Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears, software, a volunteer, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

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Brad 0:00

Aside from the problem of the word atonement, there's a confusion. The Gospel I grew up with was an atonement theory. That means we were mistaking The Gospel for an atonement theory. The Gospel is that Jesus came, died, and rose again to save us from Satan's sin and death, and to renew us to relationship with God. But these atonement theories are just about, “How did that work?” Do you need an atonement theory to preach The Gospel? Well, you do if you think your atonement theory is The Gospel. But if we go to the book of Acts and read every single evangelistic sermon, to Jews or Gentiles, by any apostle or by the proto-martyr Stephen, not one of them includes an atonement theory. And by the way, not one of them includes the threat of hell either.

Seth 1:06

Hey there, everyone, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast? I am Seth, your host. Today's topic is going to be large, and I'll tell you why. I got to sit down with Brad Jersak, and we spoke a bit about the cross, its purpose, atonement theories, payment for sin, death To summize it, we talked about why Jesus had to do what He did, and I can't think of a better question than that. Brad Jersak is an author. He's the Editor in Chief of CWR Magazine. He currently is a teacher based in Abbotsford, BC, where he serves as a monastery preacher at the All Saints of North America Monastery. With that out of the way, let's not belabor the point anymore. I hope you enjoyed this, a very brief discussion about atonement.

Seth 2:15

Brad, thank you so much for making the time this morning to come on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I am very excited to talk about the conversation at hand, specifically around a bit of your history, your journey through faith, I think it mirrors a lot of what some people experience. And I think it is what some people also wish they could do but never have the guts to do, just work through the meaty things of the the faith that we all, well hopefully, we all profess in. Then we'll finish that up with some atonement, and then if there's any time left, we'll have other topics as well. If I said who is Brad Jersak, and I'm meeting you in the bar, and I say, “All right, give me you. What's your story? How did you get from where you were, so I guess where was that, to where you're at now?

Brad 3:00

Well, being that I'm 53, this could take a while. But I will do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version. I was born in a wonderful Christian family With parents who love Jesus, introduced me to Jesus, taught me how to pray taught me to love the scriptures. We were Baptists in central Canada, fairly conservative Baptist, but I'd say my parents were open to the Holy Spirit and committed to telling others about the good news of Christ. I became a Christian, that’s what we call it in the Baptist Church, I became a Christian when I was maybe six. Then I convinced my pastor to baptize me. I immediately dove into the scriptures, and somehow my whole life was revolved around Jesus.

However, I would say by the time I was eight, we were also seeing a lot of revivalists come through town who are really into end-times stuff, and they got me into it, so the whole old dispensationalism and Armageddon stuff, second coming is next weekend. I believe it. I was on board. When you start introducing that stuff, and especially evangelistic preaching focused on the fear of hell and an ultimatum, your faith shifts. I started to move from love for Jesus to fear. For the next 10 years, my faith was in fire insurance, basically; it was fear-based. That was a lot of my first 20 years.

Then I went to Bible college and seminary at an interdenominational conservative college, and there I met my wife, Eden. After graduating, her Mennonite Church on the west coast of Canada called me to be an associate pastor for youth ministries, young adults, and outreach. I was with the Mennonites for 10 years. What I noticed from that era was that they preached a lot more from The Gospels than Baptists do. We were spending a lot of time as Baptists in Paul's theology describing what Jesus had done for us. The Mennonites, you can see really see it over the course of a decade, they just immersed us in the life and teachings of Jesus. Every youth meeting I ran, we talked about the life and teachings of Jesus, most of the sermons on Sunday morning we would look at the call to take up our cross and follow the way of Jesus that looked like something in this world, namely, the Sermon on the Mount, for example.

Seth 5:36

Was that hard to do, being that your upbringing was not that? You were, I'd call it the ‘canon within the canon,’ we only talked about Paul, at least the churches from where I’m around. Was that hard to do that, to lead a church in that way, with your upbringing?

