Adam at the Cross

I’m still thinking about the incarnation, sorry!

We’ve been asking, how close did God come to us at Bethlehem? We described this dilemma, was Jesus truly one of us, inheriting the fallen, sinful humanity of Adam (though without sinning!) or was he a new sort of human, unfallen, not sinful at all?

Evangelicals tend to say the latter. I’ve been calling for a rethink.

A new area I want to explore: I’m afraid that getting this wrong could have catastrophic effects on our view of the Cross.

Here’s what I mean: If it wasn’t the fallen, sinful humanity of Adam that hung condemned by God and man at the cross, then how exactly was Adam’s sinful flesh condemned there? Wouldn’t it have been something else that got condemned? The word of judgement spoken at the cross: how was it spoken upon Adam’s race, if it wasn’t a genuine son of Adam hanging there, but someone else? Hard to see how the cross would function as a condemning of corrupt mankind. It would, strictly speaking, be a condemning of pure and innocent mankind.

To put it another way, it’s not clear how Jesus at the cross could have acted as our representative. We believe that God’s ultimate word of judgement, his NO to sin, was spoken at the cross, right? But if that word wasn’t spoken over Adam’s fallen flesh, then when Jesus was condemned he wasn’t really acting as our representative. He was not the summing up of sinful humanity, for he didn’t even belong to that group. So God’s verdict was directed at someone else besides Adam.

Instead, we would have to say something like: Jesus was a replacement, someone from outside the group of sinful humanity, acting as a substitute for us. The sort of substitute that is not truly representative of the ones he stands for, because he is not like them or from them.

This is a bad place to take our atonement theology, for all sorts of reasons. But let’s just focus on the Cross as God’s word of condemnation. If God had put up one of us, a representative chosen from amongst Adam’s guilty offspring, and hung him on the cross in the place of us all, condemned him to death – that would make some sense. We could see how his condemnation was in some sense ours. We could even perhaps see that his death spelled (or represented) death for the whole race: if the champion is killed, the whole army loses.

But how if God puts up a replacement instead, from outside the group? And judges that outsider? Is this a clear word of judgement against us? Hard to see that it is. Does the one’s death spell death to Adam’s race? Can’t see why it would.

Of course you can develop a theological construct where the things that happen to this innocent Jesus are transfered across the boundary between his humanity and ours, and apply somehow to us. But that takes some explaining.  And ethical objections spring up all along the way. It all gets terribly complicated. And it’s a hard slog coming up with any proof texts for it!

Even with a complex atonement theology like that, what you can’t really salvage is the clarity and persuasiveness of the gospel idea of representation. The message that at last, after the long dark history of mankind, a champion arose, a David figure, who bore all our liabilities, took responsibility for the whole mess, paid the whole price, stepping forward to face our worst curse, death itself. Jesus is not God by-passing our humanity, he is God redeeming and restoring it. Jesus takes our humanity and does what needs to be done – he puts it to death. He steps up, our representative, and – is killed. And so the whole race dies in him.

You really can’t get that unless he comes from Adam’s sinful stock. Taking another, pure humanity to the Cross won’t do the job.

But, Jesus putting our humanity to death, that’s how the apostles tell it, right?

“We are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died… So we no longer view anyone purely in terms of sinful flesh.” (2 Cor. 5:14,16)

“God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin offering. He condemned sin in the flesh...” (Romans 8:3)

“I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:19).

“for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)

“We know that our old self was co-crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Romans 6:6)

“ I assure you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop…31 Now is the condemnation of this world, now its ruler will be thrown out. 32 As for Me, if I am lifted up  from the earth I will draw all |people| to Myself.” 33 He said this to signify what kind of death He was about to die. (John 12:24ff)

16 Jesus reconciles both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death the hostility through it (Ephesians 2:14-16 –  Jesus’ death puts human hostility to death).

Here’s another way of putting it: when you look at Jesus on the cross, who do you see? Just one man? Or do you see yourself there also? And all of us?

It’s only as you see Adam’s son there on that bloody cross that you realise that death is what humanity had to face. His condemnation is truly ours.

Otherwise, you’ll end up stuck with a doctrine of the cross that majors on substitution, without ever being able to ground it in the thing the New Testament really insists on: representation. And so you’ll never get a clear message of the condemnation, of the ending that was achieved in Jesus’ death. You’ll have a crucifixion that speaks of life, more than death. You’ll tend to see the judgement as a largely future event, and not pick up on the NT message that the judgement has arrived at the Cross. That would be an empty cross indeed!

If it wasn’t one of Adam’s fallen sons hanging there, then ultimately it’s hard to make sense of his final words:

“It is finished!”