BIBLE
DIGEST - Number 54 June 1995
THE ATONEMENT - RECONCILIATION WITH GOD
By Allon Maxwell
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INTRODUCTION The
first purpose of the Atonement is to reconcile us with God, leading us to
fulfil the first commandment, You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your
strength. (Mark 12:29-30) The
second purpose is like the first. Our united participation in the salvation
which comes to us through the death of Jesus, is also designed to reconcile
us with each other. You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
(Mark 12:31) In
the community of the redeemed there is a visible love. There is meant to be,
in ALL of us, nothing less than that same quality of love which took Jesus to
the cross for sinners. As Jesus has loved us, so also are we to love one
another. We must learn both to live for each other, and to die for each
other. The
existence of that love between us is THE TEST, given by Jesus, which decides
whether we are disciples or not. (John 13:34-35) It
is therefore also THE TEST of whether we have properly understood the
Atonement, whether it has achieved its purpose in us, and whether we are
truly redeemed. If
we do not have that love, it matters little whether we have the theory
correct or not. We walk in darkness still and we are blind to THE TRUTH! (1 John 2:11) If I cannot love you who I can
see, then neither is it possible for me to love God who I cannot see. (1 John 4:20) THE
PATH OF RECONCILIATION My
faith in the cross has reconciled me to God. It has saved me from the penalty
of my sins and changed my heart towards God. What Jesus has done for me, has
given me a new vision of who God is and what God is. It has changed my
attitudes and my response to the laws of God. It
has given me Eternal life! It
is not open for any negotiation between us that I might not be reconciled
with God, just because you think you have a better or more detailed theory
about the “legality” of how it all works. But
I will not reject you on account of your different theory! I have learned
that love must concede that, even if there are some differences in your own
understanding of how it worked in your case, you may also have arrived where
I am. If
you also are truly reconciled with God, I dare not fail to confess that
before men, just because we differ in our understanding of the detail of how
it came to pass for each of us. That
is not to say that I open the door to all theories, regardless of what they
are. Some theories of the Atonement are a denial of the love of God and
inherently blasphemous! Some do not seem to engender the Divine love at all.
Nor do they lead to obedience and holiness. We
may not ignore those other vital issues of obedience. (such as Believer's
baptism!....... or the Sermon on the Mount!) It
is my conviction that those who insist on verbal technical compliance with a
particular theory as the means of grace, or those who seek to hide behind
“Grace” to label obedience as “legalism”, or to exchange obedience for
compromise, are NOT YET as reconciled as they would like to believe!! Any
theory of the Atonement which leads to tolerance of any form of permissive
“grace”, we must reject, ...... not in unholy conflict, but in love. WHERE
IT STARTS Bible
teaching about salvation begins with the premise that God decrees a penalty
of death for the breaking of His laws, and that those who have sinned are in
need of salvation from the penalty which they have incurred. For
those who have sinned and are under condemnation, there are only two possible
destinies: *
For those who truly repent of
their sins, there is pardon and remission of the penalty. (Ezekiel 33:14, Acts
3:19) *
For those who wilfully persist in
their sins, the death penalty will be carried out without mercy. (Hebrews 10:26-31) Of course, if
there was no escape from death, and we all had to pay the penalty ourselves
for our sins, that would be the end for us. How
is it possible for God to forgive us, not carry out the penalty, and yet
still remain true to Himself and His law? The
answer to that question is the Good News about Jesus and his death on the
cross. A
LEGAL TRANSACTION? The
New Testament tells us that Jesus fulfils the prophecy contained in the Old Testament
ritual of sacrifice, in which innocent animals died to provide a graphic
illustration of the awful penalty incurred by guilty sinners. And
in order to convey the message of God's love for a lost world, the Bible does
use legal concepts. The message is clear that God must never be accused of
ignoring His law that sin incurs the penalty of death. Some
of these “legal” terms are words like “covenant” and “ransom” and
“redemption” and “expiation” and “justification” and “sanctification”. All of
them have a place in helping us to understand God's dealings with sinners. However,
although we may reverently say that the sacrificial death of Jesus is God's legal
provision, we must not dwell on that aspect alone. Redemption
is not merely the purchase of our release from a penalty. It is also rescue
from the sinful ways that incurred the penalty. (Titus 2:14, 1
Peter 1:18) We are not redeemed from anything until we covenant
with God to turn away from all sin. It
is the repentant sinner's confession of his guilt, his humble and contrite
heart, his acceptance, in faith, of the expiatory death of Jesus, and THEN
his baptismal covenant to turn away from sin, which ALL combine to
provide the legal justification for the forbearance exercised by God. However,
the subject cannot be reduced to a mere legal transaction. There are no legal
rights to salvation. Left to law alone, without God's love, we are lost. All
of those “legal” things are merely illustrations which are meant to take us
beyond mere legality. What we must eventually see in the Atonement is not
complex legal theories, but the practical issue of the LOVE of God revealed
by Jesus, which paid such an enormous RANSOM PRICE to redeem us from the
penalty and practice of our sins. In
supreme love, Jesus valued us, sinners though we were, as EQUAL TO HIMSELF.
