A foursquare gospel

This week I did the readings for Lesson 19 in the D&C/Church history curriculum. The subject was the plan of salvation—for which the readings were surprisingly skimpy, a fact which I think bears further reflection, but I'll save that for another time, perhaps. Today I feel moved to focus on D&C 76:40-41.

This is the gospel, the glad tidings, of which the voice out of the heavens bore record to us—

That he came into the world, even Jesus, to be crucified for the world, and to bear the sins of the world, and to sanctify the world, and to cleanse it from all unrighteousness.

Early 20th-century Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson spoke of a "foursquare gospel" that summed up what she saw as four major dimensions of Christ's identity and mission: Christ as Savior, as baptizer, as healer, and as coming king. I'm going to analyze v. 41, with its series of four infinitive phrases ("to be crucified . . . and to bear the sins . . . and to sanctify. . . and to cleanse . . .") as a kind of foursquare gospel.

1. Christ came into the world to be crucified for the world. I appreciate the fact that the verse doesn't say Christ was crucified "for the sins of the world," just "for the world." I like it because it introduces new interpretative possibilities apart from the economic-style models of the Atonement with which Mormons (like evangelicals) are most familiar, in which Christ suffers and dies to "pay the price" for our sins. Obviously that model is espounded elsewhere in the Restoration scriptures, and I know from experience that the model can bear good fruits. But I appreciate that this text creates space for other ways of understanding the Atonement.

So what else could it mean to say that Christ was "crucified for the world"? Christ on the cross is a sign, a way that God communicates something to the world. It shows the human race who we are: a people who devise horrific ways to hurt one another. It shows us how much God loves us: "For God so loved the world..." "I, God, suffered these things for all..." "Remember the worth of souls..." It shows us that God is with us in all our suffering—think Alma 7:11-12.

Jesus came into the world to be crucified for the world... To a people with a history of finding crosses and crucifixes "icky" (how many times have you heard the line about "Would you wear around your neck the gun that shot your brother?"), this verse puts the crucified Christ front and center.

2. Christ came into the world to bear the sins of the world. Again, I appreciate that the text opens up alternatives to an economic model of the Atonement, even though this line can also be read in light of that model. I'm feeling moved to read the verb "bear" in the same sense as when we say that Christ "bore" what he suffered like a lamb going to the slaughter, without opening his mouth, etc. That is, Christ bears our sins of the world in the sense that he endures our sins. "Bears with" our sins would be another way to say it. He knows we are weak, he knows we are cruel, and still he loves us, owns us as family, calls us friends.

To say that Christ bears the sins of the world also suggests solidarity. He is sinless, yet he consents to be counted among the sinful. In Christ, God throws in his lot with the human race. He shares responsibility for our f*ck-ups; he shares the blame. He takes his stand with us, despite everything we've done.

3. Christ came into the world to sanctify the world. I read that clause in light of Anglican theologies of the Incarnation I've encountered. When God enters the world as a human being, when the Word becames flesh, God becomes integrated to the world, and this itself becomes redemptive. The world becomes holy because God is part of it, is one with it. As D&C 88:41 puts it, Christ is in all things, and through all things, and round about all things, and all things are before him. We are always, everywhere, in God's presence; we are always, everywhere, in God's temple. There is no distinction between sacred and profane. All things are holy, all things are sanctified, all things are consecrated, because they are all saturated with the presence and power of Christ.

That idea has a powerful intellectual appeal for me. I find its mysticism attractive. But I suppose this requires me to believe that God is present in, for example, my mother's cancer. And I don't really know how to make sense of that proposition. I'll have to keep taking that one on faith for the time being.

4. Christ came into the world to cleanse it from all unrighteousness. And here we're back to the divisions that point 3 seemed to have dissolved. Yes, there's truth in affirming that God is in all things and through all things, etc. But there's also truth in drawing distinctions between what is of God and what is not—between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and wickedness. In this formula, Christ comes to eliminate evil and injustice from the world. No more war, no more violence, no more exploitation, no more oppression, no more inequality, no more hunger, no more disease, no more exile. That's the grand vision, anyway. But it comes in small steps, through small acts of resistance.