I used to use the illustration of Jesus’ death constituting a payment like writing out a check, so all we have to do is put our name there are our debt is paid. Then I got to thinking that if the Crucifixion is like writing a check doesn’t that mean that God can be bought off? That’s the direction that Roman Catholics go with their whole “treasury of merits” business, and that suffers from the question of to whom the debt is owed – is Jesus ‘writing’ this check to the devil? to the Father? to a deficiency in Creation that results from sin? To say it’s to the devil strike me as ridiculous given that Christ’s death is described as of infinite worth, unless you go with a limited atonement where while Christ’s death itself had infinite value only that portion needed to ‘pay’ for all our sins gets paid out.
I go back to the centrality of the Cross, the place Paul treats as the victory. I do this primarily because of one word:
- τετέλεσται
That’s (teh-TEH-les-tie) the one-word sentence that comes out in most English translations as “It is finished!” but means more than that; to gather more of the meaning, it can be rendered as “It is now and forever totally completed”. It wasn’t, as some rather sad commentators have suggested, a surrender because He couldn’t take it any more; no, it was a cry of victory at the point concerning which Paul says:
None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
I don’t regard forgiveness as the centerpiece any more, I agree with all the Fathers who said that Jesus defeated death by dying. That wasn’t evident yet – it wouldn’t be till the third day – but it was accomplished; to personify death as Paul and many of the Fathers do, Death bit down on Jesus and found it a bite that broke his jaw. As the prophet said, by dying Christ swallowed up Death.