Our common understanding is that Jesus died for our sins to pay a debt. This substitutionary atonement theory—the idea that God needs a payment, a very violent transaction, to be able to love and accept His own children. That before God could love us He needed and demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to atone for our sin-drenched humanity.
The incarnation of God and the redemption of the world is not in response to human sinfulness, but the proactive work of God from the very beginning. God never reacts, but always supremely and freely acts, and always acts totally out of love.
"Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God" (theologian John Duns Scotus 1266-1308.)
When we are focused on the problem, we never get out of the hamster wheel. To this day, we continue to focus on sin, when the whole time Jesus was pointing us toward a primal solidarity with the very suffering of God and all of creation.
We all need to realize that God does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good. Nothing we do will ever decrease or increase God’s eternal love for us.
Ephesians 1:4 “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”
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