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AT-ONE-MENT
For over 500 years the Roman Empire utilized crucifixion as a means of punishment for those that they deemed a threat to their power and their sense of order. Thousands and thousands of people were executed on crosses all over the known world until the practice was outlawed in 337 CE. So many crucifixions. So many crosses. Yet, after 1700 years of history moving forward there is only one cross we still talk about. There is only one cross that has come to represent so much to so many people. There is only one cross around which countless stories and experiences revolve.
The cross of Jesus Christ.
The truth is that while there were many crosses that Rome constructed, there is only one Jesus Christ. And it is ultimately the person, not the two beams of wood fashioned together, that compel us to keep coming back to His cross.
Why? Because something happened at the cross of Jesus. And this something inspired gospel writers, the apostles, and the early church to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the wondrous proclamation of what occurred on the very first Good Friday.
Today, we summarize what happened with the word Atonement. This is a word derived from the old English term of at-one-ment. It speaks of doing all that is needed to restore, repair, and mend a broken relationship. When we look at the cross, this is what we are witnessing. We are seeing Jesus healing the wound of relational separation between God and people and reconciling everything in the cosmos back to goodness.
The atonement is Jesus saying ‘Enough!’ to violence, cursing, the forces of evil, and ultimately to death itself. At the cross, Jesus absorbs everything that had set itself between us and God and commands, “It is finished. Enough”. And it is that moment that reveals what happened at the cross.
Forgiveness. Acceptance. Reconciliation. Freedom. True at-one-ment. Fullness of Life for Everyone.
It is these aspects of the atonement that we’ll be looking at over this series and experiencing as reality as a community.