You cannot atone for your sins. But there is hope.
I learned how to drive in a red Volkswagen Beetle that had a four-speed stick shift. The stick shift was fun. I felt like a race car driver. Decades later I bought a Chevy Cavalier with a stick shift, with which I commuted to work on Chicago expressways. That stick shift was not fun, because in rush-hour, stop-and-go traffic, I would have to push in the clutch pedal and go back and forth between first and second gear dozens and dozens of times. In hot weather, in a car for 45-minutes, without air conditioning, after a taxing day at the office, that stick-shifting felt like more work than I wanted to do.
So here’s something you now know about me: living in Chicago, I won’t buy a car with a stick shift. Not for an incredibly low price (unless I intended to buy the car and immediately sell it at a profit). Not if the car had every comfort and luxury available. A stick shift is a deal breaker.
Atonement
Similarly, there’s something you need to know about God and his ways. This is absolutely who he is, and it will not change. Because he is just and holy, this is the way God works with people: you cannot have a relationship with him without there being an atonement for your sins.
The word atone means to make amends for a wrong. To atone means to satisfy the demands of justice or to repair a wrong. To atone means to fully compensate for doing evil.
On a human level, a person who stole $10, could atone for it to the victim by apologizing and returning the $10 and adding an additional $30 for causing distress.
On a human level, a violent criminal guilty of assault and battery must atone for it by going to prison or paying money for suffering and medical bills. In addition, he must show sincere remorse and offer a humble apology.
Atonement requires death
The atonement that God requires for sin is not as easy and doable as paying money or doing a good deed. It includes nothing less than death.
“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
“The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20).
“Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
God told Adam in the Garden of Eden, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).
What cannot atone for sin
That God absolutely requires the atonement of your sin means he won’t just forget about sins, as though the passing of time, even thousands or millions of years, would change what he requires. He won’t ignore sins. He won’t forgive them solely out of mercy.
He won’t put your sins on one side of a scale and your good works on the other side of the scale, and then, if your good works outweigh your bad works, forgive your sins. In other words, good deeds can’t atone for bad deeds, just as a life of good deeds can’t atone for murder in the eyes of the criminal justice system.
God won’t accept you because you do thousands of religious duties such as going to church or mass, saying prayers, reading the Scripture, keeping religious holidays, having religious statues and pictures in your car or your home, wearing a religious necklace, or taking religious sacraments. He won’t be your Father or Friend unless there is an atonement for your sins.
But he will gladly forgive sins if there is an atonement—only if there is the atonement he requires.
What can atone for sin
Like it or not, agree with it or not, regard it as primitive if you like, this is how the Bible reveals God from Genesis to Revelation. In the Old Testament, the purpose of animal sacrifices was atonement for sin. Likewise in the New Testament the purpose of the death of Jesus on the cross was atonement for sin.
For example, prescribing how the priests were to make sin offerings of lambs for the Israelites, Moses said, “The priest shall burn it on the altar, on top of the LORD’s food offerings. And the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven” (Leviticus 4:35 ESV).
The Old Testament Book of Leviticus, which tells the priests in great detail how to conduct all the sacrificial offerings of animals, uses the word atonement 51 times.
The only sacrifice that ultimately atones
Likewise the New Testament says:
“Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
“Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12).
“In him [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Ephesians 1:7).
“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).
Atonement and forgiveness
Notice in the following verse the words atonement, sin, and forgiven: “The priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven” (Leviticus 4:35).
Notice in Leviticus 6:7 the words atonement, forgiven, and guilty: “The priest shall make atonement for him before the LORD, and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty.”
Sin brings guilt before God, and it must be judged by God. This is important: something about the nature of God’s holiness and justice requires—absolutely and without exception demands—that sin be judged. If you don’t know this, you don’t know God rightly according to the teaching of the Scripture. Sin brings guilt before the God of perfect justice, and guilt makes one liable to punishment by the God of perfect, holy justice.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We want to make amends for our wrongs by performing religious rituals, going to church, giving money to some good cause, being nice.
God’s way: He accepts one thing—and only one—for the atonement of our wrongs: the death of his Son Jesus on the cross. His death can be, and is if we trust in him, the only substitute for ours. (The sacrifice of animals no longer avails for atonement, for God accepted that method only as a temporary, forward-looking proxy for the atoning death of Jesus. See Hebrews 10:1–14.)
Life principle: Any religion or belief system that makes the atoning death of Jesus on the cross for our sins unnecessary, is anti-Christian and contrary to the Bible. It won’t work. God won’t accept you without the atonement brought about through Jesus Christ and without your sincere faith in that atonement on your behalf and its power to bring the forgiveness of sins. This is why Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
I invite you to read my weekly posts about knowing God and his ways better. —Craig Brian Larson