2 Corinthians 5.21 - A Tale of Two Goats - Part 2
I am tired of powerless, faithless, mainline “churchianity” and I am purposefully seeking to understand more of what it means to live in the actual power of the Holy Spirit. (A Real Faith reader)
In preaching that Jesus became sin on the cross and descended into hell, many of the catcalls against such redemptive facts howl that it is a repudiation of the blood of Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the theology of the “sufficiency of the cross, ” that everything ended at Calvary, that warps the clear light of the redemption narrative, eviscerating scriptures such as Hebrews 9.12 clean out of the Bible:
he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9.12, RSV)
It is “finality of the cross” theology that produces the powerless, faithless, introspective Oprahesque churchianity that prevails in the Body of Christ today. Interestingly enough, it is those preachers who speak not of the cross’s finality, but of the “power of the resurrection and the blood” who maintain the testimony of a powerfully outworking Christianity where the real power of the Spirit is in play and Jesus is still actively walking or working among us.
In our last essay, 2 Corinthians 5.21 - A Tale of Two Goats - Part 1 (you should read that one first), we demonstrated the sequence of the OT sin offerings:
presentation w/o defect –>
laying on of hands –>
death –>
[scapegoat] –>
blood on Mercy Seat
[This sequence is actually for the Day of Atonement, but the discussion is the same.]
In that essay, we made the point that the Word only called the sacrificial animal “holy” when the entire ritual had been completed. The penitent sinner seeking the forgiveness of his sins could not stop the sacrificial ritual midway through and call it a day. His lamb, goat, or bull had to be presented “without defect” and go all the way through to the sprinkling of blood for forgiveness to be had. This entire procedure is what Hebrews (and Leviticus) calls “the shedding of blood” (we’ll explain “suitcases” in a moment). As shown in the sequence, the confabulation of the “finality” of the cross shuts the whole thing down at death. There is no Hebrews 9.12 in the school of “the wonderful cross.”
At first blush, that seems like quite an overstatement (and to some, outright blasphemy), but it is not. While the cross is absolutely required for redemption, it is not an end of itself. In truth, the Word calls a cross-ended theology worthless.
Misguided cross theology holds that Jesus’s “it is finished” at John 19.30 (the death step) marked the complete end of his work for our redemption:
The word means ‘to complete,’ ‘to bring to perfection.’ Jesus had fully done the work God the Father sent him to do. (William Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek at 224)
On the cross Jesus finishes the work the father has given him to do (17.4), ending with the shout of triumph (tetelestai, ‘it is accomplished,’ 19.30), corresponding to the completion of creation itself. (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God at 440)
When Jesus said, ‘It is finished,’ He meant it. He meant that there could be
nothing added to what He had done. The same thing is true of salvation. Jesus finished it on the cross. All you have to do is have faith in His finished work. You can’t add anything to it. (John MacArthur, Crucifixion and Resurrection, Tape GC 1575)
And when the moment of his death was near, Jesus cried out, ‘It is finished,’ and bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30). By this he meant more than ‘my life is over.’ He meant, ‘I have fully accomplished the redeeming work my Father sent me to do.’ (John Piper, The Unparalleled Passion of Jesus Christ, January 1, 1995)
In John 19:30 Jesus said, ‘It is finished!’ He did not say, ‘It has just begun!’ The Greek word used in the original text is tetelestai, which means ‘It is paid; the debt has been paid in full.’ The finality of Jesus’ accomplishment upon the cross is made crystal clear by the tearing of the temple curtain that veiled God’s earthly sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, from man, thus signifying that access to God had been restored at that precise moment.” (Mark 15:38; cf. Hebrews 9:1-14; 10:19-22). Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis at 162.
As Hanegraaff puts it, this view of the redemption narrative says that “access to God had been restored at that precise moment.” But from this premise flows a mucky river of theological spins, blotchy glosses, catch-22s, and “we really don’t knows” that emasculate Jesus’s mission and his all-so-glorious triumph. For instance, we’ve seen that Hebrews 9.12 must be blotted out or gutted by allegory for cross finality to make any sense. If the cross was the end of it all, when in the world did Jesus enter into the Holy place with His blood? And if the crucifixion was only a physical act, what’s He doing with blood in a spiritual Holy place? If the cross was it, then why three days and not two or even one? What of Luke 13.32 where Jesus said that he’d accomplish his goal on the third day, not the first? (“on the third day I will reach my goal” - NIV)
One deafening example of the theological catch-22 is the “good” thief who hears “I say unto you today, you shall be with me in Paradise.” Stopping at the death step, this thief gets to “see the kingdom of God,” walk the streets of gold, and meet Moses and Elijah the moment he gives up the ghost:
Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43), imply that after Jesus died his soul (or spirit) went immediately to the presence of the Father in heaven, even though his body remained on earth and was buried. Some people deny this by arguing that paradise is a place distinct from heaven, but in both of the other NT uses the word clearly means “heaven.” In 2 Cor 12:4 it is the place to which Paul was caught up in revelation of heaven, and in Rev 2:7 it is the place where we find the tree of life, which is clearly in heaven in 22:2, 14. (Wayne Grudem, He Did Not Descend Into Hell, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, March 1991 at 112)
But to the penitent Jesus says: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ This was almost too good. There would not even be a delay. Today the Spirit of Jesus and the renewed Spirit of the thief would be in union in Paradise. The promise would be without delay. (John Piper, Sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church on April 17, 1981)
My conclusion is that the thief died the same day AND went to Heaven to be with Christ the same day. (John MacArthur, Questions on the Repentant Thief at http://www.ldolphin.org/kwellsx.html)
But this thief gold-stompin’ sneaker scenario tramples all over the black-letter scripture of 1 Corinthians 15.13, 14, 17:
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith is also in vain… . and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. (emphasis supplied)
The fact is the thief, dying on Good Friday, could not see the kingdom of God until Easter, the day that Jesus was raised.
1 Corinthians 15.13-17 stands written because the cross wasn’t final or sufficient, in and of itself. The redemption rescue could not and did not stop at the death step. Jesus had to be raised to have his blood sprinkled on the heavenly Mercy Seat (the last OT sacrificial step). If redemption stops at the cross, the God-breathed Word tells us that our faith is absolutely worthless.
A Note on Suitcases
In our everyday lives, we use shorthand phrases all the time. For instance, we tell our family, “I’m going to work” and we expect them to understand what we mean. We don’t tell them, “I’m going to go out the door, down the stairs, walk to my car, start the car, yada, yada, yada.” You get the picture. N.T. Wright speaks of these shorthand phrases as “suitcase”:
In Christian theology, such phrases regularly act as ‘portable stories,’ that is, ways of packing up longer narratives about God, Jesus, the church and the world, folding them away into convenient suitcases, and then carrying them about with us. (N.T. Wright, The Last Word, at 24)
In the American church, the “blood-shedding” used in Hebrews and Leviticus is usually preached with the backdrop of one of those action-packed Schwarzenegger movies; “blood-shedding” is bloodletting. The Word, however, doesn’t use Hollywood’s casting. As shown in the OT sacrificial sequence, “blood-shedding” speaks of everything from the presentation of the animal to the sprinkling of blood on the altar (“where the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin, and he will be forgiven” - Lev. 4.26) and everything in between. The blood-shedding Jesus had to complete for our redemption was no different.