Brad 5:54

No, it was wonderful, because we got even more Jesus focused, and I want it to be Jesus focused, and the love was coming back for me. It’s something about The Gospel itself, when you think about The Gospel, not as an atonement theory, or as four steps or five laws or three hoops or whatever, but as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The life, teachings, death and resurrection of Christ, that's The Gospel. And so when you're focused on that, it's like you just see how He takes care of people and talks to people and loves on people and heals people week after week after week. Rather than then simply thinking about this, “I'm saved from hell by believing the right thing about what Jesus did on the cross,” now we're just seeing Jesus in action over and over. You fall in love again, and I did, and including had shifts towards a more non-violence, non-retaliation, radical forgiveness of Jesus, as well, eventually hooked me.

After 10 years there, we felt a call to church plant. So my wife and I and another couple, we went to plant a church. During my time as a Mennonite, I also really discovered the whole world of inner healing, and we discovered the Holy Spirit in a fresh way. We had sort of a charismatic renewal in our Mennonite Church. With those things as foundations, listening to God, the pursuit for inner healing, we were going to plant this church. Called it Fresh Wind Christian Fellowship. I suppose not all of your listeners would recognize who the Vineyard movement is, but we were a little bit like them. It would be a very casual service, charismatic but not pentecostally In that sense. It's sort of the blue jeans thing.

Seth 7:43

Yeah. I think maybe some of my age group would because predominately still what we sing is Vineyard worship music, but I don't think people know the church that comes out of, what that springs forth from. I know even just this past Sunday, if you look down at the CCLI stuff it says Vineyard Worship, but it's all late 90s usually. I think they're familiar with some of their songs, but probably not familiar at all with that movement.

Brad 8:10

Well, the songs really helped, because that's what was informing our theology. Even though it's a charismatic movement, in a sense, the songs primarily focus on the Father's love, the Father's heart, the Father's invitation to the Father's house, all of that, especially Brian Doerksen’s stuff; he lives in town here where I live in Abbotsford, BC. That radically impacted us.That church ended up drawing, then, are those being called to the Father's house.

For the next 10 years, I was pastoring in this church where one-third of the people had disabilities and were in full-time care., one-third. On top of that, we had children who were disruptive, too disruptive for other churches, but we wanted them in. We had, then, addicts start showing up and saying, “Wow, I won't be the loudest person here, and I'm not going to get judged here.” So suddenly, we had a lot of alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts, you name it, who were in 12-step recovery, in recovery houses, and so on. We would do inner healing work with them. Then the poor started coming in; sometimes that was the working poor, at other times it was the homeless. We worked with those on the margins and just saw a consistent orientation of God's love towards them whenever we would minister and zero condemnation, always the good news invitation to the Father's love.

I stepped down in 2008. My wife became the lead pastor there for the next five years while I did my PhD work in Political Theology and Theology of the Cross at Bangor University in Wales; but it was distance learning, so I could do it from home. During that time, I was being mentored by a fellow named Archbishop Lazar Puhalo in the Orthodox Church. We really bought into the theology of the Eastern Church at that point, it’s 350-million Christians. The West knows very little bit about what they believe, and yet these are the stewards of the early church fathers’ material, who've never departed from it because it's embedded in their weekly liturgy.

Five years ago now, I formally was chrismated; that means they didn't rebaptize me, but they anointed me with oil, and I affirmed the Nicene creed and joined the East Orthodox Church. Now I'm a monastery preacher in a little monastery where probably 60 or 70 congregants show up on Sundays for the service. Vocationally I've moved out of pastoring now. I write, and I'm an editor for Christianity Without the Religion Magazine, CWRM. You can find that online for free at ptm.org. I write books. My last one was A More Christlike God. Oh, and I did a children's version called Jesus Showed Us. Then I also teach. I'm just in the midst of exiting Westminster Theological Center as a teacher in England and focusing now on another school, it's called St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick on the east coast. I'm teaching there, and I'm going to have a role as a dean in their Master’s of Ministries program.

Seth 11:24

What is political theology? Because those two words, in my brain, shouldn't belong together.

Brad 11:31

Oh, very good. So [in] political theology we’re exploring how our faith impacts our politics or our political approach. For example, we might study the history of how theological debate has informed political debate. This isn't to do with the separation of church and state or the combination of church and state. You almost have to erase the word ‘political’ from your mind for a moment. What I mean is, “How do we make our personal faith public? How do we live out our faith, not only privately, but in community and in our city? And how does working out our faith publicly impact a just society?” That may not happen whatsoever through government processes.

