A Fresh Perspective - April 10, 2009
A common view of Jesus’ death that has prevailed in western Christianity for over a thousand years sees the cross of Jesus as the instrument God used to punish his Son for our sins. This view, which is based on the substitutionary theory of the atonement, is being challenged today on a number of fronts. The challenges are coming, not from antagonists of Christianity, but from some of the most sincere, authentic, and spiritual adherents of Christianity. Only the most rigid fundamentalists would question the motives and Christian faith of these who are challenging the dominant view.
Why does God need or require an innocent victim to bear someone else’s punishment when God is able to forgive sin freely the way a loving parent forgives the wrongdoing of a child? (Matt. 9:1-8) Loving parents do not make their children pay a ransom to satisfy the parents offended honor or justice. Parents discipline, but they do not condemn. Jesus did not make God’s forgiveness conditioned upon a sacrifice. The only condition Jesus lays down with regard to the experience of forgiveness has to do with our willingness to forgive others (Matt. 6:14-15).
The God that Jesus revealed in the Gospels is not the kind of God who needs to be appeased or placated or bought off by requiring an innocent victim to die. The God of Jesus is the kind of God who takes on and endures the suffering of humanity.
This is the point that Paul makes about the cross in 1 Corinthians 1; that God’s power and wisdom are revealed through Jesus’ humiliation and death. The cross is a revelation of God’s suffering love. God, in and through Christ, made God’s self vulnerable, bearing the sin of the world in a representative way. (The hate of the religious and political leaders, the betrayal and desertion of his disciples, and the rejection of the crowd are symbolic of the hate, betrayal, and rejection of the world.)
A vulnerable God who relinquishes retributive power in favor of forgiveness may be scandalous and foolish to the powers that be (religious or political), but to those of us being saved by it, it is the power and wisdom of God’s inclusive, unconditional love.
Immanuel Baptist Church welcomes doubters, skeptics, and both unbelievers and believers who have real questions. Though we offer an invitation to discipleship each Sunday you will be under no pressure here. We are a great place for recovering fundamentalists.