A new life
"Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through
baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Rom
6:3,4).
The death of Christ, with all it suggests for his followers,
is a Bible doctrine that needs to be "lived out" in our own lives, day by day,
from the very moment of our baptisms. The cross of Christ is for us a moral
mandate, a call to action: "a new life".
It wouldn't be going too far to say there IS a discernible
reason for every commandment we are given... and that reason is the death of
Christ.
Christ's sacrifice is not just about blood, and sweat, and
tears... and it is not just about the cross on that dreadful, but wonderful,
day.
It is -- and we all know this! -- about the life he lived
every day, every hour, before he arrived, finally, at that cross. Because it was
his own unique life, built up day by day, with the building blocks of a thousand
moments of ten thousand days, that made his cross meaningful.
Thousands of Jewish men died on thousands of Roman crosses
across the length and breadth of Israel. But only one man died a sacrificial,
atoning death on a cross, because he had been, for all his life, the perfect
"sacrifice", without spot or blemish.
So Christ's sacrificial death is really about a life of many
choices, each one in one way or another a choice to deny himself, and his own
will, and to do his Father's will. The last choice is perhaps the most
memorable, because we are told how Jesus lay on the ground in the shadows of the
garden, and wept bitter tears, and uttered these words: "Nevertheless, Father,
not my will, but yours, be done!" But he had struggled to make that same choice
countless times before.
A lifetime of right choices made the final choice -- of the
cross itself -- a choice of cosmic significance... a choice which echoes down to
this day, in all our lives.
The essence of sacrifice is denial of self. And if we choose
Christ and his cross, then we are also choosing to deny ourselves... as a way of
life. It is the hardest choice we can make, but it is the most rewarding.
Allowed to work in our lives, that choice and that commitment will change
us.
"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after
me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants
to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find' "
(Mat 16:24,25).
We could run down a list of Christ's commandments, and ask:
'How does this one -- or that one -- relate to the Atonement?' And in every
case, we shall find the answer in its meaningful example of HOW to keep the
commandment, and WHY we should keep it.
*****
Do we wonder why we are commanded this, for example?:
"Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the
right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and
take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go
one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn
away from the one who wants to borrow from you" (Mat 5:39-42).
Well, of course, reason enough to do this -- or (let's be
honest) to try very, very hard -- is that Christ has commanded it. But was it
just an otherwise pointless requirement plucked out of the air?: 'Let's test
them with this one as well, while we are at it!'
Of course not.
Here is the reason, in 1Pe 2:23: "When they hurled their
insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.
Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly."
We are told not to resist evil because Christ did not resist
evil. And Christ did not resist evil because he had committed himself,
wholeheartedly, to his Father who would ultimately judge rightly.
If we believe that that final judgment of our Father is sure
and certain and righteous, then what does it matter if evil ones misuse us
today, or tomorrow, or all the rest of our lives? God will set it right. What
does it matter if we lose our coat, or our time, or our creature comforts? The
loss of those things we might hold dear will only reinforce to our minds the one
thing that we MUST hold MOST dear -- which no thief or bully or evil
circumstance can take away from us:
"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for
us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for
us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all
things?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or
hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?" (Rom
8:31,32,35).
And Paul answers his own question with an emphatic "NO!"
Nothing -- not the worst calamities that can be found in this world (no, not
even death itself: v 38!) -- will be able to separate us from the love of God,
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
*****
But suppose the "cross" we are called to bear at this very
moment is not the loss of property, or health, or loved ones... the terrible
losses that Job, for example, bore? Suppose the "cross" we are called to bear at
this very moment is... simply... the harsh word spoken to us by a brother or
sister, or the little slight we experience -- perhaps at work, or the brief
delay because some driver cut us off in traffic, or the tiny verbal jab from a
fellow-student that pricks our pride?
Maybe the "cross" that we are called to bear, right now, is
not the great mountain of difficulty that looms in front of us... but the little
grain of sand in our shoe!
How do we respond? Do we give harsh word for harsh word,
little grumble for silly slight, little whispered curse for minor inconvenience?
Do we recoil and grow angry at the least threat to our pride, or the least
questioning of our intelligence, or our strength, or our goodness, or our
wisdom?
Or... do we recall that "even Christ did not please himself"
(Rom 15:3)? And do we therefore "turn the other cheek" to the little slap, the
little needle, the little attack -- even if, and especially if, it comes from a
brother or sister, or someone close to us?
If we do, and when we do, then we are "living the atonement"
in our lives. And the picture of the cross has been transferred into our own
lives, and become for us a picture of action.
******
Yes, the teachings of the Bible all find their reason and
foundation in the Redemption, the Atonement, the sacrifice of Christ:
"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect,
not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering
because he is conscious of God... this is commendable before God" (1Pe 2:18-20).
because...
"To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you,
leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 'He committed no
sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.' When they hurled their insults at
him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he
entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body
on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his
wounds you have been healed" (1Pe 2:21-24).
Notice how the exhortations to slaves to serve their masters
well (vv 18-20) has as its basis... the atonement (vv 21-24)! It is fascinating,
here, to see how the practical derives from the doctrinal.
