The common Christian understanding is that Jesus had to pay a debt by “dying for our sins.” Our early theology was more transactional than transformational when theologians, then, developed a “substitutionary atonement theory” that before God could love us God needed Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to ”atone” for our sins.
However, studying the inspirations in the first chapters of Colossians and Ephesians and the first chapter of John’s Gospel, we would see that the incarnation of God and the redemption of the world was not an exercise in response to human sinfulness, but the proactive work of God from the very beginning. We were “chosen in Christ before the world was made” (Ephesians 1:4). Our sin could not possibly be the motive for the divine incarnation; rather, God’s motivation was infinite divine love and full self-revelation. God never reacts, but always freely acts out of free and unmerited love!
Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God! Jesus undid “once and for all” (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his infinite flow of grace.
This embeds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning; it draws people toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal “at-one-ment,” instead of mere sacrificial atonement.
On Calvary, everything was revealed—an eternal outpouring of love. Instead of us needing to spill blood to get to God, we have God spilling blood to get to us!
Ephesians 3:18-20 “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
