Like most people brought up in an evangelical home I did not at first know that there was any other way of thinking of the Atonement except in terms of substitution, in terms of God laying on Jesus the punishment that should have been laid on me. ... But there were things about it that left me unhappy. It seemed to oppose God and Jesus, and to present me with a God who was out to punish me and a Jesus who was out to save me. ... The whole conception seemed to me to imply ... that something Jesus did changed the attitude of God, pacified God, appeased God, persuaded him to withhold the hand raised to strike. It seemed to me that the whole conception starts from the wrath of God, while the New Testament starts from the love of God. It was because he so loved the world that God sent his Son into the world (John 3:16). ... Never in the New Testament, never once, is God said to be reconciled to man; it is always man who is reconciled to God ....
I began to see the tremendous thing, the fact that Jesus came, not to change God's attitude to men, but to demonstrate God's attitude to men ....
Copyright © 1975 William Barclay, William B. Eerdmans publishing Company. Also under the title Testament of Faith by William Barclay, 1975, A. R. Mowbray & co., Ltd., England. Used by permission.
