sin Archives • Knowing God and His Ways

Recently I heard a man¹ tell a story of how he as a kid in fourth grade had wronged his grandfather. Let’s give this man the name Bob. A friend came over to Bob’s house, and Bob invited him to join him on his daily errand of feeding his grandfather’s pony. Together they went to his grandfather’s nearby farm.

As Bob took care of the pony, his friend noticed four cases of canning jars. His friend suggested they break them. For some reason, Bob agreed to it, and they broke all the jars.

As Bob the adult told this story, he explained that he had no reason to go along with breaking the jars, because he loved his grandfather. He went to church with him every week. He and his family lived in a house built on his grandfather’s farm.

Sadly, Bob’s boyhood friend did not stop with breaking the canning jars. He found cases of light bulbs and suggested breaking those. After they did, they went on breaking glass. They found storm windows for the house and broke them all. They looked around for more glass to break and came upon his grandfather’s truck. Each window they shattered. Then the windows of the barn, all except for one window where the pony was kept.

Finally Bob’s “friend” left, and he walked home petrified at what he had done. He did not sleep that night. For three days he heard nothing about their crimes. Then he came home from school and found his grandfather’s car in the driveway.

“Did you break the windows out of the barn?” his grandfather asked. He suspected Bob had done it because the only window left unbroken was by the pony. Bob admitted it, but did not bring up breaking anything else.

The next day, when he returned home from school, his grandfather’s car was again in the driveway. “Did you break all the canning jars and light bulbs and storm windows?” his grandfather asked. Bob admitted doing those things but did not bring up other wrongdoing.

The next day, when he returned home from school his grandfather’s car was again in the driveway. “Did you break the truck windows?” his grandfather asked, his voice raised in anger. Bob said yes. “Someone’s got to pay for this,” his grandfather said, to teach Bob a lesson. “Do you have any money?” Bob had $5, and he went and got his money and brought it to his grandfather.

Breaking holy things

When I heard Bob tell this story, I could only cringe at the wrongness—the evil—of what he had done to his grandfather. Now as an adult, “Bob” said the same thing.

How does hearing this story affect you? Beyond its lessons for human relations, it gives us a figurative glimpse of how we should feel about sinning against God’s commandments. When we transgress a command from God, he feels as the grandfather did. We have violated his holiness.

Breaking even one of God’s commandments is more wrong, more unthinkable than we comprehend. We might think we have “just” broken one commandment, but that is like saying you only broke one windshield of the truck—only it is infinitely worse than even that. The perfection of God’s holiness makes breaking even one of his commandments an infinitely serious evil. Each one of us over our lifetimes has broken God’s commands thousands of times, in deeds far more evil than the breaking of a few thousand dollars of a kindhearted grandfather’s glass. Our guilt is beyond human comprehension. The shards of shattered glass can only be undone through Jesus.

I heard this story while evaluating a preacher’s sermons and theology. I disagree with him on significant things, which is why I have not included his name.

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).