Is dying for your friends the greatest love?

(Image from a Weslyan church group study)

In John 15:13, Jesus claims that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for friends.

I disagree.

What's more, I think that Jesus' own actions show that his claim was wrong. His actions show an even greater love ... because Jesus laid down his life for not only his friends, but for the whole world. Seems to me that Jesus voluntarily sacrificed himself not only for those close to him, but even for those who consider themselves enemies of God. Dying for your enemies is surely a greater (or deeper?) form of love than doing so just for your friends!

As Paul commented in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". Love is not primarily shown through what God does for friends but what God does for enemies.

So John 15:13 is wrong!

But wait! For those committed to Biblical inerrancy there is another option. What if Jesus demonstrates a God who has no enemies? That aligns with the implications of Matthew 5:43-48, from which we learn that God loves even those who might consider themselves God's enemies. Even if a person thinks that way, God treats them as friends ... and Jesus willingly dies for all of God's friends. In which case we could read John 15:13 this way: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And by the way, from God's point of view you are all friends."

God is not angry, says Clement of Rome

While reading the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, I paused over something he wrote about peace.

This letter, written about 96 CE, is one of the very earliest documents we have (other than New Testament texts) from the young Christian movement. Clement was bishop of Rome and was writing to encourage the church in Corinth, especially about an internal dispute on which they had asked Clement's advice.

Early in the letter, Clement writes "Let us cleave, therefore, to those who cultivate peace with godliness, and not to those who hypocritically profess to desire it" (chapter 15) and then gives examples of the type of humility we should imitate. Jesus of course is one of his prime exemplars.

Then, in chapter 19, he writes: 

The humility therefore and the submissiveness of so many and so great men, who have thus obtained a good report, hath through obedience made better not only us but also the generations which were before us, even them that received His oracles in fear and truth. Seeing then that we have been partakers of many great and glorious doings, let us hasten to return unto the goal of peace which hath been handed down to us from the beginning, and let us look steadfastly unto the Father and Maker of the whole world, and cleave unto His splendid and excellent gifts of peace and benefits. Let us behold Him in our mind, and let us look with the eyes of our soul unto His long-suffering will. Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures.

Putting aside the gendered language, what stands out to me from this passage is the firm belief that God is not angry. Another translator declares God free from wrath rather than anger.

This is the witness of an early bishop, whose understanding of God is derived from what the apostles learnt directly from Jesus – that God's disposition towards the world is not driven by wrath or revenge. If that is the case, then there is no need for God's wrath towards the world to be redirected against Jesus.

This is not a denial that Jesus "bore our sins": Clement explicitly applies that thought from Isaiah 53 to Jesus. But Clement did not think that the reason Jesus died was to assuage the anger of God. Why? Because when you reflect on the examples of people who have been faithful to God – such as Jesus, David, Job – their humility points to a God who is without anger.

Released from retribution

An unstated assumption that underlies a lot of my culture's thinking is that evil deserves to be punished. As of today, I no longer believe it.

That change of heart comes from a long line of influences.

• I read Butler's Erewhon way back about 1985. It's a humourous saga in the same genre as Gulliver's Travels, in which a lost traveller finds a land where physical sickness is punished but criminals are given medical attention.
• I started a post-grad degree on the topic of forgiveness in mid 1990's and read Murphy and Hampton's wonderful book Forgiveness and Mercy. In that book and other readings at the time I learnt a lot about the retributive principle behind most modern law but also that there are other approaches to justice, including approaches that focus on restoration rather than punishment.
• I've read plenty of Gandhi and Tutu and other apologists for non-violence. Come to think of it, I've read the Gospels for years!!! I've never been keen on the idea that people "deserve" anything, neither entitled to blessing nor deserving of punishment: the Bible makes plain that we live under grace rather than getting what we deserve.
• More recently I have given away the belief that God is angry and vengeful, needing to inflict wrath on someone, if not on us then on Jesus. Reading Rob Bell and Rene Girard have helped along that path. Still reading Darrin Belousek's Atonement, Justice, and Peace to understand Jesus' death from a non-retributive point of view.

So why have I continued to believe, however implicitly, that the proper response, the just response, to wrong-doing is to punish the wrong-doer? The assumption has been so deeply ingrained that I have not been able to question it. It is woven into our legal system, into our understanding of God, into our approach to parenting, international relations, the "war on terror", asylum seekers, slave traffickers.

But it is foreign to the attitude shown by Jesus, and foreign to the image Jesus presents of God.

This fell into place for me when Belousek's book commented on these words of Jesus:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:44-45, NIV)

How does Jesus respond when betrayed by friends, unjustly treated in a legal system, and treated violently to the point of death? Does he show any signs of revenge? Any sign that the people harming him should fear punishment? Of course not! He says "Father forgive them"!

