FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT CHRIST AND SALVATION ARE INSEPARABLE TERMS. TO BRING THE MESSAGE OF SALVATION WAS to proclaim Christ. If we ask what this salvation was which Christ brought, there is no single answer; for it included nothing less than the whole realm of faith and life and hope. There was the new vision of God ("the God and Father of our Jesus Christ"), the life from God (forgiveness, fellowship, the gift of the Spirit), the new ways of life after the spirit of Christ, the new fellowship (the Church as the body of Christ), the hope of the coming kingdom on earth and in heaven. The emphasis might vary: now it was on forgiveness and reconciliation as with Paul, now on Christ's meaning as the incarnate truth and life of God as with John, now on his priestly work as the sacrifice which ended all sacrifices as in Hebrews. But no one of these was thought of as sole or exclusive.

If we ask how Christ brought this salvation, again there is no single answer or attempt at systematic statement. The whole New Testament is the story of how he "brought life and immortality to light" (2 Tim. 1:10). Theology has tended to give a restricted meaning to the "work of Christ." Sometimes it has stressed almost exclusively his death, sometimes the idea of incarnation, while a modern liberalism has seen his saving work as that of the teacher and example. The familiar tradition has presented him as prophet, priest, and king. All three are included in the New Testament picture of what he brought to men and how he gave them life. In witness of his word, his spirit and life, his death, his living presence and power in the Church and with his disciples, he is seen as prophet of God, as mediator between God and man, and as rightful Lord of men and of his Church. But all this work is one. It is significant that the four books to which the distinctive name of Gospel was given by the ancient Church were those whose main theme was the life of Jesus. ¹

The New Testament Teaching

From the first the death of Christ was seen as central in his work. Familiarity has somewhat dulled our minds to the wonder of that strange first chapter in the life of the Church. The death of agony and shame at the hands of his foes seemed at first the end of all their hopes. They could only say, "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). Then followed the assurance that he lived, that God had raised him from the dead, that he was indeed the Messiah of God. Then, more slowly, there came the realization that his death, due indeed to evil men, yet lay in the plan of God, that it belonged to God's way for man's salvation. What was foolishness to others became for them "the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24); what had seemed like weakness they saw as "the power of God for salvation" (Rom. 1:16). "He died for all" (2 Cor. 5:15), they declared. "We preach Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1:23). They saw in Christ's death, not just the mark of his devotion, but the expression of God's infinite love seeking to save. "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son." (Rom. 5:8; John 3:16.)

But the question still remained: Why was it necessary that Christ should die, and how was his death related to their salvation? The query did not spring from speculative interest. It arose inevitably as they reflected on the meaning of the gospel and especially as they brought the gospel to others. When we look at the New Testament presentation as a whole, certain facts stand out. (1) Christ's death is central in the thought of his work, but it is not a separate act or item. It is the consummation of his life on earth, bringing it to final expression, but never separated from what went before. Similarly, his death and resurrection marked the beginning of his work as spiritual Lord and world Savior. (2) The message concerning his death is dynamic, not static; it is concerned not with setting forth a doctrine but with proclaiming a deed and its meaning for man's salvation. (3) There is no suggestion of a revealed and authoritative doctrine. What we have is the effort of the Church to understand and to interpret to others what Christ's death meant, and it does this by finding symbols and analogies in the traditional (Jewish) faith and in the common life. It is the work of preachers rather than of theologians. ²

The sacrificial system of the Old Testament afforded the first analogy. This is the special concern of the writer of Hebrews. He finds, indeed, various analogies and contrasts. He declares that Christ's death is the sacrifice required for the establishment of the new covenant, just as blood was needed for the ratification of the old. It is needed to purify conscience from dead works, which the old sacrifices could not do. Through it we have been consecrated (Heb. 9; 10; 13:20). The analogy of sacrifice appears with Paul again and again and in varied forms. "We preach Christ crucified." "Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed/' "Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (1 Cor. 1:23; 5:7; Eph. 5:2).

