Evil and the Justice of God, con't

In the third chapter, "Evil and the Crucified God," Wright moves his focus from the Old Testament story of God's risky plan to deal with evil through Israel, to the New Testament story. He writes, "The Gospels tell the story of how the evil in the world--political, social, personal, moral, emotional--reached its height, and how God's long-term plan for Israel (and for himself!) finally came to its climax. They tell both of these stories in--and as--the story of how Jesus of Nazareth announced God's kingdom and went to his violent death."

An essential piece of understanding Jesus and his ministry is that he totally identified himself with Israel: "taking its vocation upon himself, coming to the point of pain, of uncleanness, of sickness, folly, rebellion and sin." As a result, he bore--literally--Israel's sins. Furthermore, according to the gospels

Jesus suffers the full consequences of evil: evil from the political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual angles all rolled into one; evil in the downward spiral hurtling toward the pit of destruction and despair. And he does so precisely as the act of redemption, of taking the downward fall and exhausting it, so that there may be new creation, new covenant, forgiveness, freedom and hope.

Wright believes that the most adequate way of understanding what Jesus did on the cross, called "atonement," is what he refers to as Christus Victor [Christ the Victor] "the belief that on the cross Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil."

You might think this is a pretty thin sounding argument given all of the evil and its effects that we see around us every day. But, the key is understanding that what was accomplished on the cross includes "both a backward look (seeing the guilt, sin and shame of all previous generations heaped up on the cross) and a forward dimension, the promise that what God accomplished on Calvary will be fully and finally implemented." In other words, the future has come forward to the present through the power of the Holy Spirit, and we live in the present 'in-between times" trusting God for its fullness in the future. Therefore, "The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love. The cross is not just an example to be followed; it is an achievement to be worked out, put into practice...it is the start of redemption, in which suffering and martyrdom are the paradoxical means by which victory is won."

He states that in the last two chapters he will show how this is all supposed to work out in the world in which we live.