He considered us worth the awful suffering of the cross, and He freely gave
himself for our need. And
it is the sinner's own repentant heart's response to that LOVE, which is all
important. It is that new love for God, flowing from a NEW HEART, which
allows God to regard the penalty as expiated so that it does not have to be
to be borne personally by the sinner himself. BEYOND
LEGALITY - LOVE IN ACTION The
love for God that does reconcile us to God, comes from our own personal
vision of the cross. There we see Jesus reaching out to us in Divine love,
taking our guilt, and our judgement, and our suffering upon Himself, and
revealing the intense longing of God's heart to save us from both the penalty
and continuing practice of sin. The
death of Jesus is described in brief, but awful and repulsive detail. We are
forced to face the sickening truth about the cost of our sin. Just
as in the Old Testament, it was the sinner who slew the animal (and NOT God),
so too was Jesus slain at the hands of sinners who represent all of us. Certainly,
it was by God's design and foreknowledge, but it was OUR sin that caused His
death. Just as surely as if we had driven the nails ourselves, it was OUR
wicked hands that slew Him. We made it necessary. At
this point, we are confronted with love. NOTHING
AT ALL can quench this love.... not rejection.... not reviling or mocking or
false accusation.... not spitting in His face..... not plucking the beard
from His face..... not the buffeting and bruising which marred his visage
beyond recognition..... not placing that fearsome crown of thorns on His head.....
not flogging the skin from His back..... not even nailing Him unjustly to a
Roman cross. We
see Jesus accepting all that was done to Him, loving us unconditionally,
without retaliation or complaint. Nothing this side of death, nothing in all
creation, or all eternity, can ever make this man, or the God who is His
Father, cease from loving me. (Romans 8:38-39) When
I face the terrible cost of my sin, and my responsibility for every last
moment of that terrible suffering, I recoil in horror and my heart cries out
to God in contrition. And
the words of Jesus echo down the centuries still, as I hear Him intercede for
ME...... “Father forgive them”. Such
love compels my allegiance. Such love has broken my spirit and made my heart
contrite for my sin. Jesus will not be denied. His love leaves me with no
other choice than to love in return. The
cross opened my eyes to understand the meaning of God's love. When
that happened then I also began to experience its life changing power. Love
has turned my life around. Love has reconciled me to God. Now
I long to be able to love like Jesus. Love like that lives for ever! (1 Corinthians 13:8) CONCLUSION There
are those who teach that God's anger against sin was so great that he
demanded satisfaction for His offended holiness. In its worst form, God is
said to have satisfied His anger and changed His feelings towards us, only
after pouring out His wrath on Jesus. However,
the Atonement is NOT about providing a way to change Gods feeling towards US.
Nor is it about undeserved wrath poured out on a beloved Son. Nor is it about
God demanding satisfaction. It
is about God who cannot die, and Jesus who could and did die, working
together in love, to undo the penalty of our failure. AND.....
it is about the love of God poured out on us TO CHANGE OUR FEELINGS TOWARDS
GOD! The
Atonement is not simply a theory to be studied. It has power to change our
lives. The
real objective is to change our feelings towards God and towards
sin, in a way that will change our hearts, until we no longer practise
the sins which incurred the penalty. “Here is the
test by which we can make sure that we know him: do we keep his commands? The
man who says, “I know him”, while he disobeys his commands, is a liar and a
stranger to the truth; ........ whoever claims to be dwelling in him, binds
himself to live as Christ himself lived ......... only the man who loves his
brother dwells in light”. (1 John 2:3-10 N.E.B.) |