What Is The Atonement?

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What is the Atonement? The word atonement isn 't used as much in the local, contemporary church as it once was in the Early Church. The Atonement is the perfect sacrifice that Jesus Christ made to help mankind defeat sin and death. Jesus’s atoning sacrifice took place in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary. He was the ransom for all of mankind, taking the very sinful nature of humanity onto Himself, and dying on behalf of man. It is the expression of the love that God the Father and Jesus Christ has for His children, shown in a way that can never be repaid. Without this expression of love and sacrifice, the Christian faith would be as it was in the Old Testament, led by The Law. But the unexplainable love of God paved a…show more content…
This belief was the earliest of theories to come out of the death and resurrection of Christ, based primarily on the scripture of Mark 10:45, which has Jesus speaking on servanthood, stating "for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." This theory comes with both positive and negative outcomes. The fact that Jesus used the words "...and give His life as a ransom for many." gives a clear belief that this is exactly what Jesus did. With that in mind, the question must be asked; who was the ransom given to? Early church fathers believed that the ransom of His death was given to Satan himself. But does this put too much emphasise and give too much thought to the so called "power" that Satan had? Dale Campbell, writes in his paper on "Atonement theories and the Action in the transaction " expresses; "Of great concern to both ancient and modern theologians is the implicit suggestion that God would (or even could) find Himself in need of having to ‘deal’ with Satan in this way. Is the Ransom theory guilty of ‘giving the devil more than his due’ in the event of redemption ? The concern here is that the devil is being given more credit and portraying Him as the stronger person in the whole scenario, and I personally believe that yes Jesus was the ransom for mankind, but it was not to limit the overwhelming strength that the devil had over God
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