Jesus the Way?

I is for Intentional Atonement

Romans 5.1-11

This past Thursday I had my regular book club meeting with the other CRC pastors in the area. Our discussion floated here and there, but in the end we settled on the main topic. Why is spirituality on the rise, but not church attendance? Why are people looking so hard for heroes and why is it that most of our heroes die young? Why is it that more and more people brought up in the church saying that there is more than one way to get to heaven? Why is it for so many that faith has become a strictly private thing and community seems so unimportant?

We don’t just sit, eat pizza and talk about the weather. It was a great discussion and these are questions I think about often. And I know that others are thinking the same things too. Our world is in rough shape, but it always has been. People are becoming more isolated and lonely; that’s a new thing helped along by technology and economics. People are losing their ability to help those who suffer. Compassion, the way of suffering along with, has been replaced with popular psychology and discomfort.  Someone loses a spouse or friend and frequently they hear, move on. That’s life. Aren’t you better yet? Come on, get over it? We’ve become a culture that can’t stand the pain in others let alone our own pain. What about grieving properly and sitting together in the mess like Job’s friends did?

We’re in a series at Sonrise in the book of Romans. We’re also working through what the word FAITH means letter by letter. F stands for fallen – every human is in the same place starting out. Aware of, but resistant to God, wisdom and life. A stands for adoption. God’s gift through Jesus to bestow his name transforming the person from spiritually dead to spiritually alive able to embrace God, God’s love, life itself and to grow in wisdom.

In today’s text in we find the third letter: I. ‘I’ stands for intentional atonement. Let’s explore what that means.

What God the Son did in coming, living dying and rising was on purpose. The truth is Jesus came to us willingly. At just the right time. When conditions in God’s wisdom, when conditions in the world were just as they had to be. And Jesus went to the cross willingly. He allowed politics and religious schemes to run their course – on his time table, at his pace for his purposes. Jesus was always in control of the situation even though others thought they were.

Jesus actions were intentional. He can at just the right time. Jesus came and fulfilled the ancient promises of God and began the process of releasing the benefits of those promises into everyday lives. Jesus’ ministry was guided and directed and purposeful from beginning to last.

And what exactly does atonement mean? In the Old Testament, the Day of Atonement looked like this. Two goats were and the High Priest would choose by lot one for the Lord and one to be a scapegoat. On both he would lay hands and confess the sins of the people. First goat would then be sacrificed for the sins of the people and the second would bear the sins of the people away into the wilderness. The scapegoat, suffered unjustly so that others get off scot free.  Why?

At the end of the ritual, in that moment the people of Israel were for that split second completely without sin. Fully justified and acquitted. The problem was that half a second later their sin would start piling up again. Such that in a year’s time the whole procedure was acted out again.

The ancient ritual had power, but at just the right time Jesus fulfilled the ritual once forever. On the cross, Jesus became the last scapegoat. And the sins of the world past, present and future were settled once and for all. 

Hebrews 7, “Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. ²⁵ Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. . . . He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.”

Atonement removes sin guilt and Jesus did it on purpose. It was not by accident that your sins or mine stand forgiven. It was intentional.

So it seems a puzzle doesn’t it that so many teach and so many others believe other paths – religions – are equal to the way of Jesus. All faiths lead to heaven they say. But is that true? Not according to our text today.

Let’s be clear on three points.

First:, ⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  

The truth is that no amount of good behaviour or religious effort will save anyone. Christian faith is the only religion that teaches this. And no other religion on the planet teaches how their leader died for unworthy people.

Zeus of the Greek gods or Jupiter of the Romans never died for anyone. Those were the god’s of Paul’s time. And Osiris of the Egyptians had to die every year making him little better than the high priests of Israel. Some say Jesus is just a rehash of these false gods. Impossible Jesus did what no other would or could do. Jesus died for the powerless and unrighteous. Jesus died for nice people and wicked people, for the poor and the wealthy. Intentionally. Jesus is and always has been the exclusive way to the Father, to Heaven to salvation.

1 John 4.9-10. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Second point. Being justified - able to stand before a holy God with confidence– truly, authentically and powerfully results in a clean slate and a living relationship with God and his people.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved? That’s a question demanding a response. Jesus’s atonement removes sin guilt, but what is the response? To say thanks and carry on expecting that God isn’t interested in us anymore. That greed and lust and corruption are just fine as life choices? Or is it something else?

2 Corinthians 5 On the cross, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” Seek God, seek to live for God, seek to walk with God.  How?

John helps us,

¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ¹³ We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

I don’t like causing anxiety, but this matters. The Church of Jesus Christ in all time and places has contained those who accept forgiveness and seek reconciliation as a life work and those who only seem to accept forgiveness and do not honestly seek reconciliation with God or others. And that is a hard thing to say, but we live in a day of deception that faith is private and living isolated from other believers is ok. Those ideas are of Satan and it destroys the fellowship God desires with us and for us.

Scripture is blunt, 1 John 4.19-20, ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”

Receiving the benefits of Christ’s death demands a response: be reconciled to God and his people.

Third point. There is a fundamental comfort in this passage and teaching. Look at it. Paul is not sad or scared. Paul is joyful. The word boast in this case means joyful talk. Attitudes of gratitude, thankfulness and wonder. We boast in the Lord - could be said – we laugh and share about what God has done for we who do not deserve it. There is no self-pity, not false piety. You know, Jesus died for me, but I’d better watch it or he’ll take it back. No worm theology here. This is gladness, appreciation and freedom as a result of seeing the truth about life.

It’s no wonder then that Paul talks about painful suffering in a positive optimistic way. What he’s saying is that for those who believe, suffering will no destroy what God has done. Instead the suffering Jesus’ followers experience actually helps them grow and become even more grateful, thankful and hope filled looking to God for life, wisdom and peace. Peace – the well-being, contentment, peace of heart, satisfaction, joy and restfulness – that only comes through Christ. The peace that passes understanding. The peace that shows up in a willingness to forgive, and be reconciled to God and to one another. Peace to know that at the end when we stand before our maker there is strength to stand and see the love God has for us eye to eye. Last week I said that adoption by God grants confidence. This is how big that confidence is.

People are looking for heroes today. Superman or Dirty Harry: lawmen who will set the world right. People are looking for heroes who will give them hope through beauty, art or music. The terrible truth is that people cannot bear the weight of being worshipped. It destroyed Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. it seems to have destroyed Tiger Woods.

We live in a world that wants everything immediately; that has no stability of character, just hollow media images. That is no safe place to place our hope. Instead a lowly carpenter who refused to be an earthly king. A man who chose non-violence and simplicity. A God who chose to die to restore all that had been lost through no fault of his own. That man/God invites you to enter his rest and become whole.