Digging Deeper – A Plan that is Deeper Still
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 (ESV)
A PLAN THAT IS DEEPER STILL
In the final moments of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis unpacks the idea of the Atonement – that is, how the sacrifice of Christ on the cross makes us right with God. Edmund, the youngest brother of the four Pevensie children, betrays his siblings by delivering them to the White Witch. She presumptively declares her victory over the lion Aslan, stating:
Fool…do you think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.
Lewis uses the moment to illustrate the human predicament of sin. For “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23) and “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb 9:22). In mythical analogy, the Law of Narnia allows that the life of a traitor is forfeit to the Witch: “You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.”
In a twist, however, Aslan – the lion who portrays a Christ figure and the very Creator of Narnia – offers to give his life in place of Edmund. He explains:
Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back into the stillness…before Time dawned…she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead…Death itself would start working backward.
And so Aslan sacrifices himself and the Deeper Magic reverses the curse of death. The witch’s “victory” becomes her undoing. This is what is meant by Paul in 2 Cor 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ forgives our trespasses by the shedding of His blood at the cross – this is the Atonement. On the eve of the crucifixion, the presumptive victory of the devil is undone by a plan that is deeper still.
Ryan Hoffer serves as NextGen Production Director at NorthStar. He holds an M.Div in Church History and enjoys playing the harp. He and his wife, Tiffany, live in Acworth and have three children.