COULD GOD SAVE APART FROM THE CROSS?

Tony Jones, an Emergent Church guru, questions the necessity of the death of Christ for the sins of the world – substitutionary atonement:

·       I do not think that a bloody, violent death of a divine being was the only way to save the world. I believe that God has more freedom than that.

Perhaps Jones has an incorrect understanding of “freedom.” Biblically speaking, while God can do anything He wants, He does not want to do anything. Some things would contradict His promises; others would contradict His character.

For one thing, God will not sin. This might seem like a limitation to His freedom. However, freedom loses all of its meaning if God is totally free to do anything. The game of chess loses all its meaning if we can move the pieces however and whenever we want. In light of this, freedom only has meaning in the context of limitation.

Jesus understood this. He didn’t want to go to the cross and therefore prayed:

·       Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

Couldn‘t the omnipotent God have done it another way, as Jones suggests? Evidently, it was necessary that Christ die for our sins. But why? God’s holy character required this:

·       God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)

God must act justly! Do we understand this? Not really! There is no way that we can fully understand the character of God. Rather, those of us who know Him accept this!

He also required that Christ die for us to prove that He loves us (John 3:16;
Romans 5:8-10). For me, this was no mere academic issue. It had been a matter of life and death. In deep pain and despair, I was unable to shake the thought that God might be a sadist, sitting on a cloud with a big bowl of popcorn watching the freak show He had created for His entertainment. Perhaps also the Bible had been one great deception by the master deceiver? If God is all-powerful, He would definitely have incredible powers of deception.

However, one night in the midst of prayer, He revealed something to me from His Word that made all the difference. He had died for me while I was still His enemy. Deceivers, con-artists, and sadists will not do such a thing.

Besides, His death and suffering on the cross was the greatest conceivable price He could pay. Something else became apparent to me. Had Jesus been a mere created being, it wouldn’t have cost God a cent to send Him to the cross, since He could create 50,000 “saviors” in a moment. Such a “sacrifice” would not have been any demonstration of His love (Romans 5:7-10). Instead, it had to be God Himself, the God of the Bible.