Christ was the ransom. We know that. But to whom did He pay that ransom? Most of us learned that Christ paid it to God to appease His wrath. But the church fathers say He paid it to our great enemy, Satan, to buy us back from the slavery we had sold ourselves into.

Just a quick verse or two for you to think about:

Psalm 107

   ¹O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. ²Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;

---

Psalm 136

   ²³Who remembered us in our low estate: for his mercy endureth for ever: ²⁴And hath redeemed us from our enemies: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Why is this on a religious abuse site? Because I think our view of God powerfully affects how we behave to one another. It is human nature to emulate what we worship. We learn God's attributes and try to follow in His pattern. If God is just, we try to be just. If God is truthful, we try to be truthful.

On the other hand, if one of God's attributes is that He holds onto anger against His children when they do wrong and cannot let it go until a great payment has been made to Him, then isn't it natural for our religious leaders to tend to take on harsh judgmentalism? Isn't it natural for them to tend to magnify our sins rather than overlook them, and for them to demand great, visible shows of penance for our sins. Isn't it natural for them to tend to hang onto our sins until they feel 'satisfied.'? In a sense, I can hardly blame them.

I remember the reaction of one very judgmental man to someone's sin. The sinner's friend said to him, "Look at the situation he was in. Can't you kind of understand how he ended up doing what he did?" The judgmental man went ballistic. He was terrified of the idea of softening somone's offense. He had to be as harsh toward the sin as he could possible be, because he was afraid that he wouldn't be in agreement with God if he went easy on anyone's errors. That's what you get if take to heart the idea that God is so offended by our sin that He cannot even look at us until we're covered over by the infinite suffering of Christ.  

But if our God is a forgiving God, a God who has pity on His children and goes on a great heroic quest to rescue then from their captors, well then, think how differently our religious leaders would act. They would tend to be gentle, patient, heroic themselves. They would forgive sins instead of magnifying them. They would encourage us instead of beating us down. Here's another Psalm passage for you:

Psalm 25:7:
   ⁷Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O LORD.

Have a great week.

(This is what I've been up to while I've been away from Xanga.)

We have probably all learned that our sins are so black that God can't look on us or forgive us, so Christ had to die to pay our debt of sin to God. Christ had to cover us up so God wouldn't be offended by our sins when he looked at us.

This is an orthodox, acceptable, well-thought-out view of the atonement, but it's not the only one. The early church fathers give us a different view of the atonement, one that predates the 'substitutionary atonement' doctrine by hundreds of years, and I'd like to share a bit of it with you. I do this because all of us who have suffered from religious abuse have had ideas like the one above held over our heads by our abusers. They scared us with images of a wrathful, displeased God. They reminded us what miserable, sinful beings we are. They basically kicked the stuffing out of us when we tried to defend ourselves, because, after all, if we're so bad Christ had to be killed to pay God off to save us, then we have no business defending ourselves at all.

The early church fathers had a different view. It was victorious, triumphant, joyful, exciting, dramatic and freeing, and all of this without minimizing the reality of sin and our need for salvation. They just see salvation differently. Their idea of salvation is more like what we mean when we say "I was saved from a fire" or "I was saved from kidnappers." This is difficult stuff and we'll have to have many conversations about it to flush it all out. I look forward to it.

Let's look at Mark 3:27: "No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. "

Here's what Irenaeus has to say about this passage (thanks to Mr. Darcy for finding this commentary):

The adversary enticed humanity to transgress our maker’s law, and thereby got us into his clutches.²² Yet his power consisted only in tempting the human will toward trespass and apostasy. With these chains he bound up the human will.²³ This is why in the economy of salvation it was necessary that he be bound with the same chains by which he had bound humanity.²⁴ It would be through a man that humanity would be set free to return to the Lord,²⁵ leaving the adversary in those bonds by which he himself had been fettered, that is, sin. For when Satan is bound, man is set free; since “none can enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, unless he first bind the strong man himself.”²⁶ It is in this way that he became exposed as the opposer of the Word who made all things, and subdued by his command. The new man showed him to be a fugitive from the law, and an apostate from God. He then was securely bound as a fugitive, and his goods²⁷ hauled away. These goods are those who had been in bondage, whom he had unjustly used for his own purposes. So it was a just means by which he was led captive, who had led humanity into captivity unjustly. In this way humanity was rescued from the clutches of its possessor by the tender mercy of God the Father, who had compassion on his own handiwork, and gave to it salvation, restoring it by means of the Word, Christ, in order that humanity might learn from this actual event that they receive incorruptibility not of themselves, but by the free gift of God.²⁸ Against Heresies 5.21.3.²⁹

I'd like to talk about this further in another post.