THIRD QUARTER 2023
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #5
JULY 29, 2023
“HORIZONTAL ATONEMENT: THE CROSS AND THE CHURCH”

The title of our lesson this week uses the term “atonement.”  An accurate definition of this word is critical.  Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary gives two definitions of “atonement.”  One, that atonement is “reconciliation.”  Two, that atonement is “satisfactory reparation for an offense or injury.”

When you think of “atonement,” which definition are you thinking of?  Especially when we talk about a vertical “atonement” between God and man, do you think of reconciliation or reparation (payment)?  If we use the reparation/payment definition for atonement, who is paying the reparation or payment to whom?

If Jesus is paying the “ransom” (1 Timothy 2:6) or redemption price (1 Peter 1:18-19), is He paying the Father?  And how would we square that with Christ’s statement that “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30)?  If Jesus and the Father are one, then what would be the function of paying a reparation within the “oneness” of the Godhead?  There would seem to be no sense in which the ransom would be paid to Satan as he would never accept any ransom and is not worthy of any payment in the first place as he is the source of the alienation to begin with!

But there is one party who has animosity towards another for whom a reparation could potentially accomplish an “at-one-ment.”  Who has enmity towards whom, and has an enmity that could be removed by a reparative gesture?

• “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7).
• “we were enemies” (Romans 5:10).
• “why do the nations rage, and the people plot vain things . . . against the Lord” (Acts 4:25-26).
• we “were by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3)

Repeatedly throughout Scripture there is enmity, animus, wrath, hostility, from man towards God.  If that enmity towards God is our native condition, then God has taken the initiative to approach us with a ransom, a reparation, a redemption price.  God approaches us with this offer, not because we deserve it, but because we need it!  Paul, in last week’s lesson, after telling us that our nature is filled with wrath, contrasts our wrath with God’s mercy!  “But God, Who is rich in mercy, because of this great love with which He loved us . . made us alive” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

And God’s goal with this “ransom” or redemption price, is that we will experience a reconciliation towards Him.  He hopes that in seeing His “great love” towards us, we will be moved towards Him with a responsive “great love" (1 John 4:19).

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18, emphasis supplied, here and onward).  The purpose of “the atonement,” or ransom, or redemption price, is not to move God to stop relating to us with wrath or enmity – BUT – to move us to stop relating to Him with enmity, and start relating to Him with love and appreciation.  The cross, the atonement, the ransom, was made to “bring us to God," NOT, to bring God to us!

Why?  Because God never left us or abandoned us in the first place!  The cross manifests to us that God has never been standing back from us, but has been pursuing us, and, from His heart to ours, He has been reconciled to us - a reconciliation that we see demonstrated at Calvary.  “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Calvary didn’t change God’s heart towards us!  Calvary manifested God’s heart towards us!  Calvary was to change our heart towards God!

“But this great sacrifice was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, not to make Him willing to save. No, no! “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.” John 3:16. The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us. Christ was the medium through which He could pour out His infinite love upon a fallen world. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” 2 Corinthians 5:19. God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of Infinite Love paid the price of our redemption.” — Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 13.

This is one facet of the “most precious” 1888 message the Lord sent to this church through Elders A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner.

“But, someone will say, “You have made the reconciliation all on the part of men; I have always been taught that the death of Christ reconciled God to man; that Christ died to satisfy God's justice, and to appease Him.” Well, we have left the matter of reconciliation just where the Scriptures have put it; and while they have much to say about the necessity for man to be reconciled to God, they never once hint of such a thing as the necessity for God to be reconciled to man. To intimate the necessity for such a thing is to bring a grave charge against the character of God. The idea has come into the Christian Church from the Papacy, which in turn brought it from Paganism, in which the only idea of God was of a being whose wrath must be appeased by a sacrifice.

Stop a moment, and think what reconciliation means. The existence of enmity is the only necessity for reconciliation. Where there is no enmity, there is no necessity for reconciliation. Man is by nature alienated from God; he is a rebel, full of enmity. Therefore, man needs to be reconciled - to have his enmity taken away. But God has no enmity in His being. “God is love.” Consequently, there is no necessity for Him to be reconciled; there is no possibility of such a thing, for there can be no reconciliation where there has been no enmity.

Consider further what reconciliation means. It means a change on the part of the one reconciled. If one has enmity in His heart towards another, a radical change must take place in him before he is reconciled. This is the case with man. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, Who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, 18. But to speak of the necessity for God to be reconciled to man, is not only to say that He cherished enmity in His heart, but to say that God was partially in the wrong, and that a change had to take place in Him as well as in man. If it were not in the innocence of ignorance that men talked about God's having been reconciled to men, it would be blasphemy. That is one of the “great things and blasphemies” that the Papacy has spoken against God. Let us not echo it. — E. J. Waggoner, Present Truth UK, September 21, 1893, p. 386.

With this foundation of what “vertical” atonement is, we can go forth laboring for “horizontal” atonement with the same method.  Just as God gave of Himself in Jesus Christ to reconcile us to Himself, so we also can give of ourselves to draw others to be reconciled to God.  “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

As we have been drawn to God through the giving of Christ on our behalf, so we can draw others to Him by the giving of ourselves for them.  This is the same method that God uses to destroy enmity between us as individuals or races or ethnicities or religions, “that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity” (Ephesians 2:16).  “Them both” in the immediate context is Jews and Gentiles – but in the broader context it is all of us who have “aught” with others.

The cross in Christ’s life abolished the enmity between God and us, as well as between different “groups.”  The cross in our lives will abolish the enmity between us and every other human being.  This is the motivational reservoir that will cause us to “love our enemies,” because in looking to the cross, we no longer have “enemies.”

Just as from God’s perspective the whole human race are His sons and daughters, and He has enmity towards none of them, so from our perspective the whole human race are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we will have enmity towards none.  Be it racial, educational, economic, ethnic, social, or religious differences, we will treat all as part of God’s family, just as God treated us as part of His family – even when we were prodigal, treasonous, and rebellious.

This is the faith of Jesus.  And it will “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).  May we see others as God sees them, and judge “no man according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16).

“The life of Christ established a religion in which there is no caste, a religion by which Jew and Gentile, free and bond, are linked in a common brotherhood, equal before God. No question of policy influenced His movements. He made no difference between neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies. That which appealed to His heart was a soul thirsting for the waters of life.” — Ellen G. White, Testimonies, Vol. 9, p. 191.

~Bob Hunsaker