We often think political means government. No, political means public. It’s a public working out, and it can have an effect on the government. Let’s just say, for example, how do we deal with the poor in our city? Well, we should have a theological opinion about that. I don't mean systematic theology. I mean, we go to The Gospels, we look at Jesus, and how He treated the poor, how He treated the stranger, which in Greek and Hebrew means “immigrant” and “refugees.” We see how He treated the sick and what that means for health care and so on. So we look to The Gospels for now, does this have political implications? Well, certainly, the last judgment in Matthew 25 is all about how our faith becomes public for the service of a greater good than ourselves. So that's what I mean by political theology.

Seth 13:22

I'm not gonna lie. I kind of just want to talk about that now but I won't, because I didn't prepare for that. Maybe we can do that a different time. [we did that here]

Brad 13:30

I'd love to, sure.

Seth 13:31

The reason I say that is, for some reason, I've noticed through everything that I've been reading recently, everything keeps coming back to Matthew 25. I talked with Richard Beck about it. I talked with Sean Palmer about it. I didn't expect everybody to go there, but for some reason 2018 is the year of Matthew 25. Then I think that through the lens of [growing]up with the moral majority, I went to Liberty, which is extremely charged with what it is charged with; but I don't want to digress. But yeah, I definitely want to discuss that with you further at a different date. That tickles all my….I don't know, I can't even voice it correctly.

Something that I have come to realize about myself and I told some friends yesterday, I no longer can hold to a view of Scripture that endorses penal substitution. But I have many struggles with explaining why that is the case. I wanted to talk a bit about atonement theory with you. I'd like to start with, “What are we trying to say, when we say this is what atonement is? What are we defining? What are we, as Christians, trying to wrap our heads around?”

Brad 14:52

Yeah, that's a very important and good question, because the question itself introduces problems, it introduces assumptions. For example, what is the question of atonement? So here's the wrong answer, but it's the one that so often assumed. We thought the question of atonement was, “How does the cross save us?” And sometimes we even think, “How does the cross save us from hell or something like this?” So already, that's too narrow, because a better question around the atonement is, “How does Jesus save us?” I say that because Jesus’ saving work didn't all happen one on Friday afternoon of Good Friday.

It begins in the heart of God with His incarnation into the world, where God assumes human nature in order to heal human nature, and it begins at His conception and prior to that, if you're thinking about the plans of God. I mean, just the fact that Jesus saves us, that process begins from day one through what we call the hypostatic union. That means when God and humanity are united in this one person. In fact, you could say, the Creator and all of creation, are united in this one person, because Jesus Christ is both creator and created. When happens when God and humanity and creation are united in this one person at birth, it begins this salvation process whereby all the life of the Creator begins pouring into the life of humanity and the into the life of creation in a healing, redeeming way.

That then works out all through Jesus’ life. Jesus’ whole life, and especially His ministry, when He launches it in Luke 4, and He describes the new covenant, He doesn't say the new covenant will happen when I die. He says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, cleansing to the leper, freedom to the captives to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” That's all new covenant, right? And then He says this, “Today, this is fulfilled in your hearing.” Day one of His ministry in terms of public preaching. Then we see that being worked out, salvation.

By the way, the root word of this is the the verb ‘sozo,’ which means “healing” and “saving.” So it's sort of like, “making whole again,” but also “rescuing.” So that's all packaged in salvation so that someone who gets healed by Jesus is being saved. Someone who gets delivered of demons is being saved. Someone who's forgiven of sin is being saved. By the way, all of that's happening before the cross. He's saving people before Good Friday.

Then on Good Friday, well the whole weekend, we see Jesus death and His descent into Hades and victory over that, and then His resurrection. These two are like the climax of this salvation event whereby God reveals Himself through Jesus, especially on the cross, that He is self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. He’s poured himself into the world as love and that love saves us. What does it save us from?

