Writer's Update: On Atonement

This is the quietest I've ever been in terms of writing output - but be assured, I haven't lost interest, and I still feel like I have a million things left to say. At the moment I'm preoccupied with exciting outside projects to do with wedding planning and house ventures, so this is definitely the season for putting the pen down.

However, a friend asked me for my thoughts on atonement, so I jotted down brief response, which some readers may find of interest. Reprinted here:

Atonement means reparation for wrongs we have committed. We are all riddled with faults, mistakes and regrets, but most times they get suppressed into the emotional sub-ducts of the unconscious, where they never get dealt with properly. We have all done a lot wrong, so guilt is an appropriate emotion, but not an absolutely compelling one, because we need more, which I’ll try to flesh out. Now of course it’s always good to acknowledge past mistakes, and seek forgiveness when appropriate, but in a profound way, those sentiments, if left as that stage, will actually make us worse in the long run, not better, because we’ll be relying on our own steam, and that is not what we were created for.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrews atoned for their sins by sacrificing the blood of their livestock. But in the New Testament, Christ has made a perfectly sufficient atonement for our sins, on our behalf, with His own blood for all those who will trust in Him (which is why He is called the Lamb of God). That is why self-atonement will never ultimately work – because we can never pay for ourselves what has already been paid for us by God. If we could, Christ wouldn’t have taken up His cross; and if we try to pay for it ourselves, we deny Christ in the process, and that will not help us either, as the book of Hebrews says:

"For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.”

Yes, on the one hand it’s true that it’s essential for human well-being and contentment that we understand our sins, amend our behaviour to correct them, and seek forgiveness from God and from others. There is just no other way one can be a fulfilled human being without it, despite the ways we deceive ourselves to the contrary. But underpinning this truth is an even more primary one: that we are all equally forgiven sinners, and all equally loved by God, and Christ died on the cross to buy us the free gift of salvation through grace. Therefore, we are to improve ourselves and seek goodness, but under the strength of Christ’s love and guidance, knowing the prize has already been won for us. As Philip Yancey says in his excellent book What's So Amazing About Grace?:

“There is nothing we can do to make God love us more; and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less”.

What a profound statement that is we could spend literally months unpacking it, and still only skim the surface. Under Christ’s headship, we have an interesting but complex phenomenon: we have to seek the truth in a way that recognises our own wrongdoings, but equally we are compelled to love ourselves and be kind and generous to ourselves in order to reflect the love Christ has for us, and the grace He showed us on the cross. At the surface level, this seems like a bipolarity of tension, where we are asked to be harder on ourselves than we are used to (in terms of recognising our sin) but kinder to ourselves than we are used to because of Christ’s love and grace towards us (see 1 John 1:7 – “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin).

That’s also true at a psychological level: holding on to anger, resentment and guilt is worse for our well-being than owning those things through repentance. The better we want to become, the harder we want to try to eradicate even those small faults that wouldn’t have bothered us so much when we weren’t trying so hard. Striving to be excellent human beings makes it easier to atone (because we have more humility) but also easier to frame our atonement within the power of God’s grace. Knowing we will never be good enough by ourselves is, in fact, one of the most liberating self-discoveries we will ever make. It is the doorway to seeing grace for the first time, knowing God in Christ - and it is like discovering a little bit of Heaven on earth.