Kansas City, Missouri, United States - Reflecting God – Embrace Holy Living - "Our Atonement In Christ" Friday, 9 January 2015 - Scripture: Hebrews 2:10-18

Kansas City, Missouri, United States - Reflecting God – Embrace Holy Living - "Our Atonement In Christ" Friday, 9 January 2015 - Scripture: Hebrews 2:10 Everything belongs to God, and all things were created by his power. So God did the right thing when he made Jesus perfect by suffering, as Jesus led many of God’s children to be saved and to share in his glory. 11 Jesus and the people he makes holy all belong to the same family. That is why he isn’t ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. 12 He even said to God,
“I will tell them your name
    and sing your praises
when they come together
    to worship.”
13 He also said,
“I will trust God.”
Then he said,
“Here I am with the children
    God has given me.”
14 We are people of flesh and blood. That is why Jesus became one of us. He died to destroy the devil, who had power over death. 15 But he also died to rescue all of us who live each day in fear of dying. 16 Jesus clearly did not come to help angels, but he did come to help Abraham’s descendants. 17 He had to be one of us, so that he could serve God as our merciful and faithful high priest and sacrifice himself for the forgiveness of our sins. 18 And now that Jesus has suffered and was tempted, he can help anyone else who is tempted.
"Our Atonement In Christ" by Stephen Mayes
What’s a good God to do? He is merciful and just, and now He’s dealing with rebels. Beings He created who flaunt His will and steal His honor!
This was the dilemma, Anselm, the eleventh-century church leader and thinker, wrestled.* If God exercised his mercy and ignored humankind’s sin, He would be immoral. God’s will orders the universe: These rebels defied that order. So, how can God be untrue to His own nature? To maintain the moral order and balance of the whole of His creation, satisfaction must be rendered.
Yet, Anselm reasoned, these created beings can only offer God what they already owe. Even if they perfectly live out His will, this is no satisfaction for the sin wreck. “If I leave them unredeemed,” God reflects, “I’m frustrated. I created them to enjoy ‘the supreme good, that is myself!”
What a conundrum! Only humanity can make the satisfaction, yet it must be made by One greater than anything in all creation. First humanity sinned: Then the God-man redeemed. O, what an “at-one-ment!”[*See Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500 (Vol 1), Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1975, 500-501.]
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