[I've gotta include an aside here to point out that Jesus was in the habit of forgiving people prior to dying as well. He did not need to die in order to be able to forgive people. Consequently, those who believe that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God should have no problem understanding that God can forgive without Jesus having to die!]

Jesus tells his followers that the appropriate response to evil is love rather than retribution. But what Belousek showed me for the first time was the reason Jesus gives. Why should followers of Jesus not seek revenge? "That you may be children of your Father in heaven." That is, because God does not seek revenge and neither should God's children! God sends sun and rain equally on all people, not just those who deserve it. When we see someone metaphorically striking God on the cheek, we should never expect or hope that God will smite them, nor that God will swing to hit the "sinner" and clobber Jesus instead. Those who strike God on the cheek can expect God to turn the other cheek.

Perhaps I have found it hard to give up the idea that without retribution, people who commit horrible acts will just "get away with it". To eschew retribution can seem too soft and too tolerant of evils that really should be opposed. That misses the point. Certainly one alternative to retribution is to just accept any behaviour and not judge anything to be "evil". But that's certainly not the alternative Jesus promotes. His life stands in clear opposition to evil, and his death displays the power of love over evil. We can take the horror of real evil seriously and seek with all our heart, mind and strength to prevent, expose, and oppose evil, and to heal its consequences, without needing revenge or retributive punishment.

As I walked the streets of Wahroonga in the rain thinking that through, there was a moment of clarity and peace. Released from the need to support the retributive mind-set, I can all the more earnestly seek the well-being of even the most horrible people.

To my friends who figured this out a long time ago, sorry I have been so slow getting to this position. To my friends who still don't see it, come on guys! Catch up!

"Not Penal Substitution but Vicarious Punishment"

In Faith and Philosophy (July 2009), Mark C. Murphy poses the old question of just what it means for Jesus to die for our sins. He criticises the “penal substitution” view, not for its moral repugnance but its conceptual failure. Then he proposes a view of “vicarious punishment” which, he claims, is just as faithful to the Biblical witness, but just different enough from penal substitution to avoid its failure.

Let me see if I can simplify his argument …

First, he points out that the Atonement is a rich concept that probably can't be explained by any one theory or analogy. Furthermore, the concept raises varies difficulties and its unlikely that any one theory will deal successfully with them all.

The penal substitution theory of the Atonement says that we deserve to be punished on account of our sins, but that Jesus was punished in our place. To a well-trained Evangelical ear, that sounds very clear and straight-forward, but it raises a few questions, like:

• Why should it be that my sin is such an obstacle to my union with God? It's not such an overwhelming obstacle in my relationship with my wife or kids.
• Was Jesus punished in the place of every human, or just punished in the place of some of us?
• Isn't it morally wrong to punish one person for another's wrong-doing?
• Even if it's not morally wrong, what good does it do? If the goal of punishment is retribution, then punishing the wrong person simply fails to bring down any retribution on the guilty person.

Murphy's point, however, is something different. He claims that punishment has four essential characteristics:

1. Punishment is hard treatment, i.e. there must be some suffering.
2. Punishment must be imposed by someone in authority; it's not just revenge or vigilante justice.
3. Punishment is imposed for some failure to meet a required standard.
4. Punishment is a condemnation of the person punished.

Note that the first three are insufficient without the fourth. As an example, someone playing basketball may violate a rule and as a result the ball is handed to the other team. This is hard treatment, authoritatively imposed, for the failure to meet some standard. But a penalty like that is not a punishment, precisely because there is no moral condemnation of the player. The player broke a rule, but awarding a penalty is not a moral judgement.

A consequence of the fourth characteristic is that punishment is not transferable. You can't morally condemn one person for another's failure any more than you can praise someone for another person's success. (You might of course say “You must be proud of your son” to the mother of an Olympic medallist. Or you might say “You did a great job of training her” to the medallist's coach. But you wouldn't say “Congratulations on winning the medal” to any one other than the athlete herself – she is the only one who could be honoured for winning.) If Jesus is harshly treated by God for our failure, it could never be classified as “punishment” because the act doesn't meet the fourth criterion. Jesus could never be morally condemned for our failure.

What about the famous sermon illustration in which a person is found guilty of speeding and fined by the Judge, but then the fine is paid by the Judge (who turns out to be the person's father)? This of course may be a good analogy of the Atonement, but it is not captured under the penal substitution theory. This story is more about the punishment being eliminated rather than re-directed. The guilty party is not punished, but neither is the Judge. The Judge incurs the harsh treatment but is not condemned, while the guilty party incurs the condemnation but bears no harsh treatment.

So what's the alternative?

