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.
The others truly felt that our best chance to reach people was to find out what they needed/wanted and show them how the church (Jesus was mentioned every once in a while) could provide it. It wouldn’t be practical or effective to try to make people feel guilty. I had a theoretical problem with this.
If you attract a member by catering to a felt need, they come to Jesus to get that need met. For example, if you attract non-believers with a marriage seminar, and tell them that Jesus can fix their marriage, they might show up. But they’re using Jesus as a means to an earthly end. It’s no different than telling people that Jesus wants them to be rich and successful.
When you come to Jesus to fill an earthly need, you miss the point. Not only that, you miss the beauty of His work on the cross. You miss the glory in God becoming flesh and bone - He walked in the places that we walk, lived the life we should have lived, and died the death that we deserve - so that we could come to Him and become blameless in His eyes.
Instead of that, we get Jesus, the divine marriage counselor, life coach, and encouraging buddy. That vision is a bit too small for, as NT Wright says, “the creator God [who] will eventually put all things to rights”
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