The Contemporary View of Sin
The absence of sin and the crucifixion of Jesus from much of contemporary Christianity has been widely noticed. In our culture, sin is frequently euphemized as a lapse of reason (“mistake”), wisdom (“poor judgment”), or etiquette (“indiscretion”). Sometimes it’s even dressed up as an excuse of virtuous loyalty (to “my family,” “my company,” “my nation”), ambition (I want X “too much” and went after it “too hard”), or passion (I “couldn’t help it”).
Many of us seem to view humanity as divisible into three discrete cohorts. At one end is the small cluster of Saints— the Mother Teresas, Mr. Rogerses, and other ethical heroes whose lives are incomprehensibly far removed from our own. At the other end are the villains—the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, and other unfathomably awful people who seem barely human in their appetite for evil. The rest of us are in the middle. Nobody’s perfect, of course, but we haven’t killed anyone, we’re kind to furry animals and children, and are generally decent folk. Sure, we might curse a bit, and cut a few corners on our taxes, and gossip a little, and flirt occasionally, but hey, that’s normal, right?
The Biblical View of Sin
The Bible, however, says there are only two kinds of people: sinners who are off the path of righteousness and therefore on their way to a lost eternity, and sinners who have been saved by God and returned to the path of righteousness and therefore on their way to a fabulous future. The Bible does not say, as some Christians do, that everyone is simply and entirely terrible. God created humanity in His own image to make shalom in the world, and to some extent we bear that image and obey that mandate still.
Christians should, and many of us do, recognize that our fellow humans are capable of good, even great good, whether or not they are reconciled to God or even believe that God exists. The Bible says, however, that we are all infected by a lethal ethical disease. We are all inclined away from submission to God and toward self-centeredness and autonomy. We are all cursed with a moral appetite that finds at least certain sins attractive, even delicious. We may feel fine, even wholesome, but there is a decay within us that alters the very patterns by which we live day-to-day. And occasionally, especially under stress, that malignancy erupts to startle others and even shock ourselves.
Thus, we reckon with sin.
Only Jesus is a Redeemer
As for crucifixions, we moderns see none except in horrifying movies. We also see nothing like them in the other major world religions. No major religious figure dies a horrible death: not Krishna, not Buddha, not Laozi or Kongzi or Zoroaster, not Moses, and not Mohammed.
No major religious figure dies a redemptive death as does Jesus, for no other world religion thinks such a drastic act is necessary. If one follows the sage’s wisdom, or observes the proper rituals, or adopts the correct forms of life, or worships the right deity, or meditates to the ideal state, or joins in the life of the observant community, then all will be well. In the normal course of things—allowing for extreme situations in which one must defend the righteous community with force —no one needs to suffer, let alone die.
Except in tribal religions. And Christianity.
The Significance of Blood
Christian blood symbolism harks back to the giving of Torah to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. The heart of all the Jewish legislation and instruction was the sacrificial system maintained by the priests. Suffering to make up for sin, and ultimately “life for life,” is the basic logic of atonement, of making up for whatever wrong has been done. And the spilling of blood is the most powerful sign of life sacrifice.
What is striking about the Israelite sacrificial system is not only its tribute to God’s holiness, God’s loathing of evil and insistence upon it’s purging, but also the sacrificial system’s testimony to God’s mercy. God was willing to accept animal substitutes and explicitly forbade human sacrifice, although it makes no apparent sense to draw the line here. How can the blood of bulls or sheep or goats possibly make up for human sin? (One of the later books of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, in fact, asks questions along these lines: see below Micah 6: 6-7). Something crucial is missing. The system is radically incomplete, and therefore incompetent. Atonement is not being fully made.
Christian belief recognizes this point and affirms the startling truth that human sacrifice is necessary after all (Hebrews 10: 1-18 see below). Only human beings can pay human moral debts, and those debts amount to a weight sufficient to crush the life out of us. Jesus called himself the “Son of Man”, an ancient phrase that in his distinctive usage seems to have meant “the representative of humanity,” and (in a way no one understands) Jesus took on himself the consequences of all humanity’s sin.
As the one fully innocent human being who did not deserve to suffer and die coupled with the strength of a God—this combination of human and divine nature is essential to understanding how Jesus did what he did — Jesus underwent the suffering and death due to each and all of us as our scapegoat, as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1: 29). Somehow Jesus was able to substitute for the rest of us.
The blood symbolism of Jesus’s cross therefore makes sense, albeit very grim sense: suffering for sin and life for life. And in this great exchange, as Martin Luther puts it, Christ receives the consequences of our sin while we receive the benefits of his goodness.
Understandably, many people have been appalled at the whole idea. They have seen in this scenario a hapless victim of a deity’s bloodthirsty rage. How could God do this to Jesus?
Who Suffered on the Cross?
Here we must invoke what can seem to be a highly perplexing idea — the doctrine of the Trinity. Orthodox Christianity believes in one God who somehow exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians do not understand how this one God can somehow exist in three persons, and we have no good analogy to help us understand this assertion.
What we do have, however, is evidence that God exists this way. And, just as in science, when we have evidence for things we do not (yet) understand, we nonetheless believe in them. Christianity has concluded that the best way to construe all the data we have about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit — in scripture and in the experience of Christians — is to view the Three as also One, as Trinity.
