Salvation History. Chapter 18. The Divine Exchange.

Chapter 18. The Divine Exchange.


SUMMARY SO FAR:

In the previous chapters we saw that the Early Church came to a certain understanding of the Work of Christ that became foundational for understanding the whole of the Gospel. The key idea was that Christ came to be mediator of a New Covenant between God and man. We saw that in the Bible the idea of mediation is as follows:
1. The Mediator is not an independent third party but must, in himself, embody the two parties needing reconciliation, otherwise he cannot be the mediator. Thus Christ, being already the Word, God the Son, took on human form so that he could embody both God and man.
2. As the “God-man” he was then able to work mediation. Here again the Bible idea is different from ours’. The parties at war do nothing to bring about the mediation, but the Mediator has to fulfil all the conditions required of both parties and bring the Covenant to a state of completion. The Mediator has to work the mediation on behalf of the two parties.
3. The Mediator then can offer the completed covenant to the parties involved as a gift. They simply receive the covenant already in place, already set up. They receive it as a gift.
4. In the last chapter we saw how Christ removed the obstacle to relationship with God (i.e. sin) through his death on the Cross. He satisfied the demand of God’s holiness that sin be punished by becoming our substitute and taking the punishment for us.


The New Covenant is completed, sealed.


T.F. Torrance:
“..the mediating action of Christ was twofold - God to man and man to God, and both divine and human activity must be regarded as issuing from one person. In order that there be perfect mediation it requires that both sides in the mediation be fully reconciled and fulfil all that is required of them. Because man is already fallen, God took on himself fallen humanity in order that he might fulfil our part of the mediation, thus providing a perfect salvation for us.”

Athanasius:
“As mediator Jesus ministered the things of God to man and the things of man to God.”

The result of this is that Christ fulfilled both the divine and human sides of the covenant.

The covenant is completed, sealed - Christ has fulfilled all of the requirements of the covenant both from the Divine side and from the human side.
* On the Divine side of the covenant Christ saves us – only God can save. Christ, as God, saves us.
* On the Human Side Christ fulfills all that is required of man for the covenant. Only man can be saved and Christ acts as our representative man. He is saved “for us”.

So not only was Christ acting for God in the Covenant, he was acting for us. The human responsibility for completing the covenant was undertaken by him. He was our representative.

Torrance:
“Jesus Christ constitutes in his … humanity a vicarious way of response for ALL mankind… His response avails for all of us and we may share in it through the Spirit of Christ, who he freely gives us…Therefore we do not approach God in our own right or merit but only “in Christ”. It is his mediating work that God responds to, not our works... Jesus thus fulfilled the covenant from both sides - he is “our God”, and he is “God's people.”

Acting as mediator, Christ fulfilled all that was required for both parties for the mediation to be successful.

The Church has always understood this to be true. The New Covenant was completed, sealed, by Christ 2000 years ago and now we receive it as a gift. It is grace not works.

The important thought I want to pick up here is the idea that Jesus was our representative. He was saved “for us”. The salvation he brings to us, then, is already completed; we receive it as a gift. He has already done for us everything that needs to be done on the human side so that we can experience the blessing of this salvation. To say otherwise would be to say that the covenant is not sealed, is not complete, that Jesus failed in his attempt to purchase us our salvation. And this would be a horrible thought because it would mean that mankind has no hope.

But the truth is, Jesus did perfectly complete all that was required so that the covenant would be operative for us.

One of the aspects of salvation that we need is a change in our inner nature. As we saw when we looked at the Fall and its results mankind was fundamentally damaged on the inside, there was a complete reversal of the human personality. Theologians call this “the Broken image” referring to the fact that the image of God in us was shattered by sin. Part of what salvation means is that God wants to restore his image in us. He wants to conform us to the image of Christ, who is the image of God.

In this chapter I want to touch on two ideas:
1. Not only did Christ take our sins; he also took our sinful nature.
2. The work of Christ exchanged all of our brokenness due to our fallenness for the image of God.


