A Foundation for the Atonement
May 19, 2009
Dear Friends,
I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Cor. 2:2 NIV)
No single moment in time — no event in the history of the world — has been as riveting, as important, as controversial and as misunderstood as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. What a tremendous irony that something that is so vital to the faith of so many is beyond the ability of most to explain even in the most basic terms.
There are approximately 2.1 billion self-professed Christians in the world today. How many of those people could answer simple questions about the crucifixion? How many could answer the question “why did Jesus die?” and get beyond the common, but unfulfilling answer of “he died for my sins.” In my experience, few people can get beyond a couple of questions before they get that “deer in the headlights” look.
We would like to look at few principles regarding what we call “the atonement.” Basically, we would like to suggest a few guidelines to move us toward an answer of “why did Jesus die?” Before we start building a house, we need a firm foundation. If we start building up atonement principles with some shaky premises, the house will eventually fall down under the weight of inquiry. These suggested principles won’t be the ultimate answer to the question, but will narrow the list of possible answers down to a workable amount such that we aren’t all over the place in our discussions. In fact, if you agree with me on these principles (and you certainly don’t have to agree with me!), the vast majority of atonement theories that are in circulation simple vanish away as non-starters.
So with that preface, let’s start with principle #1.
Principle #1 – Jesus’ death didn’t fix a problem with God.
Once you sit back and think about this principle, it becomes so obvious that it doesn’t even merit a lot of discussion. When this was first pointed out to me by my friend John Launchbury, it was what I like to call a BFO – a “blinding flash of the obvious.” God doesn’t have problems, man does. Jesus didn’t come to fix God, he came to fix men. So let’s rule out a couple of theories right from the start. We can rule out the following:
- That God was so mad at mankind that His anger needed to be assuaged in the execution of His son. Jesus’ death didn’t calm God down from a fit of temper neither did it satisfy a blood lust or need for vengeance.
- That God could not understand us because He is perfect and needed His son to come and fill in the gaps in His understanding by living as a man.
- That God was too holy to deal with us and therefore needed an intermediary to solve His holiness problem.
- That God found Himself in a dilemma where He needed to be both just and also merciful and the only solution was the human sacrifice of His only begotten son.
Anytime we start off a sentence with “God needed” we have an unstable foundation. Jesus dying provided a solution to man, not a solution to God.
We’ll pick up with our next principle in the coming week, Lord willing.
Have a great week,
