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[Mr. Sensible]

If God created sin and he's the supreme authority, why does he need atonement to get rid of sin. Why can't he just forgive?

[jimwalton]

First of all, sin is a legal matter, not just an offense. Sin creates an imbalance, like a debt, and a separation, like a breach of contract, and so it requires specific measures to make it right. But we need to address a few other misunderstandings before we proceed.

God didn't create sin. Sin is a action of rebellion, defiance, or disobedience against who God is and what He did create. People created sin and set the universe askew.

God is the supreme authority, but it's a mistake to think God's all-powerfulness (omnipotence) puts Him in a position to do anything and everything. There are a lot of things God can't do:

- He can’t do what is logically absurd or contradictory (make a square circle)
- He can’t act contrary to his nature (be something he is not)
- He cannot fail to do what he has promised (which is acting contrary to his nature)
- He cannot interfere with the freedom of man (or we are not free)
- He cannot change the past (because past time is an inviolable truth)

So we have to temper your ideas about God and supreme authority. He is omnipotent, of course, and He is the supreme authority, but that doesn't mean He can do absurd or contradictory things.

Atonement, therefore, is a necessary correcting of an imbalance that can't be corrected in any other way. He can't just "make it go away." It doesn't work that way. He has to deal with it in ways that are properly restorative. The breach must be repaired and the imbalance must be made right.

The universe is out of whack ("fallen" is the theological term). If He were just to wave his arm and put it, um, back in whack, it wouldn't be made right because all of what caused the problem still exists.

So maybe you're wondering, "Well, why doesn't he just fix us all so that the problem DOESN'T still exist?" Because the fix is a love relationship, and you can't just wave a magic wand and MAKE people love you. If you MAKE people love you, it isn't love. The only way to right the wrong is to right the wrong, fix the imbalance, and then build a bridge of love and invite people to cross it and come home to you. But if they don't come, you can't make them. It's not love unless they come on their own. So he can OFFER forgiveness, but he can't have a reconciled relationship unless you respond to his invitation of love.

This is where He is holding out his hand to you. He has done everything necessary to put the universe back to rights. He has fixed the breach and built the bridge. He has extended an invitation, and assured you of his love and forgiveness if you will just come to Him. Then you (and anyone else who will come) will experience forgiveness full and free. It's a fantastic work that He has done and such a generous invitation to you. You might want to consider responding to it.

[Mr. Sensible]

God can decide whether something is good or not. The people of Moses' time had to follow the food laws, not following the food laws would be a sin but later God supposedly finished the law so sin isn't always independent from God. God can decide what constitutes to a sin. I understand what you're saying but why isn't that all possible without atonement?

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the reply. The food laws are in Leviticus 11, and they are a matter of "clean" or "unclean," purity and holiness vs. defilement. Leviticus (as well as the whole Law of Moses) was not a judicial tool for society but rather was a revelation of the character of God. It's about holiness and how to have a relationship with God. The food laws were symbolic of the distinctions between the people of God and the people outside of God.

No one has yet figured out the logic and patterns of the food laws. There are as many theories as there are theorists. Some of the more prominent possibilities are...

1. The list is arbitrary. There is no rhyme or reason to it.
2. The list is hygienic: the forbidden animals are carriers of disease.
3. The list is symbolic. The behavior of animals corresponds to and informs the behavior of man. The tabooed animals are those whose ways do not exemplify proper conduct. Conversely, if they remind man of virtue they are adjudged to be edible.
4. The need to teach reverence for the sanctity of life
5. An analogy to God’s holy sacrificial "diet"
6. Nonpermitted animals depart from the creation ideal of life in that they are associated with death in various ways.

But these are theories. No one really knows. What is clear, however, is that they are not associated with sin. That concept is foreign to the text. Rituals are given in the case of infraction, but none of the rituals is a sin offering. Sin has to be dealt with very specifically.

So I'm not sure I agree with you that "God can decide whether something is good or not." I think I know what you mean, but it's a misleading statement. God decided what was clean or unclean, acceptable or detestable, but we have to be careful about using the word "good" to describe it, because good has its own orbit of implications.

> not following the food laws would be a sin but later God supposedly finished the law so sin isn't always independent from God.

There are all kinds of problems with this segment.

- not following the food laws is never labelled as a sin
- later God finished the law — true, but I don't know what that has to do with anything
- sin isn't always independent from God. Yes it is. I don't understand this assertion or where it comes from.

> God can decide what constitutes to a sin.

This isn't true either. Sin is anything contrary to the character of God. God didn't decide on His character, He just is what He is. So God didn't decided what constitutes a sin, because sin is what God isn't.

[Mr. Sensible]

Fair enough, but why does God have to sacrifice himself to forgive sin? Why can't he just forgive?

[jimwalton]

As I said, there are some things that happened there that have to be righted. The most important is that sin necessarily brings death, so God had to not only deal with the sin (forgiveness), but he had to deal with the death that was part of it. Otherwise it would have been like a doctor giving you medicine to suppress your cough but doing nothing about the thing stuck in your throat that was causing the cough.

The cross is not just a declaration of righteousness ("OK, you can have your sins forgiven"). It's not an amnesty. The wrong is not righted if God just forgives your sin; he has to do something about it. The sin, the error, the evil has to be wiped out and balanced. Sure he can wipe away tears, he can forgive sin, but that only deals with one surface and not with the real problem. Forgiveness is only one layer of what Christ did on the cross. He had to deal with the evil that causes sin and the death and accompanied it.

[Mr. Sensible]

If we die and God says, "I understand you made mistakes, but you asked for forgiveness and because of that I forgave," I don't see an issue with that. I also don't understand if it was actually a sacrifice, Jesus didn't even remain dead for three days; and we know his essence is immortal and so was it even a sacrifice? He knew he'd be risen again and he might not have even felt pain if he was fully God.

[jimwalton]

I've already explained. There's far more to it than just forgiveness. It's not just, "Oh, you killed my wife, I forgive you." I'll give you a silly analogy, but it's to make a point that there's more to it. Suppose I find out you have planted a hydrogen bomb in New York City. So I say to you, "Well, that was a mistake, but I forgive you." That's not good enough. A bomb is going to go off, so it's not a matter of forgiveness alone, but of finding the bomb and disarming it. That's the issue you keep missing. There is more going on than just forgiveness.

Then you turn to a completely different question: How is Jesus' sacrifice actually a sacrifice since he didn't stay dead?

Resurrection didn't nullify the sacrifice. Flogging and crucifixion were horrific tortures. Flogging is said to have been an unparalleled brutality. Texts report that often bones or entrails were hanging out by the end of flogging. Many reputedly died from the flogging and never made it to the crucifixion. Crucifixion, on top of that—unspeakable. You think this was not a sacrifice? Would you volunteer for it if it was so insignificant (even if you'd be OK three days later)?

A soldier goes into battle and gets killed. He sacrificed his life for his country. But let's say they medivac his body out of there, work on him in the chopper and get his heart beating again, get him into surgery and fix him, then he didn't make a sacrifice for his country, he just lost some time?

Theologically the difference is that the point of sacrifice is the gift and the dedication, not the perpetual cessation. While sacrifice was often to the death (rather than just "to the pain"), it was not always the case. There were grain sacrifices, and sacrifices where a goat was sent into the desert, for example. Because Jesus sacrificed his life and took it up again in 3 days doesn't mean the sacrifice was neither real nor illegitimate for the purpose at hand.