Why Friday Was 'Good' and Not Bad---The Atonement

[HKHaugan]

Have you ever felt the need to atone for something you’ve done? What atone means is to make up for something that shouldn’t have been done, something that has brought with it a sense of guilt. We want to atone, make up, for past mistakes. This mistake prone nature we have is due to sin and its inevitable consequence, guilt, which we inherited from the initial act of disobedience Adam and Eve committed. It is not unusual to hear someone say they feel guilty even though they don’t know why. It’s that nagging sense that we never get anything quite right and that lack of being right is what we feel guilty about. It’s that sense of unsettledness. It’s like we keeping looking at life through the rear view mirror but never see what the irritant is. That is what sin does, what it is and why we find guilt like an itch we can’t reach to scratch.

How did we all get this condition? Succumbing to the devil’s temptation to think and act apart from God and His Word, every human being born since Adam and Eve has been separated from God by sin occupying the human heart in place of the Spirit because of their action. Sin isolates and alienates bringing aloneness, fear and guilt.
The deepest problem is the subtlety of sin. It results in sinners being the last to know and understand the problem. Sin infects all thought, behavior, emotion and spiritual insight with self-centered rationalization and justification. The more this process increases, the farther from God and others an individual is removed. One only has to read Cain’s self-assessment in Genesis 4:13-14 to see the human plight, “13And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. (KJV)”
Look at Paul’s self-realization in Romans 7, “14-16I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience?" Yes. I'm full of myself—after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary.
17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different (The Message Bible).”
Every person needs to be made aware of this spiritual condition and to seek its cure. As vs.25 shows only God in His love and mercy offers the cure. He makes up, atones, for our sins by His Son taking our punishment for sin on the Cross.

Before we look at that offering let’s take a look at everyday situations we see around us. A kid having failed an exam takes a ‘make-up’ exam. A person makes up for the way he treats someone by saying, “I’m sorry.” Another person goes to prison to ‘make up’ for a crime. Can we ‘pay back’ what we took from someone? Can I ever ‘make up’ for past sins? These are just some of the lingering questions about the atonement. Look at our language about making up. Women put on ‘make’ ‘up’ to make up for what they think ought to be there but isn’t. Men do the same when they wear clothes that they think make them look thinner. Or when they try to outdo one another in competition in business, sports or arguments. Win or lose “I’ve got to do better next time (make up)” so as to not be outdone in whatever I do.

There is no end to the make-up process. Everything we do has about the air of making up for something which points to a deeper issue, judgment. For every thought, act, emotion there is a judgment. It’s good or it’s bad. We see a show, a person, a situation and judgment is on our lips and on our mind. Everything has about it the aura of judgment due to imperfection. This is the evidence of sin, the flaw at the heart of human experience. Sin brings a sense of guilt and judgment when something is not completed, not completed right, not completed the way others expected, not completed so that I feel it was something well done. It is what we feel when we have thought or done something that we know to be wrong. It sticks to us like glue. Guilt is a spiritual glue that needs to be dissolved. The sense of incompleteness, imperfection, not having done enough, not meeting what others see as potential, not having done what is right and we feel that pervasive thing called failure. Failure brings that final backdrop we dread, judgment.

There is a final judgment to which all judgment points. Judgment points to that final moment when we stand before God and will be held accountable for our whole life. How will God deal with us then? We are all of us, each in our hearts, yearning for the forgiveness, restoration to and blessing of our Heavenly Father, to be at one with Him, at< >one, atone. The very depth of life itself begs for resolution, ‘at-one-ment,’ being ‘at-one-ed’, at one with God.

Remember this, Jesus is the only person who never had to atone for anything because He was already at one with His Father. Yet He chose to live in human experience and atone for us by going to the Cross, dying in our place to personally make up for our sin and guilt so that, through faith in Jesus, we could be restored, at one, with the Father, Himself and the Holy Spirit.