Dennis Edwards
Is our view of the atonement mistaken?
Definition from different on-line sources. To atone: to make
amends or reparation, as for an offense or a crime, or for an ofender, to make
up for, to become reconciled. to make amends for, to bring into unity (an old
meaning) Comes from “at one” to make amends or reparations for an offense or
wrong doing. A person taking action to correct previous wrongdoing on their
part, reparation for an offense or injury, to conciliate or appease, to
reconcile or harmonize.
I have been talking to some younger people about, or rather
they have been talking to me saying, “Dennis, maybe this whole idea about the
atonement, maybe we got it wrong. The idea that Jesus’s blood covers our sins
and we are saved through Him, maybe this whole atonement is just bad imagery. It
makes the Christians lazy because they think that they can just believe and
they don’t really have to follow what Jesus said. They have the idea that by
just believing in Jesus their sins are washed away and Jesus’s blood has
covered them and they don’t have to worry nor do they have to follow in His
footsteps.” My young friends attack the atonement because of the hypocracy that
they see in Christian people.
I have a very difficult time accepting their ideas. My friends
will argue with me that it’s not what one believes that matters, but what one
does. That’s what is necessary. They say, “Look, these Christians believe in
Jesus, but then they don’t do what He says. We don’t think that is right. What’s
really important is what you do, not what you believe.” In part, what they are
saying is true.
Apostle James said,
“Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my
works…because faith without works is dead.”
In
other words, by my works you can see what I believe. Maybe the people who don’t
have works to show don’t really believe because even Jesus said, “Not every one
that says unto me, Lord, lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he
that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that
day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name have
cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works? And then I will
profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
I have been researching and studying about the atonement. I
have been trying to understsnd what it means. I have found that it means
different things to different religious sects. There exist different theories
of what exactly it signifies. Different Christian denominations take differing
viewpoints. At different times in history it has had different significance. I
think
generally, when we think about
atonement we think of making restitution for wrong doing. If I break my
neighbours window by accident, I need to do something to restore the situation
and bring us back into harmony. I have to fix the window and anything else that
may have been damaged and make amends for my lack.
Therefore, to my mind, since the fall of Adam mankind has a fallen
nature that causes us to sin and disobey God. On my own efforts I am unable to
make atonement for my sins, because I only fall into sin again. I am in an awful
bind and I find no solution. The good that I want to do, I am unable to do. The
evil that I don’t want to do, I end up doing. Paul cries out, “Who can deliver
me from the bondage of this prepertual sin and resultant death?” That is the
state of fallen man. We are in a helpless bind with no release in sight. All
our self effort just makes matters worse. We are not able to reconcilie
ourselves to God. We can’t make atonement for our sins, because we can’t even
approach God in our sinful nature. What can we do?
Moses taught the Jewish people the sacrificial system. It may be that what Moses taught at that time was similar to what God taught Adam in
the beginning and similar to what Noah practiced when he came off the ark. However,
the Bible is full of examples showing that the blood of bulls and goats can
never fully satisfy and make restitution for sin. Something more was necessary
which was the blood of the Promised Redeemer. The Redeemer would come and could
approach God through his own righteousness. But no normal man is capable of doing that.
Therefore, God Himself entered humanity as a child and lived a sinless life. He
offered Himself as a Lamb without spot before God in the hands of the very
people whose mission was to prepare the world for that Redeemer. Through His
sacrificial death He brought man and God back into harmony, because He made
restitution for mankind’s sins. He made amends or made a way for amends to be received
by God the Father. He made a way, a path to reconciliation, a path to life. Our
sin had brought us to death. As a result of our sin or disobedience we would
need to pass through death’s door. But the Redeemer has given us a door to life
eternal. He has given us reconciliation with God. He has given us a way to get
in harmony again with God. He in fact said that He was the door.
