What Did the Cross Accomplish?: A Conversation about the Atonement

by N.T. Wright

Speaking of stories, perhaps I should be allowed a concluding one, which reveals the way that the cross powerfully leaps over barriers of incomprehension and becomes, in itself, the strong symbol of Christian apologetic. Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jew by birth, was archbishop of Paris for the last quarter of the twentieth century. He once told a story about three boys in a provincial town who decided to play a trick on the local priest. They went into the confessional one by one, and they confessed to many weird and wonderful sins. The first two ran away laughing, but the priest, knowing what was going on, set the third one a penitence. “I want you,” he said, “to go up to that large statue of Jesus on the cross, and I want you to say, ‘You did all that for me, and I don’t give a damn.’” Off went the boy. This was all part of the game. He said it once, “You did all that for me, and I don’t give a damn.” Then he said it a second time. Then he found . . . that he couldn’t say it a third time. He broke down and left the church a changed person. “And the reason I know that story,” concluded the archbishop, “is that I was that young man.” The gospel message of the crucified Messiah, comments Paul, “is a scandal to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, the Messiah—God’s power and God’s wisdom” (1 Cor 1:23–24).