Back to the topic. Jesus paid the price of our redemption to law and justice - to the Godhead. He paid it with His blood. Law and justice demands not only pardon but death for sin. Jesus had to die because it was required to satisfy law and justice. That's how it is, how the Godhead set it up from the beginning.

Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)

This is what the LORD says: "Administer justice every morning; rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed" (Jeremiah 21:12)

This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Administer true justice: show mercy and compassion to one another." (Zechariah 7:9)

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice.( Isaiah 30:18)

In addition to knowing God better, doing justice leads to shalom, peace: Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever (Isaiah 31:16-17).

Where there is justice there is the possibility of peace. The opposite is also true: where there is oppression and injustice there can be no shalom.

What is this shalom God is calling us to experience? It is certainly more than the absence of war and violence. The basic meaning of shalom is wholeness. It involves all the conditions of life that make for wholeness and harmony. Shalom is the goal of God's work as deliverer and liberator. God's purpose in the world is to restore shalom wherever it has been broken. (http://www.bread.org/get-involved/at-church/biblical-basics-on-justice.html)

TE: This assumes that God had a 19th century Western perspective of justice from the beginning. What evidence is there that God had such a perspective?

MM: Isn't it the other way around? That is, Western societies got their ideas of justice and mercy from God.

TE: Justice is administered by showing mercy and compassion. God longs to be gracious to us because He is a God of justice.

MM: Justice and mercy are two sides of the same coin, right? In mercy God withholds justice. The idea that mercy is justice isn't supported in the Bible or the SOP.

TE: I'd be curious to see where you see in Jesus' teachings the ideas you have expressed.

MM: The following passages address your question:

Love your enemies.

What shall we say of the false idea of the atonement, held even by many in the popular Protestant churches of today, and expressed in a late confession of faith in these words, “Christ died to reconcile the Father unto us”?

This is not the place to enter into a discussion of that theme; suffice it to say that it is the pagan idea of sacrifice applied to Christianity. God, they think, was angry; he must pour forth his wrath upon some one. If upon man, it would eternally damn him, as he deserved; but this would interfere with God’s plan and purpose in creating the worlds, so this must not be. And yet God must not be cheated of his vengeance; for this reason he pours it forth upon Christ, that man may go free. So when Christ died, he was slain really by the wrath and anger of the Father. This is paganism.

The true idea of the atonement makes God and Christ equal in their love, and one in their purpose of saving humanity. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.’ The life of Christ was not the price paid to the Father for our pardon; but that life was the price which the Father paid to so manifest his loving power as to bring us to that repentant attitude of mind where he could pardon us freely. Thus Satan has transformed the truth of God’s love into a lie, and even infused this lie into the very doctrine of the atonement. (George Fifield; emphasis mine)

While God has desired to teach men that from His own love comes the Gift which reconciles them to Himself, the archenemy of mankind has endeavored to represent God as one who delights in their destruction. Thus the sacrifices and the ordinances designed of Heaven to reveal divine love have been perverted to serve as means whereby sinners have vainly hoped to propitiate, with gifts and good works, the wrath of an offended God. (PK 686)

(M)an was deceived; his mind was darkened by Satan's sophistry. The height and depth of the love of God he did not know. For him there was hope in a knowledge of God's love. By beholding His character he might be drawn back to God. (DA 762)

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

The above reality that we have described to this point has been described with several different analogies by the Fathers. Taken together, they can give us a complete picture. The problem has arisen because some have taken one analogy and attempted to make that describe the whole of atonement. However, because it can only point to certain truths about the atonement, any attempt to do this will inevitably result in false conclusions both about God and what needed to be fixed for us to be “saved.”

This is essentially what Anselm did, who is known as the father of satisfaction understanding of the atonement. His goal was to be able to explain to the heathen in a logical fashion why Christ had to die for our sins, without using the Bible or the Fathers. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to stay within them, but because of his methodology he does drift away substantially on some points. It is known as the satisfaction theory because it indicates a need to satisfy a lack that keeps us from salvation.

Essentially, he took the concept of debt that we owe to God and made that into the whole of the atonement. We do see the debt understanding even in the Bible, as the servant who owed his master a lifetime plus of wages. Athanasius speaks of our debt we owe as well, but not as Anselm ended up using it. Because of sin, we owed God a debt due to our violation of His honor. This honor has to be repaid somehow due to the nature of God. Man can’t pay it, only God can pay it, so God becomes man to not only pay what His due is to the Father through perfect obedience, but goes beyond that to give what He didn’t have to give, His life. Since He didn’t need this “merit”, we can obtain that merit for paying our debt to God off. The sacraments then become a means of distributing these merits, as well as other good works. This is basically the Roman Catholic understanding.

The two major problems with this understanding are these: 1. God’s forgiveness is not dependant upon repaying a debt, and 2. The debt we owe is not to the Father. All we have to do to know that the first is not true is look in the Scriptures. All through the Old Testament, before Christ’s sacrifice, God is considered merciful, slow to anger, forgiving all who come to Him. He is ready to cast our sins as far as the east is from the west. The only requirement for forgiveness offered in 2 Chron. 7:14 is “if my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways….” Nothing is mentioned about atoning for a past debt before forgiveness of sins can happen. Rather, God simply says: “…then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. In the New Testament we have the parable mentioned earlier, where the servant who owes his master more money than he could ever hope to repay is forgiven his entire debt without expectation of repaying it. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, likewise the father takes the son back, not asking that he restore the wealth he lost in sinful living.

Concerning the second, we see as we have already noted that death is what is being defeated, Satan is the one who we are in bondage to, not God. By placing God as the one who is unwilling to forgive us our debt, it is He who we are in bondage to death with, not Satan. This is attested to by the Fathers:(http://www.orthodoxconvert.info/Q-A.php?c=Salvation-The+Atonement)

His goal was to be able to explain to the heathen in a logical fashion why Christ had to die for our sins, without using the Bible or the Fathers.

I stripped out the quotes that weren't from Jesus, and this is what remained:



This is indeed in full harmony with God's concept of justice.

Where in Jesus' teachings to we come across the idea that Jesus had to die in order for God the Father to be able to legally forgive us?