I find it very difficult to throw away the concept of the
atonement. It is so embedded in the Gospel story. The whole Bible story is
embedded with the blood sacrÃfice. Some of my young skeptic friends say “It’s
because Moses got the whole idea of the blood sacrÃfice from the heathen
nations. It is nothing that originated with Him and “God.” He made it up to try
and purify in a way the heathen ceremony and used it in his religion because
the people were used to the idea of the blood sacrÃfice. It comes from the
heathen nations.”
I decided I better look in the Bible and see what the Bible had
to say. The first place I started reading was in Genesis chapters 1-12. God said
He made the world and everything that was in it and it was good. He didn’t say
it was perfect, but He said it was good. He put a man in a garden and told him
not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But as you know the
story, man ate from the tree. They didn’t listen to and obey what God said to
do. They were tempted by the temptor, like we all are. They disobeyed, like we
all do. What happened? Right away, the man and the woman knew they were naked
and they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. But the leaves weren’t
sufficient. God said, “I am going to have to cast you out of this good
place that you are living in, this Paradise. I am going to have to throw you
out because there is another tree here which is the tree of life. Now that you
have your fallen nature, I can’t let you eat from the tree of life or you are
going to be like that forever. I’m going to have to put you out of the garden.”
God
casts them out. However, before they have to leave, though it’s very brief
story, we get some more information. God kills some kind of an animal, maybe a
lamb, maybe a ram, or maybe a heifer. He kills an animal and makes clothes for
Adam and Eve. He covers their nakedness with the clothes that He makes them. No
doubt, in His love, He’s also covering them because He is casting hem out of
the good paradisical place. Maybe it’s going to get cold at night outside the
garden.
In the garden clothes weren’t
needed. Out side the garden, it’s going to be different. Maybe there’s going to be rain or have other climatic conditions than what they are used to. They are
going to need clothes to keep warm and protected.
It may very well be that God made a ceremony, a religious
ceremony when He sacrificed the first animal and covered them. Symbolically, by
making clothes to cover them, He was in away covering their sin. He was covering
their sin with the clothes of the animal to show them that now that they have
sinned, in order to be covered, someone or something needed to die. To bring
conditions into to harmony with the new situation they were going to face an
animal’s blood needed to be spilt. In order to cover them with clothes so that
they would be warm and protected in their new situation an animal neeeded to
die. The blood of the animal needed to be shed for their sake, for their safety
sake, for their health sake, for their protection.
At the same time God was making the clothes, He may have told them about
the Seed of the woman who would come. The Promised Seed would be bruised or harmed
by the serpent, but that Promised Seed would crush the head of the serpent.
Looking back we see that it was a prophecy about Jesus. He died for our sins
but eventually will crush the head of the serpent after the millennium period.
The serpent will be cast into the lake of fire with death and hell and all
those who were not found written in the book of life.
We see right form the beginning that there was a blood
sacrifice, an animal sacrifice. God made the blood sacrifice ritual and
implanted in the first human’s minds instructing them that because of their sin
the sacrifice needed to be made. He instructed them that the sacrifice was
symbolic of the blood that would be shed in anticipation
or as a prophecy of what was going to happen with the Promised Seed. Maybe He
explained it all to them. Maybe they didn’t understand all that it meant. But
we can be sure the Lord who had been teaching them in the garden gave them an
understanding of the blood sacrifice and of the Promised Seed.
When they are cast out from the garden God puts angels or
cherubim with a flaming sword at the entrance to the garden so that man could not
reenter the garden. Maybe the flaming sword was a place where they came when
they needed fire in those first days when they were learning to live on their
own outside the garden. There was a fire at the entrance to the garden from
where they had been cast out. No doubt they probably didn’t want to get too far
away from the entrance. Maybe they stayed as close as they were allowed. On the
day of rest, when they had to worship God as He had taught them in the garden,
they would come near to the entrance to the garden and offer a sacrÃfice. Maybe
they were able to pick up some fire from the flaming sword if they needed it.
