I’m working my way through John Stott’s The Cross of Christ (quite slowly, I might add), and came to his chapter about the problem of forgiveness. I’ve seen quite a few different theories of atonement over the last couple of years, and since I’d never spent a lot of time thinking about it, it’s been pretty interesting to see what’s out there: from the vague atonement=Jesus=the Gospel equation from the Church of the Apostles “Theology Blog”, to the idea that Jesus’ martyr’s death was intended to move us emotionally to repentance.
In his chapter on the problem of forgiveness (Why did Jesus have to die? God could just forgive us if he wanted to.), Stott states succinctly something that I have tried to suggest to a number of people over the last few years, most of whom regarded the idea with disgust:
We can cry “Hallelujah” with authenticity only after we have first cried “Woe is me, for I am lost.” In Dale’s words [R. W. Dale in his book Atonement], “it is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath, that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God.”
I’ve said for quite some time, you can’t appreciate the Good News until you’ve gotten the bad news. Namely, that you’re a sinner, and you have no hope of saving yourself.
I worked for a long time in an environment that was focused on people’s “felt needs”. These generally took the form of fellowship, comfort, security, confidence, stability, counseling, etc. I always felt, and often said – occasionally with other people within earshot – that we needed to focus on the most important, and usually unfelt need, of forgiveness from God. Read more
