Jerry Gill's Enduring Questions

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE IDEA OF “ATONEMENT”?
Traditionally the idea means that in dying on the cross for humanity’s sins, Jesus Christ satisfied God’s desire for holiness by replacing humanity’s sinfulness with his own holiness and thereby fulfilling God’s requirement for righteousness. Often this theory is referred to as the “Penal Satisfaction” theory of atonement. Jesus thus paid our debt to God for being sinners by dying in our place and satisfying God’s requirement for holiness.
In my mind this whole approach makes no sense at all. It is never explained why God requires a death to satisfy His righteousness. Seems rather bloodthirsty? The Jewish tradition in the Old Testament followed this way of thinking and Paul then built on it in his interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross for all humanity. Throughout its history the Christian Church has wrestled with how to interpret or reinterpret this whole atonement idea for modern times.
As I read the Gospels I see Jesus at the end trying to redefine the meaning of his coming death in terms of his life and teachings. He submits to the trial and death without complaint and asks God to forgive his murderers. The spirit of his life and teachings clearly lived on in his immediate and later followers thereby creating what became the Christian Church, with all the virtues and sins thereto pertaining. This spirit has been picked up and lived out by such great spirits as those of Gandhi, King, Dietrich Bonhoffer and many others in different ways and to various degrees.
This view of the Atonement is explained and discussed in various theological sources, such as Donald Ballie’s God Was In Christ and Gustaf Aulen’s Christus Victor. The key idea is that God never was angry with humanity, but throughout both history and the Old Testament always sought to be fully reconciled with humanity, in spite of the latter’s continuing efforts to try to live on its own without reference to God. This self-centered approach to life by both God’s followers and others has generally led, as contemporary history has shown, to chaos and great suffering, both on humanity’s and Christianity’s part.
In his great novel The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky wrote about how one of the brothers explained that when Jesus was in fact confronted by his accusers and murderers, he smiled and kissed them. The point is to live the love of God as seen in Christ and to thereby render it real in one’s own life, even as Jesus did in absorbing the hate and sin of both the Jewish and Roman leaders who crucified him. Even as God absorbs the sins of all humans century after century.