Penal substitution taught that Jesus Christ saves us from God. No, Paul says God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us. He saves us decisively from Satan, sin and death. As far as I can see, that is The Gospel testimony of the saving work of Christ. So you can see how, “How does how does the cross save us from hell?” Or even, “How does the cross save us from the punishment or wrath of God?” It's just too small of a question.

Seth 19:10

I find when I talked to people about this, and predominantly my stream that I am in and around is a Calvinist stream just by proxy of where I'm at and the friends that I have from Liberty, and I'm fine with that. I know going in that I'm going to be called heterodoxical or a heretic, and I'm not really certain what the difference is between those two. Why do we need, as a church, there's penal substitution, there's Christus Victor, there's governmental, there's moral influencers, there’s ransom theory, why do we even need? Are we making this more difficult than it needs to be? Do we need all of these theories at all?

Brad 19:49

Yeah, it's incredibly problematic in this sense. First first of all, let me just say a word about atonement. So, in the Eastern Orthodox churches, they're very nervous about that English word to begin with because of what's happened to the English word. The roots of the English word really were what, in one of the questions you had sent me was “at-one-ment.” Now you don't normally take a word and split it up like that to get its meaning. We call that a exegetical fallacy, but in the case of “atonement,” that is how the word was formed “at-one-ment.”

Here's why the Orthodox are nervous of that word. At the outset, when the word was first coined in English, it meant “reconciliation,” “to reconcile,” but the English word has morphed over time, and it doesn't mean that anymore. The word “atonement” now means something closer to the word “appeasement.” Therefore, the atonement theories of the West tend to stop asking, “How does God in Christ reconcile us to Himself?” By the way, He didn't need to be reconciled to us, He never turned from us, but we needed to be called back home, like the younger son in the prodigal son story, he's reconciled to his father. So if that's the question, no problem. “How does God reconcile the world to Himself?” By forgiving us of sin, by conquering death, and by opening wide paradise to us again.

But the question changes if the word changes. So now, in penal substitutionary atonement, for example, the popular version, the unnuanced version, and maybe we'll say the classical version from Calvin, is more like, “How does the torture and death of Jesus Christ appease the wrath of God so that He can forgive you?” While some would say that's The Gospel, the Orthodox would say, “No, that's a heresy,” because you're making God into this angry, wrathful judge who needs to be appeased by a child sacrifice. Well, when I first met Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, he said, “Oh, I see your problem. You worship Molech, he’s the god of wrath who needed to be appeased by child sacrifice. Yahweh is not that way. Yahweh comes in the flesh to let us know we are forgiven, we are loved, and we are welcomed unconditionally.” That almost makes it a different religion.

Sorry to ramble, but now, you're question was, “Do we need all these different theories?” I want to say that, aside from the problem of the word atonement, there's a confusion. The Gospel I grew up with was an atonement theory. That means we were mistaking The Gospel for an atonement theory. The Gospel is that Jesus came, died, and rose again to save us from Satan's sin and death, and to renew us to relationship with God. But these atonement theories are just about, “How did that work?” Do you need an atonement theory to preach The Gospel? Well, you do if you think your atonement theory is The Gospel. But if we go to the book of Acts and read every single evangelistic sermon, to Jews or Gentiles, by any apostle or by the proto-martyr, Stephen, not one of them includes an atonement theory. And by the way, not one of them includes the threat of hell either.

The Gospel I grew up with was an atonement theory. That means we were mistaking The Gospel for an atonement theory. The Gospel is that Jesus came, died and rose again to save us from Satan's sin and death and to renew us to relationship with God. But these atonement theories are just about how did that work? Do you need an atonement theory to preach The Gospel? will you do if you think your atonement theory is The Gospel, but if we go to the book of Acts and read every single evangelist sermon, to Jews or Gentiles by any apostle or by the proto-martyr Stephen, not one of them includes an atonement theory. And by the way, not one of them includes the threat of hell either, not once. So whatever The Gospel is, it doesn't need that.

We also confuse atonement theories with biblical metaphor. So it's almost like you've got The Gospel first; second, you have biblical metaphors describing The Gospel from the mouth of Jesus and Paul and James and others. Then after the fact, hundreds of years later, you add this third layer that we call atonement theories. So okay, those can be interesting to talk about, but they certainly shouldn't be confused with the biblical metaphors or with The Gospel as such.