They would pray how God had taught them when they were together in the garden.
Eventually, in the process of time, the two sons, Cain and
Abel made a sacrÃfice unto the Lord. They were probably married by this time
and already with children. Now they were old enough to make a sacrÃfice on
their own. Up until that time, Adam had been the one making the sacrÃfice. He
was teaching his descendants and passing on the tradition and the way to
worship God to his sons. Finally, the two oldest sons each made a sacrÃfice
unto the Lord. Abel sacrificed a lamb, a blood sacrÃfice, and the Lord accepted
his sacrÃfice and was pleased with it. It was how God had taught Adam and how
Adam had showed his sons. However, Cain didn’t want to make an animal
sacrÃfice. He decided to do his own thing and sacrificed the works of his own
hands. God didn’t accept his sacrÃfice. God corrected Cain and said,”Just do
the right thing and you’ll be accepted.” But Cain refused to do right thing and
the enemy entered into his thoughts. Sin entered his heart, and he called his
brother to help him do some work in the field. Abel, unaware what was happening
accompanied his brother and Cain without warning killed him.
We see the false religious system rising up against the true
religious system. Abel was trusting in God’s righteousness to save him and not
his own and just being obedient and believing. Cain was trusting in his own
righteousness, trying to follow his own reasoning, unwilling to just follow and
do what God said through revelation. Cain thought that he knew better. But
where did it get him? He ended up killing his own brother. Till that time Adam
had been teaching his family to follow God. But even here, you see God’s mercy
on Cain. God prevents him from being killed. God could have killed Cain, but God
let him live in hope he would change and come back to God. God was very
merciful. Even though Cain was the first murdered, God was very merciful and
let him live. Cain when out from the presence of the Lord and built the first
city. Maybe cities are places away from the presence of the Lord?
After the death of Adam, men begin to get worse and worse. Men
start calling themselves the Promised Seed. They all knew a Promised Seed was
coming. In their desire to rule over their brethren some of the early men may
have claimed to be that Seed. Not much detail is given in the Sacred Writings.
We see Enoch prophesying that at the end of the days God would come with
thousands of his saints and angels in judgment. After Enoch , we come to the
period of the flood. God is going to destroy the whole world because of the
iniquity and the evil imaginations of men’s hearts and the violence in the
earth. But Noah, a preacher of righteousness, finds grace in the sight of the
Lord. God instructs him to make the ark. We see when Noah comes out of the ark the
first thing he does is build an altar and then offer an animal sacrifice in
thanksgiving to the Lord. His sons were learning from watching their father the
importance of the animal sacrifice. While Noah is alive everything goes pretty
well until we get to Ham’s grandson Nimrod the mighty Hunter, or Warrior.
Nimrod, like men before and after him, claims to be again
the Promised Seed. He uses his fame and physical prowess and abilities to
coerce the descendants of Noah into cities on the plain of Mesopotamia. He
promises the people protection from the wild beasts (Dragons/Dinosaurs?). By that time
after the flood, it had been a few hundred years. The wild beast that had been
released after the flood had been able to multiply. The Bible chronology shows
there was at least 700 years from when the flood ended to the tower of Babel.
The next major event is the tower of Babel. By this time
Nimrod had already corrupted the religious ceremony and sacrÃfice and had made
his own worship ceremony contrary to how his great grandfather Noah had
worshipped. Nimrod starts a false religious system. Sad to say, all the
families, except perhaps for some of Shem’s descendents and maybe a few others,
join Nimrod’s kingdom at Babel. Some of Shem’s descendants were still following
the ways of Noah who had been following the ways of Adam. But at the time of
the confusion of the languages all the other people groups, those early people,
those 70 nations, were working together under Nimrod’s orders to build a tower
to the heavens. But God confuses their language and they are not able to
understand one another. The great dispersion takes place.