Closely associated are two conceptions taken from the legal-juridical field. The first is penal. Man is under judgment (kataktima) of death because of his sin. Christ took this penalty upon himself in his death (Rom. 8:1; Gal. 3:10-13). This thought goes back to Isa. 53. Christ was "put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, ... to prove . . . that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3: 25-26. Cf. Eph. 5:2; I John 4: 10). Here the form of the analogy is legal, the motive is clearly ethical-religious: to assert the holiness of God, the meaning of sin as against such a God, the holy God as merciful and forgiving, the holiness and love both manifested in Christ's death. The point of the analogy is not the idea of an inflexible penal system, but the nature of a redemption which expresses both holiness and love.

The other figure, that of debt and its cancellation, is taken from civil law. We are under obligation of obedience. Sin is debt. Paul declares that God has "forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; . . . nailing it to the cross" (Col. 2:13-14). Here again the purpose of the figure is plain—the emphasis on free forgiveness as against legal demand. Jesus uses this same figure of debt to teach that the spirit of undeserved mercy as seen in God is to be the rule of man's life (Matt. 6:12; 18:21-35).

The idea of a conflict with the powers of evil represents another New Testament approach to the work of Christ. It is found especially with Paul, but it rests back upon the common belief in a spiritual world of evil conceived in personal terms. Paul speaks of angels, principalities, powers, elemental spirits of the universe, world rulers of this present darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, as well as of the evil one, the devil, the god of this world (Rom. 8:38-39; Col. 2:20; Eph. 6:11-12; 2 Cor. 4:4). These "rulers of this age" (1 Cor. 2:8) crucified Christ. Man by sinning has come under their dominion. By his death Christ delivered men from these evil powers, though the final conflict and deliverance will come with his return (1 Cor. 15:24-27). The modern reader, literalistic and realistic, is repelled by this mythological presentation. Yet Paul is dealing here with a significant aspect of Christ's work. There is a power of evil. Paul knew it in his own life and found deliverance from it through Christ (Rom. 7; 8). We know it today, working as a tragic force in individual lives, in history, in our social order, and in the life of nations.

The idea of the Incarnation is basic to the New Testament conception of the work of Christ. It is not a question of the later two-nature doctrine but the central conviction that in Christ God had come to men, entering our life for its redemption. Jesus was more than a prophet speaking for God, more than an anointed one, the Messiah sent by God. In Christ God was present, God was speaking, God was acting. This conviction is most explicit in Paul and John. Paul speaks of the pre-existent Christ who "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:7). John speaks of the Word, the Logos that was with God and that "became flesh and dwelt among us" (1:14). We have here the beginnings of christological doctrine, reflected in another form in the virgin birth stories of Matthew and Luke. But we miss the significance of such passages except as we note clearly their double concern: first, with the redemptive meaning of Christ; second, with the conviction that this redemption was from God and that God was in Christ. Using the word "incarnation" in this primary religious meaning, we may say that for the New Testament and for all Christian faith the Incarnation is clear as God's way of coming to man for his redemption.

How did Jesus himself conceive of his work? In seeking to answer this question we do not forget that our Gospels are not primarily historical records. They are concerned to present the gospel, to bring God's word to man as it came in the word and work of Christ. But the history is there. The gospel was given as God acted in these historical events. They present the events while they interpret the meaning. The historical interest belongs to their faith, a fact which the extreme negative criticism has failed to see. Without reverting then to an impossible literalism, viewing the gospel narrative as a whole, we have reason to believe that here is a basically true picture of the historic Jesus as he lived and wrought for men.

On the basis of this picture we may say, first, that Jesus began his public work with the conviction that he was called of God to proclaim the coming kingdom. With this was the realization that he was the Messiah—God's servant anointed for this task. The temptation story shows what questions this raised in his mind and how God led him into the way which he followed throughout his life. We see how his dependence on God made him independent of popular ideas and expectations and even in relation to details of Old Testament references. Humble dependence upon God's leading and help, utter devotion to God's will, and the thought of service rather than rule marked his attitude. When we recognize the variations in the report of Jesus' words as given in the accounts of the Last Supper and in the notable passage of Mark 10:42-45 (Luke 22:25-27), the fact remains that Jesus saw his calling as that of servant. He saw himself as the Suffering Servant of Isa. 53, not as the messianic king who was to subdue the nations by his might and rule them with a rod of iron.

