So this is one of those soaked in blood Protestant doctrines that I had a hard time letting go of. My whole life I have heard that because we sinned against a holy God we deserved to die. I heard that Adam and Eve succumbed to the wiles of the devil and broke the only existing law of God so God was going to have to kill them. Instead of killing them, he satisfied his wrath and the judicial penalty due by sending his son to be killed on our behalf.
We have to go back to Eden on this one. Actually, we need to go before Eden was even created to set the stage.
Saint Paul, through the power of the Holy Spirit, reveals the Creator’s frame of mind and his motivation before the work of creation ever started.
Before the dust was stirred on what became Adam, God purposed him to be his son. Union and unity with the divine was the plan before day one. Why? Paul says, “for his pleasure” and “in love.”
This is a big deal. God didn’t create us for mindless compliance. He didn’t create us to soothe his egotistical yearning for praise. God created us to be with him and to be like him because it simply made him happy to love us.
Now, let’s travel to Eden. God created Adam and Even in this utopian garden where he said, “It was good.” It was all good.
He also said this, “… of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” not as an arbitrary test of obedience, but as a protective warning as any nurturing parent would.
Well, they did it. They ate. All that was good was marred. They hid from the God they once walked beside. This was a problem much bigger than Adam or Eve could fix.
What would their Father do?
What would you do?
Satan is described as a liar, a thief, a dragon, a deceiver and an adversary set on devouring humanity like a lion devours his prey. And Adam and Eve were now his.
What would you do if your child was kidnapped by someone like that?
God the Father unleashed his fury, not on Adam and Eve, but on their captor. Adam and Eve would have consequences, yes, but the full force of Godhead would be unleashed on the one who stole God’s children. The devil’s open act of war would engage the Lord of Heavens army. This enemy would be crushed (Gen. 3:15).
The incarnate Christ took the battle to Hades the only way could, by becoming man, dying and taking back what was rightfully his- his children.
His death on the cross “disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it (Col. 3:15).
Jesus’ first public reading of scripture quotes a prophesy of Isaiah.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Is 61:1
Atonement for sins was never achieved by Jesus being the whipping post for a vengeful God. Atonement was given as a gift, an act of mercy for lost children taken captive by an enemy they couldn’t escape on their own.
Jews today still observe Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. The ceremony of the scapegoat was a sacred observance in Israel of old. The sins of the people were metaphorically placed on a goat who was sent to the god of the wilderness, Azazel, alive (Lev. 16:10).
Jesus is our Levitical atonement. He carried our sins back to the enemy saying, you can keep this. I will take what is mine. And with the resurrection Jesus climbed out of the grave with you and I in his blood stained grasp.
And now,
“According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3).
