37. Didn’t Christ pay for all our sins at the Cross?
Not one Scripture asserts that Christ paid for sin(s), or that his crucifixion was a payment, or that sacrifices were payments, or that they depicted a payment, or even that sin can be paid for in principle. Where Scripture is silent, we would be wise to follow suit. Much rather, Jesus acquired a people, bought and paid for by his invaluable blood. This is the uniform and repeated teaching of apostolic Scripture. The exchange was elegantly simple. He, the perfectly Just One, volunteered to undertake the fateful hardships of this suicide mission in order to win the prize, i.e., God’s graciously vast overpayment to him for all his trouble, so that he in turn could graciously give it away to the needy and broken—us. It was for us! And our salvation. Now he has a family, siblings, descendants, and heirs together with him to inherit property in Kingdom come. Big group hug! This is God’s answer to evil. Could there even be such an ultimate overcompensating settlement against evil, in God’s justifying wisdom, unless evil existed in the first place? And in a universe where evils are necessary in order to bring about greater goods, there must be a clear proof of this calculus so we can take heart and keep battling evil and grow to proper human maturity. The historic Cross was the lightning rod to trigger the awe-inspiring discharge of God’s immense reservoir of graciousness via electrifying Resurrection power. Without it He could not have gotten our attention—we were that far gone.
The Premial Atonement 