Atonement: Making Up for What’s Wrong
I have said things that I did not really mean. I have spoken words of hurt. I have lost my temper, which has resulted in treating people badly. After those moments, I know I have to make things right. I have to make it up in some way. Sometimes a heartfelt apology will do. Other times, a gift or token of remorse helps. With my kids I often need to listen to them and then set aside time to do what they want to do. No matter what, I am always thankful for the opportunity to know of my sins, repent of them, and try to make things right. Once I am dead, there are no more second or third chances.
Scripture reveals that sin brings death: both physical and spiritual. Spiritual death means separation from God, even enmity with him. It means that there is something wrong between us and God and to make matters worse since we’re dead we aren’t even able to do anything about. If things are ever going to be made right, God himself has to make the first move, even though he wasn’t in the wrong. In theology we call God’s first move, atonement, and it focuses completely on Jesus Christ.
The good news of Jesus Christ is that God made the first move by sending his Son to take on our human nature, live a sinless life, and lay down that life so that by dying he undoes the power of death over all of us who were spiritually dead. He did not have to do this, but it was fitting that he did. Humans are valuable. Humans are made in his image. When we rebelled God could have responded by wiping us out, but that would not be fitting of a God who is life itself. He could have just excused sin, but that would have been hard. Rebellion and sin are an affront to God by corrupting and undoing all his good work, but he could not just magically rid it from the world without recognizing its ugliness and its steep penalty and price, and sinful people were so crooked in their thinking and actions that they were unable to make things right on their own. So what was God to do? Athanasius calls this the “divine dilemma” and offers the Incarnation of God the Son as God’s solution.
In theology we make compartments for all the things going on in Jesus Christ. We distinguish his Incarnation from his Obedience, Atonement, Resurrection, and Ascension. We also distinguish how God justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies us in him. As helpful as distinctions can be in trying to grasp the depths of what it means for God to become human, the early church considered all of Christ—all of who he is and all of what he does—to be part of God’s atonement. In other words, when God moved first to make things right between us and him, the answer was Jesus Christ, not just one thing he did.
Where Adam went astray as our representative, Christ did not. We can look to him for what it means to be human from birth to death, to life after death, and even to life after life after death in resurrection. All of Christ reconciles us to God, making us “at one” with God, or as the English word says, we have found at-onement (atonement) with God through Christ. N. T. Wright likes to say that when Jesus wanted to explain what he meant to his people, he did not hand down a lecture, a theory, or a diagram that charted it out. Instead, he repurposed a meal for them to share together. If we want to understand atonement more deeply, there is no better starting place than the Lord’s Table.
Scripture reveals that sin brings death: both physical and spiritual. Spiritual death means separation from God, even enmity with him. It means that there is something wrong between us and God and to make matters worse since we’re dead we aren’t even able to do anything about. If things are ever going to be made right, God himself has to make the first move, even though he wasn’t in the wrong. In theology we call God’s first move, atonement, and it focuses completely on Jesus Christ.
The good news of Jesus Christ is that God made the first move by sending his Son to take on our human nature, live a sinless life, and lay down that life so that by dying he undoes the power of death over all of us who were spiritually dead. He did not have to do this, but it was fitting that he did. Humans are valuable. Humans are made in his image. When we rebelled God could have responded by wiping us out, but that would not be fitting of a God who is life itself. He could have just excused sin, but that would have been hard. Rebellion and sin are an affront to God by corrupting and undoing all his good work, but he could not just magically rid it from the world without recognizing its ugliness and its steep penalty and price, and sinful people were so crooked in their thinking and actions that they were unable to make things right on their own. So what was God to do? Athanasius calls this the “divine dilemma” and offers the Incarnation of God the Son as God’s solution.
In theology we make compartments for all the things going on in Jesus Christ. We distinguish his Incarnation from his Obedience, Atonement, Resurrection, and Ascension. We also distinguish how God justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies us in him. As helpful as distinctions can be in trying to grasp the depths of what it means for God to become human, the early church considered all of Christ—all of who he is and all of what he does—to be part of God’s atonement. In other words, when God moved first to make things right between us and him, the answer was Jesus Christ, not just one thing he did.
Where Adam went astray as our representative, Christ did not. We can look to him for what it means to be human from birth to death, to life after death, and even to life after life after death in resurrection. All of Christ reconciles us to God, making us “at one” with God, or as the English word says, we have found at-onement (atonement) with God through Christ. N. T. Wright likes to say that when Jesus wanted to explain what he meant to his people, he did not hand down a lecture, a theory, or a diagram that charted it out. Instead, he repurposed a meal for them to share together. If we want to understand atonement more deeply, there is no better starting place than the Lord’s Table.
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