Atonement

As promised – my own thoughts on the meaning of the cross.  

I've felt obliged to start with a summary of orthodox understanding in order to set the scene for my own thoughts later on. Please do read to the end and don't be put off by 'yet another christian banging on about the cross' at the beginning.

The clear evangelical position on the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection is termed Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA).  In a nutshell this means that Christ paid the penalty for the sins of the whole world when he willingly surrendered to execution by the Romans, thereby becoming a sacrifice to cover all of our sins, now and in the future. This is the clear teaching of the whole of scripture: 

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53 v5, 6)

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,(1 Corinthians 15 v3,4)

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5 v8)

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10 v45)

  are examples of many passages that lead to this doctrine.  

In the Old Testament sins were redeemed through animal sacrifice (Leviticus Ch14 and Ch15).  So to be able to pay the price for the sins of the whole world this sacrifice had to be significant indeed.  In fact only the sacrifice of God himself on our behalf could possibly do it, and so the fact of the resurrection becomes vital in the story. For the resurrection demonstrates that Jesus was truly God: And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15 v17).

These facts are central to Christian belief. The physical death and bodily resurrection are vital truths without which Christianity has no foundation.  

But now we come to the objection of many (notably in recent times Steve Chalke: Atonement debate) that God must be some kind of monster to demand such sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin.  If he is God why cannot he just forgive?  After all, that’s what we do.  

This now leads us to the observation that clearly in the Old Testament, God is not a fan of sacrifice: “The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats”(Isaiah 1 v11), and

“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise”(Psalm 51 v16,17) 

and in the New Testament: 

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9 v13). 

So why sacrifice, requiring the death of something?  Girard’s Mimetic Theory provides a solution. It proposes that in the earliest human communities the practice of sacrifice was developed as a solution to bad seasons and crop failures, and other unexplained difficulties for early human groups.  (For a clear explanation about how this anthropological theory works see “Compassion Or Apocalypse?: A comprehensible guide to the thought of Rene Girard” by James Warren (www.amazon.co.uk)).  

But in essence, sacrifice involving the death of something can be seen as a human device, not a divine one.  An effort by early human society to pacify the gods, which then developed with the passage of time into a requirement for a sacrificial price through the death of something to cover the penalty for sins.  Animals were sacrificed as a substitute for the human who needed redemption.  

So now in Jesus we have a saviour who has paid the sacrificial price for every level of sin that we are likely to commit: Have we done something that should require our arrest – he’s done that, something that would lead to our friends deserting us? Something that would make someone spit at us? beat us?, flog us?, and ultimately, something that would require our execution? He’s been through that.

But God does not require such a sacrifice, we do, and God sent Christ to the cross not to satisfy his need for a sacrifice, but to satisfy ours.  God could just forgive us, without any need for sacrifice, it is we who require sacrifice in order to be convinced that the required price has been paid.  

Which makes his sacrifice on our behalf, not to appease God but to satisfy us (“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” (Matt 27 v23)), all the more remarkable.