CHRIST TOOK ON (“ASSUMED”) OUR SIN NATURE:

The Teaching of the Church Fathers:

If we are to understand the work of Christ we need to understand what the Fathers of the Church taught concerning it.
The Fathers taught as follows (This, in part, is a summary of the ideas of St Athanasius’ book, “On the Incarnation of the Word”):

1. In Creation all things were made from “nothing”(Genesis 1:1-3, Romans 4:17). They were given existence and form by the Word of God (John 1:1-3, Hebrews 1:2). Mankind was thus created by the Word of God (“Let us make man…” Genesis 1:26) such that the nature of mankind was grounded in the Word of God. In this way man was made “in the image of God”, being grounded in the Word of God who is Himself the image of God (Colossians 1:15). Thus we derived our “image” from him who is the image of God.

2. However with the sin of Adam, the Fall, mankind broke free from the Word of God as his ground and source. Through disobedience to the word (the command) we broke free from the Word (The Divine Lawgiver). We “fell away” from the Word which/who gave us form and substance and are now in a state where we hang suspended above “nothingness”. We are in danger of falling totally into nothingness, the nothingness from which the world was originally created. The image of God in us is shattered. By being divorced from the Word, who gives us the image, we lose access to the image and so we live lives that deny the image.

3. The human problem is that we are now cut off from the Word, the ground and source of our being and we have no way of re-establishing contact with that Word, if left to ourselves. Therefore God, in his love, stepped into our situation by sending his Son, the Word of God, to earth as a human being to reunite humankind with the Word of God. He did this so that we could again find our being and purpose in God. It was fitting that the Word of God, who was the ground of the creation made from nothing in the beginning, should enter into that same creation as a man and reclaim that creation from the curse of nothingness (vanity) it was under, for the glory of God.

4. To do this the Word, the Son of God, became man (Philippians 2:6-8). Retaining fully his divine nature (as the Word) he took on (“assumed”) our fallen, broken humanity. Thus he had two natures, human and divine,each perfectly preserved and fully intact in the one person. This is what we call “The Incarnation” from the Latin words meaning, “to be in the flesh”, i.e. a body.

5. Then in every stage of life, being as we are in the world, he was fully tempted, but instead of sinning (as Adam did) at each point of test he brought to bear his Divine nature (the Word) onto the human situation so that our human nature was again connected to the Word of God.

Hebrews 4:15.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without sin.”

The word “tempted” here, in the Greek, means simply “tested”. The English word “tempt” originally meant “test”. It had no connotation of evil. Through its use in the English Bible where the test of faith leads to a pass (doing the will of God) or a failure (sin) it came to mean “to lure to do evil”. But that is not the meaning of the word really. Here it is used in its original sense. Jesus was tested:
* In every stage of life – from conception to adulthood and then (physical) death.
* In every area of life – all of the areas that we as human beings struggle with – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
* In every sort of life experience that we can possibly experience – love, betrayal, death of a loved one, friendship, play, work – you name it, he experienced it.
In every one of those tests, faced with the possibility of obeying the Divine Word in him or following fallen human nature, he chose to follow the Word of God and so he never sinned.
In doing this he regrafted the nature of man to the Word of God as it was in the beginning. (This, of course, assumes that the human nature he began with was not grafted to the Word when he started the process, i.e. his human nature was what we would call “fallen”.) Through this process of “re-identifying” humanity with the Word the image of God in mankind was restored. The fallen human nature was exchanged for the Divine nature, the Word. This exchange happened “in Christ”, in his own being. The Fathers called this “The Divine Exchange”.


6. By the end of his life on earth this fallen human nature he had perfectly converted back into the image of God grounded in the Word. Human nature was now totally sanctified, grounded in the Word of God.

Thus the words of Jesus in John 14:30 would have deep meaning:

John 14:30.
“I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, …”

Satan has a hold on us when there is areas of our life that are not sanctified – not grounded in the Word of God and tested in that Word. Satan had no hold on Jesus because every area of life had been aligned with God’s Word and tested. And in every test Jesus had remained true to the Word. Thus every area of human life was again regrounded in the Word of God – a conversion in the inner man had taken place.

