a beloved parent because of love, not from anxious fear of punishment. If we truly love God, we will not be lazy, but will exert every effort to follow God’s way, seeking to embody God’s spiritual values. To understand the parable, one must have some of the same honesty and sincerity that the young son has.
Sometimes it is hard for us to accept the unconditional kindness of God. It may go against what we have learned. But if we open our hearts sincerely and learn about God’s love, then we can understand what is meant by this: salvation is God’s gift, not paid for, but freely granted. Jesus gets this message across by showing the father in the story being so generous, and demanding no payment through penance or suffering. There is no retribution, no punishment, only restoration and rejoicing.
God’s generous desire to save is also the point of the nearby parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4). Is Jesus saying the shepherd will neglect the ninety-nine? Of course not. He is using this exaggerated imagery to show that one “sheep” really matters, and the shepherd will go out and rescue that one! God cares for each individual person. There is “joy in heaven” when the one is found and recovered (15:7).
Similarly, a woman who loses a coin will sweep the floor, light the house, and search until she finds it, for there is value in the one coin (15:8–10). There is value in the one human being. The three parables in Luke 15 show God seeking out the lost to save them, without any punishing, scolding, or making anybody “pay.” The emphasis is on God’s love and generosity.
Jesus went out of his way to try to convince people that the Father is loving, all wise, abundantly forgiving, and provides a way for us to grow Godward. But people always find it hard to accept new ideas without mingling them with some old and unexamined ideas that they are carrying around. This happened with the early Christians as well.
One of these old ideas (held by Gentiles as well as Jews) is that justice requires retribution. A recent book by Ted Grimsrud shows how Jesus rejected the common belief that wrongdoing has to be met with violent retribution. He argues that “the logic of retribution” is still “deeply ingrained in the religious consciousness” of many Americans who assume that “God’s holiness or honor” has to be “satisfied” through some act of retribution against sin.2 Grimsrud points out (as I will) that Jesus heals and saves people simply out of God’s desire to make them whole, and without any accompanying theology of retribution. When he shows compassion to people, he is showing them God’s compassion, but they are slow to learn, even the ruler of a synagogue, to whom Jesus says: “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). He is trying to get the ruler to see that God cares so much more for this woman’s real needs than for rigid Sabbath rules!
But people were constantly misunderstanding Jesus, especially his own apostles. Jesus had to scold James and John when they asked if they could call down fire upon Samaritan village, in retribution for their lack of welcome (Luke 9:52–55). He worked tirelessly to wean the apostles from their biases and misconceptions. How often do we allow our material and earthly concepts to diminish our understanding of God?
Let us look into this by digging more deeply into the biblical record. By the way, this does not imply that I consider the Gospels to be flawless records, like tape recordings, but I do consider them to be largely reliable reports.
1. I am using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) for Bible quotes, except when otherwise indicated.
2. Grimsrud, Instead of Atonement, 5, 7.
1
Assumptions about God
In upcoming chapters, I will address the genesis of the images of sacrificial atonement and ransom. For now, I can mention that our earliest source for the sacrificial and purchase metaphors for the death of Jesus is the Apostle Paul, who was writing in the 50s AD. Paul is also the source of that extremely unfortunate slogan: “you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). Paul’s successors took his metaphors quite literally, blending the notion of sacrifice with the image of ransom and coming up with the idea of the death of Jesus as a ransom payment for the sins of humanity, the idea called “atonement” in theological circles.
In this chapter, I want to respond to the idea of atonement that is popular today, by contrasting it with the teachings of Jesus. My argument is less with Paul than with his more literal-minded successors, and with the crude atonement ideas that developed over time. It is the purchase concept that is most problematic.
The main problem with teaching that Jesus’ death paid for human sin is that it slanders the character of God the Father! If God was either unable or unwilling to forgive without a payment in blood, then God was either weak or cruel. Both are false. God was not compelled to demand that a payment for sin be made, nor was God defending God’s honor. Such ideas emerge when people apply human laws and attitudes to God.
“Somebody had to pay” is based on a series of mistaken assumptions. One is that God is stern and demanding, while Jesus is merciful and kind. This goes against Jesus’ own teachings about his similarity to the Father: “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life . . . Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 5:21; 14:9). There is no spiritual contrast between the Father and the Son; they have the same love. This is the good news: there is a circuit of love that flows from the Father, through the Son, to the Spirit, into us, and then among us.
Of course, no Christian wants to say that God is either cruel or weak. Yet Christians commonly fall into that trap unawares, accepting formulas that Christian authorities have told them they must believe, usually accompanied with a fierce and angry energy. Most believers follow their leaders. Instead, we should reflect upon what we have been taught, and see if it needs to be questioned, in the light of Jesus’ own focus on love and forgiveness. What did Jesus himself teach about salvation?
Salvation Now
Jesus made it clear, in his preaching and his ministry to people, that the kingdom of God has come; it is here. Jesus built people up spiritually and told them they were already saved by their exercise of faith. There are seven times in the Gospels where he tells people “your faith has saved you,” even when he has performed a miraculous healing for them. I am counting the times the NRSV renders it “faith has made you well,” as well as the times they translate the same verb as “has saved” (Matt 9:22; Mark 5:34; 10:52; Luke 7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42). The verb is σώζω (sōzō), which has the primary meaning of “saved.” In all seven passages, the verb occurs in the perfect tense (sesōken), so it actually means “has saved.” The choices “made well” or “made whole” make sense in their context, but so does “saved,” and I prefer to stay closer to the verb’s primary meaning.
By no means am I arguing that people are self-saving. That would be too rigid a reading of “your faith has saved you.” Rather, Jesus is generously giving them credit for their faith, and their role in receiving salvation. Actually, salvation results from both the divine downreach and the human upreach: the coming together of God’s love (embodied by Jesus) and a person’s sincere and faithful plea. Jesus does do miracles of healing, but he likes to lift people up and include them. He acknowledges their receptivity to the act when he says “your faith has saved you.” Jesus certainly is the Savior and the Healer, but he likes to emphasize the human end of the divine-human connection.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus saves
