After discussing various texts that speak of the “cup” of God’s wrath in the Old Testament (e.g., Jer 25:15 [LXX: 32:15]):
What then shall we say? Given the well-attested use of this image to
refer to God’s general judgment and punitive wrath manifest in subjection to
the nations, and given that Israel’s [light, which Jesus predicts he will
experience, is just such a deliverance into the hands of the nations, he likely
envisions his coming death at the hands of the nations, he likely envisions his
coming death at the hands of the nations as the endurance (the “drinking”) of
God’s punitive judgment falling upon Israel due to their sin and current unrepentance.
In Isa. 51, Jerusalem’s experience of captivity was described as their “drinking”
the “cup” of God’s wrath. But having drunk it (51:17), they will leave their captivity
as “the redeemed” (λελυτρωμενοις) people of God (51:11, 17, 22). Within the Gospel narratives, Israel
rejects the herald of salvation and thus remains in captivity, in need of “ransom”
(Mark 10:45; Matt. 20:28; Luke 24:21), meaning that the cup of God’s wrath
remains theirs to drink. Knowing this, Jesus prays that this cup of God’s wrath
remains their to drink. Knowing this, Jesus prays that this cup might pass, but
he is determined to do as God wills. Realizing that this cup will not pass away
unless he drinks it (τουτο παρελθειν εαν μη αυτο πιω), he obediently submits himself to the
will of his Father: “Your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). “In Gethsemane the die
has been cast.” He is prepared to endure Israel’s fate with them and on their
behalf so that “the redeemed of the LORD will return” (Isa. 51:11).
If these comments are on target, the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus as
voluntarily undergoing Israel’s punitive discipline, the covenant wrath of God
expressed in their/his being handed over to Israel’s captors (i.e., the nations
and their powers), to bring to an end such discipline in himself. This he does
by dying at the hand of Israel’s enemies as a ransom to liberate those captive
to such enemies, of whom Satan is the chief. This death is punitive (or “penal”)
in that Jesus experiences Israel’s punitive discipline occasioned despite Jesus’s
summons. But this notion of “punishment” should be contextualized within the
Deuteronomic/Levitical matrix of Israel’s covenant curses, which the nation is
already experiencing. It would be misleading to abstract the “penal” component
from its storied position and simply assert that God punished Jesus by killing him
on the cross. Rather, Israel is already experiencing punitive discipline in the
form of captivity to the nations and their powers, and Jesus enters into “cursed
solidarity” with his people, enduring the plight they are under. His subjection
to the nations is his willing act, knowing that they will put him to death.
Further, his death is liberative in that his death pays the punitive debt held
and exercised by Israel’s captors, thereby liberating those held captive due to
this debt. So though his death is not strictly a sacrifice, it is nonetheless
salvific.
Jesus’s story does not end there. Having endured this fate, God vindicates
the obedience of his Son by raising him from the dead. In view of Ezekiel’s
image of Israel as “dead” (punished) due to their sin, but “resurrected”
(restored) when God delivers them from exile (Ezek. 37:1-14), Jesus’s
resurrection symbolizes, embodies, and initiates the inauguration of Israel’s
restoration. Newly resurrected, Matthew claims that Jesus now possesses “all authority
. . . in heaven and on earth” (28:18). Similarly, Luke claims that, having
suffered the Messiah has entered “into his glory” (24:26), probably referring
to his dominion over all the nations. With this newly possessed authority over
all the nations. Jesus sends his disciples once more to Israel, and now to the
nations as well, to summon them to repentance (Luke 24:46-47) and to make them
into disciples of Israel’s Messiah (Matt. 28:19). That this post-resurrection
summons does not replace following Jesus’s interpretation of the Law for
something else (“faith” in him, reductively) is made plain by Matt. 28 and Luke’s
sequel, Acts. In the former, the disciples are to teach “all the nations” to “follow
all that I commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). In Acts, repentance, faith, and “doing
deeds consistent with repentance” (Acts 26:20) are named as normative, and the Jerusalem
Council (Acts 15) assumes that Jews still keep the Law and rules that gentiles
keep select regulations prescribed in Lev. 17-18. (Paul T. Sloan, Jesus and
the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel Within the
First-Century Judaism [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2025], 207-9)
