If forgiveness means accepting the extended consequences of an injury or loss, how did Jesus’ death on the cross consummate God’s forgiveness for mankind’s transgressions (also known as “sin”)?
Transgressions generate consequences along two dimensions. One is related to the effects of the transgression on another person (a victim), we can call this the horizontal dimension, and the other dimension is related to the effects of the transgression on one’s relationship with God (we can call this the vertical dimension). For God to forgive every person of their transgressions, He must accept the consequences arising from both of those dimensions.
For the horizontal dimension, accepting the consequences of a transgression includes taking on the pain of every injury, experiencing the terror of every abandonment, and enduring the wickedness of every injustice.
If we believe a model of existence where God resides in a distant locality far removed from our reality here on Earth (for example, in a cosmic castle called heaven beyond the outskirts of our universe), it would be all too easy to also assume that God is also far removed from the suffering that afflicts mankind. Perhaps we might even believe that the Almighty is so insulated from the pain of that suffering by the cosmic distance that God doesn’t care – or is too far or feeble to do something about it. One might even conclude that God is merely a spectator watching things unfold on the stage of the Earth. Taken to the extreme, an infinite distance would be tantamount to there being no God at all.
What if God was not far, far away, but was present in every instant, and was a participant in every interaction that resulted in injury, suffering, and injustice? In this reality God would experience the pain and injury from every calamity, mistake, selfish act, assault, injustice, and evil act while absorbing the full brunt of discomfort, anguish and terror that each victim experienced. What if it cost God as much if not more discomfort than the human victims?
While it might not erase the pain a victim experienced, God’s co-experience of suffering would do two things: First, it would intertwine God’s consciousness of the pain of the situation with a stake in its outcome. God would not be a passive bystander in such a reality. Secondly, it would enable the potential for a community of suffering between God and the victim and allows for God to be WITH the victim in the midst of suffering. This is significant because the one need that was built into mankind from the beginning of creation was to address aloneness. (“It is not good for man to be alone.” Genesis 2:18 )
The consequences that God would need to accept in the course of forgiving mankind of their sin then, includes the experience of pain, injury, and suffering that arise from each sinful act (horizontal dimension), but it also must include the consequences of the rift in the relationship between the transgressor and God (vertical dimension). If God’s greatest interest in creating humanity was to have a personal relationship with every man and woman, then the choices for independence from God that underlie every transgression cause that vertical relationship to be diminished. Taken to its logical conclusion, a broken relationship results in aloneness. The transgressor finds him or herself separated from both the earthly victim of the transgression as well as from God.
For God to take on the consequences of separation means that God himself must experience that aloneness (both horizontal and vertical). Jesus’ dying words on the cross was, “Lama sabachthani”, which means, “my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that utterance, we are given a glimpse into the horror that Jesus felt at being alone from his heavenly Father. The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) which had only known community in the perfection of heaven for the first time experienced aloneness in the person of Jesus on the fateful day he suffered on the cross.
The consequences of transgressions can go far beyond a victim experiencing pain and aloneness, they can result in the victim’s death. In this case, the victim’s death would be the consequence of a most extreme injury. An injury so severe, the victim’s life is extinguished. For God to accept the consequences of such a mortal injury, God would need to die himself. God would need to accept the same consequence as the victim if he were to truly forgive.
In death, one loses all ability to contribute to one’s continued existence. Physical death is the ultimate state of dependence where one can not continue to exist unless there is an intervention from an agent outside of the confines of unidirectional time and linear space.
What are the ultimate consequences for the transgressor who causes another pain, injury, or injustice? At its root, every transgression grants the transgressor some measure of value or benefit at the expense of some other soul who pays a price for that value or benefit. Within that transaction, the transgressor drives a chasm of distance between themselves and the victim, and also between themselves and God. Transgressions at their core are a person’s choice for self sufficiency at another’s expense. A transgressor rejects any hint of dependency on God to provide for them and grabs at the reigns of control in a vain attempt at self sufficiency. Instead of leaning into and entrusting their lot toward a benevolent and involved Creator, the transgressor determines to grab by their own will, the desired commodity. This rejection of community and interdependence stems from a lack of trust, and an unwillingness to entrust one’s fate to another. Taken to it’s logical and ultimate conclusion, this independence leads to aloneness. Through a lifetime of choices, a person can drift farther and farther away from God as they pursue a life of self sufficiency and the illusion of control over one’s own destiny. The opposite of transgression, then, is faith – to entrust one’s circumstances and future to God and to lean into him/her in dependence.
The significance of this is highlighted in the story of the “original sin” in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and partook of the forbidden fruit. In an earlier post, we saw that this transgression was rooted in their desire for independence from God. They wanted to become self sufficient and obtain a desired commodity (the knowledge of good and evil) on their own apart from the Creator. In fact this same motivation (independence through self sufficiency) underlies all transgressions. The consequence proclaimed for this transgression was death. This might be seen as a punishment – a deterrent that might attempt to keep future souls from venturing across the line, or it could be viewed simply as a direct consequence of the move toward independence. The choice for independence away from the source of life results in a being that can not sustain their own existence so death).
According to the Christian faith, one can depend only on the Creator for restoration and continued life after death. If mankind was designed from the start to be in communion with the Creator and the man (and woman) choose to leave proximity with the Creator, they are operating outside of their “design limits.” Ironically, only the Creator can fix their predicament of isolation. No matter how hard mankind attempts to be self sufficient, they are brought one way or another (voluntarily or involuntarily) into a dependent state with the Creator, and ultimately through death if not some other means.
For God to accept the consequences of these moves toward independence (and thereby forgive them), God needed to experience dependency in a way never before encountered by the perfect Trinity in Heaven. Since before the dimension of time was created in our universe, God existed in the perfect communion of the Tri-partite Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). As God, S/He was self sufficient. This all changed when Jesus died on the cross. When this member of the Godhead died, Jesus was the one member of the Godhead who became totally dependent upon the other members of the Godhead to bring him back to life. Scriptures tell us that it was the Father to whom Jesus entrusted His fate. Jesus was God’s role model for how to entrust oneself, one’s existence to the Father, by being willing to let go of self sufficiency (which was a right of Jesus’ as the member of the Godhead) – and entrusting one’s future existence to another entity.
When we lose (or give up) our ability to maintain our continued existence, we die and immediately become dependent upon someone else to intervene on our behalf in order to have any chance of continuing to exist. Jesus chose to embrace that dependency so that the Godhead could experience the consequence of death, but also so that He could show us the way to entrust ourselves to the Father’s redeeming and resuscitating power.
In short, Jesus’ death on the cross was God’s mechanism for accepting the consequences of injury and injustice to victims in the horizontal dimension and it was also the mechanism by which God accepts the consequence of complete aloneness which occurs in the vertical dimension for the perpetrator of the transgression. A transgressor’s progressive steps toward increasing independence results in ultimate aloneness, a kind of spiritual death. The dead cannot restore themselves, and only a powerful outside agent can restore one’s existence from that death.
Jesus was God’s role model for us in both regards, and in both instances, Jesus’ total dependence upon his heavenly Father was the mechanisms by which the heavenly Father saved him and preserved his existence by raising Jesus from the dead.