Murphy suggests that “vicarious punishment” is not a lot different from penal substitution, but sufficiently so that it gives a better account of Christ's Atonement. In this theory, A deserves to be punished, B undergoes hard treatment and that hard treatment constitutes A's being punished.

Are there other instances where one person is punished by having someone else treated harshly? One that Murphy never mentions is the classic whipping boy of the 17th and 18th centuries: where a close companion of a prince would be beaten for the prince's failings.

Murphy asks us to imagine a legal system where a murderer is punished by having their own spouse killed. This may be any even harsher punishment (and greater deterrent) than being killed oneself. It is not just that one's loved-one is suffering, but that one's loved-one is suffering because of one's wrongful actions.

Another example Murphy offers (from Steven Porter) is an athletic team in which the captain is made to run extra laps if anyone in the team misbehaves. This is somewhat like a CEO having to take responsibility for actions of other employees in the company. I wonder if there is an implication here that God, as universal CEO, is accepting that s/he bears responsibility for what went wrong with the world?

Murphy then deals with several objections to vicarious punishment, but I'll jump forward to how this applies to Christ.

First, note that vicarious punishment requires some sort of special relationship between the guilty party and the suffering innocent. It wouldn't work if the hard treatment was meted out to an anonymous or unrelated person. In the Atonement, our punishment is vicariously assigned to our Lord. If that special relationship is taken seriously, then this is very hard treatment indeed – that I am responsible for my Lord's suffering.

In a footnote, Murphy leaves an interesting question open. Does Jesus bear this special relationship of being Lord with just those who recognise that Lordship? If so, then those who do not have that special relationship with Jesus are, as yet, unpunished. Or is Jesus every person's Lord regardless of their acknowledgement of the fact – in which case all have been punished by his suffering?

Some implications of this view:

• Note that there are few cases where vicarious punishment could be applied without being seen as simply unjust. How can it be just to cause one person to suffer for another's wrong-doing? The only exception really is when the suffering innocent accepts the hard treatment voluntarily, and that of course if exactly the case with Christ.
• We do not get away with not being punished. It is not that Jesus was punished instead of us, but that we are punished by the fact that our Lord suffered.
• Vicarious punishment is a form of retribution: “It is far worse, incomparably so, for my Lord to be killed, and killed for my offences, than it is for me to be killed for my offences.”
• Like the team whose captain is caused to suffer, the church experiences a strong sense of unity through the fact that all of us are punished by the one act of suffering of our common Lord.
• Vicarious punishment is also form of deterrent Although we can't undo the fact that Christ has already suffered for us, we may now think “If I do this wrong thing, then it will be true that Christ's death occurred in order that I might be adequately punished for my wrong-doing.” – and that may give me good reason for not doing so.

I think Murphy misses an important point about the nature of the hard treatment in vicarious punishment. There are really two separate “hard treatments” in his examples. There is the hard treatment of the suffering innocent (such as the spouse who gets killed), but also a separate hard treatment constituted by the psychological suffering that the guilty party goes through in watching the spouse suffer, grieving for the loss, and feeling the guilt from their own responsibility for the spouse's suffering. In Murphy's example, all four criteria of punishment are met by the guilty party's suffering, quite independently of the spouse's hard treatment.

This calls into question Murphy's conclusion about the case of the Atonement. It does seem to me that his account still requires each of us to suffer for our own sins. If it wasn't for the psychological pain of us knowing that we caused our Lord's suffering, then there is no vicarious punishment. If we could brush off that pain – as it would be in the case where we had no special relationship to Christ, or if we were pathologically unable to feel empathy – then surely the "punishment" is void. But if vicarious punishment still requires the guilty to suffer, then a significant chunk of the "vicarious" part is lost, and the work of Christ is diminished.

Finally, Murphy poses the question of what role is left for forgiveness? Under any theory of Atonement in which the punishment that we deserve is applied, doesn't the punishment remove the offence? So what's left to be forgiven? On the other hand, if God can pardon us then by definition no punishment is left to impose.

Murphy draws on the distinction between criminal law and tort law to show that being punished for our sins does not remove all the obstacles to union with God. Criminal law involves some violation which is answered by punishment; tort law involves some violation that is answered by compensation. It makes sense to talk about a victimless crime, but no sense to talk about a victimless tort. One action may be both a crime and a tort, and just because one is sent to jail as punishment for a crime does not prevent the victim seeking compensation via a separate process. The one act may bear two independent liabilities – one to punishment and one to compensation – and being freed from liability in one respect does not entail being freed from liability in the other respect.

If we apply that to the case between us and God, our crimes against divine law may be dealt with by the vicarious punishment of Jesus. But we have also wronged God, and how can we provide compensation for that when everything we have is God's already? That is why we also require forgiveness.