—Barrie McMaster

Don’t collapse Jesus’ gifts of redemption and atonement into mere personal piety, delegates and guests of the biennial Canadian MB study conference were warned.

Erwin Penner, professor emeritus of religious studies at Tyndale University College, Toronto, said while it is true atonement has personal application to us as individuals, much more is happening. The disastrous physical world since Adam and Eve contrasts with the new creation Isaiah foresaw. What Christians can look forward to, thanks to Christ’s atonement, is “…a reversal, moving us to the promise at the end of the day when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.”

So when we are in Christ, he said, we know the new creation. “There is also a global level of this claiming of creation, as we await eagerly for our adoption” – the adoption Jesus made possible in the resurrection, and our liberation from the fall of humankind.

Penner asked, could such a “horrid, cruel, sadistic symbol of torture and execution like the cross” become the answer to the sin in the world? In fact, what was God doing on the cross? There was a threefold purpose, he said. God was showing his nature, his grace, and his reconciling work.

Jesus spoke of how “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing….” (John 5:19). Penner said it’s important to understand that the Father and the Son are unified. It was “self-giving on the cross. Did God abuse his son? No, he also took the punishment, and gave himself in Christ.”

Through the resurrection, the power of sin is broken, said Penner. “Christians are ‘in Christ’ and belong to the kingdom of God. “We cannot avoid dying. But what Jesus accomplished on the cross reversed the curse we read about in Genesis, and raises us back to life.”

“We cannot overestimate the wickedness and horror of the fall,” Penner continued. “There is no way out of that unless God himself were to act.” That gift “also causes us to want to confess his name.”

He concluded with the description in Revelation 22 of the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God, and how the Lamb will be present, and his servants will see his face and will serve him.

“Our response ought to be as in verse 20,” he said. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

As delegates responded to the presentation, International Community of Mennonite Brethren executive secretary (and former CCMBC executive director) David Wiebe welcomed Penner’s “braided rope idea” of God’s purposes in the atonement. He said there is a “holding together of these images in our fellowship around the world.”

Fort Garry pastor John Unger asked about the relevance of suffering of the church, and whether it is an essential part of Christianity. Penner said Christians are the body of Christ. “It is not a question of an insufficient atonement in that passage,” he said. “When Christ’s body suffers, he suffers.”

Stéphane of Montreal said that much of the time “we Christianize the same things in our lives that are sinful,” like religiosity, selfishness and cowardice. And “people see no difference in us.” He said Christians need to remember that the cross is a way of life, walking in humility, and in the love of God.