Where did Jesus go when he died? What happened to Jesus on the cross? Ask NT Wright Anything podcast

my primary task is to expound what the New Testament says about the meaning of the death of Jesus speaking as a first century historian I'm trying to understand what Matthew Mark Luke John Paul etc etc thought they were talking about interesting Paul doesn't say God condemned Jesus he says God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus Jesus was only dead for three days and God knew he'd get him back in heaven he he even called it a bad weekend in human Camp um this reminds me of of of what ing a child go into a maze taking a wrong turning and then in order to get out taking another wrong turning and another wrong turning the ask ENT WR anything podcast let's go to a question first of all from Galen in Cambridge share who asks my question is about your views on penal substitution and salvation when you've raised criticism on this topic are you a simply trying to bring balance to the discussion about our calling here on Earth and where we go when we die or B saying that the traditional understanding of penal substitution is not correct and God did not actually require Jesus to die as a sacrifice for sins let's start there and there's a follow-up question sure um I I think there is a sense in which I'm trying to do both of the things that gay mentions but I would want to say my primary task is to expound what the New Testament says about the meaning of the death of Jesus and as I do that speaking as a first century historian I'm trying to understand what Matthew Mark Luke John Paul etc etc thought they were talking about and as I do that I find that different ways of talking about jesus' death in the last 2,000 years have sometimes got hold of some bits of what's in the New Testament but then missed out other bits and then produced distortions by emphasizing some things in one way and and not rather than another so I'm not simply starting out there in the tradition and trying to correct things I'm trying to take a run at it from the New Testament again which actually has been my life's work to say let's just read the Bible and see where we go with that but um clearly there have been distortions within what has been called penal substitution and for me quite a breakthrough in thinking about this some years ago was realizing that the phrase penal substitution can mean quite different things to different people according to which story you put it in if you have an element of a story and you frame it within one narrative it means something quite different you know supposing you see somebody walking down the street carrying a briefcase um it's a very different sort of thing if actually this is the briefcase that that Russian spy was carrying 2 minutes ago and they just passed in the street from if it's um um a man who left his briefcase at home and his wife has kindly brought it to him so the same thing can mean something different in a different narrative so penal substitution can be expressed in very damaging ways and even when preachers don't intend to do this it is quite clearly the case that this is how many many many people particularly young people hear it the idea being that there is this big bullying Angry God who's very cross with us all and he's got a big stick and he's about to lash out unfortunately somebody gets in the way happens to be his own son so that somehow makes it all right and pH we we get off now last year or the year before I forget I had a a public discussion on this um with some some colleagues in America and uh one angry Theologian got up from the floor and said nobody believes that nobody teaches that these days and one of the colleagues on the panel stood up answered it for me he said I teach first year undergrads at a certain College which I won't name he said what Tom has said is precisely what they all think the gospel is and they're struggling to know whether to believe it or not so now if that is what people have heard and are hearing then we've got some serious work to do because we have taken John 3:16 God so loved the world that he gave his only son and what people have heard is God so hated the world that he killed his only son and then when you say that in a word world where there is child abuse and domestic violence and so on people think I know that bully of a God and I hate him and then the whole thing goes horribly horribly wrong okay if you were to as it were look at it in its most sympathetic light that particular way of understanding this ter what what would you say is a better way of understanding well from that point of view obviously the thing to emphasize is that what happens on the cross is The Sovereign Act of Love on behalf of the father himself the the the the death of Jesus reveals the love of God Paul says in Romans 5 God commends his love to us in that while we were still Sinners the Messiah died for us and for that of course you need a very tight Nexus between God and Jesus because it makes no sense to say I love you so much I'm sending somebody else to do the dirty work I love you so much I'm coming to do it myself so that there is a a strong trinitarian theology built into the New Testament at that very Point I've always felt that that's sometimes where the missing link is is simply the fact that it's God himself on the cross yes yes which then of course causes other problems when Jesus says my God why did you abandon me Etc and that's that's