On Divine Forgiveness of Sin

On Divine Forgiveness of Sin

We’ve all heard it. Jesus Christ suffered and died to pay the price for sin and thereby procure God’s forgiveness of our sin. That way of understanding the salvific work of Jesus Christ is called the classical theory of atonement. A fancier term for it is the theory of substitutionary sacrificial atonement. It says Jesus took our place (the substitutionary part) and became the sacrifice that the theory says was necessary before God could or would forgive human sin. Although we often read scripture through a lens of the classical atonement theory, that theory actually has scant biblical support. Much more frequently the New Testament authors see Jesus paying a price for sin but not one paid to God as in the classical theory of atonement. It’s paid to the devil to procure our ransom from sin. This theory is called either the ransom theory of salvation or the Christus Victor theory. I subscribe to neither the classical atonement theory nor the ransom theory but to a third way of understanding the saving work of Christ called theology of the cross. For a discussion of the failings of classical atonement theory and an explanation of theology of the cross see Chapters 8 and 9 of my book Liberating Christianity.[1] Here I want to set forth an objection to the classical theory of atonement that I don’t cover there, namely, that it posits that there was no divine forgiveness of sin before Jesus. That theory says that Jesus had to suffer and die before God forgave sin. Jesus’ sacrifice comes first. God’s forgiveness of sin follows. That is something I cannot and do not accept. God is a God of love and grace. Love and grace aren’t love and grace if they don’t include forgiveness. Beyond that I want to look at a few pre-Christian Bible passages that knew full well that God forgives human sin.

There is no doubt that centuries before Jesus the ancient Hebrews knew that God forgives sin. Consider for example this passage from the eighth century BCE prophet Micah:

Who is a God like you, pardoning

               iniquity

       and passing over the

               transgressions

       of the remnant of your

               possession?

He does not retain his anger

               forever,

       because he delights in showing

               clemency.

He will again have compassion

               upon us;

       he will tread our iniquities

               under foot.

You will cast all our sins

       into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:18-19.

More than seven hundred years before Jesus Micah knew that God forgives our sin. Not will forgive our sin after some event centuries in the future. God forgives our sin now says a prophet who never heard of Jesus or the classical theory of atonement.

The Hebrew Bible, which is the Protestant Old Testament and part of the Roman Catholic Old Testament, contains many verses about God’s forgiveness of sin. Consider for example this passage from Numbers:

Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even until now.

Then the Lord said: “I do forgive, just as you have asked….

Numbers 14:19-20.

Numbers tells stories from the Exodus, but in its present form it probably dates from hundreds of years after the Exodus. Nonetheless Numbers as we have it was written several hundred years before Jesus, and it knows that God forgives sin. Not will forgive sin. Does forgive sin.

Or consider these verses from the Psalms:

The Lord is merciful and

               gracious,

       slow to anger and abounding in

               steadfast love.

He will not always accuse,

       nor will he keep his anger

               forever.

He does not deal with us

               according to our sins,

       nor repay us according to our

               iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above

               the earth,

       so great is his steadfast love

               toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

       so far he removes our

               transgressions from us. Psalm 103:8-12.

The psalms can be hard to date, but the most recent of them was written at least a few hundred years before Jesus. Yet they too know that God forgives sin. It simply contradicts Christian scripture, that is, Old Testament texts from hundreds of years before Jesus, to say that God forgave human sin only after the Son of God Incarnate paid a horrible price of suffering and death to procure that forgiveness.

When we add this consideration to all the other reasons why the classical theory of atonement is unacceptable, for example that it constitutes cosmic child abuse, we see that God always has forgiven human sin just because it is in God’s nature as love and grace to forgive human sin. Jesus didn’t have to suffer and die to buy forgiveness for us. It was already there. That doesn’t mean Jesus death is without salvific significance. For what that significance is see Chapter 9 of Liberating Christianity that I mentioned above. God has always forgiven human sin. God always will. On his death bed the German poet Heinrich Heine is supposed to have said “Of course God will forgive me; that’s His job.” That is a rather flip way to put it. I would say of course God will forgive all of us because that is God’s nature. The point is the same. God forgives. God always has and always will. God forgives free of cost and without requiring any substitutionary sacrificial atonement. Thanks be to God!

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[1] Sorenson, Thomas C. Liberating Christianity, Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2008.