Forgiveness Without Sacrifice

This is a question I received recently at the ministry:

I have read the Bible, as well as Mr. Mcdowell's book The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. I have read several other books on apologetics, as well as the apologetics study Bible, and am very familiar with scripture. However, I am not a Christian. I am an atheist, with some deistic leanings. The primary reason is because no one can seem to answer me one question- it is in no apologetics book I have read that I can recall, and it should stick in my mind. The only answer I get is "God works in mysterious ways", "Our ways are not God's ways", or some sort of variation- and I feel that's a cop-out. Apparently, God made us in his image, and as such, even though we are not capable of understanding infinity or anything of that nature, we should be able to understand the human parallels to his motivations. So my question is this- Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man? Why could he not simply forgive, as man can? A man can let go of bitterness, of a grudge deep in his heart- I have done it myself. Why could God not do the same?

Response

Hey (Name Withheld),

That’s a great question. It’s obvious you’ve put a great deal of time into your thoughts on Christianity and its teachings. I very much appreciate your honesty regarding where you stand on God and your beliefs. I too was a staunch atheist with days where I might have thought some deity existed, but if so was largely irrelevant. It’s easy for me to set my mind back to the philosophical and theological views that I once believed to be true. Since you’ve shared a bit about your thoughts, I’ll share a bit about where I was as well. I was raised in church and knew all the Biblical stories. I also believed they were fabrications. Logic and science solved problems, got answers and healed people. Religion did nothing of the sort. Instead, religion seemed to be a very powerful placebo for people to find purpose and meaning in their lives. That is why it existed, to serve as a fictitious comfort to those who had a need for it. Religion was full of logical fallacies and contradictions and as such it was reserved for the intellectually incapable or emotionally needy.

As you can tell, I’ve been intellectually persuaded otherwise over the last decade or so (since I now work as a researcher at a Christian ministry). But that has persuasion took years of asking the right questions to the right people and refusing to accept answers at face value. Knowledge can never be gained without genuine doubt and uncertainty. So I want to encourage you to keep asking questions. Approach every Christian you know with thoughtful questions.

Now, let’s look to the questions at hand regarding forgiveness, God and less-than-satisfying Christian responses. Starting with the sort of Christian responses you’ve encountered, I would say that the issuers of those statements (God works in mysterious ways, etc.) are both correct and incorrect at the same time. Is God an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being that exists outside of time and space? Yes, He is. In that sense, He is truly a mystery in and of Himself simply because a finite human encased in time and space cannot fathom God in His entirety. However, I would disagree with the context in which that statement is often applied to God’s actions. Everything God does has a purpose. His character as it is described in Scripture prevents the idea of God being a haphazard, random being. Often times, as selfish people, we simply do not LIKE what God is doing but choose to trust Him anyway. These people often attribute what they consider to be “bad” acts of God to be simply “mysterious.” The death of a loved one or a bout of depression could be the culprit. But these things are not mysterious when we realize that if God were simply a fair and just God, we would all be cast into Hell immediately without warning or mercy. If there is a mystery about God at all, it would be why He would EVER love a sinful, dirty, disgusting people like ourselves. The real mystery, in my opinion, is that every single human isn’t suffering at a maximum level every second of their lives until they die and rot for eternity. Yet even this is not a mystery if we acknowledge that God is a sovereign, merciful and loving God.

Yet there is one instance in history where something truly unfair in the negative sense did occur. The death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As you correctly point out, His sacrifice bought redemption for all those that believe in Him. It was an act of un-deserved evil carried out against the only perfect man to ever live. Yet, that act also brought about the most glorious good to a multitude people equally undeserving of good.

Finally, we turn to the topic of forgiveness. It is important in any discussion that one first defines what they are talking about so as to not carry on a dialogue that is being understood on two different levels. If I may quote part of your question, you stated:

“Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man?”