7. This perfect man he was then able to offer as a sacrifice for sin on our behalf, dealing weith the two aspects of the sin problem, our guilt and our fallen nature. Thus he paid the penalty for sin (1 John 3:5) and put to death the old fallen Adamic nature once and for all (2 Corinthians 5:14).

Romans 8:3
“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ….”

* Christ came in “the likeness of sinful flesh”, i.e. in the same sort of stuff we are made of.
* In that “likeness” he was an “offering for sin”.
* As a result “he condemned sin in sinful man”.
In other words the power of sin in our lives has been overcome through what Christ did on the Cross.

There is a sense in which the Cross was the final victory. Though Christ had, throughout his life, worked a process of conversion in his inner being, it was only with the Cross, the death and resurrection, that this conversion was fixed eternally and able to be made available to others. The Cross was the crux.

8. Now, Christ having been raised from the dead, this new humanity-in-the-image-of-God is offered to us as a gift. We too can be converted in our inner nature by believing and receiving the Word of God.

T.F. Torrance:
“Since, in Jesus, God has come into our human being and united our human nature with his own, divine nature, then atoning reconciliation takes place within the personal Being of the Mediator. His person and work are one. What he does is not separate from his personal being. I.e. the work of Christ does not take place outside of Christ but within him, within the incarnate constitution of his person as Mediator. Redemption is thus linked with the incarnation...
“In Jesus Christ, the Son of God became incarnate within our fallen, guilt-laden humanity. Through his own atoning self-sacrifice and self-consecration, he did away with our evil and healed and sanctified our human nature from within and thus presents us to the Father as those redeemed and consecrated in himself.”

At the heart of this is a concept that grows out of the idea of Christ as Mediator – the idea of:


THE DIVINE EXCHANGE.

The Church has from the beginning taught this:
(The following notes are largely taken from Derek Prince, “The Atonement”.)

“At the Cross an exchange took place, divinely ordained and predicted. All the evil due, by Justice, to come to us came on Jesus so that all the good due to Jesus earned by his sinless obedience, might be made available to us….
“As our mediator Christ took all the evil that was coming to mankind due to sin and exchanged it in himself for all the righteous goodness of God so that we could enjoy God’s favour…”

“Jesus on the Cross said, “It is finished.”
In Greek this is a single word in the perfect tense and means, “to do something perfectly”. “To perfectly perfect.” “To completely complete.” The perfect tense suggests that the work and its effects will remain completely effective from that time on. It will not diminish or fade in its intensity or effectiveness. It will not change or become partial. What is done is done and it cannot be changed.”

This is the effect of the work of Christ – it is to finish something, and the Church understands that work to be the work of mediating a New Covenant between God and man. Included in that Covenant is the total conversion of our fallen human nature into the image of God, a Divine Exchange. In a sense it was an unfair exchange – but to our advantage.

The heart of the Gospel: Isaiah 53:4-6.
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

“The central verse: v6—this is the problem of the human race. Here is the diagnosis of the Bible. We have not all committed gross sin. But there is one thing each of us has done: we have turned to our own way, which is not God’s way. The best modern word for that is rebellion. The root problem of humanity is rebellion against God. We are all in the same category; we are rebels. We without exception have gone our own way. But the marvellous message is this: God has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.

“Hebrew: iniquity = avon. It not only means iniquity but all the evil consequences of iniquity the punishment of iniquity, and the evil consequences that iniquity brings on those are guilty.

“Thus the Lord laid on the suffering servant the iniquity of us all, the punishment of our iniquity and all the evil consequences of iniquity.

“This leads us to a fundamental truth—a key that unlocks all the treasures of God’s provision. At the Cross an exchange took place, divinely ordained and predicted. All the evil due, by Justice, to come to us came on Jesus so that all the good due to Jesus earned by his sinless obedience, might be made available to us.”

