Series: The Cross

"Christus Victor"
Phil 2:5-11; Col 2:8-15; Rom 12:14-21

The heart of the matter

On the evening of the last day of his life, it was advent 1986, Karl Barth, arguable the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20^th century had a phone call from his life long friend, Eduard Thurneysen. They spoke about the problems in the world, and Barth concluded the conversation with the words: "Aber nur ja nicht die Ohren hängen lassen! Nie! Denn – es wird regiert!" (Don't be discouraged! Never! Jesus is in charge!).

Students of theology have to read a book by the famous Swedish Lutheran theologian Gustav Aulen. It is called Christus Victor (1931) – "Christ is victor", reminding us of the early Christian confession "Jesus is Lord".

Aulen reasons that interpreting the Cross in terms of ransom and sacrifice does not really get to the heart of the matter. It is more a detour that came about under the strong influence of some of the early Church fathers.

According to Aulen, the heart of the matter, what we mean by atonement, must be expressed in different categories and different language.

It has to do with the struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, between demons and angels – and then the victory of good and of God.

Reality is understood in terms of a cosmic conflict between two forces: The good God on the one hand, and evil, Satan, death on the other.

Through voluntary sin, humanity has come under the influence and domination of evil, Satan, and death.

The evil powers not only dominate humanity, but in this domination they, at the same time, carry out God's judgment upon humanity's sin.

God, however, overcomes this alienation between humanity and himself by entering into a cosmic and dramatic struggle with the forces of evil (incarnation). God wins that struggle and consequently liberates humanity from the forces of evil (atonement).

Biblically speaking, in Christ, God "disarmed the principalities and powers ..., triumphing over them in him" (Col 2:16, compare 1 Cor 15:24-28).

Consequently, God is reconciled with the world, and at the same time, God is reconciled with himself.

God's love is aligned because God wants to be related to God's creation, and God's justice is satisfied because evil and sin have not been overlooked; they have been dealt with in a cosmic struggle out of which God in Christ emerged as victor.

On the basis of that victory, those who are "in Christ", those who believe in Christ and are baptised into his realm have the resources to struggle with evil and overcome it. The apostle exhorts his friends in Rome: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21).

Having that view of reality in mind – it is probably more Greek than Jewish – we now begin to appreciate some New Testament interpretations of the Cross that do not speak of sacrifice and ransom.

Here is an ancient Christian Creed, preserved for us in the correspondence with Timothy. It speaks of salvation, not as the result of sacrifice or ransom or atonement, but in terms of triumph over evil forces:

(Jesus Christ) was revealed in flesh,
vindicated in spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. (1 Tim 3:16-4:1),

This is related to the Cross in one of the early hymns of the Christian Church. It is preserved for us in Paul's letter to the church in Philippi:

… Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Phil 2:5-11)

This victory of Christ over the forces of evil that estrange us from God is applied to the market place of life in the letter to the Christians in Colossae:

… when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses,

erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

(Col 2:13-15)

People believed that somehow, somewhere up there, there was a moral accountant that kept records of good and bad deeds and if you were in the red, then you are in trouble. To deal with the trouble the bad record had to be erased. Sins had to be forgiven. God did that by "nailing them to the cross" and by disarming the evil forces that made life miserable.

And to cap it of, a final text from Paul's letter to Corinth in which you find both ideas. The idea of atonement: "Christ dies for your sins …" and the idea of victory:

… (Jesus Christ) must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. … When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:24-28)

What has happened? Why do we have in the same New Testament many word-pictures and stories that explicate the meaning of the Cross. Two are fresh in our mind. The ideas of ransom, sacrifice, and redemption on the one hand, and the idea of the triumph of Christ through Cross and Resurrection over evil and demonic forces that separate us from God on the other.

The problem that all human beings have in common is the problem of existential restlessness or anxiety caused by what the Bible calls sin or unbelief.

All religions deal with that experience, that search for meaning and fulfilment, that yearning for salvation.

The answer to the human predicament must be given in terms of the experience, the religion, the culture in which people live.

