MEANING OF ATONEMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 745, 19 August 1929, Page 14

MEANING OF ATONEMENT

NEW WAY OF LIFE The “Atonement in the Light of Modern Thought” was the subject of an address at the Community Mission, Dominion Road, last evening, by the Rev. George Jackson. The speaker outlined the various theories of the atonement which had been preached since the Founder of Christianity had been crucified at Jerusalem. As each theory had been superseded by a view more in accord with the divine character as revealed by Jesus, two things had become more clearly evident to thoughtful men.

The first was that the character of God could not be represented by any statement that made it necessary for an offended deity to be placated by the sacrifice of an innocent victim. God did not need to be reconciled to men. He was active in seeking to win men from selfishness and from sinful courses, and was a father of love who suffered under the burdens which human wrong-doing imposed upon humanity. The second was that the life and death of Jesus was not a piece of divine stage-acting. He did not move from incident to incident of his life until he came to the cross, in order to fulfil some prearranged scheme of salvation.

The recognition of these two facts, asserted the speaker, opened the way for a clearer understanding of the divine character and purpose in human experience. All love that suffered in order to raise the level of life for individuals and for the race was redemptive in quality. Jesus proclaimed, and exemplified in His life, the message of a new way of life for men, and a new order for society, which he called the Kingdom of God. His message and His life of matchless love aroused the hostility of the ecclesiastical and political leaders of His day. He chose the cross, and preferred to he crucified, rather than permit His cause to be crucified by compromising with the forces that opposed Him. Those who were prepared voluntarily to identify themselves with Jesus and all the prophets of a nobler life and a better social order were in some degree saviours of the world. The true setting of the cross was not a skull-shaped hill outside Jerusalem, but the centre of the universe, where the divine spirit of love was eternally crucified by the avarice and selfishness of mankind.