He saw his first task as that of witness: pointing men to the God of holiness and mercy, proclaiming the good news of his coming rule, calling men to repentance and faith and the life of love in the spirit of the Father. But apparently he saw from the first that to follow God's will for his life and complete his witness might mean the giving of that life in death. The temptation in the wilderness, the mount of transfiguration which was really the mount of struggle and decision before he set his face toward Jerusalem, the last struggle in the Garden, these all point the same way. "We cannot doubt, as we survey the whole tenor of the life and teachings of Jesus, that everything leads up to the cross and there finds its explanation." ³ The cross was his final witness and appeal to his people, his final act of obedience to God, the final sacrifice of love in a death which was one with his life.

The Church's Doctrine of the Work of Christ

Two facts are to be noted as we consider the different theories of the work of Christ which have obtained in the Church. First, the theory should always be considered in relation to the total doctrinal position. The ideas of God and the world, of man and sin, of the Church and the kingdom, all enter in here, as does the general world view. Second, the starting point is commonly some one of the New Testament figures noted above, but often isolated, literalized, and developed into a formal theory.

One of the earliest theories was that of the ransom paid to Satan. Its background was the religious (not metaphysical) dualism which saw a spiritual kingdom of evil ruled by Satan. Its analogy was the familiar fact of men taken captive, held as slaves, and redeemed by payment of a price. Man by his sin had fallen under the dominion of Satan. God offered to deliver his Son in death as a ransom for captive men. But Satan did not know that Christ was divine and that death could not hold him. So Jesus rose again, and men were freed from Satan's bondage.

A more significant contribution, of the Eastern Church, was the conception of salvation through incarnation. There is a definite background of metaphysical thought here, but the primary interest is practical and soteriological. Man as man is finite and mortal. Sin has separated him from God through whom he might have been lifted to immortality. Now he is corrupt, under the judgment of God and the law of death. So the mortal and corrupt nature of man must be transformed into the divine and immortal. The personal-ethical categories are not excluded here; they could not be in any presentation of the Christian faith. But the stress is on the mystical-metaphysical. Christ, the eternal Word, enters our humanity. He becomes one with our race. Out of love he willingly suffers death. He does this "that in his death all may die," though he himself as immortal could not die. Thus "by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body," all men "were clothed with incorruption." The death of Christ is still of central importance, but not as the precondition to salvation. It is part of the total fact of Christ's incarnation and it is the Incarnation which is the divine way of salvation. Alike the way of salvation and the meaning of salvation are summed up in the well-known word: "He assumed humanity that we might become God." ⁴ Within this framework Greek thinkers found place for the idea of Christ's death as a ransom paid to Satan or as a satisfaction to God. Athanasius even suggests that Christ's "death in the air, that is, on the cross;" was right and natural, for the air is the sphere of the devil; so, being lifted up into the air, Christ vanquishes the prince of the power of the air and reopens the road to heaven.

The abstract terms and the metaphysical formulation of this doctrine of incarnation and salvation seem to us remote from the central religious realities of the Christian experience of salvation. We should recognize, however, that the primary interest was not speculative but religious. It was the fear that the truth of man's salvation was endangered which spurred the fight against Arianism and docetism.

The defects of this doctrine are obvious. God is not impersonal substance; he is spiritual-personal being. Religion is man's life lived in personal relation with this God. Salvation is God's gift of this life. Life like this, personal and ethical, can only be given through personal-ethical means. It cannot be expressed in impersonal terms of substance and nature, nor mediated by a metaphysical union of natures taking place in Christ at conception or birth and by the reception of a divine substance in the transformed elements of the sacraments. All this is nonpersonal, nonethical. Salvation is personal-ethical; it can come only as the God of mercy offers forgiveness and fellowship to sinful man and man responds in faith and obedience. In such a fellowship God gives himself to man in forgiveness and grace and man knows the transforming power of God's presence and becomes a child of God in spirit and in truth.

