The Atonement Idea of Forgiveness Is a Bad Copy of a True Masterpiece

Let me show you the real thing

Most of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. His thinking laid the foundations for much of Christian theology. Unfortunately, a lot of it is flawed.

One of the foundational elements that Paul misunderstands is forgiveness.

The flawed version of forgiveness

Paul’s story regarding how divinity forgives humanity, told almost wholly through Atonement Theory, contends that everyone (including you and me) have accumulated sin.

Next, we must be divinely forgiven of our sins. Why?

Without a divine forgiveness, we won’t survive the experience of death and move on to the rest of our eternal life. The only way for us to achieve such a divine gift is to believe Jesus atoned for our sins by his excruciating death on the cross.

Of course, there’s more detail to it than just two paragraphs, but from a Pauline standpoint, this logic is flawless.

There’s just a slight problem.

Paul’s model doesn’t agree with Jesus’s.

The original version of divine forgiveness

Before Paul (or Peter, or any of the other accepted apostles) amended Jesus’s teaching, Jesus himself offered the original, superior model.

It goes like this.

God is the spiritual father of everyone, and just like all wise, loving, caring earthly fathers, — true fathers — he knows what his children need even before they ask. If you’re a father and you’ve seen your children struggling with something, you know what they need just by watching them.

They don’t have to verbalize their request for help for you to know; your greater experience gives you deep insight about their needs.

In this same way, God understands your need for forgiveness even before you ask, and gives it freely.

God’s forgiveness isn’t conditional. It’s not based on believing anything, like Atonement theory.

Forgiveness is an experience, not a mere belief

While in fact God’s forgiveness is freely available, in your experience it’s not available until and unless you forgive someone else. Why? Because giving and receiving forgiveness isn’t just some abstract philosophical notion.

Forgiveness is something you live out: it’s experiential.

Personally giving forgiveness to someone else seems to open one end of the experiential channel so you can then you feelingly receive forgiveness on the other end.

Jesus taught this experiential method of forgiveness to the apostles. Further, to help them remember, he embodied the concept in The Lord’s Prayer, “.. .forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors …”

Other apostles agree with Jesus’s model

The other apostles also write about this in their own way.

“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Mark 6:14–15

“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Matthew 11:25–26

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you.” Luke 6:37

In the view of these three, crucifixion wasn’t necessary for divine forgiveness, nor resurrection, nor a belief in Atonement, a theory built decades after Jesus’s death. All that was required was the simple act of emulating the merciful and loving character of the divine creator by forgiving others first.

This model is in keeping with all of Jesus’s teachings: simple yet profound; mundane yet transcendental; a living combination of both human and divine experience.

Paul tries valiantly to produce a rational model of divine forgiveness. It replete with the great trifecta of evolutionary religion: sin, sacrifice and atonement.

But nothing surpasses Jesus’s original, superior, teaching.