Reflections on the Cross from Mark Driscoll

I don’t listen to sermons all that frequently. I don’t own an i-pod, and I tend to read and surf through blogs during my spare time. But lately, I have tried to get in at least one sermon a week in addition to what I get from church.

This week’s sermon was an address (“Death by Love: Reflections on the Cross”—8MB download or 35MB download) that Mark Driscoll gave at a recent Resurgence conference hosted by his church, Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I know that Driscoll is controversial, but this message revealed an earnest, serious fellow who exults in the cross. Without going into a defense of him or his missiological emphasis, let me just encourage you all to listen to this sermon. It is an hour and thirteen minutes of reflecting on the cross. And I almost think he just about covered everything that is really important about the cross—all in one message.

He starts out with a vivid description of what a crucifixion actually was. I was thankful to be reminded of the terrors that Christ underwent purposefully for me.

Then he stressed the centrality of the cross. He made some helpful evaluations of various movements within Christendom with regard to how they view the cross. And while they are certainly generalizations, I think they help point out the natural pitfalls and tendencies of these movements.

Charismatics generally tend to move away from the cross to Pentecost and beyond. They focus on Acts 2, rather than on the climax of the gospels. Liberals prefer to focus on the kingdom rather than the cross and atonement. Fundamentalists, he said, tend to preach a religion of works and don’t focus on the fact that Christ has done all that is needed through the cross. They ignore the cross, he said. [From my perspective, I can understand how he would generalize fundamentalists in this way. No fundamentalist would claim to be a legalist, yet the following points would combine to make many of them (especially hyper fundamentalists) practical legalists: 1) a practical emphasis on dos and don’ts 2) a common tendency to view salvation strictly as a done deal, or past event, rather than an ongoing process (Phil. 2:12) 3) a sanctification approach based on “gritting your teeth” and “trying harder” (Gal. 3:3)] And finally, postmoderns tend to reinterpret the cross for today’s culture. The language of wrath and atonement wouldn’t apply today, they’d say.

Then Driscoll finished the message by focusing on the penal substitution aspect of the atonement. He stressed that the atonement is multifaceted and that there are elements of truth to almost all the atonement theories. But the point of contention today is over the penal substitution of the atonement. Driscoll did not really make a detailed defense of penal substitution, but sought to explain it and stress its significance. In doing so, he pointed back to the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament sacrificial system. There were two goats used on that day. One was slaughtered—that is propitiation, he said. The other was released to wander in the wilderness—that is expiation.

Propitiation is the fact that God is angry justly at us for our sins. Driscoll pointed out something I hadn’t thought of before under this point. Everyone goes out of their way to stress God’s love for us as being personal. But no one wants to think of His wrath as personal. We are okay with getting upset at people who wrong us, but God can’t get upset when we or others wrong Him. Driscoll further stressed that we need not think of the message of propitiation as detracting from a message of God’s love for us. No, 1 John 4:10 explains that Jesus’ propitiation of God’s wrath for us is the love of God. Propitiation illustrates and explains God’s love for us.

And expiation is another aspect to this penal substitution. Driscoll pointed out that some translations echo a popular theological position today in translating the Greek word for propitiation as expiation. Driscoll stresses that the word includes both expiation and propitiation, not strictly expiation. He also challenges Calvinists for he believes they often defend propitiation to the exclusion of expiation. To Driscoll, expiation is basically cleansing from sin. Christ takes our punishment (propitiation) and delivers us/cleanses us from our sin (expiation). He pointed to 1 John 1:7 for this.

To conclude my post here, let me encourage you all to listen to this sermon. It will fill your mind with thoughts of Jesus and the cross, and I trust it will cause you to be more captivated and enthralled by the wonder that Jesus suffered on our behalf. May the cross of Christ—and all its ignominy, shame, and horror—fill you with awe at the glorious love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. And may it free you to trust in Christ alone for the guarantee of all of God’s promises to us, even eternal life.

∼striving for the unity of the faith for the glory of God∼ Eph. 4:3,13 “¢ Rom. 15:5-7