Nonviolence and the Atonement

By Ronald J Sider

The foundation of Christian nonviolence lies not in some calculation of effectiveness. It rests in the cross. The ultimate ground of the biblical summons to love enemies is the nature of God, revealed first in Jesus’ teaching and life and then most powerfully in His death and resurrection.

Jesus did not say that one should practice loving nonviolence because it would always transform vicious enemies into bosom friends. The cross stands as a harsh reminder that love for enemies does not always work—at least not in the short run. Jesus grounded His call to love enemies in the very nature of God: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45, emphasis added; compare to 5:9). God loves God’s enemies. Instead of promptly destroying sinners, God continues to shower the good gifts of creation upon them. Since that is the way God acts, those who want to be God’s sons and daughters must do likewise. Jesus’ concept of the suffering Messiah who goes to the cross as a ransom for sinners underlines most powerfully His teaching on God’s way of dealing with enemies. 

That the cross is the ultimate demonstration that God deals with God’s enemies through suffering love receives its clearest theological expression in Paul: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. . . . While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:8, 10, emphasis added). Jesus’ vicarious cross for sinners is the foundation and deepest expression of Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. As the substitutionary view of the atonement indicates, we are enemies in the double sense that sinful persons are hostile to God and that the just, holy Creator hates sin (Romans 1:18). On the cross, the One who knew no sin was made sin for us sinful enemies (2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10-14).

Divine Child Abuse

But to say this plunges one into the midst of intense modern debate about the nature of the atonement. Is the “violence” of the cross inconsistent with Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence? Is the cross divine child abuse? Have we misunderstood Paul’s concept of sin? As a result, is the idea that Jesus’ death paid the penalty for our sins a mistake? Is the widespread evangelical idea of substitutionary atonement—that is, that Jesus took our sins upon Himself, becoming our substitute so that we might receive salvation—really what the New Testament says? And if Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross is the primary or only purpose of Jesus’ coming to earth (as some evangelicals claim), is there any connection between the atonement and Christian ethics? Let’s consider some of these questions.

J. Denny Weaver argues that Jesus’ death “accomplishes nothing for the salvation of sinners.” Weaver insists that Jesus did not come to die and God did not will Jesus’ death on the cross. “Satisfaction atonement in any form depends on divinely sanctioned violence,” he writes. Such a view, Weaver claims, makes God the author of Jesus’ death, which is divine child abuse. It is a picture, Sharon Baker claims, of “a cruel father who demands the blood of an innocent person.”

Furthermore, it nurtures unhealthy attitudes among Christians, encouraging women to accept abuse and minorities to accept domination. Finally, it involves a heretical doctrine of the Trinity.

I find these views fundamentally unbiblical at many points. They simply ignore large parts of the New Testament. Jesus said he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The Gospels, Acts, and the epistles all say that Jesus’ death on the cross was according to the eternal will of God (for example, Acts 2:23).

The claim that Jesus’ death has no significance for our salvation contradicts numerous New Testament statements. Paul regularly argues that we are reconciled to God by the death of Christ (Romans 3:21-25, 5:9-10; Galatians 3:13-14).

What about divine child abuse? If we see an angry God bludgeoning the innocent man Jesus, then this surely is divine child abuse. But that ignores the fact that the Trinity is present at the cross. The Father and the Spirit suffer the agony of the cross every bit as much as the Son. The Trinity wills the cross.

What about the argument that we are involved in logical contradiction and a heretical doctrine of the Trinity if we say both that Jesus taught nonviolence and God willed Jesus’ death? This would be a logical contradiction only if Jesus condemns violence in precisely the same way that God uses violence at the cross. But that is not the case. The action of an infinite God substituting Godself for sinful persons at the cross is not identical with the action of finite persons using violence against other persons.

It is very important to note that Jesus did not see any contradiction here. Jesus clearly said His followers should love their enemies, thus being children of the heavenly Father (Matthew 5:43-48). But the same Jesus talked about God’s wrath against sinners, divine punishment of evildoers, and eternal separation from God (Matthew 25:41-46). Jesus does not find these two ideas to be contradictory.

Nor does the rest of the New Testament. As we will see below, the teaching that God is angry at and punishes sin is all through the New Testament—right alongside the most amazing statements about God’s overflowing love. We ought to submit to what Jesus and the New Testament tell us about God punishing sinners and the Son taking our place at the cross rather than reject (on the basis of some alleged logical contradiction) one part of what Jesus and the New Testament teach.