a real problem which can only be dealt with by a very careful uh investigation of if you like what it meant to be Jesus what it meant to be the one in Whom The Living presence of Israel's God came to dwell in our midst and that's that's the heart of all the mystery of the gospel and it's source of endless Wonder but uh so what tried to do is then to say well hang on in the New Testament the result of the death of Jesus isn't simply well I was very sinful now fortunately somebody's taking my punishment so I get to go to heaven that is actually to moralize our vision of what it means to be human moral now let don't misunderstand me morals matter sin is important I'm not saying it doesn't but sin is a failure rather than uh simply the breaking of rules it's it's it's the failure to be genuinely human the Greek word hamartia sin means missing the mark shooting an arrow at a Target and missing what is the target the target is genuine humanness what is genuine humanness it's reflecting God's image and and whenever we attempted to sin what is actually going on is that there is something we are supposed to be doing and being to honor God in the world in our family in our own lives whatever and sin draws us away from that presents us with a cheap alternative or whatever so that then we collude with forces of Destruction and chaos and darkness and then we we basically say to the principalities and Powers which by the way I don't have good language for the powers of darkness and they didn't have good language in the first century for the powers of Darkness but you have to acknowledge and if after the 20th century we can't acknowledge this how stupid are we that there there is a superhuman power of darkness which still is active but then how does that work through us giving our human authority to Idols to things that we worship the result of that is sin which means we are bound in a tight grip Jesus dying for our sin releases the grip of the powers that's the that's the central thing now a number of different people have emailed in essentially the same question but what do we mean when we say a phrase that come so easily to the tongue Jesus died for our sins or on our half yes what I mean is what are we actually saying in saying a phrase like that when Paul says that he adds the phrase according to the scriptures now that doesn't mean I can find three proof texts EG Isaiah 53 what it means is there is an entire scriptural narrative which is about how the Creator God is rescuing the world and that scriptural narrative is shaped by The Exodus particularly and then by all the things that follow from The Exodus but then coming through the whole story of Israel in Exile where the people who are supposed to be bearing the solution for the world are themselves suffering the result of the problem and the Messiah Israel's Messiah comes to the point where that story has reached rockbottom in order to take its wait upon himself and so to begin New Creation so it's creation Covenant Exile and when you speak Jesus taking the weight of that upon himself again we're speaking in pictures and and metaphors and so but but what I suppose the question a lot of people have is what what does that literally mean in the sense what what what happens on the cross to release the weight to to that Jesus died for our sins I want to know what literally means literally as well in that in that sentence which is often a problem but the the clearest passage I think in Paul about this is Romans 8 3 and4 when having said there is no condemnation for those who are in Messiah Jesus because the law of the spirit of life in Messiah Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death because because God has done what the law couldn't do since it was weak through the FES flesh sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering here's the thing he condemned sin in the flesh there is no condemnation for us because God passed sentence of condemnation on sin interesting Paul doesn't say God com condemned Jesus he says God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus here has one way of looking at it which is a reading of Romans 7 and8 that God gave the law extraordinarily in Romans 7 is a very difficult passage in order to draw Sin onto one place in order to lure sin to the place where it could be condemned namely to Israel's representative who is therefore the world's representative so Jesus dies as the representative substitute taking the condemnation on himself so that having condemned sin sin is now itself condemned and New Creation begin and that's the energy of the spirit taking it forward you talked about the way that this is all building up from Old Testament to new um in this and a couple of the questions that came in are are in regard to how the Old Testament sacrificial system relates to to Jesus sacrifice so Grant in Oxford asks um I understand how the sin offering in the Old Testament relates in the New Testament to Jesus's atoning sacrifice but what about other Old Testament offerings such as the wave offering peace offering Fellowship offerings how do they relate to New Testament theology what's their symbolic meaning for Christians this is a huge question and again we've got multiple misunderstandings and I grew up with the belief which is which is a very standard one in many systems of preaching that what's going on when in the Old Testament somebody offers a sacrifice is they come and they confess their sins over the