Disclaimer: I am very in touch with the fact that as a limited human I have a limited perspective. So as you read my take on the work of Christ on the cross, keep in mind that I offer this as an imperfect argument. But along with all the rest of the imperfect arguments regarding the atonement - check your theology book, there are many (ransom, substitution, etc) - I hope that you can find for yourself the true parts, and let them change and improve your experience of what it means to follow Jesus. In as much as theology sends us down rabbit trails that keep us from figuring out what Love is and doing it, I think it is not of God. So I hope what you glean from this is an encouragement rather than a hindrance.

The confusion I have over the evangelical theology surrounding the atonement was birthed by a skeptic I met in university. His point was simple but difficult. "Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?" was his question. I parroted the standard answer I had grown up with, something along the lines of: 1. God is perfect, 2. people sinned, so 3. there had to be a blood sacrifice to atone for the sin and make us right with God. He was fine with the first two, but he was pretty adamant that the leap to the third one was broken logic. Why the sacrifice? Why blood? Is this God not above all things? God is the author of everything; no concept can exist outside of him that he is bound to. So why would he set up this elaborate and seemingly arbitrary scheme in order to make people right with him? Why couldn't God, being the-almighty-being-who-makes-the-rules-and-is-bound-by-nothing just speak into history that we are all forgiven and it be done?

This guy's questions left me with the realization that I was simply toeing the party line with no honest understanding of what the work of Jesus was all about. So I told God that I can’t speak passionately about something I don’t understand or even really believe and that he should enlighten me. I have prayed for a long time now asking God to make the atonement really make sense for me.

And here’s what I’m thinking so far:

What if the demand for a sacrifice, the capital “J” demand for justice that was satisfied at the cross came not from God but from humankind? What if the cross was God submitting himself to humankind’s selfish demands, smashing into history with a transcendent act of Grace, thereby revealing once and for all God’s own personality, that of undeserving and perfect Love?

I consider my years of teaching history. I am fascinated by the way the law pervades every early civilization. Anywhere people settle down and try to live together, eventually some sort of law code breaks out. And invariably, the law code is revenge based. If you poke out my eye, I poke out yours; kill my dog, I’ll kill yours, etc.  And the logical end of revenge would be a life for a life.  If you shed my blood, I’ll shed yours.  What I saw in the early civilizations I studied totally verified this. Many of them took it to the point of human sacrifice to their god, assuming, I suppose,  that since we demand sacrifices of each other, surely god must demand them as well to atone for all the wrong we have done.

Why, since our earliest days as humans, did we consider this necessary? It is ironic to me that revenge isn’t really that logical; as we know it perpetuates problems that grace would end. Yet, it is so deep in all of us. It is almost an assumption, a presupposition. If someone came and cracked me in the jaw most people would feel I have the right to crack him back. Again, why? Because it is the best way to a solution? No. For the most part, the answer is “just because”. It is an innate response. I can see that one answer to this “why?” would be “to create fear in the guy who punched me so he won’t do it again”. Weak answer,  of course, because odds are he is going to feel a need to create some of that fear in you too once you punch him back. It points to how the whole thing is based on fear, along with satisfaction of a very natural (apparently natural isn’t always good!) desire to avenge ourselves. Revenge provides us with that quick satisfaction, and is rooted in our own pride/selfishness.

What is so clear about the new way that Christ trumpets in the kingdom of God is that it is the very opposite of revenge/law. As far as I can see, all the stories and teachings of Christ point to grace. Revenge and the law have their foundation in self-ishness, an orientation to satisfying your own needs/desires. The foundation of grace, as modeled by Christ, is perfectly contrary in its self-lessness. Jesus stands apart from revenge and the law, instead pointing us toward forgiveness and even the extreme of hospitality (as defined by Miroslav Voth’s – a proactive doing of what there is no onus on you to do in the first place).

To me, this seems to be the entire theme of God’s interaction with his creation throughout history. It is us following our nature and wreaking terrible revenge and law on one another. God’s plan is to teach us the divine way, the divine nature, the way of true Love as expressed in grace. Someone might protest, “but the law came from God and so is obviously his way”. I would respond, as I think the epistles do, that God gave the law as a concession to our hard hearts. The law was given, maybe more like allowed, for a certain time in order to reveal how badly it worked, to show how hopeless it was for bridging the distance between us and God (because it is so unlike God’s way).

So then in Jesus and his death on the cross we find the most shocking and extreme walking out of grace in all history; an act of grace so mighty that all the powers of darkness are sent reeling. Throughout history, humankind demands a sacrifice. At the cross, God says, “I will give you a sacrifice. I will give a sacrifice so far and above the pathetic cheapness of your sacrifices.” But his sacrifice is radically different from ours in one way: it is unwarranted. There is absolutely no reason why the God who is over everything should submit himself to the demands of his creation. But in this act of humility and submission, this is exactly what he does, and in doing so, smashes the spirit of the law that is the driving force of human society.

I see hints of this in the Old Testament like when the Israelites ask for a king. The dialogue went something like this:

“No, it’s best if I am your king.”

“But everyone else has a king!!”

“A king will enslave you, can’t you be satisfied with me?”

“No, we want a human king.”

“Ok then, it is not the best thing for you, it is not my way, but I will do it your way”

And God submits to the wrong desires of his creation. Again and again, God sets us totally free to make our own decisions, even to the point of letting us do things that hurt us, and we end up finding out the hard way. I “kinda” think that is what the law was all about as well. The law cooperates with the evil tendency in human nature, and even awakens it. Paul says it like this, “But sin took advantage of the law and aroused all kinds of forbidden desires within me!” (Rom. 8:8).

In my experience of evangelical theology, there is often an awkwardness between what Jesus said and did during his ministry on earth and what happened with his death on the cross. Much of his teaching doesn’t meld that clearly with notions of substitutionary atonement. The result has been that much of the actual teachings of Christ are ignored or discarded, and the traditional evangelical understanding of what happened at the cross is stressed. I am thinking especially of dispensational theologies I remember hearing in my youth, that had such problems with the sermon on the mount that they relegated it to an endtimes millennial time period. But it is the same thing when, because his ideas are so contrary to the culture we are in, we ignore Jesus’ directives regarding peace, money, etc (radical self-sacrifice in general).

But if Christ on the cross was a monumental, history changing act of grace, then his teaching and action in the rest of his ministry make perfect sense as well. Everything he did and said pointed us to grace; he began teaching us how to turn from the darkness of our own selfishness, toward his light of selflessness. This was the “new way” proclamation of his ministry, and it found its climax in his ultimate act of grace on the cross.