It is also important to remember that the Bible calls on believers to imitate God at some points and not at others. Finite human beings are radically different from God. We do not create out of nothing. Our understanding of how holiness and love, justice and mercy, fit together in perfect harmony is dreadfully incomplete.

One of the places where the New Testament specifically forbids persons from imitating God is just at this point. God, the New Testament teaches more than once, does rightly execute vengeance on evildoers. But the New Testament explicitly says that Christians should not do that (Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30; 1 Peter 2:23). Finite human beings simply do not know enough to rightly combine holiness and love in a way that punishes evil the way God justly does. Yet that does not mean that God should not. Nor does it mean there is a contradiction in the Trinity or in Jesus’ own teaching when the incarnate One tells us that the trinitarian God loves God’s enemies and also punishes sinners. Only an infinite, all-knowing, all-lovingand holy God knows how holiness and love fit together perfectly in the very being of God.

One final point: Weaver and others, such as Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, seem to think that the satisfaction view of the atonement encourages women to submit passively to abuse and the oppressed to passively accept oppression. But that is to claim too much. One can and should agree that an understanding of the atonement that focuses exclusively on Christ as our substitute on the cross so that we can be forgiven by a holy God does cut the link with ethics. It does make it easy for white racists and male chauvinists to continue in their sin. It does run the danger of nurturing passivity in the face of abuse and oppression. But none of those problems follow if one has a fully biblical understanding of the cross and salvation. Christ not only came to die as a substitute for us. He also came to bring the inbreaking reign of God; to combat and break the power of evil, including sexism and racism; to transform and empower us so that believers now can live according to the norms of Christ’s dawning kingdom and join Christ in the battle against all that enslaves, abuses and destroys people.

The solution to the inadequacies of an exclusively substitutionary view of the atonement is not to throw away what that view rightly teaches. It is rather to see that metaphor in the much larger context of everything the New Testament teaches about the atonement. It is also to place all of that within Jesus’ proclamation that the messianic kingdom has begun and His disciples can and should even now live the life of that new kingdom. The goal of the atonement is not only forgiveness of sins, but also freedom from the power of sin so we can now live the kingdom life that Jesus taught.

C. H. Dodd, “sins,” and Sin.

Many scholars have argued that, for Paul, God’s wrath is not divine anger at sins committed, but rather an “inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.” What the cross needs to accomplish, therefore, is not forgiveness of sins, but liberation and deliverance, from the enslaving power of Sin. Consequently, the atonement involves Christ conquering evil, not Christ offering Himself as a substitute for our sins. 

That the New Testament does sometimes talk of Christ’s atoning work in this way is clear (as in John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14-15). But an exclusive emphasis on this understanding of the atonement ignores other clear texts that speak of “sins” in the plural and say that Christ became our substitute to offer sinners forgiveness for our sins. And Christ’s substitutionary death happened because God, who is both holiness and love and hates and punishes sins, freely chose out of unfathomable love to accomplish our forgiveness that way.

Frequently Paul talks about sins in the plural (Romans 4:7; 11:27; 1 Corinthians 15:3). Furthermore, Paul quite clearly says that Jesus became a substitute and a curse for us, taking the guilt for our sins upon himself (Romans 5:6-11; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10-13).

The result? God no longer reckons or imputes our sins to us (2 Corinthians 5:19). When we trust not in our good deeds but in God, “who justifies the ungodly,” our faith is credited as justification (Romans 4:4-6). And Paul goes on to explain what that justification means by quoting Psalm 32:1-2, which says that someone is blessed whose sins are forgiven rather than being counted against such a person (Romans 4:7-8). And, as Paul has explained a bit earlier, that justification comes through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross (3:21-26).

God’s wrath

Does Jesus’ cross deal with God’s wrath? Does God’s wrath require Jesus’ death so that God may forgive sinful enemies? And if so, does that contradict Jesus’ teaching that God loves God’s enemies?

Many modern people want to dismiss the idea of God’s wrath and speak only of God’s love. But the New Testament speaks of God’s wrath at least 30 times (as in Romans 1:18; 2:1-8; 3:5). But does that mean God is angry at sinners?