Christianity emerged out of Israel’s religion. The one thing Jews were known for in the Roman Empire was their steadfast adherence to monotheism: one and only one god. The point for us is that no people in the world were less inclined to believe in the plurality of the divine nature than the Jews.
Jesus’s disciples, however, very early came to believe they ought to worship him—not just to venerate him as their esteemed rabbi, but to give him the honor due to God, including praying to him. How the early Christian experience of Jesus led the disciples to worship him and then conceptually wrestle with the idea of a “two part” God is a long and interesting story. This process soon eventuates a belief in a “three part” God, as the Holy Spirit, previously understood as just another name for the influence of Yahweh in the world, comes into focus as a distinct person, capable of loving and powerful agency and one on whom the early Christians came to rely as their constant companion since Jesus had left the earth after his resurrection (John 14: 16-17).
Jesus so impressed his followers with his God-like wisdom, compassion, and power that they were compelled to revise their understanding of God in a truly innovative, if also deeply mysterious, way—at first a “binitarian” view of God, and then fairly quickly a trinitarian view of God. Their experience of the Holy Spirit, coupled with the way Jesus spoke about the Spirit (particularly in John 13 -17), led them to this three-in-one conviction. Who would come up with something like the doctrine of the Trinity unless circumstances compelled them to do so?
The cross event features the suffering of one God, one deity suffering as Father, Son, and Spirit: as the victim on the cross, yes, but also as the loving Father and Spirit who hated to see him hurt, even as they support him in his necessary work.
Why doesn’t God just forgive us? Why does anyone have to suffer at all?
The first thing to say is that forgiveness, in fact, always entails suffering. If you have ever forgiven a serious injury, you know how much it hurts to refuse to get even, let alone seek vengeance, and instead to forgive. Striking back is an instinct to even things out. Refusing to exact one’s due means a kind of awful swallowing, an act of self-control and, indeed, self-sacrifice that truly costs the forgiver.
The second thing to say is that the Cross of Jesus Christ is more than just an elaborate, if shocking, symbol of God’s self-sacrificial forgiveness. The cross actually solves a problem. It doesn’t just point to something else, such as God’s love or God’s justice. In itself it accomplishes something.
Sin is not only a rupture in our relationships with God and others. Such a relational rupture could be repaired with appropriate repentance and forgiveness. But sin also incurs a debt. It creates a problem in the universe that needs solving, a deficit that needs fulfilling, a wrong that needs righting.
Indeed, the term “forgiveness” includes the idea of repair and restoration.
I owe you $1000. It’s time to pay up, but I tell you that I need the money for something else and won’t be able to pay you back for some time yet. You compassionately see my side of things, and you decide to forgive the loan, and forgive me. We thus remain friends. But the fact remains that you are out $1000. Either I pay it, or you do—no matter how we feel about each other. And you have decided to repair the situation by paying yourself, so to speak, the owed money. That’s what is entailed in (fully) forgiving a loan.
In the cross of Christ there is a disorder that is rectified, a penalty that is paid, a something wrong that is made right by Jesus’s sacrifice of himself.
We see this logic at work in a poignant scene just before Jesus’s arrest, trial, and death. In the Garden of Gethsemane just outside Jerusalem, the night before his execution, Jesus confronts his terrible destiny. In an anguished prayer to his Father, Jesus acknowledges that the “cup” of suffering for sin must be drained by someone — either by us or by him. However we feel about him and however he feels about us, the wrong must still be righted. Despite whatever good feelings exist on either side, the cup of atonement is still there to be drunk. And Jesus chooses to drink it on our behalf.
The Multiple Aspects of the Cross
The Cross of Christ therefore shows us many splendid things. It exemplifies a hero’s commitment to a cause. It assures us of God’s love. It inspires devotion. And it marks Christ’s victory over all our enemies, particularly death, hell, and the devil. All these great things, and more, are important aspects of what Christ accomplishes in the Crucifixion.
The cross of Christ also did what needed to be done, however dimly we can understand it. Jesus suffers—far more than we can imagine, for the suffering due all of us was somehow piled up and dropped on him, the awful pain of scourging and crucifixion being only the outward elements of an inconceivable inner agony. Jesus dies and then literally goes to hell and back for us—for hell, whatever else it is, is the situation in which one makes final atonement for sin.
Further discussion of Jesus’s foray into hell after his crucifixion can be found in
Conclusion
In the rich complex of events at the end of Jesus earthly career—suffering, death, atonement, resurrection, appearances, commissioning, ascension—God did the heavy work for us,
- providing forgiveness for sin (the “negative” part on our inclined plane of salvation),
- providing rebirth (in the Holy Spirit, the “rebirth” part),
- and providing the path to greater spirituality and the power to keep on it (in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit especially through the Bible and the Church, the “positive” part),
- with the promise of a final rectification of all things in the Second Coming of Christ.
As Trinity then —as Father-God and Son-God and Spirit-God doing for us what we certainly could not do—would not even want to do—for ourselves, God provided and provides for us what is, in the most fundamental sense, salvation.
If you found this post interesting, inspiring, informative, or useful, please follow us and share. Many more posts to feed your soul can be found on the Navigation Menu. God bless you.
Relevant Scripture
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Micah 6: 6-7)
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. 4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, my God.’”
8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16 “This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”
17 Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”
18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary. (Hebrews 10: 1-18)
He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. (Ezekiel 2:3)
Spiritual Meditations 