Someone Else's Sacrifice?

One popular misconception that atheists or anti-Christians hold is that the idea of God's sacrificial atonement for sin through Jesus Christ is in fact an unkind, unforgiving act.

Their question is simply, "Why couldn't God, in all his loving-kindness simply forgive us our sins? Why did he have to use Jesus as a sacrifice?" They imagine an illogical scenario like this:

You're at a playground and Joe walks up and punches you in the stomach. You have two options; you can forgive him and move on, or you can justifiably punch him back. The latter being fair in the cosmic scale of equity. But inexplicably, instead of punching Joe in return or forgiving him outright, you pull in George, an innocent bystander, and punch him in the stomach instead.

That's how some critics of Christianity view Jesus' death on the cross. Why did God the Father drag his own son to be punished for sins that he could have simply forgave? To them, it's illogical and cruel.

Firstly, God had to devise a plan to atone for the sins of man because without doing so, there would be no point in us doing good. If doing his will and not doing his will result in the same thing; reconciliation and closeness to God, then what's the point of having rules or a God-given moral code of absolute right and wrong? We might as well live how we please and just let God forgive us all in the end. That would be chaos, and as it were, unloving.

After all, do parents that love their children let them do whatever they want only to forgive them of their mistakes? No, parents give their children rules and boundaries that are sometimes broken. When they're broken, the children are punished or reprimanded and then forgiven to try again. That's the model of a loving relationship; that's God's model for us to follow.

Secondly, Jesus, when he died on the cross for our sins, wasn't an unwilling third party. It wasn't that God didn't want to suffer or forgive us and dragged Jesus, kicking and screaming, into the picture.

Jesus is, in fact, God himself! Jesus' sacrifice IS God's sacrifice. It's true sacrifice because God sacrificed himself to die for our sins.

In the end, God's plan for atonement and reconciliation is still the most beautiful, perfect plan conceivable.