What Is The Atonement?
It is difficult to answer this question without getting right into spiritual language. There are two crucial ideas we must grasp with the word atonement.
First, look at how the word is formed: at-one-ment. We cannot separate the idea of atonement from the concept of unity. The goal of atonement is and must always be to unify. From this idea we also understand that there has to be more than one party involved.
Second, to atone means to pay for. When a debt payment is satisfied it is atoned for. We don’t use language like this for normal payments because the word carries a heavy legal meaning. I wouldn’t say that I atoned for my coffee when I swipe my credit card at Starbucks. The idea that is conveyed with atonement is that a wrong has been made right—a debt has been paid in such a way that grievances or consequences no longer exist.
I’m specifically trying to not use spiritual language in order to establish the atonement idea before we apply it to our relationship with God. So, to summarize: atonement is a payment that satisfies a debt, removes grievances, and unifies the parties involved. We can see an effort for this in the legal system with possible prison time and debts owed to the offended parties, but this still falls short. There is no payment that can bring back a loved one and most crimes or offenses do not end with the victim and perpetrator in unity with one another.
It is not hard to see how this definition of atonement applies to our relationship with the Lord and what Jesus did on the cross. If we apply these ideas to Christ’s work on the cross we might say that Christ paid our debt, removed the consequences of our sin, and brought us back into right relationship with the Father.
Was the atonement necessary?
In short, absolutely! Our need for atonement is shown all throughout the Scriptures.
A few chapters into Genesis, sin enters the world through Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:1-7). This brings death into the world as God promised it would (Genesis 2:17), and all of humanity is separated from God. God gave his people the law and sacrificial system in the Old Testament to show them their need for atonement (Leviticus 16). Jesus said that he didn’t come into the world to condemn it because it was already condemned (John 3:17-18). Paul told us that everyone has sinned and the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23; 6:23).
There is nothing that humanity needs more than atonement. Without something to pay for our sins, without something to pay the debt that we owe, without something to satisfactorily remove our guilt, we are destined to pay for our sins on our own. The Bible is clear that sin brings physical death and also spiritual death. Without an atonement for our sin, the Bible is clear that we will spend eternity in Hell as a punishment for our sin.
What is accomplished in the atonement?
It is hard to overstate what has been accomplished in the atoning work of Jesus. The first thing we said when defining atonement was to think of it as at-one-ment. This means that even though we have sinned and deserve God’s wrath, even though we are sinful and our filth cannot be in the presence of God’s holiness, through the atonement we are brought into unity with Christ. We were “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:12-13).
Another key aspect of the atonement is that Christ has paid our debt. God is the eternal Creator; for this reason, we are held responsible by him for our actions. Because our sin is against an eternal God, the punishment that is required of us is eternal. The debt we owe is infinite; we could never fully pay for it. However, because Jesus is eternal he can pay an eternal debt, and because he came as a man he can die in our place. So, Christ, in his death and because he lived the perfect life, was able to fully pay our debt and then credit the payment of that debt to us. He has redeemed us “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).
The unity we now have in Christ through the atonement does not happen because God chose to forget about our sin. Before we receive the righteousness of Christ we are enemies of God (Romans 5:10). We were children of wrath (Ephesians 2:10), and God had genuine wrath and fury stored up for our unrighteousness (Romans 2:10). God did not forget about that wrath; he did not sweep it under the rug. His wrath was satisfied with Jesus’ payment for sin. He poured out the full measure of his anger for sin on Jesus. This means that there is no more wrath left for those of us who are in Christ.
Lastly, the atonement brings healing. The first three things we looked at have to do with our standing before God—our separation from him, the debt we owed, and the wrath we bore. All these are taken care of in Christ and that allows true healing to take place. Therapy, self-care, and healing are popular topics these days. This therapeutic culture is empty and unfulfilling as it focuses on ways that we can help ourselves.
In Christ and through his atoning work we realize that we cannot help ourselves. We need someone greater than us to do the work of atoning, and the same thing is true of healing. Therapeutic topics are so popular today because people are longing for real healing. People are truly broken and bearing the weight of their sin, but anything other than the healing work of Jesus and the encouragement of the Spirit is like putting band-aids on a broken leg—it’s not addressing the issue.
Christ can breathe life into our spiritual lungs; he can address the pain and hurt that we have with a treatment that really works. The healing that Christ offers us is complete because in him we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The atonement we receive in Christ is perfect. He has accomplished what we never could to give us the life that we never deserved.