The Atonement Teaching Makes Me Groan





I always feel uneasy when I hear Christian preachers explain the Atonement.

The most common teaching is that when Adam and Eve sinned, they offended God, and were put out of fellowship with him. In order to get back into fellowship, God required his perfect, sinless son, Jesus, to be brutally beaten and murdered. The death of Jesus satisfied God, and so fellowship could be resumed.

Adam's, sin is described as a debt. God could not just forgive the debt because He is perfectly Just, and Justice demands that every law broken must be paid for. So someone had to pay the debt to satisfy God's Justice. Since Adam was a perfectly sinless man, before he sinned, it would take a perfectly sinless man to pay the debt.

The Satisfaction Theory says God orchestrated his own beloved son's extremely violent, excruciatingly painful death by crucifixion.


The thing that makes me feel uneasy is I always ask myself: "What kind of a God would do this to his beloved son?" What father would kill his innocent son to atone for the sins of his guilty sons?

God, The Trickster

There are some who teach this Satisfaction Theory who make it all look like a trick on God's part.  The Satisfaction Theory accuses God  of being deceitful. They say God himself came to the earth, as the son, and paid the debt. But If a perfect, sinless man had to pay the debt, then God in the form of  a man, paying himself a debt is just a charade. And it's a rather mean charade because it draws humans like Judas, and Pilate, the Romans and  some  hapless Jews into murdering him. Why make them accomplices in his deception?

I cannot accept this explanation of an angry God deceiving people, or pulverizing his Beloved. This disturbing Satisfaction Theory of Atonement was the brain child of a Catholic Monk named Anselm who lived around 1000 A.D. Despite its thousand year run, I think it is flawed, and creates an image of a violent God who condones violence. 

Among the Theories on the Atonement We Have
  1. The Moral Influence Theory (Clement 100 AD)  -The cross shows God's love and draws men to him. 
  2. The Recapitulation Theory (Ireneus 200  AD) - simply by becoming united to human nature the God/man infuses and changes our nature. Christ did this by his incarnation rather than his crucifixion. 
  3. The Ransom Theory (400  AD.) The ransom (Christ's death) was paid to the Devil
  4. The Satisfaction Theory (Anselm 1000  AD) God, being divine received a divine insult to his honor and dignity when Adam sinned, and only a divine God/man could pay a satisfactory penalty.
  5. The Penal Theory (Calvin 1600  AD) Christ's death was like a criminal's fine being paid. we criminals (sinners) were set free when the God/man paid our price-which was his blood spilled in death.
  6. The Governmental Theory (Hugo Grotius mid 1600s  AD) All the sins of the world entered Yahshuah's body on the cross and God punished  all sins, by the death of of his sin bearing son. All sin debts are now canceled

The Last Supper Wisdom Theory  (2007 AD)


My  view of the Atonement is based on what Jesus said at the Last Supper when he held up the cup. He did not say this is my blood to appease an angry God. He did not say this is my blood to pay the penalty demanded by justice. He did not say this is my blood to prove God loves you. He did not say this is my blood to prove I love God and I love you. He did not say this is my blood to conquer the devil. He did not say this is my blood to liberate you from slavery, racism, sexism, poverty, or misogynistic patriarchy. He said

"This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is poured for many." (Mark 14:24).  So his blood was not to pay a price, but to start a new  covenant. In Hebrew the word for  covenant is Berith "cutting". There are four or five Beriths in the Bible. God made a Berith with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and of the blood of Yahshuah "cut" the New Berith.

                                                                                         So What is the New Berith?

The New Berith, or the wine that was in the cup of Yahshuah was his teaching (his wisdom)  on how to be reconciled to the father. It is his teaching that is the New Berith.  The Wine is the blood of wisdom. He said:

If a man loves me, he will keep my teachings, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. (Jn.14:23,24)

The goal of his blood (wisdom) is to have the Father and Yahshuah living in your body as their temple. That's what it means to be born again and to be in the Kingdom and to inherit the Promised Land. Yahshuah poured out his blood (wisdom) not by dying a sacrificial death to pay a price, but by living and speaking wisdom. You enter the New Covenant by obeying his teachings.

Whoever keeps my words will never see death.

So I insist Yahshuah did not die to appease an angry God,  but he lived  to reveal to us a loving Father who longed to birth us into his family and give us a kingdom of love. I have long struggled with the idea taught to me that Yah was loving, but he was so "just" that he could never freely pardon and show mercy to us. And yet the message of Yah to us is to forgive and show mercy. How could he ask that of us, if he was incapable of modeling it for us? I now believe that I was taught a false view of Yah further compounded by faulty translations.

Yahshuah's entire life was about mercy and not  sacrifice and propitiation.

"For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6)

I further believe that Yahshuah knew he would be murdered, but that was not his intention. He intended to surrender to Satan as a ransom so that all who became his followers could be redeemed from the Land of Death. He new that Satan would renege on the deal and kill him with every intention of keeping him and his followers forever in the Land of Death. Yahshuah further understood that once Satan killed him then Satan would lose his power over him, for Satan was not allowed to kill an innocent man. Satan either did not know Yahshuah was sinless or if he did, he was convinced that once he got him on th cross he would fall into the sin of despair and Satan could forever claim him. Yahshuah remained victorious throughout the torture and crucifixion and thus  defeated Satan, sin and death.

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