If people's restlessness or even the soul's darkness manifests itself in a feeling of guilt that darkens one's awareness of God, and if one was brought up in a culture where guilt is dealt with by offering sacrifices, then it can make sense that Jesus Christ is confessed as the sacrificial lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

If, on the other hand, a person's existential restlessness is understood in terms of powers of the air or demons or evil spirits cause us problems, then the confession that Christ is the Lord, the Victor triumphing over the powers of the air is more appropriate.

So, the same reality, the same content, God clearing the air through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, takes on different forms depending on the audience.

How do we feel about the picture of Christ as Victor explaining the meaning of the Cross? Can it be helpful and suggestive to us? Here are a few points for your reflection.

When we speak of victory, we normally have a military victory in mind.

When the Crucified is named as victor then we have a new vision of reality, a new vision of life.

Indeed, we have a clash between different views of what is at the centre of life as created by the God who revealed himself in Jesus.

Can we get a little closer to this new vision of life? Can we detect analogies in our world to this new understanding of life?

"We shall overcome … some day".

You remember the song that arose from the civil rights movement in the United States and then served as an inspiration for many people around the world who were on a journey to be free.

Here were people around the world whose chains had begun to hurt. They were oppressed and they felt that the wholeness of life can only be experiences when the forces of oppression were defeated.

Martin Luther King, Jr. based his hope and his struggle on the story of Jesus.

Three things are important:

o The forces of oppression where people and governments and churches and school systems. They were real and they were part of our world.

o The means for the struggle was non-violence.

o "… some day". The struggle was carried by the conviction of hope against hope. That conviction was fed by the Cross of Christ as a divine victory. And the same would be true when Nelson Mandela took the bread and the cup in his prison cell for 27 years before he saw faith and hope bearing fruit.

This brings us to another topic where the language of victory may maintain its meaning today.

We know that Jesus celebrated life by casting out the demons that hindered and destroyed life.

There are circles today in which the troubles of the world are explained in terms of demons and principalities and powers. These are seen as evil spirits that hinder life and make us do things that we do not want to do.

Reference is often made to the Scriptures that say that "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12)

When the text goes on to invite us "to put on the whole armour of God" and engage in spiritual warfare, that is often interpreted in terms of becoming prayer warriors. Now, there is of course nothing wrong with prayer. Indeed many, or most of us could not imagine facing the challenges of life without prayer. But when the apostle talks of "rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places", he refers to the daily human struggle against institution and structures that diminish human life. Structures and institutions like racism, child abuse, disrespect of refugees and asylum seekers, disregard for old and sick people. These injustices have a spiritual dimension. They do not only affect our politics and our morality, but they affect our souls and they diminish the ethos of our societies. The forces of evil come to us in human and historical structures and institutions. When corporation put profits before people, when governments have lost the vision of a good society, when churches deny equal rights to women, then the forces of evil spread their odour. The early Christians spoke of principalities and powers that dehumanize life. With that language they were not thinking of some abstract and disembodied spirits, but they were thinking of agents of evil that came to them in the shape of human and historical institutions that distort and diminish life.

Jesus' victory over demons is the invitation to name the structures of evil in our world and then resist them.

Through faith and baptism we participate in the victory of Christ over the forces of evil: "… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Rom 8:37).

Perhaps the Baptismal liturgy in the best place where the church celebrates that victory of life over death, grounded in the story of Jesus and continuing in our life.

"… we have been buried with him (= Christ) by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. …, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Rom 6:1-11)

Here we are, my friends. Christ resisted the forces of evil during his life. He fought the demons, he raised the status of women and children, he gave hope to the oppressed. He named the evils of his day, until the structures of evil quenched him. But God stood by his man. Indeed God made Jesus' struggle against evil his own business. By raising Jesus from the dead, God not only confirmed Jesus struggle against evil, but God revealed that evil will not have the final history. Knowing that, we can enter the struggle in the certain hope that God's ways will outlast the ways of the world and therefore we can "overcome evil with good."

Thorwald Lorenzen
21 March 2004