head of the animal the animal then gets killed so the animal is bearing the punishment for their sins that's simply straightforwardly wrong that is not what happens the animal over whose head sin is confessed is the scapegoat which is the one animal that doesn't get killed it gets driven off into the Wilderness because having got the sins of Israel symbolically confessed on it is now unclean you couldn't offer it to God as a sacrifice and we we have to stand way back and rethink the whole thing because the language of sacrifice is woven into the way that the Western tradition has thought about atonement um about um Jesus dying as a punishment for sins or whatever but it's simply not what sacrifices were about when you read the pentet which is a hard book to read Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy but if you imagine reading it at a run it goes like this creation sin fall idolatry Etc call of Abraham Abraham's family turn out to be themselves deeply dysfunctional there is a moment of reconciliation at the end of Genesis but then there they are they in slaved in Egypt and God rescues them so that the people who are carrying the solution to the world's problems will know themselves to be the rescued slaves that's really important but they are rescued in order that the Tabernacle the living presence of God can come and dwell in their midst now that is the danger moment to stand at the intersection of Heaven and Earth is a very dangerous place to be because no no one can see God and live and all that so there's a whole book of health and safety rules as to how you to handle this it's called Leviticus yes and the sacrificial system in Leviticus is not about punishing animals so that we get off and go to heaven it's about if God is going to live in the midst then the sanctuary needs to be purified the people need to be purified on a regular basis it's like we say in the Lord's Prayer every day forgive us our trespasses because we are praying that God's kingdom will come on Earth as in heaven it's the same thing the point of the biblical story is not how do we get into God's presences how does God get into our presence and and how then do we purify that so then the sacrifices the the blood offerings are and notice in Leviticus and numbers the animals aren't killed on an altar that happens in Pagan sacrifices right the animals are killed somewhere else that's irrelevant the point is the blood which is the life is presented on the altar because the life blood functions as a kind of detergent to cleanse the pollution now as Hebrews says that is actually only a sign and a symbol um but ultimately the life of Jesus himself purifies us and the whole sanctuary and then in the letter to the Hebrews there's lots of complicated stuff about the Heavenly sanctuary and the Earthly Sanctuary but the point is God wants to dwell in the midst and the sacrificial System including wave offerings heave offerings serial offerings you know the Ser you don't kill the serial offerings so which should have blown the whistle on that idea initi no it really is because I think you've really helped to distinguish between what's being meant in different terms of sacrifices but but I have I have to say I have many times over my career asked Jewish Scholars what did first century Jews think they were doing when they brought offerings to the temple and I've started in the last 10 or 15 years to get really good answers my colleague David Moffett in St Andrews is an expert on this I've learned a lot from him he's a is a Hebrew scholar particularly yeah um well I hope that's also help to answer the question that came in from Steve in Ogden Utah who asked how the Old Testament Temple sacrifice relate to thinking about the atonement but um let's turn to another question um which is from Mike in New Jersey um and he he says there's a popular atheist podcaster in the United States David Smalling and he continually asks the following question to his Christian guests how is God sending his son to Earth for instance John 3:16 a sacrifice uh he defines that David smly defines a sacrifice as giving up something that the person will not get back and he claims well Jesus was only dead for 3 days and God knew he'd get him back in heaven he he's even called it a bad weekend in human Camp um how would you respond to that kind of objection this reminds me of of of watching a child go into a maze taking a wrong turning and then in order to get out taking another wrong turning and another wrong turning I mean that sentence is is a brilliant example of sort of one mistake on top of another on top of another and I want to say if that's the kind of thing that that podcaster has heard Christians say then it just shows that Christians too can get themselves into a right old model because actually God sending Jesus is a sacrifice in the sense that I was talking about in that God wants to dwell with his people and John's gospel that's what it's all about the word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst and Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world so that God can dwell in our midst in Jesus and then in the person of the spirit um and that suddenly looks totally different and he's just defined sacrifice as somebody giving up something they won't get back that's a kind of a modern meaning of sacrifice and part of the difficulty is that a word like sacrifice and a word like atonement these have got Modern English connotations