The Atoning Work of Christ: “I can’t get no, satisfaction!”

2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (NRSV)

¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^d not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ^[1]

                “Pastor, why does there have to be a ‘blood sacrifice’?  I’ve never understood how the shedding of one’s blood, could atone for another’s sin.  So we’ve sinned against God.  What good does sacrificing a sheep or a bull do?”  More to the point, was Jesus’ death necessary for our forgiveness, or could there be something else going on here?

                Can forgiveness be freely offered?  Or must there be some objective act of satisfaction in order to open up the possibility of forgiveness?
                I continue to focus my thoughts and reflections around the concept of intimacy with God and one another as the final objective of Christ’s ministry of reconciliation.  I must confess that the only way I can make sense of our relationship with God is to compare and understand how our relationships with one another work.
                Last month my wife and I celebrated our 34^th wedding anniversary.  There are a lot of things that go into a marriage that lasts 34 years, or a life-time for that matter.  Obviously, a great deal of love freely given and gratefully received is a wonderful place to start.  Another equally obvious thing is that for relationships to last and to grow in intimacy over the years there will need to be a willingness and capacity to forgive.  To put it differently, if you are going to insist on keeping score, there is going to be hell to pay down the road.
                In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^d not counting their trespasses against them.
The basis for intimacy, forgiveness, and reconciliation is in not keeping score.  It is not about retaining meticulous records of all the wrongs done and demanding some action to correct the wrong or compensate (make satisfaction for) the wrong done. 
                One of the things I learned about myself in the years past is that part of my psychological profile is distinctively “shame based”.  One dimension of that shame based profile is “to never bury the hatchet”, or more specifically, never forget a wrong as the day may come when you may need the ammunition.  This became particularly clear when I reflected on memories of hurts that I was preserving from the earliest days of my life and of my marriage.  Such a memory is an act of score keeping.  And as long as we continue to keep score, as long as the days of our lives are counted in terms of merits and demerits, forgiveness is not possible.
                Now if I was totally honest, I’d probably confess that within our marriage I have a lot more to be forgiven for, than I have to forgive.  But again, that is just another way of score keeping.  Would forgiveness be served if at the end of the day, my wife and I could look at each other and say, “OK, you have done this and I that, we’re even.  Let’s call it good.”  Or more to the point, if I were unfaithful to my wife, is there anything that I could do, any price that I could pay, that would merit her forgiveness and justify it?  Going back to the original question posed by my parishioner, if I sacrificed our family pet would that atone for my sins?  What about a child?  Does blood have to be shed in order for sin to be forgiven?
                In my example, if forgiveness were possible in that situation, it would only be possible as a free gift of grace, offered unconditionally because of the love that defines the relationship.  It would be a conscious choice on one person’s part of “not counting (the other’s) trespasses against them.”
                This I believe is the reconciling work of God in Christ Jesus.  It is about not counting trespasses.  It is about the Son declaring from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  It is about God loving us unconditionally, in spite of ourselves.
                There is an old adage that “Love is blind.”  Loving intimacy is not blind, it just doesn’t keep score.

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d  Or God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

[1]  The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989

d  Or God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

Sin is not an STD

For some, the title to this article might sound to be a radical departure from Christian theology.  For others it might seem a statement so obvious it’s hardly worth stating.  What continually amazes me is how much has been invested in this line of thinking over the centuries.  Jesus had to be born of a virgin so as not be infected with the fallen condition of humanity.  And that further, Mary, Mother of our Lord, must have been conceived “immaculately”, so as not to infect Christ within her womb.  Of all the Christian Doctrines, I believe that the doctrine of original sin is one that we struggle the most to communicate in the context of a contemporary world view.  That little baby just doesn’t appear to be representative of “total depravity” and deserving of nothing but eternal damnation.

“You want some food for thought concerning original Sin?  We cannot perceive the world except through our own eyes, meaning that our world view will always be self-centered, and our actions so disposed.”  This is a paraphrase of a comment that Dr. Roy Harrisville made in one of my seminary classes.  It deserves some thoughtful consideration.

