Jesus’ work in the Upper Room and on the Cross is multi-dimensional. There are many things going on, many things that Christ accomplishes — or better yet, many different perspectives on the one work of Christ. It would be kind of like observing a beautiful statue in a museum. One can walk around that statue and view it from different angles. From each angle, one has a different appreciation of what the artist was accomplishing in that work of art. Let’s take five different angles on Christ’s Paschal Mystery, that entire work that He accomplishes in Passion Week in the establishment of the new covenant.
Redemption
The first angle is Redemption. What Jesus did on the Cross and in the Upper Room is “paying the price for our sin.” He paid a debt we owed to God; a debt that we were unable to pay for. All of us are created to be God’s servants. In justice, therefore, God is owed our service, worship, our lives, even our actions. That service to God was not given; and in justice, it needs to be paid.
Jesus pays that debt. He gives to God the perfect sacrifice, the most meritorious sacrifice of supreme value. His life is not just any human life, but it’s the life of the Divine Son of God. He is, in a mysterious way, the mystery of the Trinity — He is God Himself, living out a life where all of His actions are an act of worship to the Father. Jesus does that; He lives and leads the perfect life of service that has so much merit in God’s eyes. It has so much value that it can pay the debt of service that’s owed by the whole human family. He is willing to pay that debt for all who are willing to allow Him to do that for them. Those who are willing to receive Christ, to give their lives to Him.
A similar idea to this idea of redemption, or paying the debt owed to God, is the idea of being ransomed from the control of the devil. In ancient times, when one owed a debt that could not be paid, one was given over to a jailor. In different passages of Scripture, Satan is likened to the jailor who has control over those who owe the debt. In Mark 10:45 we read, “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” There’s that image of ransoming; from whom is Jesus ransoming us? That would be Satan, into whose control our lives were given by our failure to pay that debt of service to God. Redemption not only pays the debt owed to God but simultaneously frees us from the debtor’s prison of the devil’s power.
Again, similarly, in Hebrews 9:15 we read, “Therefore, [Jesus] is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgression under the first covenant.” The idea of “redeeming” here is that of paying a price for someone in bondage, in slavery — to buy them out of slavery. This is what Jesus has done for us. He bought us out of slavery to sin.
Atonement
The second angle on Christ’s Paschal Mystery is atonement. Atonement is the reparation of an offense — a kind of judicial concept. To atone is to make amends, in justice, for an offense one has committed. It might be to accept a punishment, or to perform some other action to “make up” for what was done. But what if someone makes atonement for another person? One person could accept the punishment that someone else deserved in order to extinguish the judicial case against them. In a sense, that’s what Jesus has done. Christ accepts the punishment that’s due for our sin. The just punishment for our disobedience is death, and so we could say that Jesus “dies in our place.”
But on the other hand, it’s not simply a kind of “penal substitution” where an innocent person is put to death on behalf of a guilty person. That would actually be a failure of justice. Although salvation is presented in that way by some Protestant evangelists and theologians, it’s not quite the right way to think about it. While it’s true that Jesus accepts the punishment of death for us, it is more out of solidarity with us than instead of us. We still will die, bodily-speaking, afterall.
Furthermore, Jesus is our King and we are His nation. Just like a king might offer himself on behalf of his nation in a loving act of self-sacrifice (for example by offering his life to the enemy if the enemy would spare the rest of the nation), so Jesus does this for us. So again, it is not simply that Jesus is punished in our place. It’s more accurate to say that the love by which Jesus accepted death for us atones for our guilt, atones for our lack of love. His loving act of self-sacrifice “makes up” for the evil we have done.
In addition, Jesus’ death is not something that takes place apart or away from us. It is communicated to us in our baptism through our faith. At baptism, a person undergoes Jesus’ death — is joined to Him in His death — and then is raised with Him to new life. Our baptism marks our whole life so that all of our sufferings and ultimately our own personal death becomes so many participations in Christ’s suffering and death. We are saved by His atoning death because the merit of His death wins for us a share in His death. In that way, we become like Him and become truly pleasing to God.
Our sufferings and our death are no longer just our own; they are joined to the sufferings and death of Jesus. Because they are joined to Jesus, they have great value in God’s eyes and they become redemptive and atoning. Jesus didn’t simply die so that we don’t have to. Jesus died to make our deaths meritorious in God’s eyes. That’s another difference between a Protestant understanding and a Catholic understanding of atonement.
Liberation from the Devil
A third angle is that Jesus’ Paschal Mystery involves liberation from the devil — a kind of military image. 1 John 3:8 says, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” Likewise, Colossians 1:13 says, “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” It’s a similar way to thinking of being ransomed from the devil, but more of a military image of Jesus defeating the devil in combat.
Jesus’ death and resurrection is a definitive breaking of the devil’s power. The devil has the power of death; Jesus defied the devil’s power through His resurrection. That defeat of Satan can be applied to anyone who will accept it; and the way to accept that defeat of the devil and liberation from him in one’s own life is through repentance and reception of the Sacraments. All of the Sacraments have an exorcistic power to them, but in a particular way, Baptism and Confession. The confessional is the first line of defense in most cases for deliverance ministry against the powers of evil. To confess our sins, one becomes liberated from the power of Satan.
[Editor’s note: the next lesson will complete the five angles.]