffer? After all, He was only one; we are many. As with so many such questions there can be no final answer. The Bible makes no such attempt. One should, however, re- member that in the Cross we do not deal with a mechanical event or commercial transaction. The work of salvation moves on a spiritual plane, and no tidy analogies exist to explain it all.
We need to keep in mind, first, that suffering by its very nature is not subject to mathematical calculation or to being weighed on a scale. In a sense, to suffer the severest broken arm possible is to suffer them all. To die one excruciating and agonizing death is to die all of them. Second, we have to recall the character and nature of the person suffering. Christ was perfect in holiness and therefore had no sense of personal blame or remorse, as we would have if we knew we were suffering justly for our sins. There is something heroic in the stinging rebuke the thief on the cross hurled at his companion in crime. ‘Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong’ (Luke 1). Christ’s perfection did not detract from His suffering but may, in fact, have intensified it, because He knew His was undeserved. His prayer that He would not have to “drink the cup” was no ploy. He knew the suffering
all will be satisfied with such a simple solution, of course. But it
appears reasonable. Note 2 Kings Ps. and Rom. for
examples of God’s anger or punishment joined with forgiveness or atoning sacrifice.
Aspects of Christ’s Saving Work
that lay before Him. That He suffered as God certainly has a CHAPTER
bearing on the
10
The Saving
Work of Unlike some other biblical or theological terms, Christ ciliation” appears as part of our common vocabulary. It is a
term drawn from the social realm. Broken relationships of any kind cry out for reconciling. The New Testament is clear in its teaching that the saving work of Christ is a reconciling work. By His death He has removed all barriers between God and us. The word group the New Testament uses (Gk.
al-
la.&)
occurs rarely in the Septuagint and uncommonly in the New, even in a religious The basic verb means “to change, “to cause one thing to cease and another to take its place.” The New Testament uses it six times with no ref- erence to the doctrine of reconciliation (e.g., Acts6: 14;
1 Cor.l-52).
Paul alone employs the word group with religious connotations. The verb and the nounproperly convey the notion of “to exchange” or “to recon- cile,” as one would reconcile books in accounting practices. In the New Testament the application is primarily to God and us. The reconciling work of Christ restores us to God’s favor because “the books have been balanced.”
the suffering in the messianic Pss. 22 and 69 and in the prophecy about the Servant in Isa. 53. For us who are Trinitarian, any hesitation to that “God died’ on the cross is misdirected. Of course, God cannot die. But Jesus was and is the God-Man, perfect God and perfect Man. God cannot be born either, but He was in Jesus. The best Greek texts of Acts support the reading, “Be shepherds of the Assembly of God, which He [God] bought with his own blood.” Some translate the phrase tou
tou idiou as “through the blood of His own,” i.e., “His own Son.” A study of the use of the adjective idios will show that the absolute use in the singular is rare, appearing at most four times if we exclude Acts
(i.e., John Acts Rom. and possibly 1 Cor.
In each instance, the context makes explicitly clear what idios refers to.
Heb. and have a different order, tou idiou but
that simply reflects a common position of the adjective when the writer wishes to stress the noun rather than the adjective. The difference does not demonstrate that the translation in Acts must be “through the blood of his own Son.”
word “reconcile” does not occur in any form in the of the Old Testament. Its appearance in the generally translates Heb. words having to do with “making atonement” (e.g., the kipper group, cf. and 8: 15). The New Testament has sixteen uses, twelve of which have
a religious sense. The double compound verb, does not
Systematic Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective
CHAPTER The major relevant passages are Romans and