which don't correspond to anything in scripture and we as Christians get fooled by this and make our own constructs and we have to go back again and again sorry to be boring about this we have to go back to the original meaning of scripture um you've you've summed it up quite nicely I mean sometimes I sometimes I hear people responding to these kinds of objections to say um you know well it wasn't that much of a sacrifice Jesus dying and only coming back three days later and and some Christians might say but what he experienced on the cross um alienation from the father and so on that was in a sense yeah is a is a a fate if you like that that we can hardly imagine the consequences it seems to me when you read the gospel something something very interesting going on because as we know with any real big event there are several different ways you can look at it which may well all be true simultaneously think of Julian barnes's novel flow Bear's parrot where his pictures of flowar appear to be totally incompatible and yet it was all the same man he was just a very rich complex and and rather rather strange character but so when you get John and when you get Luke you might think on a first reading it' be wrong but you might think that Jesus that it's not really a problem for Jesus to die on the cross you know this will be unpleasant but soon over sort of thing when you get Matthew and Mark it's very different this is Jesus um in Gethsemane uh really agonizing over it you do get that a bit in Luke as well but but I think in in Matthew and Mark it's strongest because then in Matthew and Mark it ends up with Jesus on the cross quoting Psalm 22 my God why did you abandon me and so then we have as I think we've mentioned before the god forsakenness of God and some of the great theologians of our age people like Jurgen mman have tried to say it in that paradoxical way in order to say that somewhere at the heart of the one God there is the agony of the world being born and shared and that that mustn't be downplayed as though that was a trivial thing and that's very difficult for us to say although people who have shared in the agonies of the world and people who in prayer have had a sense of what some have called the darkness of God um will say even if in retrospect it seems to last only a short time it's still pretty appalling while it's happening one last question um Paul in Winnipeg Canada asks what do you believe scripture is teaching about Christ's descent to the dead mentioned in the Apostles Creed and in the early church fathers dialogue a descent into sh or Hades or is it as some translations of the Creed put it a descent into hell and perhaps you could comment on the scriptural passage that that's based on as well yes the idea of Jesus descending into shol or into the Abode of the Dead um is based on First Peter um and this is after the crucifixion that this is generally seen yes that that after Jesus has died then kind of where is he for the next 36 hours sort of thing and in Luke it says that he says to the bran today you will be with me in Paradise so how does that work part of our problem here is that we don't have again good English words to name what they meant much more vaguely by shol or Hades or whatever this is an arm-waving sort of language about gone to the place of the dead and if if we say descent into hell then you could say and some Christian Traditions have said this that this is the the so-called harrowing of hell that he goes down to hell um in order to say okay guys it's all over coming up out of here if you look at Greek Orthodox icons of the Resurrection it's Jesus leading Adam and Eve out of the underworld um now there's all sorts of things going on there which I don't think the New Testament uh is talking about because in First Peter it talks about Jesus going to preach to the spirits in prison and then there's there's a couple of passages there there's one in 1 Peter 3 when he goes and preaches 1 Peter 3:19 preaches to the people who formerly didn't obey when God patience waited in the days of Noah looks as though this is referring to those very strange creatures in early chapters of the Book of Genesis who were particularly Wicked and as though Jesus has gone down to tell them right your doom is nigh in other words this isn't preaching in the sense of persuading them to believe or anything like that this is telling them the final battle has been won and you lost and then uh however um in in 1 Peter 4:6 um it says this is why the gospel was preached to the dead so that though judg like humans in the flesh they might live in the spirit according to God now that's a very odd passage I don't claim to know exactly what Peter meant or how we should then interpret it but I think there's been quite a a good amount of work done theologians like Fon balazar in the last century exploring the mystery of Holy Saturday the mystery of the day between Good Friday and Easter what do we say about God about Jesus and and many have said something about that whole drama is that Jesus Takes the loving presence of God down to the very deepest that human um human horror and anguish can go and that's an image I think I can relate to even though I wouldn't stress it because that doesn't seem to me where the New Testament itself lays the [Music] weight for

Channel: Premier Unbelievable?

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Id: 4WPL3ptrKRU

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024