This is my next response for my treatise on Why Chrisitianity is REAL, in response to an article at Atheists Alliance International by Bill Flavell’s article, entitled “Eight Reasons Christianity is False”
Atheist Bill’s seventh reason against Christianity:
“7. Christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. God killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son’s legs so I can forgive my neighbor in case she ever parks her car on my drive. It is quite ridiculous..”
Bill makes a personal judgement that stems from his inability to comprehend in a straight line. He says Christian theology is absurd because, as he says, ‘God paid a price to forgive future sin’. Our Christian theology regarding Jesus’ death is tied to previous and current sin, NOT future sin. His premise is incorrect, and leads to a conclusion that is also false.
Explaining this part of Christian theology is a challenge in a short essay. In effect, the starting question should be “why did Jesus have to die? And, along the way we have to understand the nature of sin more effectively.
Why did Jesus die?
- In political terms , the people in power in Jesus’ time felt he committed crimes punishable by death.
- From a theological perspective,
A. There is a price to pay for forgiveness.
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- If you smash my smart-phone, and I say “you are forgiven”, there is still a cost that has to be paid. If it is true forgiveness, I would have to pay for a new phone to cover its replacement. Even if you do not care about me, the cost is still there. Likewise, if you do not believe in God, the cost of forgiveness is still required. God’s cost for forgiveness was paid to cancel existing debts. “13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13–14).
- For more info on forgiveness, consider this solid examination of this subject, entitled Structures of Forgiveness in the Old Testament – FaithTrust Institute
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B. Jesus died to rescue us from the current reality of our condemnation
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- 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)
- Bill’s idea of God forgiving future sin is misinformed. God’s forgiveness should not be seen as a carte blanche solution for anything future. A better understanding is to think of it similar to a bank’s line of credit. In order to get a line of credit, a person has to have something of value, and the bank has to see the person as a low risk to pay back any debt. We are still obligated to seek forgiveness in our current reality- because we are not perfect people, and we will make mistakes.
- Our rescue is an ongoing process in respect to forgiveness. It is not simply a once-and-for-all-its-done process as Bill suggests. As C.S. Lewis said: “Ask God to forgive you, not Excuse you”.
- In this article, Joe Rigney says: … we are perpetually called to come into God’s presence, to unveil ourselves to him. “All of us are worse than we think.” A chief component of this unveiling is the confession of our sins. If we are to come into God’s presence, we must come honestly. We must come as we are. And what we are is a bundle of sins, fears, needs, wants, and anxieties, so our honesty and unveiling must include the confession of sins. Lewis is aware that the confession of sin is difficult and fraught with danger.
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C. Jesus died to demonstrate God’s love, at the point in history when we needed it most.
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- “6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6–8).
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- Peter Abelard (1079-1142) explained it as a way to bring us back to God’s love: “The Son of God took our nature, and in it took upon himself to teach us by both word and example even to the point of death, thus binding us to himself through love. “
- Abelard’s call for the individual to respond to Christ’s death with love still has appeal today. “Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear – love for him that has shown us such grace that no greater can be found.”
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D. Jesus died so that humanity will have a day when we can overcome death.
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- “8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.” (Romans 6:8-9).
- The most comforting thought for a Christian is that death is not an end. It is a beginning, complete with a permanent residence in the presence of God. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. (2 Corinthians 5:1)
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E. Jesus died to destroy Satan’s work.
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- “8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” (1 John 3:8)
- “The work of the devil is to tempt people to sin. When they sin, his work is accomplished. So what the Son of God came to destroy is not just the guilt of sin (which might enable us to stay like we are and go right on sinning into heaven) but actually sinning. The Son of God came to destroy sinning. The work of Satan is to tempt us to reject the authority of God and become like God ourselves. Satan works to nurture and cultivate the pride that puts its own desires above the law of God. This is lawlessness; this is the essence of sin; and this is what the Son of God came to destroy in you and me.” (John Piper) .