By the way, also, you mentioned Christus Victor. So that's another problem because people in the West will think that Christus Victor is one of the atonement theories. It's described that way in Gustav Allen's book, Christus Victor saying, “Well, what's the atonement theory of the early church?” I don't believe Christus Victor is an atonement theory. I think it's a description, biblical metaphor of The Gospel where Christ is victorious over death. That’s not a theory. That is Gospel.

So I go into depth in all of these in A More Christlike God, and I even tip my hat to a version, a very subtle version of penal substitution, where we say, “If you mean, by substitute, that Jesus did something for us that we could not do for ourselves, well, of course. Of course He did. If you mean by penal that Christ suffered death, which is the penalty for sin, penal, well, of course He did.” You’ve got scholars in Germany, like Tubingen, talking this way. Okay, in the academy it's very subtle, but that's not what it means in popular preaching, is it? It means, “God punished Jesus instead of you.” That's what it means, so I would just absolutely resist that, because God doesn't need to do that.

Seth 25:31

Yeah. That sounds similar to a friend of mine sent me, he didn't endorse it I one way or another (I'm certain he'll listen and I don't want him to feel attacked), he sent me a YouTube clip of NT Wright basically saying that, “You can still hold penal substitution while holding Christus Victor or while holding other versions.” It doesn’t have to be an “and/or,” it can be an “either.”

Brad 25:55

Yeah, Wright is an interesting fellow. His last book on the cross is really important and worth reading. It's called The Day the Revolution Began. Here's the problem with Wright. When he talks penal substitution, he doesn't mean wrath appeasement at all; in fact, he has his own version, he's created his own version of penal substitution whereby he gets to keep using that phrase, but I don't think he should do that when he clearly says, “It is not about wrath appeasement.” So in that book, and I'm quoting him, he says, “There are versions of The Gospel where it's about the appeasement of the wrath of an angry God,” and says, “That is paganizing The Gospel.” In other words, Wright is calling the popular preached version of penal substitution, “pagan,” then I think he should let go of that phrase because, for him to say, “But I believe in penal substitution,” then redefine it, that's like me saying, “Well, yeah, and I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”

Seth 27:12

“And by that I mean this,” because you are a latter day saint and you follow Christ.

Brad 27:20

Exactly right. But I'm not a Mormon. Wright is not a five-point Calvinist or a four-point Calvinist. At least I felt like he was being disingenuous until this last book. Now he's come out and just clearly said it, “if you mean that Christ had to appease the wrath of an angry God in order to forgive you, that's paganizing The Gospel.” I [think], “finally you said.” I'm sure someone won’t like that he did.

Song 27:49

I’m not your friend. I am something you never comprehend. No need to worry. No need to cry. I’m your messiah, your reason why. You, I would die for you. Darling, if you want me to, I would die for you.

Seth 28:31

Here's a question that naturally arises when we think about Christ and the cross. As a father, if what I'm hearing you say is the cross is not an instrument that allows God to forgive or to love, it’s not the tool, it’s not the means. I can’t voice that well, but I think you hear what I'm trying to say. Was it even necessary that I would have to sacrifice my son, if I was in God's position? Why would I do that? Does it take away something, especially in light of we're in the Easter season as we're recording this, does it take away something to know that He possibly didn't have to do this?

Brad 29:12

I believe He had to do it, but not in order to forgive. Then, if it's not like God's anger poured out on Jesus as violence and death dealing, if that's not what releases God to forgive, then why does that need to happen at all? Here's our answer to that. The cross was absolutely necessary for two reasons. Remember, it's not just Jesus, the man, on the cross; God is on the cross. There's an old Latin expression that expresses how the indivisible Trinity, so remember that for a moment; we believe in one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - one in essence and undivided. That's in the liturgy that we sing every Sunday. I'll say it again. We believe in one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - one in essence and undivided. Any atonement theory that divides the Trinity where God and Jesus Christ become separate is a formal heresy, because now you've got either tritheism, three gods, or you've made Jesus Christ less than the Father or he ceases to be God in some way. That’s just Arianism.