If the emphasis of the East in relation to Christ's work of salvation was on the Incarnation, that of the West was on his death. Representative was Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, influential not only in the Roman Catholic Church but later on in Protestantism. In contrast with the East the conception of God and of man's relation to God is strongly ethical-personal. But the relation is not that of the merciful Father and the sinful son; it is rather that of Ruler and subject. In the background was the elaborate system of penance which the Church had developed. Anselm brought out the principles that underlay this system and in turn helped to further it. That system was legalistic. Contrition and confession were required of the sinner, but these, with faith added, were not deemed enough. There had to be satisfaction, a penance imposed; and the priest, acting as judge with authority from the great Judge, imposed that penalty.

Anselm begins with the idea of the Incarnation, as his title indicates: "Why was it necessary that God should become man?" In his answer he unites the ideas of incarnation and atonement. His argument is simple. Sin is debt: it is man's failure to give God what is due him. That debt must be paid or the sinner must be punished. Justice requires this, and if God is not just, then he is not God—so Anselm insists. But man cannot make this satisfaction for past sin and for good reason. First, sin is of infinite gravity because it is committed against an infinite God, and finite man cannot make an infinite satisfaction. Second, man is impotent just because of his sin. Finally, all that man can off er is the obedience which is required of him at the moment; he cannot make up for the past.

The only way out, says Anselm, is through one who is both God and man. As man Christ could make satisfaction for the sins of man, could pay to God what was due from man. As God he could render a satisfaction of infinite value, and this he did in his death. At only one point does Anselm seem to go beyond the legalistic framework, and that is in the idea of the solidarity of Christ as man with the human race. But here, as in the East, the solidarity is metaphysical rather than personal-ethical.

To be distinguished from Anselm's theory is that of penal satisfaction. In both cases the point of view is juridical, but the latter moves over from civil to criminal law. What is demanded is not satisfaction in payment of a debt but punishment of the transgressor. Christ becomes our substitute, taking upon himself the wrath of God and the penalty of death demanded by our sin.

There are two basic objections to these satisfaction theories. First, the conception of salvation is inadequate. Salvation is more than exemption from punishment or cancellation of debt. These at best are the negative aspects. Salvation is life, life from God, life with God, the life of new men in a new world. Second, these theories miss what is central in the Christian way of help. They are right in their stress on the holiness of God and the seriousness of sin. We still need Anselm's word: "You have not considered of how great weight sin is." But he misses the heart of the gospel: God overcomes sin through the love that was in Christ, the love that judges and forgives, that is free and undeserved, a suffering, self-giving, creative love. In these theories the divine grace does not really enter in; what we have is the Judge who is satisfied only by payment or punishment. Nor is there, strictly, forgiveness; for when the debt has been paid, there is no more anything to forgive.

To these conceptions of Christ's work must be added the "moral influence theory." It became widely influential in modern thought as this revolted against the satisfaction theories, but it goes back in fact to Abelard in the twelfth century. His central thesis is that Christ is the manifestation of God's love, which in turn calls forth our love for God. Christ's work is not directed toward a victory over the devil or the satisfaction of God; its concern is with mart, to win man back to God by revealing God's love for man.

The Meaning of Christ for Salvation

In attempting a constructive statement of the meaning of Christ for salvation we must summarize certain conclusions already reached. (1) Salvation is the inclusive Christian word for God's total work in giving life to man. Thus it includes individual and social aspects, victory over evil and gift of good, the movement of history and a present salvation, this world and the life to come. (2) This work of God is one, and Christ has his significance for every aspect of it: for forgiveness and the creation of the new life in men, for the movement in history and the final consummation. (3) Christ's work must be looked at as a unitary whole, and we must see the whole Christ as having meaning for that work. (4) Always Christ's work is the work of God-"God was in Christ." (5) Salvation is God's deed and gift, not man's achievemerit. But God's work is ethical-personal, God's gift and man's response: so in the Incarnation, so in our experience of salvation. Keeping in mind that this work is one, we may now look at its different aspects, summarizing the Christian conception of salvation.

