King of Kings Not Secretary of After Life Affairs

Substitution Serves the "So That"

1 Peter 2.19-25

The lectionary epistle for the Fourth Sunday of Eastertide is 1 Peter 2. In the middle of his instructions to the elect community— instructions for how they are to embody publicly the messianic revolution begun by cross and resurrection— the Apostle Peter pauses, pivots, and quotes from the prophet Isaiah. This is clear reminder that the creed specifies no atonement theory for the church because the church’s canon and liturgy already function as its only explanation for it:

“He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom others hide their faces…Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth…

Although he had done no violence, there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain… he makes himself an offering for sin."

No doubt, you know these lines from Handel’s Messiah. The Suffering Servant Song in Isaiah 53 is the fountain and the foundation for understanding the death of Jesus Christ as a substitution; that is, in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the incarnate God suffers and dies in the place of— as a substitute for— all humanity.

Pro nobis.

For us.

In our stead, God the Son bears the verdict of the just sentence of God the Father. The Judge is judged in our place. Jesus Christ undergoes the the righteous wrath of God as the expiation for sins, offering his perfect, innocent, and sinless life as a vicarious substitute for your own. 

As Karl Barth puts it:

“Our turning from God is followed by God’s annihilating turning from us. When it is resisted, God’s love works itself out as death-dealing wrath. Jesus Christ follows our way as sinners— in our place— to the end which our sinful way leads, into outer darkness.”

The prophet Isaiah’s suffering servant song is at the center of the tradition’s interpretation of the atonement as a substitution. From the earliest days of the Church, Isaiah 53 informed Good Friday liturgies. The ancient Church Fathers quoted Isaiah 53 lavishly in their preaching and writing. Mel Gibson inscribed his 2004 film, the Passion of the Christ, with a quotation from Isaiah’s suffering servant song.

For many Christians, this particular way of understanding the death of Jesus Christ (the New Testament uses a variety of motifs to interpret the meaning of the crucifixion), rooted in Isaiah 53, just is itself the Gospel. When people complain that preachers should steer clear of politics in the pulpit, avoiding public issues or current events, and instead stick to proclaiming the Gospel, they usually have in mind as the Gospel this particular way of understanding the Gospel.

“I don’t want to hear about politics in church just preach the Gospel,” I’ve heard more than a few folks gripe over the course of my ministry. Indeed many in the black Church have directed warranted criticism of the often exclusive focus on substitutionary atonement in the white Church for the way it severs the Gospel from social justice.

But it’s odd—

It’s odd that we would reduce the good news of the Gospel to the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ for sinners.

And its odder still that we would make that version of the Gospel incompatible with the Church’s social and political witness.

It’s a strange given that the only unambiguous use of Isaiah 53 to interpret the death of Jesus Christ, in the entire New Testament, comes here in the Apostle Peter’s epistle.

As crucial as Isaiah’s suffering servant song has been in the Christian tradition for understanding the death of Jesus Christ, the only instance of the New Testament using it is in this lectionary passage from Peter.

And notice the context of the text:

Peter’s preaching politics.