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I stumbled upon Wayne Jacobsen when I was researching different atonement theories last year. The Cross as Cure Not Punishment came up in the google search results. It is part 4 in a series of talks called Transitions. He also talks about this in his book He Loves Me.
....the unanswerable questions should invite us to reconsider our distorted view of the cross. Since Adam’s fall we have come to picture God not as a loving Father inviting us to trust him, but an exacting sovereign who must be appeased. When we start from that vantage point we miss God’s purpose on the cross. For his plan was not to satisfy some need in himself at his Son’s expense, but rather to satisfy a need in us at his own expense.
And it was not his plan to satisfy the requirements of the Law...nor is the atonement about the fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system. Later on in the book he says....
But I am deeply bothered by the thought that in some way God was able to separate himself at the cross. The popular understanding of the cross seems to be that God the Father executed wrath on God the Son while standing at some discrete distance.
Such thinking not only denies the essence of God’s nature but then distorts what happened at the cross. Paul wrote that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ…” God was no distant observer, but a participant. He didn’t send Jesus to do what he would not do; but God himself acted through Jesus to bring about our redemption.
Some have taken Jesus’ cry that his Father had forsaken him to mean that at the darkest moment, the Father had to turn his back on the Son. God cannot bear to look on sin, they argue, so that when our sins were laid on him, God had to turn his face away from his Son.
God has never run from sinful humanity. He didn’t hide from Adam and Even in the Garden. They hid from him as he sought them out. It is not God who cannot bear to look on sin, but that we in our sin can’t bear to look on God. He’s not the one who hides. We are. God is powerful enough to look on sin and be untainted by it. He has always done so. He did so at the cross.
I could not agree with this more. God was IN Christ reconciling the world to himself. Kind of hard to turn his head away if he was (as the Amplified renders it) personally present. And is not our great God omnipresent? Is there anywhere he is not? How is it then that he could not look upon sin? Even if I make my bed in hell, behold, he is there? He has been looking on sin throughout the ages. He personally (in the incarnated Christ) walked among sin on a daily basis.
God is not a wimp...he is not too delicate to look upon sin. He does not have to turn away from sin and in fact there is no hell hole too dark, no evil place too wicked...nowhere that he will not go to rescue his children. The Cross should show us that....
He didn’t just deal with our sins, but with the very nature of sin itself. By allowing sin to touch his person through the Son, he would be able to prevail in himself over that which we were powerless to fight. Through the physical body of Jesus, sin came face to face with the power of God, and as we shall see, God prevailed over sin completely.
He goes on to talk about God's wrath as a type of chemotherapy which was vented against Sin (the disease) and he see the cross as the antidote for Sin. Also check out his God Journey site. There are lots of resources there and a bunch of podcasts of conversations between Wayne and his side kick Brad Cummings. The podcasts are a hoot...and very edifying. He has an emergent church kind of spin on things. Oh...and he is not a universalist....but that one little detail is just a matter of time :)
13 comments:
Oh, that last sentence is very cheeky :)
I believe Wayne has never aligned himself with the emergent church movement.
Hi Chris...
It had been a while since I wrote that post so I had to go back and reread it. I'm thinking the comment you are referring to was:
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He has an emergent church kind of spin on things.
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I guess what I was trying to convey is that his views do not seem to be traditional evangelical views and are more akin to those you might find among the emerging church. I guess I was referring more to the attitude of the emerging church than the "official organization." Especially the "emerging" part. Wayne did emerge from the traditional church system I think. Wasn't he a pastor at a very traditional church? I didn't mean he was part of the official emerging church movement per say. I know he visits and ministers at a lot of gatherings in people's homes.
I don't know him personally. I've participated very hit or miss, now and then on a yahoo list he founded...lifestream journey. I've listened to 20 or so of his podcasts, exchanged a few emails with him...read his He Loves Me book...visit his blog now and then. I think he is a great guy...which is why I wrote this post.
Thanks for visiting. Thanks for commenting. Comments are always welcome....