1. Christ is Savior because he is revealer, and first of God. Man must know God if he is to be saved. That is more than belief in God or knowledge about God; it is seeing God, hearing him speak to us, knowing what he is and what he asks. The New Testament has little if any theory of the Incarnation, but the fact itself is vital for its faith: "God was in Christ." In him God and man were one. There is nothing here about substance and essence, about hypostasis and ousia. It is personal, not abstract. The disciples saw a life wholly given to God, the life of the man Jesus. They saw the living God, the God of truth and love, ruling that life, speaking through it, acting in it. Here was truth in life, the Word become flesh, the life which was "the light of men." This life which was revelation includes the teaching of Jesus, his deed of service consummated in death, and back of all his spirit of love which was God's Spirit in him. To see this love, to answer it, to receive it, to live it, this is to be saved; and first it is necessary to see it. With this revelation of God there is also given the revelation of man, of what man is as seen in the light of God, of what he should be and may become. In his own spirit and life Christ revealed the true nature of man.

2. Christ's saving work was one of reconciliation. The term is a better one than the word atonement because the latter has been so much a center of controversy and misunderstanding. Of like meaning, and more often used in the New Testament, is the word forgiveness. What was Jesus' part in this? Was his death needed for this?

We need first to realize that Jesus' task was not that of reconciling God to man; it was man that needed to be reconciled, and it was God who in Christ was the reconciler. But that is not to view forgiveness or reconciliation lightly. Salvation is through union with God. Sin divides. It is more than a matter of debts to be paid or deeds demanding punishment. It is the wrong spirit and life in man, the mighty and destructive power which we see at work in the world today. Ignorance, indifference, folly, selfishness, greed, lust, blindness, and unbelief—sin is all this and more. Reconciliation is always of two. Man had to be brought to see God in his holiness and love, to see himself in his sin and need, to see the new life that was offered him, to give himself utterly in the radical revolution that was demanded. This is what Christ has done and is doing today. And with this reconciliation of God and man goes the reconciliation of man and man whose need we see today as never before. This is not sentimental but positive, creative, breaking down age-old barriers, joining men in understanding, faith, justice, good will, and common effort.

3. The work of Christ is one of conflict. He is Christus victor. He won the victory in his own life by utter trust in God and obedience to his will. He points that way to us if we would have victory over sin and peace of soul. He won out over his foes, not by summoning twelve legions of angels, but by answering their hate with love. In that spirit he calls to us: "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." And he gives us the weapons of faith and truth and love which are needed for victory.

4. The saving work of Christ is creative. Speculative theology has elaborated on John 1:3 ("All things were made through him") and built up a doctrine of cosmic creation through the Logos, or second person of the Trinity. That is not our concern here, nor is it that of the New Testament. John's own interest is clear: "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (1:17). Paul is clear in his great emphasis. There is conflict and victory over evil, but the goal is a new creation: new men in a new world. There is, of course, a cosmic reference here. The goal of creation, revealed in Christ, was present in the beginning. Christ is the revealer of the creator God and his purpose as he is of the redeemer God and his end.

5. For us, as for the first disciples, the death of Christ is central in his work. It brought a revolutionary change in the faith of Jesus' followers. Before that he was to them the coming messianic conqueror of traditional belief. His teaching and the course of his life had, indeed, pointed another way, the way which he took, not without struggle, but with clearness of conviction. His death of shame at the hand of his foes scattered his followers and destroyed their hope (Luke 24:21). Then there came the new vision of the Christian faith and way. Since then the cross has been the supreme symbol of Christianity and the epitome of its message.

