10andBOUNCE said:
FTACo88-FDT24dad said:
10andBOUNCE said:
Christ obviously was perfect and innocent displayed by his life as the God man. But as Peter says, "Christ bore our sins in his body." He is the perfect sacrifice and suffered our punishment for our sins. God was not punishing Him for any of His own transgressions. This is the great exchange of our sin bore on Christ and His righteousness (which is alien to us naturally) given to us. This does nothing but bring us to our knees in complete and utter gratitude.
It brings me to tears in frustration over how you can't see how the idea of God the Father punishing God the Son, who is begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, and God from God and light from light, true God from true God, for something he not only didn't do but could never do, is simply wrong.
What exactly happened on the cross then?
Ok, you asked so here goes:
Most basic theological terms have a Greek or Latin origin with perhaps some Hebrew in there too, but atonement sprang from English. The suffix "-ment" refers to the result of an action. Atonement, therefore, is the result of an action that "atones", which is a contraction of "at one." By making atonement for mankind, Jesus made it so that God and man are no longer separated. They are now "at one" and reconciled with each other.
That is the destination or the end game. Now let's walk through the how.
The story doesn't begin at Calvary. It begins at Eden, when man's willful rejection of God did not merely break a rule. It shattered a relationship, caused human nature to become disordered, and introduced death into a world made by God for life. No creature could repair what had been broken, because the offense was directed against an infinite God. Something, or better said "Someone" of infinite worth was required to restore the order of justice and love. We were lost in our sins.
Then came the so-called Reformation. This is where we begin to run down atonement rabbit trails. The novel Protestant idea of forensic justification and sola fide flatten the cross into a single legal transaction. The atonement is not a single thing. It is an event of numerous different parts and features. It is manifold in its nature. The notions of redemption, ransom, victory, sacrifice, satisfaction, example, and substitute are all used to describe and explain it. All of those aspects are present in what Christ did.
Let's look at some.
1. The Sacrifice of the Perfect Offering of Christ.
The cross is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Every lamb offered in the Temple was pointing forward to the Lamb of God. Jesus, as both priest and victim, offered Himself once and for all (Hebrews 9:12). This sacrifice is not repeated but re-presented in every Mass, the same sacrifice, made present across time, although we are not re-crucifying the Lamb of God. We are re-presenting the once for all sacrifice of the Lamb that stands "as though being slain" RIGHT NOW in heaven.
2. Satisfaction or Restoring the Order of Justice
St. Anselm of Canterbury theorized that Christ satisfied God's justice by restoring the honor of God, which man had offended by sin. Since Christ satisfied God on our behalf vicariously, theories of this nature are called vicarious satisfaction theories. The Council of Trent affirmed that the Cross made satisfaction for sin, not because God needed to be appeased like a pagan deity, but because justice and love are not in opposition. True love cannot simply ignore the gravity of evil. Humanity owes a debt to God, not to the devil. Our injustices have stolen from the justice of God and therefore must be paid back.
3. Substitution. Jesus Did What We Could Never Do
The concept of substitution is central to understanding the cross. By dying, Jesus in some sense substituted for us. He did something we otherwise would have had to do for ourselves, and were incapable of doing. He stood in our place, not because the Father is wrathful toward the Son, but because the Trinity, in an act of perfect love, chose to absorb the consequences of sin from within human nature.
4. Victory (Christus Victor) or The Defeat of Death and the Devil
This is the most ancient strand of atonement theology, beloved by the Church Fathers. Christ descended into death and destroyed it from the inside. By dying without sin, He robbed death of its power. The Resurrection is not an epilogue to the atonement; it is the atonement completed. Calvary without Easter is only half the story.
5. Moral Exemplar as the Pattern of Self-Gift
The cross also reveals the shape of love itself. Christ's death shows what it looks like to love without limit, to lay down one's life for another (John 15:13). This is not the whole of the atonement, but it is a real dimension of it and one with radical practical implications for Christian discipleship.
What's missing entirely from all that is any hint of some sort of divine punishment. There is no hint that God the Father poured wrath upon an innocent Son as a legal penalty, as though the Father and Son were in opposition. That contradicts literally everything about Christianity. Such a model gives an image of a monstrous God, destroys the coherence of Christian doctrine on the goodness of God, His Triune nature, and the consubstantiality of the Father and Son. The Father did not punish the Son. The Son, in union with the Father, freely chose to enter into the depths of human suffering and sin to transform them from within. And the Father looked upon the Son's act as an act infinite love, worthy of paying the debt we owed.
In summary:
The Second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully man, offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice, priest, victim, and altar, restoring what sin had broken, defeating what sin had unleashed, and revealing the love that had always been driving the entire story from the moment of creation. The cross is not a transaction between an angry Father and a suffering Son. It is the Trinity's own love poured out into a broken world, meeting humanity at its lowest point and lifting it to union with God. If you wonder what the love of the Trinity is all about, look at a crucifix.
St. Paul captures it well in 2 Corinthians 5:19: "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our trespasses against us."
That is atonement. That is the cross.