No Bible subject has occasioned more disagreements, and more
hard feelings, and more tears, than the meaning of the Lord's sacrifice. Christ
died, in love and obedience, for us. Yet it is a fact that much of
Christadelphian history is a recounting of disputes about details of the
atonement, of brethren struggling to define more perfectly exactly what Christ
accomplished, and how he accomplished it. And sometimes having the fiercest
arguments over the meaning of a term here or a phrase there.
If only we would struggle, with equal determination, to learn
the meaning of Christ's sacrifice for our daily living, for how we treat other
people, for how we LIVE OUT the atonement.
What does this mean in real life?
It means, for example, that I must serve my employer (or my
clients and customers) as if I am working for God. And the common injustices and
indignities I suffer -- being left to "hold the bag" when some coworker didn't
do his assignment, or losing an account through no fault of my own -- must be
borne patiently in light of the suffering and death of my Lord.
Is this always true for us? What a shock the full force of
these words can be for us all! We 'LIVE OUT the atonement' in our office
cubicles, our stores, and our construction sites.
The cross as moral mandate is a hard thing for people raised
in the obsessive privacy of Western life. God does not 'mind His own business',
but walks right into our workplace on Monday morning. There He reads every file;
He inspects every product we turn out. Our place of labor is an ongoing
spiritual workshop -- where we struggle, each day, to better understand and to
better LIVE what Christ did for us.
Other examples of "living the atonement" in our daily
lives:
In 1Pe 3: 1-6 Peter gives rules for Christian wives:
"Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands... For
this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to
make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like
Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if
you do what is right and do not give way to fear."
A woman 'LIVES OUT the atonement' with her husband -- she
makes herself "beautiful" by submitting to him, as he must do to his employer
(1Pe 2:18-20). The wife will yield willingly, beholding her Lord's yielding in
his giving of his life for her sake (1Pe 2:21-25). To strengthen his point,
Peter speaks of Sarah, who called her husband "Lord" even though he uprooted her
from the security of home, and endangered her life and honor twice. In spite of
all his mistakes with her, he was still her "Lord". Sarah 'LIVED OUT the
atonement'; it wasn't an intellectual puzzle for her but a way of life.
Sarah's daughters are in our ecclesias, 'living out the
atonement' every time they work -- as only they can -- to bring comfort and hope
and encouragement to those who are sick, or afflicted, or mourning.
"Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with
your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with
you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers" (1Pe
3:7).
What man can read these words without cringing? Men 'LIVE OUT
the atonement' by being considerate of their wives. All our Bible 'knowledge'
and understanding is of no value if it is not demonstrated where we dwell, in
our homes, in every interaction we have with our families. The atonement is
acted out in married life -- in thousands of little choices and thousands of
little actions.
*****
The atonement of our Saviour is meaningful to us in the degree
to which we appreciate its message for each of us, in the most personal and
private parts of our daily lives:
"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after
me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mat
16:24).
The writer AW Tozer has expressed it this way in "The Pursuit
of God":
"The cross is the symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt,
violent end of the human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and
started down the road had already said goodbye to his friends. He was not coming
back. He was not going out to have his life redirected. He was going out to have
it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing. It
slew all of the man completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good
terms with its victim. it struck swift and hard and when it had finished its
work the man was no more. That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between
the ways of God and the ways of man is false to the Bible and cruel to the soul
of the hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the world. It intersects
it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our life up on to a higher plane. We
leave it at a cross."
But our enactment of Christ's atonement is scarcely if ever
reduced to a single act of total self-denial. The atonement, for most of us,
must be lived out each day of our lives. To this we have been called: a
day-by-day "taking up of the cross". Each day we pick up that rough, heavy,
splinter-filled piece of wood, and lug it a little further along the road toward
our final destination.
As another writer has put it:
"To give my life for Christ appears glorious. To pour myself
out for others... to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom -- 'I'll do it. I'm
ready, Lord, to go out in a blaze of glory.'
"We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1,000
bill and laying it on the table -- 'Here's my life, Lord. I'm giving it all.'
But the reality for most of us is that the Lord sends us to the bank and has us
cash in the $1,000 for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here
and 50 cents there. Listen to the neighbor kid's troubles instead of saying,
'Get lost.' Go to a committee meeting. Give a cup of water to a shaky old man in
a nursing home.
"Usually giving our life to Christ isn't glorious. It's done
in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. It would be easy to go out
in a flash of glory; it's harder to live the Christian life little by little
over the long haul" (F. Craddock; NET Bible Illustrations).
******
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your
spiritual [or reasonable, or reasoning] act of worship" (Rom 12:1).
Through stops and starts, and wrong turns and blind alleys,
sometimes failing but sometimes succeeding, we are learning to be, even in the
small things of our lives, even in the little corners and quiet moments of our
homes, "living sacrifices".
But the trouble with "living sacrifices" is that they keep
trying to crawl down off the altar!
And so we pray:
"Lord, help us to hold on to your cross, and your altar, and
endure our portion of pain, and 'die a little' every day, so that we might -- by
your grace -- show forth your death until you return."