Seth 30:34

Can you say that again, for those in the back row, and if you're in your car and you dozed out, please come back around and listen right now.

Brad 30:41

Okay, so we believe in one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - one in essence and undivided. That means it's God on the cross. So the Latin phrase I was going to tell you is, “All the operations, or workings, of God in this world are undivided.” That's why it's Yahweh says in Zachariah 12, “You will look on Me, the One you have pierced.” Who is “Me”? Yahweh. Where is God, the Father on Good Friday? Paul tells us in II Corinthians 5, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

To split away, to have Father and Son, the Godhead, severed, which penal substitution requires, you fall into one of two errors. Either you split the Trinity, which is invisible, so that's an error, or you make Jesus less than the Father. For example, we might say, “Christ became sin, and the Father can't look on sin.” Oh, okay, so Christ is not fully God anymore? Wait a minute. This is Christian orthodoxy, that Jesus Christ never ceased to be fully God at any moment. He never ceased in fellowship from His Father. In fact, in The Gospel of John, He says this, “You will think I'm alone, but I'm not alone. My Father is with Me.” I mean, how much more clear does He have to be?

Well, if it doesn't fit your system, you just ignore those verses. But what about, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me? Well, that's rooted in Psalm 22:1; you just keep reading the Psalm, verse 22, 23, 24 and He says this, and it's from the same mouth saying, “God has not despised the afflicted One. He has not turned His face from Me.” One more verse, in Isaiah 53, it prophesies this very error. It says, “You will look on Me, and you will think I was stricken by God, but it was your sins I endured or bore.” In other words, if you think God did this, you're wrong. But you will think that, but I'm telling you right now; already in Isaiah, He's warning us against that very mistake.

Seth 32:58

Yeah. So is it just obedience, then? Is Jesus incarnating just to die because I said I have to?

Brad 33:06

No, it's more than that. So I would say it this way, and I said it before, I slipped it in before, and now we'll make it overt to this moment. Why did Christ go to the cross? Two reasons. One, to reveal God as self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. In other words, God Himself, He gives Himself over to our wrath, He submits to our darkness, to our rebellion. He submits Himself to that. We pour out our wrath and violence and hatred on Him. Then what does He say? “Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.” So He radically forgives the sinners, He forgives all sinners. But also then, co-suffering, and by that I mean He doesn't just forgive sins, He suffers the injustices of all time and all history are drawn up into Him on the cross. He swallows them in love and recycles them as forgiveness. So he's in solidarity with every victim from every war, from every rape, from every murder, from every embezzlement and all. He takes that into Himself, and His love purges it.

That’s the revelation part, that He's showing us who God is, what He's like, but also then it's a decisive victory over Satan, sin and death. So in John, concerning the cross, He says, “Now I'm going to be glorified, and the prince of this world will be driven out,” like now from on the cross. In terms of sin, God could already forgive sin; but now, in a decisive way, He forgives all sin, because because it has been drawn to this moment in time. Then He, most importantly, perhaps, Jesus needed to die to conquer death. Here’s the logic of the early church fathers. When we sinned, the consequences of our sin is not the God kills us, but that sin kills us. Sin kills us. And now we have this…

Seth 35:22

So it's sin, not God, demanding I don't want to say the word payment, but that's what's been ingrained in me.

Brad 35:32

No, sin causes the death. So if the ransom is to anything, the ransom is to death itself. What has to happen is God needs to enter the realm of death to destroy death, but He can't because he's God. But wait, if He takes on a human nature, He can. So what happens is, in the one person of Jesus Christ, through His human nature, He is able to die. By being able to die, He can enter death. But wait, He's still God. So when God enters death, what happens? Death blows up. It's destroyed.

Think about the movie Men in Black. I don't know if you've seen it. Tommy Lee Jones virtually taunts this giant cockroach into eating him whole. The cockroach eats him, but he doesn't die. Then Will Smith taunts him. Then, finally [Smith says], “You shouldn't have done that.” And you hear this weapon powering up from inside the bug, and it blows him up from the inside, and there's Tommy Lee Jones fully alive. This is the early Christian vision of the death and resurrection of Christ, that God needs to become man so that He can enter death, so that He can destroy death.

