Embedded in the text of Romans, Galatians, Hebrews and other New Testament writings is an amazing concept of divine justice that has not found its way into the mainstream Christian theology of atonement. Yet it does more to explain the question: “Why did Jesus have to die?” than any of the traditional atonement theories.
Theologians offer several theories or models to explain the importance of Jesus’ death. The most prominent are the theories that his death satisfied man’s debt to God or that it provided a moral inspiration for the believer. But the key to understanding the atonement language in the Bible can be found not in divine “satisfaction” and “moral influence” theories but in the ancient Hebrew concept of covenant familiar to all Jewish believers at the time of Christ.
In this view Jesus’ primary role was not as a substitute or example, but as mediator of a new covenant. If there is a unique theology of atonement that supports an Anabaptist perspective of peace and justice, then this is it.
The Covenant Connection
There is another way to explain the concept of atonement that more closely fits the Pauline explanation of Jesus’ death and resurrection and yet supports the Anabaptist view of redemption and the transformed life. The Gospels, read through the lens of a covenantal relationship between God and God’s people, suggests that Jesus’ passion was neither substitutionary nor exemplary, but mediatorial. Jesus was the great mediator of a promissory covenant that had existed for all time between humankind and God. This covenant was not fulfilled by the law, but by the gracious fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham before the law was given.
“The promise was given to Abraham and his seed…The law introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise. But God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.”11
This covenant gave Jew and Gentile alike the right to become children of Abraham and inheritors of all that God had promised through Christ. Jesus was the promised mediator of this covenant and God fulfilled it as promised to Abraham.12 When Paul and the New Testament writers laid out their carefully worded explanations for Jesus’ death and resurrection for the new church, they used covenantal language that would have been familiar to all the Jewish listeners. (Terms like “substitutionary,” “satisfaction,” never show up in the New Testament texts.) The key to understanding these Christ events, they said, was the covenant between God and all people and Jesus’ role as the covenant mediator.
“For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”13
God is faithful to God’s covenant promises, Paul explained. God’s covenant is not a conditional contract bilaterally concluded by two parties. It is a unilateral commitment or promise on God’s part to act toward God’s chosen covenant partner with overwhelming kindness and generosity. God made a commitment to fulfill this gracious purpose at any cost. Thus when God exercises saving mercy toward sinful people, God is simply fulfilling the covenant promise. Jesus is God faithfully carrying out just what divine love had pledged to do. Paul’s argument to the Jewish and Gentile believers was this: by dying, Jesus bore all the curses due to the transgressions under the first covenant. In the resurrection, God fulfilled the covenant promises to restore all people to a right relationship with God and each other. With this simple argument, Paul bridged the scriptural gulf between the Jew and the Gentile, vindicating the rights of the Gentiles under the concept of justification apart from the Law.
Paul assured the new church that the new covenant not only promises the believer forgiveness of sins and acceptance into God’s favor, but it guaranteed salvation apart from the law or keeping of the law as the religious Jews were expected to do.14 Recent scholarship supports the view that Paul’s understanding of justification had less to do with individual righteousness through keeping the law and more to do with becoming part of a community of faith.15 For Paul, the new covenant was the context for all people to be accepted into this community.
Robert Brinsmead, an Australian theologian, explains this concept in terms of God’s justice.
“God’s justice,” he writes, “ is based on God being true to what he promised in his gracious covenant. If God is to be just, then he must be true to his commitment to help and to save wretched, undeserving people. This biblical idea of justice, first presented in the Old Testament, is beautiful and powerful in its simplicity. Nevertheless, Western theology insists that justice must somehow be related to what a person deserves. In order to preserve this supposed justice of God, Western theology has had to resort to legal manipulation in an act of atonement in which God is forced to respect the principle of distributive justice.” 16
Justice which is distributive (i.e. giving to everyone what is due) and which is the opposite of mercy, inevitably becomes equated with God’s act of punishing people for their sins. If forgiveness is extended to them, it is only because other punishment fell on Jesus as the substitutionary victim. What fell on Christ is called “justice” (according to the traditional interpretation of Romans 3:25,26), while the pardon granted the believer is called “mercy.” This is the classical Latin theory of the atonement. It reinforces the idea that God’s justice is primarily punitive.
When Paul writes about the good news of a justice which bypasses the law altogether, a justice which is grounded in a promise given before the law,17 he is faithful to the teaching of Jesus. When Jesus preached about the good news of the kingdom, Jesus spoke about a divine justice that refuses to conform to the canons of legal justice. His parables teach us that love and grace do the surprising, “foolish” and daring things—such as the employer who rewards latecomers with a full day’s pay18 and the father who welcomes the prodigal as if he were a hero.19
A Justice Based on Grace not Law
The justice revealed in the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the primitive church leaders are in a stark contrast to the Western notion of justice developed during the Reformation. Even today, it seems that the vast majority of Christian believers do not grasp the difference between justice based on law and the justice based on grace. Articulating this difference should be one of the priorities for the modern Anabaptist community because it is integral to how we understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and how we understand the atonement.
