A biblical word study - ATONEMENT
In Christian theology, atonement is the central doctrine of our faith and can properly include all that our Lord accomplished for us on the cross. It was a vicarious (i.e. substitutionary) atonement. On the Day of Atonement, perhaps the goat which was substituted was in some sense not as valuable as a man, though the goat had never sinned: but God in His matchless grace provided a Substitute who was infinitely better than the sinner, absolutely sinless and holy, and dearer to the Father than all creation. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a), and “Him who knew no sin, he made to be sin on our behalf: that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (II Cor. 5:21).
There are two opposite facts that the ingenuity of the theologians could not have reconciled without God’s solution: first, that God is holy and He hates sin, and that by His holy law sin is a capital crime; and second, that “God is love” (I John 4:8); and so the problem was “How can God be just and at the same time justify the sinner?” (cf. Rom. 3:26). John 3:16 tells us that God so loved that He gave — but our blessed Lord was not just a means to an end — He was not a martyr to a cause. In the eternal counsels of the Trinity, He offered Himself to bear our sins (Rev. 13:8), and so, voluntarily, He emptied Himself of the divine trappings of omnipotence, omniscience, and glory (Phil. 2:5-8), that He might be truly human, became the Babe of Bethlehem. For about 33 years He perfectly fulfilled the law on our behalf (Matt. 5:18) and then paid the penalty for our sins in His death for us upon the cross. Our Lord’s work of atonement looks in three directions: looking toward sin and Satan, He redeemed us with His precious blood (I Pet. 1:18,19: “Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold—but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot”); looking toward us, He reconciled a world of sinners with God (Rom. 5:6-11: “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life”—); and looking toward the Holy Father, He propitiated divine justice (I John 2:2: “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world”).
It seems strange that theologians have invented so many theories of the atonement when the teaching expressed above seems to be clear and simple. A partial answer lies in the difficulty of putting into philosophical language the mysteries of the faith; but a larger explanation is that the truth cannot be explained adequately by those who have not experienced it. - Arthur B. Fowler
Tags: Theology
