He Came Preaching the Pardon of God

We don’t need elaborate theories of the atonement to see why his death is for us

We’re in the twilight of Lent, a time every year when Christians— preachers especially— wrestle in earnest with the question at the heart of the Church’s faith, “Why was Jesus Christ crucified?”

The Apostle Paul says we all have the law tattooed on our hearts. We just can’t help ourselves. We’re hard-wired to think in terms of merit and demerit, earning and deserving, cause and effect. It’s not surprising, therefore, that just as we’re hard-wired to want a preacher to exhort us in Jesus’s name, we also want a preacher to explain to us the reason for his death. The language of the law is not imprecise.

Any account, on God’s side of the ledger, that necessitates the crucifixion— God’s honor, for example— makes the law almighty over the God who has told us he is slow to anger, rich in mercy, and abounding in steadfast love.

Even if you’ve never been to seminary, you know what the church has termed (with an appropriate amount of hedging) “atonement theories.”

Jesus paid it all, the hymn sings. In Christ alone, “the wrath of God was satisfied” a contemporary song summaries the old, old story. At least the roadside signs and Christian kitsch are more honest about the transactional nature of these theories, reducing the Gospel story to a math equation, “1 cross + 3 nails = 4given.”

Stanley Hauerwas often quips about Easter:

“If you had an explanation for the resurrection, you should worship that explanation not Jesus Christ.”

Likewise, if there’s an eternal law which requires Jesus to solve the roadside equation, then we should worship that all-determinative law rather than Jesus or the other members of the Trinity.

Martin Luther called such explanations of the crucifixion “covering the cross with roses,” for they hide the brute and immediate fact that Jesus dies on the cross because we killed him.

Perhaps more critically, “theories” of atonement that make the cross a legal necessity on the way to divine pardon ignore the clear testimony of the evangelists in the Gospels.

• Jesus doesn’t die so that God can forgive us.

• Jesus comes proclaiming the forgiveness of God.

• Christ preaches the pardon of God from the very start of the Gospel— hell, this is why we killed him!

In a justly famous sermon, “Jesus Died for You,” the theologian Gerhard Forde quickly summarizes the various atonement motifs at work in the history of the Church. He considers especially the most prominent theme in Christian interpretation, Substitution.

Hewing close to his text, Forde says:

“All we need to do is to look carefully at what actually happened…“God didn’t have to be paid to forgive, but announced forgiveness through Jesus to begin with. But that is when the trouble starts. For we would not have it… we don’t need elaborate theories or doctrines of the atonement to see why his death is for us. We lay hands on him and put him to death. And he does not stop us.”