Genesis 15:1-12; Philippians 3:17-4:1
In the atonement something changes. We become different than we used to be, and God treats us differently than He he treated us before we became Christian, before we were saved. The doctrine of the Atonement is about that change. There are two aspects of the Atonement: Something changes in us that causes us to see God differently. And that causes God to see us differently.
There are also two aspects regarding what changes in us that correspond to the two aspects of our identity as human beings. First, we are human beings, which means that we as individuals belong to a category, group, or set—a community. The Bible calls it a kind; we usually call it a species. Humans belong to the species Homo sapien. This species is characterized by high intelligence, bipedalism, and the ability to create complex tools and social structures.
What does this have to do with the Atonement? Everything, because the Atonement pertains to the species, not only to individuals. This means that God is saving humanity from extinction. But He cannot do that without saving particular individuals.
In the larger story God’s promise or covenant has been taken up by Jesus Christ. Jesus fulfilled God’s promise by living the story of an actual human being who actually fulfilled God’s ancient promise. Jesus lived it to the full, which cost Him His life. But His death was simply a transition point in the story. The death of Jesus as an individual has become the birth of a larger story about the fulfillment of God’s promise to provide a very large population of faithful human beings.
Listen Here: https://open.substack.com/pub/phillipaross/p/atonement-crossover