C. H. Dodd and others, as reported above, have argued that God’s wrath is an impersonal process of cause and effect built into the structure of the universe. As Paul says in Romans 1, God gives sinners over to the natural destructive consequences of their evil acts (1:24, 26, 28). The fact that sinful actions produce destructive results does not mean, it is said, that God is angry at sinners. God is only angry at sin.

It is true that sometimes the object of God’s wrath is sin itself (as in Romans 1:18). But in other passages, the object of God’s wrath is evildoers (Luke 21:23; John 3:36; Romans 2:5; 1 Thessalonians 2:16). Sin, as David recognized so clearly in confessing his adultery, is first of all an offense against God (Psalm 51:4). After listing a number of sins, Ephesians 5:6 says: “Because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.”

Repeatedly the Bible says that death is a central aspect of the punishment of sin. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). But Christ has taken the curse of sin upon Himself, dying as our substitute so that those who have faith in Christ are now justified, forgiven, and thus free from God’s wrath against sinners.

But does this mean that God could not have forgiven us unless Christ had died as our substitute? Some evangelicals say that. They say that God could not have forgiven us if Christ had not died for us.

I believe the New Testament clearly says that God did accomplish our justification through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross. But I know of no biblical passage claiming that was the only way our holy God could forgive us. That the trinitarian God chose to substitute Godself in a most astounding way underlines that God is both love and holiness. It demonstrates more clearly than anything I can imagine that sin is a terrible reality that our holy God refuses to ignore. But the crucifixion of God incarnate does not mean that was the only way God could forgive us. It simply reveals in a most amazing way that God is both holiness and love. An infinite, all-knowing, all-loving God could have chosen any number of ways to forgive us.

But does not Hebrews 9:22 say that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”? Some think this verse means that God could not forgive our sins unless Jesus died for us. To interpret the statement in that way, however, ignores the first part of the verse: “The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (emphasis added). The text is talking about the situation in the Old Testament. And even then, the text says, there were exceptions.

It is striking that on Israel’s annual day of atonement, when the high priest made atonement for all the sins of the Israelites, the goat bearing those sins was not even killed (Leviticus 16:21-22)! Jesus repeatedly declared—on His own authority and without any requirement that sacrifice must be offered at the temple—that people’s sins are forgiven (Mark 2:1-12). Clearly, both Testaments teach us that God normally uses sacrifices (animals in the Old Testament, Jesus’ death in the New Testament) as God forgives sins, yet also that God sometimes forgives sins without any blood sacrifice.

The fact that God chose to accomplish our forgiveness through the incarnate Son’s death on the cross reveals most vividly that God is both love and holiness. But that does not mean God’s wrath against sin and sinners is equal to God’s love for everyone. God is love in a way that God is not wrath.

Exodus 34:6-7 declares that whereas God’s punishment for sin lasts only briefly, God’s steadfast love (khesed) endures for a thousand generations! Again and again and again, various psalms declare that God’s “love endures forever” (Psalm 106:1, 107:1, 118:1-4). God’s “anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime” (30:5).

The Trinity is love from all eternity. Before creation, God had no wrath. God’s holy wrath follows human sin. In fact, it is God’s love that prompts God’s anger at sinners. Precisely because God loves all people with unfathomable love, God is angry when people harm and destroy themselves and others. Mary Schertz rightly says that “the wrath of God is the truth-telling force of God’s love.” And God’s love continues even as God punishes (Jeremiah 9:10). Nowhere is God’s love more powerfully revealed than at the cross, where the Trinity somehow experiences crucifixion as the eternal Son becomes a curse for us and dies for our sins.

If crucifixion were the end of the story, then we would need to conclude that God’s wrath is at least equal to God’s love. But the story continues on Easter morning. The resurrection loudly declares that God’s love for sinful enemies far outweighs God’s wrath against sinners. The resurrection of the one who died for our sins proves that Jesus was right in teaching that God is like the father of the prodigal son. God stands with arms stretched wide open, eager to forgive our sins and welcome us back as forgiven sons and daughters.