In the view that we are taking here (the Orthodox View of St. Athanasius) we would want to go a little further. This exchange took place – not only at the Cross, but all through the life of Christ. At every point of temptation or trial Christ exchanged a fallen human response for obedience to the Word of God that was within him, his Divine nature. In this way our humanity was again reconnected to the Word of God, fallenness was exchanged for obedience. This in no way minimises the work of the Cross, nor the great glory of it, but it gives the whole of Christ’s life great spiritual significance for us. The beauty of this we shall see in later chapters.

Derek Prince in his book then goes on to outline nine specific aspects of the exchange or the substitution and five specific things we are delivered from. To Dr. Prince’s nine exchanges we will add a few.

The exchanges comprise a complete provision for us as Christians in every area of our lives. God has made sure that we will lack nothing in this life through his provision in Christ.

1. Forgiveness of sins.

Confession: Jesus was punished that I might be forgiven.
Isaiah 53:5
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”


2. Righteousness in place of sin.

Confession: Jesus was made sin with my sinfulness that I might be made righteous with his righteousness.
2 Corinthians 5:21
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

There is a difference between sins and sin. The sinless Son of God took on himself the total sinfulness of the entire race.
The opposite of sinfulness is righteousness.
Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.
We never attain the righteousness of God by trying to be good. The only way to apprehend the righteousness of God is by faith.


3. Life in place of death.

Confession: Jesus died my death that I might share his life.
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There is an enormous difference between what Jesus gives us and what we deserve:
Wages are earned for work and are justice. The free gift cannot be earned.


4. Blessing in place of curse.

Confession: Jesus took the Curse so that I can have the blessing of Abraham – fullness in all things – in every area of life.
Galatians 3:13,14
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

Every curse that might have come on us came on Jesus instead that all the blessings due him might be made available to us.

The blessing of Abraham: Genesis 24:1.
“Abraham was now old and well advanced in years, and the LORD had blessed him in every way.”

How is this relevant to us:
Well, Paul tells us in Galatians that even Christians can come under a curse.
If we try to live our lives on the basis of law – rules and regulations – we come under a curse – because the essence of law is that you have to, keep all of it to fulfil it and because of our fallen natures we can’t.

If we try to live this way we come under a power of Witchcraft.
Galatians 3:1-3.
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

* There are two different courses – the way of faith in Christ, believing what you have heard, or the way of human effort, keeping the Law.
* If a person follows the second way, keeping the Law, they are “bewitched” i.e. come under a curse of witchcraft.
* Paul is writing here to Christians — even Christians can be bewitched, i.e. come under a curse pf witchcraft.
* The attempt to be righteous by keeping the law, i.e. legalism, is witchcraft.


5. Abundance in place of poverty.

Confession: Jesus took my poverty so that I can have his abundance.
2 Corinthians 8:9
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

2 Corinthians 9:8
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in all good works.”

Greek: “all” - five times, “abound” - twice. But it is only received through grace.
Poverty is a curse. The alternative to poverty is riches but Prince prefers the rendering “abundance”.
God offers us abundance, i.e. having enough for our own needs and something left over for others.
There are three levels of provision: insufficiency, sufficiency, abundance.
God wants us to have abundance.

This passage (2 Corinthians 8-9) is dealing with the subject of money. That is clear in the context. Normal rules of interpreting scripture would require us to interpret these promises in the context they are found to find the true meaning.


6. The new man in place of the old man.

Another aspect of the Cross: not what the cross can do for us but what it can do in us.
The old and new man are two of the most important characters in the New Testament.

Confession: My old man, the rebel, the corrupt one, was crucified in Jesus that I might be delivered from that evil and corrupt nature and that a new nature might come into me through the word of God and take control of me.
Romans 6:6
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

The old man: the sinful nature we have inherited by our descent from Adam. Every descendant of Adam is born with a rebel within. This fallen nature of sin has in every area been corrupted by the sin in it.

