I went to a theologically liberal seminary. Early on in my time there I was part of a conversation in which I raised the atoning work of Christ. An older fellow, whom I did not know, chimed in with, “Well, that all depends on what you mean by atonement.” I was taken aback. I was unaware that that was a question. From my reading, the Bible seemed pretty clear as to what is meant by atonement. That conversation comes back to me when I consider Palm Sunday.
Entering Jerusalem, Jesus is approaching the culmination of his earthly ministry. From the moment he was conceived in the womb of the virgin, this week has been the goal. He was given the name Jesus and his name defined his mission, and his mission’s denouement is upon him. With ‘eyes wide open’ he moves toward the holy city, self-aware of who he is and what he has been sent to do. It is love incarnate. To make it anything less by recasting Jesus passion as something other than a wrath-bearing, substitutionary sacrifice, is to drain it of all significance. Palm Sunday is no longer a deliberate act of grace by God in the flesh, but a misguided display of self-importance by a woefully deceived cipher of a man. The fellow at the seminary who suggested that atonement could be redefined fulfilled the hopes of plotting Jews: that Jesus would be discovered to be just another loser with visions of grandeur (see Acts 5:33-38).
But as Jesus repeatedly warned, and the gospel accounts clearly record, his passion, undertaken as the promised redeemer, was designed to meet the need of those he came to save. His central role in procuring that salvation is fully attested in the events of Palm Sunday: his symbolic mount connects him to the prophesied king of peace: the accolades of the crowd are received by him as fitting praise; the spiritual blindness of Jerusalem will result in its destruction. Even the evil of those who seek to destroy him plays into the eternal plan of God.
Our King of peace has come, “righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9) And to “all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
Jesus came to save sinners, and it is sinners that he saves.