Multiple metaphors of the atonement

I agree with the many theologians and biblical scholars who find all the biblical metaphors of the atonement complementary and important. Rejecting any one metaphor involves ignoring or denying a significant part of what the New Testament says about the atonement. It is only when we take one view and emphasize it in a one-sided or exclusive way that we have problems. Rather, we need to see how the moral, substitutionary, and Christus Victor views of the atonement complement each other. And placing them in the context of the gospel of the kingdom helps us understand Jesus’ interrelated roles as teacher, victor, and substitute.

As messianic proclaimer of the kingdom of God, Jesus taught a radical ethic of love (the moral metaphor). From His Sermon on the Mount through His death on the cross, He taught and modeled the way of love, even for enemies. Living His costly ethics, however, is possible only for forgiven sinners who are empowered by the Spirit.

As nonviolent messianic conqueror, Jesus inaugurated the kingdom, battling with Satan and all the forces of evil (the Christus Victor metaphor). He conquered diseases and demons in His public ministry. On the cross, He broke the power of Satan, and on Easter morning He arose triumphant over death itself, enabling His disciples, in the power of the Spirit, to live Jesus’ kingdom ethics now.

As Isaiah’s suffering servant, Jesus died on the cross as our substitute (the substitutionary metaphor). As a result, we can stand before our holy God despite our sins.

Understanding the atonement in the context of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom underlines the community-building aspect of Jesus’ saving work. Jesus not only preached the gospel of the kingdom; He also formed a new kingdom community of women and men, prostitutes and royal servants, tax collectors and respectable folk. A reconciled community is central to God’s plan of salvation (Titus 2:14). Scot McKnight is right: the “atonement is all about creating a society in which God’s will is actualized—on planet earth, in the here and now.” And that includes loving our enemies.

That God incarnate died for sinful enemies is the deepest foundation for Jesus’ call to love our enemies. Rather than being a problem for a nonviolent Christian ethic, the atonement provides the most solid foundation. The cross is not an angry God bludgeoning an innocent man. It is the three persons of the Trinity together embracing the agony of Roman crucifixion to accomplish our salvation. That the Trinity chose such awful reality to accomplish our forgiveness demonstrates with unspeakable clarity that God is both holy and loving. But the fact that God substitutes Godself for us at the cross demonstrates that God’s wrath is but for a moment and God’s love is everlasting.

If one claims that the substitutionary view of the atonement is the only important view, then one truly cuts the link between the atonement and ethics. But that is a one-sided, unbiblical position. It ignores the clear New Testament teaching on the moral and Christus Victor metaphors of the atonement. And it fails to place the cross in the context of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom. At the heart of Jesus’ gospel is the teaching that the members of Jesus’ dawning kingdom should love their enemies. And the fact that the Trinity somehow embraces Roman crucifixion for sinful enemies is the deepest foundation for that teaching.

It is a tragedy of our time that many of those who appropriate the biblical understanding of Christ’s vicarious cross fail to see its direct implications for the problem of war and violence. And it is equally tragic that some of those who emphasize pacifism and nonviolence fail to ground it in Christ’s atonement. Since Jesus commanded His followers to love their enemies and then died as the incarnate Son to demonstrate that God reconciles God’s enemies by suffering love, any rejection of the nonviolent way in human relations seems to me to involve an inadequate doctrine of the atonement. If God in Christ has reconciled God’s enemies by God’s suffering servanthood, should not those who want to follow Christ also treat their enemies in the same way?

— This essay is excerpted from Ronald Sider’s forthcoming Speak Your Peace: What the Bible Says About Loving Our Enemies (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald   Press, 2020), used with permission. A longer text with elaborate footnotes is in chapter 12 of Ronald J Sider, If Jesus is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence (Grand Rapids:BakerAcademic, 2019). J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 245, with his emphasis.

 Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 35. See also Sharon L. Baker, Executing God: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about Salvation and the Cross (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 70–78.

 Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement, 89, 245–46.

 See Joanna Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim, 1989), 1–30.

 C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932), 23

 And Christ’s battle with the demons during his public ministry. See Ronald J. Sider, Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 97–98.

 J. I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned he Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007) 40, 72.   John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (2nd ed; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 160.

 Mary H. Schertz, “Partners in God’s Passion,” in At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross, ed. Duane K. Friesen and Gerald W. Schlabach (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2005), 173.

 This section includes material from Ronald J.  Sider, Good News and Good Works: A  Theology for the Whole Gospel (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 1993), 95–100.

  Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 11.

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