God had told them to disperse after coming off the ark, but
the people had refused out of fear of the wild animals. Nimrod was offering
safety and security in his cities. We remember that it was Cain the murderer
who made the first city after he had killed his brother Abel. But God is no
friend of man’s cities that oppress the poor. Now with the confusion of
languages the people reluctantly have to disperse or migrate to different parts
of the world. They take with them, not the pure religion of Adam-Noah-Shem,
with the right idea of the sacrÃfice, but instead they take with them the
impure corrupted religious sytem of Nimrod. We don’t even know what they were
sacrificing by this time. Maybe they were already sacrificing new born children
or adults. Jewish tradition tells us that Shem gathered together two hundred
warriors who fought and defeated Nimrod. But Nimrod’s wife takes control of the
kingdom.
Those groups of people who do have to leave Mesapotania take
with them the corrupted ideas from Nimrod, a corrupted religious system. They
take these concepts with them out to all the new lands where they will settle.
Each language group no doubt corrupts it more over time or some reformer brings
light and brings them back closer to the true idea of the sacrÃfice. In 1918,
Sir James Frazer published a book,
Folklore in the Old Testament,
showing the similarities between the Old Testament event as recorded by Moses
and the indigenous legends around the world. The many legends show that early
man brought with him the knowledge of the Tower event to the many different
locations man dispersed to.
But generally, as they go into isolated places, over time, the
religious system gets corrupted more and more. Sometimes some outside influence
or some righteous person amongst them helps bring them back to the purer
concept kept by some of the descendants of Shem. If we read through the ancient
records in secular history about the post flood period in the different
civilizations around the world, we find a corruption of the Genesis account of
the flood and sometimes even of the creation. The concepts found and recorded
in Genesis, the revelation that we received through Adam/Noah/Shem has been
corrupted in the other mythologies and fables that we find in the written
records that are still available of
the heathen
nations. Nevertheless, we are still able to get a glimpse of the Genesis flood
story and sometimes the creation story within the corrupted versions found in
the different mythologies and fables of the ancient civilizations.
Abraham is the next figure in our study of history. He was
asked by God to make a sacrÃfice of his only son, the promised son born
miraculously in his old age. Sarah, his wife had been past the age of child
bearing when Isaac was born. Abraham obediently goes up the mountain with his
son to perform the sacrÃfice. Isaac says to him, “Dad, I see we’ve got the
fire, and the wood, and the knife, but where’s the sacrÃfice?” Abraham,
speaking by the Holy Spirit says, “God Himself shall provide a sacrÃfice. God
Himself will be a sacrÃfice. God Himself will be the sacrÃfice.” God stops Abraham’s
hand as he is about to sacrÃfice the child. God had tested Abraham to see if he
was willing to sacrÃfice his own son in obedience to God. Abraham knew it was
God that was telling him to do it.
Abraham knew it wasn’t just his own mind. He
knew he wasn’t being lied to by the devil. He knew it was God who was telling
him to make the sacrifice. Abraham knew he wasn’t crazy and hearing voices. In
obedience to God, Abraham begins to sacrÃfice Isaac but God has the angel stop
his hand and says, “No.” Abraham looked up and a ram was caught in the thicket.
Together with Isaac he sacrifices the ram. We see Abraham teaching Isaac the
blood sacrÃfice, just like we have seen since the garden of Eden. The
sacrificial lamb was symbolic of the Promised Seed. Jesus was the Promised
Seed, the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the earth. The Lamb of
God, “this is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world,” as John
the Baptist would later proclaim.
Where else do we see the sacrÃfice? It’s passed down through
Moses. Moses teaches the children of Israel that the sacrÃfice was a time of
confession, repentance, followed by a time of joy and celebration. They often
would eat the animal that had been sacrificed. Some sacrÃfices would be given
to the High Priest and his family. But at another sacrÃfice, part would be for
the High priest, and the rest for the family of he who was offering the
sacrÃfice. The sacrifice was a time of festival and celebration. But first there
had to be repentance and getting right with God, atonement was sought, having their
sins forgiven was the goal. Then they would
have a celebration, a feast.
