Results Attained: The Death of Christ.

At this point, we need to pause and look back at the ground we have covered. We found evidence that led us to believe that Jesus of Nazareth gave a decisive new impulse to the religious life of humanity. In His own day, the human race seemed to be sinking toward ruin; through Him, it was turned onto a path of steady progress. So we set out to learn more about the teaching of so extraordinary a Teacher.

We have also found, from abundant and indisputable documentary evidence, that the great Apostle who founded the Churches of Europe did in fact teach the following: using language shaped by the Jewish thought of his own time, he taught that God receives into His favor all who believe the good news announced by Christ; that this salvation comes to them through Christ’s violent death; that Christ deliberately laid down His life for this purpose; and that the need for such a costly means of salvation lay in human sin. We found teaching equivalent to this attributed to Christ in four memoirs that have come down to us from the first century of the Christian Church, though the wording and ways of thinking in those memoirs are quite different from Paul’s. We found similar teaching in other documents from the same period as well. This agreement among witnesses, despite wide differences in form and detail, gave us complete proof that Paul had correctly understood and reproduced the teaching of Christ. It is also clear that Paul and the other writers of the New Testament accepted these doctrines with complete confidence, and that these doctrines shaped their whole way of thinking and living.

For Whom Did Christ Die?

In our discussion of Faith and Works, we noticed a passing statement from Paul in Rom. 2:4: "Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" That statement suggests that God is working on all people with influences that lead toward salvation, influences that will actually save everyone who responds to them. We also found strong support for this idea in Jesus' words recorded in John 6. 44, 65. We have now seen from Paul that God gave Christ to die so that the justification of believers would be consistent with His own justice. This means that without the death of Christ, salvation — and therefore these divine influences leading toward salvation — would have been impossible. If that is true, then these influences, and the salvation that comes through them to all who believe the Gospel, were part of the purpose for which God gave His Son to die. In other words, the purpose of Christ's death included the entire human race.

There is much more teaching in the New Testament that confirms this universal purpose in the death of Christ.

Other New Testament Teaching on the Death of Christ

Now that we’ve looked at what Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews say about the death of Christ, it’s time to compare that with what Christ Himself says about His death in the four Gospels.

One of the most striking moments in the Synoptic Gospels appears in the account found in Matthew 16:13–28, Mark 8:27–9:1, and Luke 9:18–27. Jesus takes His disciples away from the busy centers of life — to the remote regions near Hermon — so He can share deeper truths with them. But before introducing anything new, He checks what they’ve already understood. He asks, “ Whom do men say that I am?” Peter speaks for the group: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Faith and Works

In The Moral Teaching of Christ we saw that each of the four Gospels presents Christ as teaching — clearly, repeatedly, and without apology — that God opposes all sin and shows favor only to those who obey his commands. And we saw that Paul echoes that same point with equal clarity and force. Yet we also saw something else: both Christ and Paul say, just as plainly, that God welcomes into his favor as heirs of eternal life all who believe the good news Christ announces. Put side by side, those statements can sound like a contradiction — and that tension is what we need to face now.

Because the New Testament teaches both truths so strongly, we cannot accept any “solution” that weakens either one. The first claim is demanded by the supreme authority of the moral law, which will not tolerate any violation of its rights. The second is just as necessary, because only full pardon can meet the deep need of guilty and helpless humanity. So we now look for the underlying harmony between the claims of justice and the message of mercy.

Universal Sin and Moral Ruin

In our last post on "Righteousness and Law", we saw that people across cultures share a deep sense of personal sin and a fearful awareness of punishment beyond death. Alongside this is another powerful experience: the feeling of being morally trapped. We sense what is right, we even approve of it — but something within us holds us back. It is like a chain we cannot break. When we look honestly at ourselves, we find this inner condemnation and bondage clearly present in our own hearts. And when we look outward, we see the same reality vividly reflected throughout human literature.

This same understanding of the human moral condition appears clearly in the letters of Paul. In Romans, Paul pauses his explanation of the Gospel to give a careful description of humanity’s condition apart from it — both Gentiles and Jews alike. In Romans 1:18–32, he explains that God made Himself known to the Gentiles through creation, so that they would have no excuse for their sin. Their moral collapse, he says, shows God’s righteous anger against them for turning away from that revelation and embracing idolatry instead.

The Foundational Principles of Paul's Gospel

When we look for freedom — from the consequences of past sin and from the moral struggles that still bind us — we are led beyond the ethical teachings of Christ we have already briefly examined. We now turn to another set of ideas found in Christ’s message and in the New Testament. These ideas are closely connected to moral teaching, yet clearly distinct from it. They are also strikingly unique within the broader history of religious thought, belonging in a special way to Christ and to those who followed Him.

Because we have no writings directly from Jesus Himself, the most reliable way to understand His teaching is to look at the letters written by the earliest Christian leaders. Among these, we can say with confidence which letters come from the hand of the most prominent early preacher of the Gospel. These writings place us face to face with a remarkable Christian who lived in the same generation as Christ. By studying them, we can attempt to reconstruct Paul’s understanding of both the Gospel and of Christ Himself.