Daily Lesson for July 11, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Numbers chapter 35 verse 31:

“Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is subject to the death penalty; a murderer must be put to death.”

I have been thinking some this summer on the doctrine of Atonement and it’s central question: Why did Jesus die on the cross?

I, of course, grew up hearing judicial explanations using analogies from the realm of criminal justice.  The whole idea was that it is a matter of justice owed to God for human sin and the sin required death. Jesus died his death in our stead.  He died and because his life was perfect we all went free. 

But the justice analogy is fundamentally, well, unjust. What kind of courtroom would allow a convicted murderer condemned to death to be replaced on death row by another, innocent person?  Mothers and grandmothers would line up the world over to give their lives on behalf of their wayward children. This would never be justice. It would be chaos.  And the whole judicial system would collapse. 

I am thinking the whole judicial model of the atonement needs to collapse also. The idea that God had to mete out punishment is in the first place an undermining of the whole concept of forgiveness in the first place.  And, the idea that one person — even a perfect person — can actually repay the sins of a transgressor is a bizarre and entirely unsatisfying notion of justice. The whole law and order analogy of the atonement is itself actually fundamentally unlawful.

I don’t know how to solve this. I’m going to be reading up on other ways of thinking about atonement in the coming months. But one thing I know for sure: it makes no sense to take a fundamentally unjust resolution and ascribe it to defend the bloodthirsty actions of a purportedly just God.

What if God isn’t bloodthirsty at all?  What if God forgives without the demand of blood payment? What if, as Jesus quoted, God “desires mercy and not sacrifice”?

That would change a whole of our theology.  And I think it would change it for the better.