I would strongly posit that “forgiveness without sacrifice” is not forgiveness at all. Suppose a Canadian friend of yours stole money from you and blew it all on non-refundable airline tickets to Cuba. You could not use the tickets (being an American citizen) and you couldn’t get your money back. However, you exercise forgiveness by not holding the offense against your Canadian friend. If your “forgiveness” is contingent upon repayment of some sort, then true forgiveness has not been exercised. However, if we were to suppose a situation where we FELT wronged and yet there was nothing of our taken, hurt, destroyed, etc… then our feeling of forgiveness would be misled. I do not need to forgive someone for letting their dog defecate on my neighbor’s lawn. Nor do I need to forgive someone for doing something I disapprove of if they have committed no wrong against me. If anything, that person that we FEEL like we should forgive needs to extend forgiveness towards us for passing undue judgment against them! We have wronged them when they have not wronged us.

Therefore, if ones forgiveness is only applicable when one has been wronged, then that wrong that is absorbed by the offended is their sacrifice of forgiveness. In some cases the wrong cannot be undone (in the accidental fatality), and in some cases it can (lost money that was borrowed out without interest). In either case, to demand repayment stands in direct opposition to forgiveness. To sacrifice that which was wronged or taken in favor of reconciling the offender to oneself as if no wrong had taken place is the very definition of forgiveness.

So we ask why God, who is supposedly loving, caring and holy would sacrifice His own Son to forgive us our sins. Yet, in our last sentence we have already answered our own question. Forgiveness, which is an act of love, requires sacrifices in equilibrium with the magnitude of the offense suffered. Now, it could be argued that God (being omnipotent) would be the only one who could forgive without sacrificing anything because… well… He’s God. But let us not be so easily deceived by false logic! God’s omnipotence does not free Him to do that which is logically impossible! God cannot create a square circle and He cannot create a stone so big that He cannot lift it. These are logical impossibilities. It is also logically impossible for the benchmark and foundation of all holiness to act in an unholy and unrighteous way. God’s holiness demands that there be justice served to all those who wrong their infinitely glorious creator. That justice, in the absence of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, is death and eternity in torment for all people(eternal because of the infiniteness of the one offended, not because our sins are infinite in and of themselves). God could not wipe that away and have it disappear. There needed to be an sacrifice of equal weight and magnitude in order for those sins to be forgiven.

What would make such a sacrifice of equal magnitude? Well, since they were the sins of man that were to be forgiven, the sacrifice NEEDED to be in the form of man. Human sins could only rightly be atoned for by a human sacrifice (the Biblical book of Hebrews deals with this exhaustively). However, the sins of a finite person against an infinite God require an infinite sacrifice of that person’s life. That is why mankind is powerless to save themselves from their due judgment. No finite acts of righteousness (which is simply how we ought to act anyway. No one gets extra credit for the things they ought to do in the first place) will ever earn a person right standing before God. One act of disobedience towards a holy and infinite God is enough to cement our rightful place as one condemned. But if this eternality of punishment originates from the infiniteness of the one wronged, then the sacrifice that needs to be made for each individual needs also be infinite.

And thus we have a bit of a conundrum. The only sacrifice that will redeem a man from his sin needs to be another man. Yet, his sin is infinite in scope and thus requires an infinite sacrifice. The only infinite being or thing exists is God. So, the only sacrifice that would qualify to save even a single man from Hell needs to be both fully man and fully God. Nothing else could possibly do. Given the existence and character of God and given the sinfulness and selfishness of mankind, this is the only LOGICAL solution that is self-consistent and not self-refuting.

In summary, forgiveness necessarily requires sacrifice. A man cannot simply “forgive” without giving anything of himself. That would be a logical contradiction against the definition of the word forgive. If we are bitter towards someone, it may be that we subjectively do not like them… and they may not have wronged us at all… and in such a situation it is indeed possible to alter our viewpoint from bitterness to one of a more positive flavor, but let us not confuse such emotional molding as forgiveness. It is not. God sacrificed His son, His own blood, simply because that was the ONLY way that a loving God could forgive mankind and redeem His created people to Himself.