In our liturgy, we always sing this, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.” So the idea is that all humankind has come under the curse of sin or the wages of sin, which is death. It's not enough for Christ to forgive sin, He has to deal with the problem of death, and he has done so. So He overcomes death, and now He holds the keys of death and Hades. I love to ask this question. If Christ holds the keys of death and Hades, what do you think He'll do with them? Well, He unlocks Hades and leads a parade of captives out in His train according to Ephesians. He preaches the good news to those who were enslaved in the tomb. Peter says this, “Those who were judged in the body are made alive in the spirit.” The idea is that He had to die to break death, and and He did so. For us, death is the big problem.

You did mention payment. Do you want me to talk about payment a little bit?

Seth 38:00

Sure.

Brad 38:01

So here's the problem. We have some verses where it just clearly says [in] II Corinthians 5 that God wasn't counting our sins against us. Even in the Old Testament, Psalm 103, “He forgives all of our sins. He heals all of our diseases,” and then He says, “He has not treated us as our sins deserve.” So God is not into eye-for-eye justice, that’s the whole point of forgiveness. Forgiveness is when you don't demand eye-for-eye justice. Pardon is even a legal term for that, right? When you pardon someone you say, “You don't need to be punished according to the measure of your offense, you’re pardoned.”

All right, then, where do we get the idea of payment? It's from two metaphors, ransom and redemption. Those are biblical metaphors, but we think of them in modern terms. Ransom is when you pay a hostage-taker to set someone free. Redemption is when you pay for an item or for a slave, for the slave owner or the pawnbroker to release something into freedom, right? So here's a problem already. Is God the hostage taker? Did Jesus pay God? Is God the one who enslaved us? No. But then, wait a minute. Who's being paid? This was a question in the early church. Then what we realized is this. Ransom and redemption are metaphors rooted in the exodus, in the Old Testament, where it says that God redeemed Israel out of Egypt, or He ransomed Israel out of Pharaoh's hands. So the metaphor is freedom from slavery, right? But wait! In the Exodus, who did they pay? Nobody. In fact, the people of God plunder Pharaoh. They not only rescue their slaves without payment, they actually take a whole bunch of gold and people even with them, right.

Seth 40:05

And then make a country out of it.

Brad 40:07

Right. So this is the limitation of redemption and ransom language is that it is about freedom, but it's not about payment. You see this in a poignant way when in Jesus’ parable when He says that He's going to bind to the strong man, enter his house, and plunder his goods. So it's not a payment, it's a home invasion. The home of Satan is sort of, metaphorically speaking, is death and Hades. Christ is going to bind the strongman, Satan, enter his house, death, and plunder his goods, the dead. He does, so that’s redemption.

Seth 40:47

The people of that day would have gotten that connection, correct?

Brad 40:50

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Seth 40:51

The audience that he was speaking to would have known what he was referencing.

Brad 40:55

Absolutely. You see, that's a typical metaphor, but it's not really an atonement theory, right? It is The Gospel but in metaphor.

Seth 41:03

If I've learned anything from doing this podcast, it is that Western Christianity has insulated itself to such a point that we no longer know the history of the faith and, because of that, the culture and everything. It makes it hard to grasp those things unless you actively seek it out, which is sad. It’s a disservice. Ugh.

Brad 41:26

Well, we don't mean to, but here's what we did. In the Protestant Reformation, we reject the whole of Christian history and say, “We're going to go back to the Bible ourselves, and we're just going to figure it out by ourselves. But, by the way, we're going to do it with a legal lens, a courtroom metaphor, and every verse will be read through that legalistic metaphor. And if it doesn't fit that sort of “God as a punishing judge, and the law demands punishment, and sin is law breaking; if it doesn't fit that model, then we can't even see the verses.” They don’t count.

Seth 42:02

Yeah, just read over it. It's the nutrition facts on the label. We're not worried about those. I'm worried about how it tastes. I want to end with this, then. You had said at the beginning, after I'd said “I'm not quite certain what I believe with atonement theories,” you would hope to indoctrinate me. What theory should I hold to? What do you think personally best fits? What theory would you point people to learn more about, as they listen to this? I have many more questions, so I can't think that no one else also doesn't have more questions.