In the New Testament, we find over and over again the
writers of the Gospels and letters talking about the imagery of the sacrifice.
In the Old Testamnet we have Isaiah 53, a whole chapter about how the Messiah
would be like a lamb taken to the slaughter. Both Paul and John and Peter talk
about Jesus blood atonement for our sins. The book of Hebrews goes over the
same subject. The atonement has been very strongly presented in the Scriptures.
I can understand how we might think the idea of the atonement is wrong
because of the bad fruit we see in many of the “Christian” believers. But I
don’t think it is the atonement that is wrong. Just because Christians don’t
obey and do what God says, doesn’t mean that we’ve got the idea of atonement
wrong. I think, to a certain extent, we have the idea of the atonement right.
Jesus’s blood does cleanse us from all sin. We just have to believe on Him to
have that cleansing. But what does believe mean? The word “believe” comes from
the Greek word “pisteu.” It means “to drink in.” If we drink something in, it
becomes a very part of us. We show our faith by our works. We show what we
believe by what we do. If we are not doing what Jesus said, do we really
believe in Him?
I think our belief system is very important. Some people may
say they believe in Jesus. But then they have been taught that it is sufficient
to just go to church on Sunday. That’s all they need to do. That’s their
sacrÃfice. They go to the mass and go through a symbolic remebrance of Jesus
dying on the cross. They are taught that the mass or church attendence is all
that is necessary to have atonement. The mass or service is sufficient. But
they haven’t really been taught to obey God’s word. Apostle James tells us, “Be
doers of the word not hearers only deceiving your ownselves.”
In Matthew chapter seven Jesus said some would come saying, “Lord,
Lord,” and yet He would not accept them because they hadn’t really known Him.
They hadn’t really loved Him and obeyed His word as He meant it to be
obeyed.
Jesus told His disciples, “if
you love me, keep my commandments.” Jesus tells the disciples in the sermon on
the mount, that those that just go through the motions, but don’t really love Him,
that aren’t really motivated out of love for Him,
– they are going to be cast out. Maybe Jesus
is talking about those Christians or religious leaders or pharisees or people
that think it’s just sufficient to hear the word of God. They make a claim of
belief, raise their hand to be saved, but then they don’t do what the word
says. They go sinning and supporting sin and not speaking out against it. They
don’t become a new creature, and their inner spiritual man doesn’t grow day by
day. They don’t spend time in God’s word letting it speak to them and
letting it lead them into a deeper life with
Jesus. God’s word is that light that shines in the dark place of our heart,
illuminating us.
I am sorry, I can’t throw away the atonement.
Maybe the church has made the atonement of none affect
through their traditions. The devil has turned it into a escape hatch. People
don’t obey the word of God, they just hear it. “Oh, Jesus has died for my sins,
Goody.” God’s people have had this problem since the dawn of time. They heard
the word, but since it wasn’t mixed with faith and obedience, they didn’t
follow it. If we really believe, then we will do what the word says. I believe,
and Apostle Paul tells us, that what we believe is very important. Our thoughts
influence our actions. That’s why we need to have right thoughts and a right
mind set. You can say you don’t believe in God or in anything, but then why
should you be good? It just doesn’t go together. Ultimately, it’s being
irrational to say that there is no God, but then say you have to be good and do
good. If there is no God then everything is permissible and you don’t have to
do anything. That’s what Dostevosky said. “Without God everything is
permissible.”
So keep God in your life. Be a doer and not a hearer only.
Believe on Jesus because He says that if you believe on Him you would be saved
and have eternal life. He rose from the dead to prove that what He said was true. But He even said, "Just do what I say and you will know whether I am speaking for God or for myself." [3] Remember, believing means receiving and following and
doing, not just hearing. God bless you as you follow Jesus with all your heart.
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