The old theologians used to call this “Total Depravity”. By this they did not mean that we were so totally corrupt that we could not do any good, but rather they meant that there is not one part of our nature that is not touched by sin and in some way corrupted. We are depraved in every area of our being – just some areas are more depraved than others.

The old man is absolutely corrupt morally, physically and emotionally. Corruption is irreversible. The only way to change a person is to make him a new creation. God’s plan is to replace the old man with the new man. “You are a new creation – the old has passed away behold the new has come.”

God has only one remedy for the rebel--he executes him. But the message of mercy is that the execution took place in Jesus on the cross.

In order to be freed from slavery to sin we must do more than receive forgiveness for our past sins; we must deal with the rebel inside. Here is where the cross comes in: our old man was crucified with Christ.


7. His wounding for our physical healing.

Confession: Jesus was wounded that I might be healed.
Isaiah 53:4
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Jesus was wounded physically so that we might be healed physically.

Griefs: Hebrew literally means “sicknesses”.
Sorrows: Hebrew literally means “pains”.

Notice the tense: “we are healed” literally “Healing was obtained for us” i.e. on the Cross.
When the Bible speaks about atonement it never puts healing in the future. As far as God is concerned healing has already been obtained. We are healed.


His wounding was also for our emotional healing.

Isaiah 53:4,5
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

“Wounds”: both in the physical and the emotional realms.
There are various emotional wounds and healing for all of them is provided through the Cross. But shame and rejection are two of the commonest and deepest emotional wounds that humanity suffers.

8. His Glory in place of our shame

Confession: Jesus bore my shame so that I can experience his glory.
Hebrews 2:10
“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

Hebrews 12:2
“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Shame: the opposite is glory.
Jesus endured our shame that we might share his glory.
Shame is one of the most common emotional problems of Gods people. Believers are ashamed to let others know they have a problem. Shame shuts you up in a prison.

He endured shame right through his life: As far as the people in Nazareth were concerned he was illegitimate and they kept reminding him of the fact. In fact the priests resorted to reminding him of this too, “Moses – we know where he came from but we don’t know where this man came from”. This is a direct slur on his parentage. They wouldn’t have said this if they had accepted Joseph as his father but they knew that was not the case.

On the Cross Jesus endured shame—such shame as we can hardly imagine.
There was no form of death more shameful than crucifixion. It was the lowest form of punishment for the most debased criminals. Naked, mockery. What he endured was shame.


9. Acceptance in place of rejection.

Confession: Jesus endured my rejection that I might have his acceptance.
Isaiah 53:3.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Rejection can be described as the sense of being unwanted and unloved. You are always on the outside looking in. Other people are “in”; somehow you never are.
On the cross he was rejected: We hid our faces from him. Hung between heaven and earth – the earth rejecting him and heaven not accepting him.

Jesus was rejected throughout his life:
Already mentioned at Nazareth.
Bethlehem – Joseph’s home town. Courtesy would have demanded that his family give him lodging but they refused to do to because of his wife and illegitimate child.
His hometown rejected him – tried to stone him.
Everyone rejected Jesus - including the Father. God rejected him because he became sinful with our sinfulness.

Ephesians 1:4,5
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will…”

* We are chosen. We are accepted in the Beloved. This is the ultimate acceptance.
Greek: accepted = to make graceful or gracious, be highly favoured. Being highly favoured is even better than being accepted.
* "adopted". In Roman law a child was not considered to be fully a "son" and thus the heir of the father just because of natural birth. A second step was required wherein the father "adopted" the son, who then became his legal heir.


10 Jesus has given us a renewed mind.

Confession: Jesus took on my rebellious, ignorant, corrupt mind so I could have the mind of Christ.
Romans 12:2
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”

1 Corinthians 2:16.
“We have the mind of Christ.”


11. Jesus took our grief.

Confession:
Jesus took my grief so that I can have the oil of gladness.
Jesus took my despair so that I can have a garment of praise.

Isaiah 61:2-3.
“…to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion and bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes
The oil of gladness instead of mourning
And a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”