Cindi.....
I think Jacobsen is very much aligned with the emerging church mentality. Especially with his participation with the book The Shack, which of course is new age disguised as "Christian fiction". I saw clips of him speaking about it and when asked about hell, he simply said hell and the gnashing of the teeth and weeping was nothing more than our emotions of the consequence of sin...Jesus never said that. This whole "love of God" and "grace of God" IS a good thing and IS truth based, however, when people start just teaching (like he is) to focus only on that, but mention nothing of obedience to God, discipline, fear of the Lord, surrendering to Christ, then that poses a very dangerous thing. Compromising can creep in, which is exactly what had happened in the church today, people are focusing so much on just love but fail to obey God's commands, and they're accepting the things God clearly says we should steer clear from, all in the name of "tolerance and love". Grace and Truth HAVE to be balanced, to me, Jacobsen has failed to express the WHOLE truth and just expressed only some of it.
Just curious....have you read much of what Wayne has written? Have you listened to any of his podcasts or are you basing your opinion of him on a few comments about the Shack. Have you read The Shack?
Cindi....
@SW: how can you say we are focusing too much on love? What did Jesus command? Love the Lord and love your neighbour as yourself. I see nothing else about obedience there.
A religious spirit me thinks.....
Focusing too much on love...?
Isn't that what 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 tells us to do?
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
No one is disputing the emphasis on the love and grace of God, as found in the Bible. What concers people about Wayne is that he seems to downplay or redefine other Biblical truths such as God's wrath and justice, hell, judgement for sin, Jesus' propitiatory sacrifice etc. Without these you only have half of the gospel - the first half. Wayne is trying to jump straight to the 2nd half. The whole of the old testament system and law explains this but Wayne avoids it. Jesus spoke more about hell than Wayne would have us believe. Wayne spends a lot of time warning his readers that his views are controversial, and more time trying to justify why they are correct and historic orthodoxy is wrong. There should be no need to do this if he is simply telling the Biblical truth. I advise people to get their theology directly from Scripture and not from popular authors like Wayne.
Well, I can agree with one comment you made...
I advise people to get their theology directly from Scripture
I am always a little put off by people who make their comments anonymously. If you think it...then own it. You must not have read anything on my blog other than this post....otherwise you would know that I don't think Jesus talked about hell AT ALL....at least not the eternal torment version of hell. And Wayne's views are very conservative and traditional compared to mine. Blessing to you...Cindi....
I think that so many people don't know how to divide the two covenants between the mosaic and new covenant of grace. Under the old covenant, animals blood was require. Under the new covenant, Jesus blood put away our sins forever and the He sat down cause the work was finished. If Jesus blood really put away our sins forever then there is no more punishment and judgement for sin if your in Christ. So God is not angry anymore because Jesus blood appeased Him. People will go to hell not because of what they do but because of how they believe. If you rely on your own works for righteousness then good luck but if you put your faith in Christ finish work then you belong to Him and God is just and the justifier of him that believes in Christ
Has he ever aligned himself with biblical theology?
It is not about God's anger, it is about His Holiness. Sin cannot enter God's very presence without torment. Adam hid. Isaiah felt enormous woe so much that his sin had to be PURGED by a coal from the sacrificial alter. Did God point his finger at Isaiah and say "You sinner!" No. Isaiah spoke his own condemnation and the very sin that caused it and this was brought on by simply being in God's Presence. How can a loving God send someone into outer darkness? When there is something far worse. Coming into the very presence of a Holy God as a sinner, who's sin has not been remissed (yes, like cancer) by the blood of Jesus Christ; both sacrifice and cure. God will see their torment and in love say "depart from Me." God understood this from the foundations. When Adam sinned He knew that there would be nothing we can do to rid ourselves of sin, and forgiveness alone could not remove it. It took the spotless Lamb of God as sacrifice for the remission of sin. Every sacrifice in the Old Testament pointed to Christ. And Christ in us is the hope of glory.
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