One issue that troubles me is how to explain the atoning work of Jesus. The penal substitution theory works in that Jesus died to pay the penalty for the sins of the world - but I just find it dreadfully unconvincing - unjust and unnecessary. Does anyone think any other theory works better?
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I like this idea - never encountered it before but it does avoid the problems with the substitution theory
Perhaps we are overcomplicating it, we see in life that predecessors die to make way for heirs and Jesus also refers to nature in John 12:24 "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds". Maybe God put this natural system in place to show us the path to the afterlife. Jesus becomes the focal point of this process which all humanity can identify with.
When I was young, I was taught that God always has to punish sin and the only way He could forgive us was by punishing someone good, namely His Son. For this forgiveness to be applied to us, however, we must also repent and place our trust in Christ’s sacrifice.
God can only be merciful towards us when we repent, therefore, because of Christ’s suffering. Without that, we would all remain unforgiven, no matter what we did or said. That was also the state of those who repented before Christ’s death. God could only forgive sinners in the Old Testament, because He knew of the Son’s future atonement. Jesus was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Christ’s sacrifice therefore acts as an actual atonement for repented sins committed before His death, and it provides a potential atonement for sins committed in the future.
This analysis raises some difficult questions, however. The first is that it teaches that God must always punish sin. He is actually unable to forgive us when we repent. This is not enough; someone must be punished for each and every sin. I am not convinced this is taught in the scriptures.
The second difficulty relates to justice. If God’s need to punish every sin arises from the requirements of justice, how can punishing a good person for the sins of someone else satisfy His need for justice? In the human world, we would all condemn this as a miscarriage of justice.
I do not accept the orthodox view, therefore, as it makes God out to be a machine who must always wreak revenge, but whose sense of justice does not extend to punishing the actual offender. I believe God is never unjust and is merciful to us when we repent, because mercy is an integral part of His loving nature.
There is a further problem with the orthodox view. We are told that Jesus’s sacrificial death actually, ‘takes away the sins of the world’. It would not achieve that, however, if only a few people repented and the vast majority went to hell for ever.
For this reason, I believe Christ’s death sets in motion a process that results in the repentance of us all. God's anger with our sin is averted, therefore, because He knows we will all repent in the end. The love of God demonstrated in the cross is irresistible to us. God created a little iron filing in each of us at birth and Christ is the magnet, which will ultimately draw us all to salvation.
We only have metaphors and analogies and the facts of what happened to help us understand what is beyond our understanding. Here are some pointers that help me:
i/ Jesus identifies with the sin and pain and death of each and every one of us, and carries it on the cross and through the grave, then by his resurrection reveals that he has overcome it.
ii/ He is the judge that passes a sentence 'Guilty' - then carries the punishment himself
iii/ Salvation through Christ was revealed to the Jews, who for many centuries had practised a system of sacrifices for sin. So 'the sacrificial lamb' image and the sin offering, and the scape-goat, and the sacrifices for atonement were understood by the Jewish people. We can only understand the sacrificial images by looking at the Torah
I agree with you, David, and don't subscribe to the 'legal fiction' explanation of the atonement, as a missionary and RE teacher I knew once described it.
As God only forgives sin when we repent, I believe Jesus's sacrifice atones for sin by 'drawing all men to' God (John 12:32) and bringing us all to a state of repentance. It is the irresistible redemptive power of a love that will go to any lengths, that brings us to the atonement that gives us peace.