About twenty years ago, Lutheran Community Services conducted a parenting class in my congregation.  I will always remember the observation they shared.  “The work of adolescence is differentiation.  Many parents see this as ‘rebellion’, but in truth, every adolescent must differentiate themselves from their parents in order to prepare to enter into adulthood.”

Martin Buber writes in “I and Thou”, (pg 112):

“Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.
Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.
One is the spiritual form of natural differentiation, the other that of natural association.
          The purpose of setting oneself apart is to experience and use, and the purpose of that is ‘living’—which means dying one human life long.
          The purpose of relation is the relation itself—touching the You.  For as soon as we touch a You, we are touched by a breath of eternal life.

This is the cycle of not only human relationships, but of the entirety of creation.  Differentiation and Association.  Each entity, whether it be the celestial bodies, or developing fetus within a mother’s womb, the galaxies and solar systems, the emerging cells within each living thing, are continually and simultaneously in this process of differentiation and association.

It is for the sake of Love that God created the world.  And God’s ultimate purpose is loving intimacy with all of creation, and with each individual person.  But intimacy with an Other, requires both differentiation and association.  In other words, we had to first be able to say “No!”, in an adolescent like rebellion in order that we could then say “Yes!” to the invitation to loving intimacy with God.  God had unity prior to the creation of the world.  All that was, was God.  But in creating the Other, God sacrificed unity for the sake of intimacy.  Differentiation of our wills from God’s may well be seen as an act of defiance, and often it is exactly that.  But in that God’s ultimate purpose is an intimate loving relationship with each of us and all of creation, it is also a necessary precondition for our being able to associate with God, in love.

Confessions of a Confessional Lutheran

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today^[1]”   [Acts 22:3, NRSV]

I could paraphrase this:  “I am a Confessional Lutheran, born in a pastor’s household, brought up in the Lutheran Churches, studied at the feet of Nestingen, educated strictly according to the Book of Concord, being committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, just as all of you are.”  I could add to this that as Nestingen’s teaching assistant I tested my classmates on their memorization of the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession.  And for twenty three years now I have been preaching and teaching each on a regular basis.

Now for my confession:  As the years have gone by I have found that the traditional language of Law and Gospel, so firmly rooted in our tradition, mandated by our constitutions, and the very framework of the Confessions that define Lutheranism – no longer are persuasive to me.  My fundamental problem is that though we hold firm to Paul and Luther’s understandings that we are justified by faith, apart from works prescribed by the law, we have nevertheless retained a fundamentally legalistic world view.  Rather than come to a new understanding of the Gospel that has nothing to do with “the Law”, “the Law” remains fundamentally determinative for our relationship with God.  The Gospel has been added, yes.  It is seen as the cure demanded by the Law.  But the Law remains.

We have a “cure” for the condemnation that the Law exacts, and so we will continue to “wound with the Law” that we may “cure with the Gospel”.  What if that wasn’t what God ever intended?  What if the reason God sent Jesus was not to first beat us up, convicting us of our sins, so that then he could forgive us?  What if it was simply about a loving God reaching out to those that God loves, seeking nothing more, but also nothing less, than an intimate relationship with us all? 

If St. Augustine could begin his “Confessions” with the line “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”, the thought of Intimacy with God is clearly not some new and novel thinking.  Loving intimacy is not a concept that can be defined legally.  If we read scripture from the standpoint of a theology of intimacy what we find is that this theme is clearly present throughout the biblical witness.  But if we develop our understanding of God’s relationship with the world as being defined by a quest for intimacy, we will end up with a much different world view than when we begin from the starting point of law and obedience.

Previously, I have written about my concerns that we no longer share a world view that centers on a cosmic battle between the forces of Good and Evil.  I also have shared that I do not believe that it is all about “playing by the rules”.  The polarity that I am suggesting truly reflects the world in which we live, is a polarity of “intimacy” versus “estrangement”.  It is purely for love that God has created us.  And the only thing God desires of us, is that we love even as God has first loved us.  This is not radical language.   It is at the very heart of the biblical witness.  But love and intimacy can never be defined by the Law.  Hence, I find myself compelled to reexamine our traditional teachings that presuppose the Law as the fundamental framework of our relationship to God.

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^[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Ac 22:3