Brad 42:32

Yeah, I would say be aware of atonement theories. Be aware of them, but you don't have to hold to any of them. What you do need to come back to is, “What is The Gospel? And what does the Bible say about The Gospel?” So as a result, perhaps what you thought of as an atonement theory, Christopher Victor, I would say that's a good biblical metaphor for what The Gospel accomplished. It’s Christ's victory over Satan, sin and death.

Another one that you get in Scripture that you could use as a metaphor, it becomes sort of the early church fathers, one of their favorites, is the picture of the great physician. Sin is not just law breaking behavior that needs to be punished. Sin is a fatal disease, a wound deep in my soul that needs a great physician, and you will never punish that out of anybody. He didn't just come to save us from the consequences of sin. He came to save us from the disease itself. In that case, you [think], okay, instead of looking at it as a courtroom with a judge and a need for punishment, you see it as a hospital, and you get this in the Good Samaritan story, that we're a hospital where the Great Physician has come to heal us of this fatal disease. How does he do that? By uniting with us. When He unites with me, His healing love pours into me in that love union, and it cleanses me of sin. It doesn't punish me of sin, it cleanses me in the same way that if I was a garment with a stain, He cleanses the stain out of the garment, without destroying or hurting or tearing up the garment, or shouting at the garment, or lashing the garment. If that's a theory, the theory is this - His union with humanity heals humanity. All early bishops would say, Christ became human so that you could become divine, not by nature but by grace.

Seth 44:42

Yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. Brad, where would you direct people to engage with you? Obviously, you got your writings. You've got the magazine, which I will say I enjoy that magazine, I frequent it, probably about once a month. I enjoy the magazine, because I find it's honest. It seems to not have as much of an agenda as you will get from A camp, or B camp, or C camp, so I appreciate that. Where would you direct people to either engage in the work that you're doing, or just overall? Where would you send people to?

Brad 45:21

You know, I have a website called bradjersak.com. Of course, the ptm.org website is where you'd find my [work]; I have a blog there, but also this magazine. I’m on Facebook as Brad Jersak. I'm on Twitter as @bradjersak.

One thing I recommend, it's a good foundation, perhaps, to Eastern thought and to my thought, is if they Google “Jersak chairs Denver.” If you do that, you'll see that there's a third minute video of me describing what we call The Gospel in Chairs. Basically what I do is, in 30 minutes, I described the difference between how we tell The Gospel in terms of the penal substitution model, and then the glitches in that which I felt needed upgrading, and that I found in the Eastern early church fathers. I retell The Gospel as “God is in relentless pursuit of us. He never turns from us. He's always after us.” I do that just using the Bible. It's online in various forms. But if you do “Denver,” that's the one that's best produced. It's got multiple cameras, better focus and sound and all of that.

Seth 46:45

Fantastic. I have not seen that. I'll search that out today. Well, Brad, thank you again, for your time this morning. I appreciate it very much. And I hope you have a great day.

Brad 46:54

My pleasure. It was good to be with you, and I’ll see you again.

Seth Outro 47:03

Thank you all for listening. I want to ask you to, if you didn't do it at the beginning, do it now. Go to iTunes, rank the show. That is the best way that you can help the conversations that are happening here to bubble up on the Internet so that more people can interact with them. On top of that, share the show; share it with your family, your friends, Facebook, social media, whatever avenue you choose is a great avenue. I would also ask, if you feel so led, to become a patron at patreon.com/canisaythisatchurch. You'll also find a link to that on the website, canisaythisatchurch.com. I am very grateful for those of you that have taken the time and your money to do so. Talk to you next week.

Seth Music Credit48:04

Music from today's episode was used with permission from artists Noah Guthrie from his most recent album entitled The Valley. You can connect with Noah on all the social medias, as well as follow him on Spotify. You can listen on Apple Music. As with all of our artists, you will hear the selections from today's episode in our Spotify playlist, Can I Say This At Church.