The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement

by Michael J. Gorman

That is, to enter the community of Christ-followers through faith and baptism is to enter personally into the story and the reality of the crucified Messiah that has already generated the new-covenant community that walks “in newness of life” (Rom 6:4) and in which “the just requirement of the law” is “fulfilled” by “walk[ing] not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4). It is a new-covenant community with a new life because its participation in the death of Jesus was, and is, coupled with participation in the resurrection of Jesus (Rom 6:4, 13).178 The Spirit effects both death and resurrection (Rom 8:11, 13), accomplishing in believers—as a result of Jesus’ death—the covenantal obligations that could not be accomplished among those mastered by sin (Rom 8:3–4; cf. 2 Cor 5:21).179 The beneficiaries of Christ’s death are such only as participants in it.180