A Meditation on Models of the Atonement

 

I'm thinking about atonement this week. Here are four questions Metropolitan Kallistos Ware offers that I'm finding helpful as I contemplate the possible ways to understand what Christ has done for us.

<1) Does it envisage a change in God or in us? “Some theories of Christ’s saving work seem to suggest that God is angry with us, and what Christ has done is to satisfy God’s anger. But that cannot be right. It is we who need changing, not God. As St. Paul said, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). It is the world that needs to be reconciled to God, not God to the world.”>

Lord, In what ways do I need to be changed, in order to be reconciled to You?

<2) Does it separate Christ from the Father? “Some theories seem to suggest that God the Father is punishing Christ when He dies on the Cross. I remember as a student in Oxford hearing that great evangelical preacher Billy Graham say, “At the moment when Christ died on the Cross the lightning of God’s wrath hit him instead of you.” I didn’t find that a very happy way of thinking of Christ’s work. Surely we should not separate Christ from the Father in that kind of way, for they are one God, members of the Holy Trinity. As St Paul states, in the words that I quoted just now, ‘God was in Christ’. When Christ saves us, it is God who is at work in Him; there is no separation.”>

How have I tried to pit the Persons of the Trinity against one another? How have I preferred One over the rest? Father, forgive me; help me to see how Jesus reveals you, and by your Spirit use me to reveal Jesus to others.

< 3) Does it isolate the cross from the Incarnation and the Resurrection? “We are to think of Christ’s life as a single unity. So we should not think only of the Cross, but we should think of what went before the Crucifixion, and of what comes after.”>

Lord Jesus, help me to be balanced when I study about and speak what you have done. Enable me to make connections, and see your power and love throughout the entirety of your story.

<4) Does it presuppose an objective or a subjective understanding of Christ’s work? “Does Christ’s saving work merely appeal to our feelings, or did He do something to alter our objective situation in an actual and realistic way?”>

Father, thank you for the way you are in the process of restoring my soul, my heart, my mind, and my body, and healing the whole world.

cf.

https://avowofconversation.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/salvation-in-christ/