God the Father is doing everything God can do to help willing individuals to fulfill their earthly objective which includes (at great personal cost to God) the allowing a willing Christ to go to the cross.
Christ is not trying to “pay off the debt created by our sins” since our sins created an impossible debt to pay. That “debt” cannot be paid (it is totally irreconcilable) but it can be “forgiven”. God’s Love can allow Him to forgive our huge debt without Christ going to the cross. Christ is not trying to make “restitution” for us (that is not possible), but is providing a way for us as children to be disciplined (disciplining is not bringing about restitution) so the disciplining does not have to equal the “restitution” or hell for those that refuse the disciplining in this life. Discipline is not punishment although in scripture negative discipline is often translated punishment.
The analogy of a ransoming is not an analogy, but an actual ransom, an excellent fit to what is happening Christ, Paul, John, Peter and the author of Hebrews all use it, but that does not mean the Ransom theory of atonement is correct for many reasons including God not owing satan anything and God not needing to pay satan to get His children back. We, as sinners, are holding captive in sin ourselves; we are the kidnappers of our own self. When we appeal to an unbeliever to become free, the person holding him back is himself. We do not pray to God to release the individual and we do not perform an exorcism on the individual. The prodigal son was not stolen away and chained to the pigsty, but the prodigal son held himself in the pigsty until he came to his senses.
The payment of Christ’s tortured, humiliated and murdered experience is to the individual sinner and it is up to him/her to accept or reject the payment.
The “value/ benefit” is only realized by the believer in that this is what the unbeliever has caused Christ to go through and it is purely his individual responsibility that Christ went through this torture and murder. He the individual could have provided “another way” if he had just not sinned and fulfilled his objective without sinning (God could have known a person way in the future fulfilled the objective without sinning (mean there was another way).
Realize what I cause cuts to the heart (is the worst feeling I could have and I am reminded of that feeling and almost repeated at every Lord’s Support, like those in Acts 2:27). The only think that keeps me from collapsing every time I think about what I caused is the fact there is also being shown the greatest Love possible at this same time. I have been forgiven of causing Christ to be crucified, which has to be the greatest offence I could do.
Realizing how much I have personally been forgiven of compels me to Love much.
For me to Love much, I have to be forgiven much and like those on Pentecost, being forgiven of crucifying the Messiah is an unbelievable much to be forgiven of.
Paul seems to convey this idea with Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ…”, Paul is not saying Christ took my place in His crucifixion, but says he has been crucified with Christ. While Christ was being crucified I would think out of a strong empathy for Christ God the Father was being crucified with Christ and would have experienced even great pain and sorrow. As our Love for Christ grows will we not experience a greater empathy for what Christ went through?
If a child correctly experiences Loving discipline than that child will have a much closer stronger relationship with the Loving disciplining father afterwards.
This explains the part faith plays in atonement, since the atonement sacrifice is not accepted by the nonbeliever and thus is not disciplined by it.
The sacrifice is made to God since God sees its need for man and thus out of Love for man the wills Christ freely go to the cross, but it is a gift to man to help man with his/her objective of obtaining Godly type Love.
Can anyone say: “My little sins are not that significant”?
Paul in Ro. 3:25 giving the extreme contrast between the way sins where handle prior to the cross and after the cross, so if they were actually handled the same way “by the cross” there would be no contrast, only a time factor, but Paul said (forgiven) sins prior to the cross where left “unpunished” (NIV), but that also should mean the forgiven “sinner” after the cross were punished.
From Romans 3: 25 Paul tells us: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. …
Another way of saying this would be “God offers the ransom payment (Christ Crucified and the blood that flowed from Him) to those that have the faith to receive that ransom. A lack of faith results in the refusal of the ransom payment (Christ crucified).
God is not the undeserving kidnapper nor is satan, but the unbeliever is himself is holding back the child of God from the Father, that child that is within every one of us.
Paul goes on to explain:
Ro. 3: 25 …He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished
I do not like the word “unpunished” but would use “undisciplined”.
So prior to the cross repentant forgiven people (saved individuals) could not be fairly and justly disciplined for the rebellious disobedience, but after the cross if we repent (come to our senses and turn to God) we can be fairly and justly disciplined and yet survive.
God and Christ would have personally preferred Christ’s blood to remain flowing through his veins, but it is I that need to have that blood outside of Christ flowing over me and in me cleansing my heart. I need to feel that blood and know it is cleansing me.
If you think about the crucifixion, you would realize at the time, Christ was on the cross God in heaven out of empathy/Love for Christ would be experience an even greater pain than Christ. We as our Love grows and our realization of what we personally caused Christ to go through will feel the death blow to our hearts (Acts 2:37). We will experience the greatest pain we could experience and still live, which is the way God is disciplining us today and for all the right reasons because Loving discipline correctly accepted results in a wondrous relationship with our parent. (We can now comfortably feel justified before God.)
