Review
So far in our Deceitful Heart series, we’ve talked about how mankind is “prone to wander” and about the faithful heart of our unconditionally loving Father. Today, we’ll continue our journey to understand the nature of God and man with an exploration of the Son and Savior, Jesus Christ.
A Bigger Picture
After leaving the Garden, as mankind became more deceived and drifted further from the knowledge of his identity as a son with a place in his Father’s family, his actions became less godly and more susceptible to evil influences. Remember what God told Cain: “And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Subsequent generations became more deeply entrenched in guilt, shame, and sin in a vicious cycle – the more the sin, the more the guilt, the more a desire to justify the hurtful and damaging actions… the more the wrongful behavior continued. Hurting people hurt people. The destructive and ignorant actions of humans caused them to feel shame, resulting in an increasing desire to hide from God and His perfect plan. “…light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19b).
So, God, an unconditionally-loving Father, unwilling to give up on His offspring, did something drastic – He took our own scales of justice, our “eye for an eye” philosophy, and turned it upside down. He was innocent, yet he died the death of the guilty. He showed us that our worldview – that doing good deserves blessing, doing wrong deserves punishment – wasn’t the fullness of His way. His way involves relationship and grace. He loved us while we were still in the pigsty of our sin (just as the prodigal son’s father never stopped loving him). “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly…. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8).
Christ destroyed guilt, shame, sin, and death in His body on the Cross, freeing us from any penalty we deserved or thought we deserved and revealing that we are precious to God, regardless of our actions. One of the purposes of Christ’s death was the restoration of God’s original family. He never gives up on His children. Every individual is made in the image and likeness of their Father. And while each individual person may value participation in God’s family more or less than another (or even more or less in various stages of their own life), it’s also important to remember the story as a whole – God never gives up on mankind, His beloved creation, and never will.
The True Solution
There is a common Christian belief about the purpose of Christ’s death called “penal substitution,” also known as “satisfaction theory.” These are called “atonement theories” and they are meant to explain why Jesus had to die. There are at least 7 popular atonement theories commonly referenced in Christianity today.
The widespread theory of penal substitution claims that God the Father’s wrath against human sins (which offend a just and holy God) needed to be satisfied by someone paying the price. The often-used analogy is that we deserved a whipping, and our “older brother” Jesus stepped in and diverted our angry father’s wrath onto Himself, sparing us the punishment.
The problem with this view is that it misrepresents our Father. It can go so far as to cause us to be afraid of Him, even after we’ve come to know Him. We feel that Jesus loves us, but the only reason God the Father is ok with us is because of Jesus and Him alone. Like we’re not really loved by God ourselves – Jesus is loved by God, and Jesus loved us and died for us, so the Father can love us, too. It’s like a good cop/bad cop version of the Trinity.
In reality, the Father, Son, and Spirit are all on the same team: “For in Him [Jesus] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19).
The idea that Jesus took God’s wrath which we deserved is not at all present in Scripture. Have you heard that the Father had to turn His face away from Jesus on the Cross as He took the full weight of our sin on Himself? Again – not in Scripture. In fact, this view contradicts the verse above that says “God was in Christ” on the Cross (2 Cor. 5:19). The closest scriptural reference to the idea that God at one point was not in Christ on the Cross is that Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, pointing people to that chapter in which He reveals that He would be pierced for us, His garments divided by casting lots, etc. He was also identifying with mankind as we have felt in our human experience, from our (faulty) perspective. We thought God was far from us – but that doesn’t mean that He was. “If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there” (Ps. 139:8). Jesus has the keys to death and Hades (Rev. 1:18). We can’t be separated from His love. There’s nothing stopping Him from being with us but our own running away from Him. Adam and Eve were the ones who ran and hid; God pursued them.
Side Note: Some may fear that if they “fall away from God,” feel far from Him, go astray into sin, or stop believing correctly in Jesus they may still be in danger of going to hell when they die. If we feel this way, we may be presuming that a proper belief in Christ (or having accurate theology) is the “good work” that saves us from a terrible afterlife. But when we realize that God is constantly pursuing us, we see that if we feel far from Him, we are the ones running and hiding from Him, just as Adam and Eve did. The second we stop running, He embraces us. To feel like God might turn away from us because of something we did wrong, or because we didn’t do something right (like believing in a certain type of theology, or even reading our Bible that day, or asking for forgiveness) is to misunderstand Who our Father truly is at His core.
The relatively young theory of penal substitution was mostly promoted by Anselm of Canterbury around 1100 A.D. The ransom theory (or Christus Victor) is much older, going back to some of the earliest church fathers, around 200 A.D. C.S. Lewis promotes the ransom theory in his book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Edmund (humanity) was redeemed from sin, death, and Satan (the Witch) through Aslan’s (Christ’s) death. It’s pretty clear-cut and simple enough for children to understand. I personally believe all the theories I’ve researched show an aspect of why Jesus had to die except for the penal substitution/satisfaction theory. I encourage you to research atonement theories on your own. Some are more rooted in Scriptural texts and others are more philosophical or pragmatic. They reveal multiple aspects of the beauty of the Cross.
Let’s talk about the term “saves us.” Jesus saves us from our sin, shows us the path of righteousness, and brings us into relationship with our Father and our true identity in union with God. This is the heart of what salvation means. In Hebrew, salvation connotes healing and prosperity – a restoration of the whole person. Modern Christianity has placed far too much weight on determining one’s location in the afterlife rather than realizing that eternal life is knowing God, and it begins now. (John 17:3; Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15).
I could go on about this topic, but suffice it to say that the ultimate victory of the Cross has put to rest everything that could possibly hold us back from the most awesome existence imaginable – the one God dreamed up before the creation of the world, and the one He dreamed up specifically for you while you were in your mother’s womb. Can you see His dream for you? Can you release anything that might be holding you back? Because Jesus already unlocked the shackles on your legs and wrists and opened the cell door; all that’s left is for you to walk in the freedom He has bought you.
Now that Jesus has shown us the Father in a way we couldn’t understand Him when we were running and hiding from Him, and revealed His unconditional love for us regardless of our going astray as a prodigal, there is nothing, nothing that can separate us from His love! “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
He has conquered every accuser that may come against us – Satan, guilt, shame, sin, death, our past failures, our false beliefs, our feelings of inadequacy – and said, “I’m bigger than any mistake. There’s no mess you can make that I can’t get you out of. My love wins!”
This is the power of the blood of Jesus.
Nuance
The differences I have brought up between us being inherently evil or just prone to wander may seem insignificant, but they have major implications as to the character of God. When we realize that our Father could love us even before we aligned ourselves with Christ, we realize that we are called to see every single human being around us as loved children as well. Those who don’t call God their Father yet don’t recognize themselves as His children – but He does, and we can and should, too. They are lost children; lost children are lost because they belong somewhere, in a family. Otherwise they would be orphans. Those who have not yet aligned themselves with Christ are not “on the losing team until they believe the way we do.” Rather, they were included with Christ in His death 2,000 years ago, at the same time I was included in Christ. He won humanity back from sin, death, deception, our own feelings of inadequacy – now we are just waiting for everyone to wake up to that fact, one at a time.
So, what about us? What about those of us who have been awakened to our sonship, who align ourselves with Christ? Next time, we’ll talk about the incredible ramifications of that realization and acceptance, and the fullness of our identity as Little Christs. I hope you’ll join me then.