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The Moral Influence View of the Atonement and the Judgment Hour
William Diehl
Many great Christian scholars and theologians have tried over the centuries to put into words the meaning of why our Lord had to die upon the cross of Calvary. All Christians will agree that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died for our sins but problems develop in the areas of just what exactly the Lord did accomplish when He died and why did He have to die. Couldn't God just forgive simply because He is God? Why did God have to come down here to Earth and die for our sins?
The Christian believes that God has spoken to man and revealed truth about creation and salvation which man cannot find out by mere reason and observation of the natural world. And so we believe that God has revealed truth to us through His word, the Bible.
Briefly the Bible tells us about — 1. God having created man in a perfect world without sin or death — 2. the fall of man and the entrance of sin, guilt, and death — 3. God's promises to eventually save man from sin, guilt and death as found in the Old Testament in the writings of Moses and the prophets — 4. and finally God has acted to fulfill all of His promises in coming to Earth in the Person of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Gospels tell us about the Lord's birth, His ministry, His sayings, His sinless holy life, and finally about His betrayal, death, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven. Although the Gospels explain some of the reason why Jesus died on the cross, it is really in the epistles of Paul and the other apostles where we find the most detailed answers to the question of why our Lord had to die.
Now we come to the point to which I have been leading. What we say about the Gospel—what it is—and what it means—must be gathered from the writings of the Bible and not from an interpretation which accepts some of the statements about the Gospel while rejecting other statements which we find objectionable. This brings us to the "Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement".
Peter Abelard was a Christian scholar in France who lived from A.D.1079 to 1142. He was a famous Christian educator who was one of the first men to start a university in Europe, the Sorbonne, and eventually became a famous lecturer at Notre Dame. Being a brilliant scholar, he wrote a book, "Yes and No", in which he concedes that the Bible is a divinely inspired book but written by men who were very fallible and that fallibility has entered the writings and interpretations found in the Bible.
Having laid this foundation of fallibility, he then questioned the idea that Christ actually died as a propitiatory (debt canceling) vicarious (in our place) atonement (act which effects legal reconciliation to the Law) for sin to satisfy the justice of God as demanded by the Law of God. This is the Apostolic, scriptural view of why Christ had to die, but Abelard preferred to ignore the concept of atonement and focus on the view that Christ's sufferings were not meant to suffer the guilt and penalty of sin, but only were endured only to melt our hearts to love God. Thus the primary motive for Christ allowing Himself to be crucified was to motivate (morally influence) us to be loving and humble as Jesus was and thus to reveal the love and kindness of God to others.
The attractiveness of this view to the natural sinful heart of man is very deceptive. This view is wrong, not because of what it affirms, but rather because of what it denies. There is great emotional appeal to such a view of the sufferings of Christ. And thus many are swept into this view as being great light which does away with all the need for blood, law, atonement, redemption, propitiation, satisfaction, debt, guilt, penalty, original sin, substitution, justification, righteousness of faith, ransom, punishment, condemnation, sacrifice for sin, purchased, reconciliation, pardon, and sin. In the final analysis salvation consists of our love response to God's love and we are admitted to heaven because we are "safe to save" because we love God. The beautiful sounding terms of love and gentleness are almost overwhelmingly deceptive to anyone who does not know the Pauline, New Testament gospel.
In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God's holiness and glory can only deal with sinful man through the only mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ who for us, lived and died and arose again for our justification. He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many. God has reconciled us unto Himself through Jesus Christ. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He reconciled all things to Himself having made peace through the blood of His cross. For all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God has set forth as a propitiation by faith in His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. To him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Righteousness shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.
May this brief discourse shed some light on the Moral Influence Theory. The problem is not with what it affirms (the loving heart of God) but rather in what it denies (the substitutionary death of our Lord for our sins). Any gospel which denies that our forgiveness and acceptance with God is made possible through faith in the shed blood of Christ is a denial of the true meaning of the Cross and robs us of our assurance and confidence before the holiness of God.
Only the assurance that Christ has made atonement for sin will give us hope in the coming time of trouble. All other ground is sinking sand.
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