Here is a quick summary of the distinction between law-based and grace-based justice:
Law-Based (Latin or Western) Justice
Conforms to a norm (i.e. based on law)
Distributive: gives what is deserved
Opposed to or in tension with mercy
Primarily punitive (retributive)
Grace-Based (New Testament/Gospel) Justice
Faithfulness to a relationship
Non-distributive: carries out what was promised
Mercy for all the oppressed
Primarily a liberating or saving action
The idea of a justice based on grace illuminated the New Testament theology and set it apart from the teachings of the Jewish rabbis. The early Christian believers were particularly interested in this concept because they found themselves engaged in a new and uncertain relationship with the masses of humanity outside the Jewish community who never had been bound by Mosaic Law or understood the nuances of its demands on the pious believer. Jesus’ ministry had thrown them a curve ball. The church was to be opened to whosoever would come, Jewish or not. The law stood directly in the way of this liberal notion of acceptance.
Covenantal View of Atonement
A view of atonement that reflects the principles of the New Covenant and emphasizes a grace-based justice (or righteousness) rather than law-based punitive justice can be summarized as follows:
•The meaning of the atonement is that God has executed the promised liberating justice for everyone (especially those who are forsaken, destitute, and excluded). God has done so by being faithful to God’s ancient covenant in raising up Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant apart from the law.
•Jesus’ death on the cross symbolized an ancient covenantal transaction familiar to all Hebrew people. As mediator of the covenant, his death put the covenant or will into effect.20
•The resurrection is the Christian metaphor for the triumph of divine justice over sin, alienation, and death. Jesus completed the covenantal transaction that began with Abraham and culminated in the resurrection. It opened the door to a new covenant relationship with all people based not on law but on a promise.
•We also become mediators of this justice when we extend God’s covenant promise of grace to all the downtrodden and outcast of society, for they too have full standing under the New Covenant as God’s people. We become mediators of this justice when we extend compassion, forgiveness, and understanding in all our relationships and when we advocate for human rights and dignity.
An Anabaptist Vision of Atonement
The gospel narratives assured the early Hebrew believers that the requirements of their ingrained religious system were reconciled with a new vision of a universal community of believers where no one was excluded, and where Mosaic Law was no longer the basis for acceptance by the community or by God.21 It set the stage for a universal faith that welcomed the downtrodden and outcasts based on God’s faithfulness to God’s everlasting promise.
This view of the atonement should resonate with Anabaptist theology. Atonement is not adequately explained by the “satisfaction” of divine wrath, by the power of divine example, or by the Christus victor motif. Rather, the meaning of atonement is found in the covenant actions of God—where all the conditions of God’s promissory covenant to all people of the earth are fulfilled. Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant where justice (or righteousness)22 apart from the law has been revealed. It means that we also become mediators of this justice for all the downtrodden and outcast of society, for they too have full standing under the New Covenant as God’s people. Yet the majority of Christians still cling to the belief that justice requires blood and fire instead of mercy and compassion. The Anabaptist tradition recognizes one very important principle. Hostility and vengeance do not bring peace and justice. Compassion, understanding, and grace do. A covenantal view of atonement supports this theology in a very unique and powerful way.
Endnotes
1. Van Biema, David, “Why did Jesus Have to Die?” Time, April 12, 2004.
2. Hebrews 9:12.
3. Mark 10:25.
4. I Peter 2:21.
5. Colossians 2:15.
6. Hiebert, Frances F., “The Atonement in Anabaptist Theology,” Footnote 5, Direction Journal, (Winapeg MB).Fall 2001,Vol. 30, No.2.
7. Kraybill, J. Nelson, “Four Spiritual Truths of a Peacemaking God,” The Mennonite, November 4, 2003.
8. Hiebert, Frances F., p. 135.
9. Weaver, J.Denny, The Nonviolent Atonement, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eedmans Pub. Co.) 2001, p 7.
10. Weaver, J. Denny, p.3.
11. Galatians 3:16-18.
12. Genesis 12:3.
13. Hebrews 9:15.
14. Romans 3:21.
15. Mattison, Mark M., A Summary of the New Perspective on Paul.
16. Brinsmead, Robert D., "The Scandal of God's Justice-Part 1," The Christian Verdict, Essay 3,1983, p.8.
17. Galatians 3:16-19.
18. Matthew 20:1-16.
19. Luke 15:1-31.
20. Hebrew 9:16-18.
21. Galations 3:25.
22. The word for righteousness, sadaq, is used interchangeably for justification or justice in the Bible.
This article was written by Caleb F. Heppner