The death of Christ is (1) the revelation of what sin is and does, and of God's judgment upon it. It was not the deed of a few diabolical spirits, but rather the fruit of what we find all about us today and in ourselves. Ambitious leaders fearful of their position, a sovereign state that put first its own power and rule, timid followers who withdrew at sight of danger, and more than all else the multitudes, the people of the rank and file, careless, blind or indifferent to great issues and a great summons, these brought his death. It is (2) the supreme revelation of God as it was the final and supreme expression of the spirit of Jesus. God is love, love unmeasured and undeserved, love that suffers and that gives. (3) It sets forth the way of God for the salvation of his world and the establishment of his rule: "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit" (Zee. 4:6). In it that Spirit is revealed as suffering, forgiving, reconciling love. The gospel is the summons to receive this love and to follow this way.

6. It is the work of Christ to create unity and in so doing to overcome evil and create life. Here the deepest meaning of his work comes to expression and its other aspects are gathered together. Incarnation, reconciliation, vicarious suffering, all enter in. Here comes first Christ's own union with God, by which all his work was made possible; because the Son was one with the Father, the Father could work through the Son. With this there went his union with man. The theology of the early Church sought to express this in its doctrine of the two "natures" in the one person, and of the "assumption" of our "humanity" by the Son, abstract terms in which the vital, personal, and ethical meaning tends to be lost. What the New Testament shows us is one who joined himself to men in love, who made their sorrows and needs his own, who bore their sins in life and death, who confessed for them their sins and bore the consequences of those sins that the chastisement of our peace might be upon him and that by his stripes we might be healed. And all this was that he might unite men with God and in turn with one another in a new humanity.

It is not easy to express this truth. Men have attempted it in metaphysical, in legalistic, and in mystical terms. The reality is there, whatever the form of thought. In Christ the God of love was joined to man in a life of love. In that love Christ was joined to the life of man. Through it he has united men with God. And this is the victory that shall yet overcome the world: our faith in the God of love and the life of love as brought to us in Christ. This is the meaning of vicarious suffering, of the idea of substitution, of the declaration that "God became man in order that man might become God."

It is significant that the deeper truths about Christ's work and our faith have been mainly set forth in symbol and analogy, alike in the New Testament and in the literature of worship. And sometimes the poets have grasped what has been hidden from others. So in The Last Voyage, by Alfred Noyes:

Did his creation, then, involve descent,

Renunciation, sacrifice in heaven,

A Calvary at the inmost heart of things,

Wherein the eternal Passion still enacts

In an eternal world what mortal eyes

Saw dimly on one shadowy hill of time? 5

And this is from the Jerusalem of William Blake, the poet mystic:

Wouldest thou love one who never died

For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee?

And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not himself

Eternally for Man, Man could not exist; for Man is Love

And God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death

In the Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.

Toyohiko Kagawa's word is marked equally by social passion and religious faith, as may be noted in his Meditations on the Cross:

Without awakening to this full Cross-consciousness,

The social revolution is absolutely futile.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

It is the adventure of ultimate Love;

It is the consummate Art of the Universe.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

                                                   The Cross is

The whole of Christ, the whole of Love.

God speaks to man through the Cross

Of Love's mysteries concealed in the Divine Bosom.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Those who have no Love of humanity

Have no way of knowing the Love of God;

.     .     .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Without the Cross there is no victory. ⁶

Interesting, finally, is the comment of the Hindu philosopher S. Radhakrishnan, writing in East and West in Religion:

The mystery of life is creative sacrifice. It is the central idea of the Cross, which was such a scandal to the Jews and the Greeks, that he who truly loves us will have to suffer for us, even to the point of death. . . . The Cross signifies that evil, in the hour of its supreme triumph, suffers its decisive defeat by the force of patient love and suffering.

1) Cf. Emil Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Scboepfung und Erloesun, p. 332.

2) Ibid., p. 38.

3) E. F. Scott, The First Age of Christianity, p. 107.

4) Quotations are from Athanasms, The Incarnation of the Word of God, sees. 6-10.

5) By permission of the publishers, J. B. lippincott Company, from "The Last Voyage" in Collected Poems in One Volume by Alfred Noyes. Copyright, 1922, 1947, by Alfred Noyes.

6) Used by permission of Harper & Brothers.