Atonement or condemnation?

Often, the Gospels in the New Testament describe moral situations where Christ Jesus chooses atonement when others want to condemn. This week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled “Doctrine of Atonement,” summons us to answer for ourselves what at-one-ment with God might mean in the details of our daily lives.

Teaching ethics at a major university led me to better understand the necessity of raising decisionmaking standards above the legal system baseline. If students are working in a country where bribery is legal and expected, but not part of their moral standards, they are in a moral dilemma. They can either raise the bar to include their moral standards or suffer in their moral dilemma. If they raise the bar, the original law is not destroyed; instead, a higher sense of law is brought into play. We hear a similar message from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus states, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17 , citation 9). The Jewish laws (doctrine) for atoning sins are outlined in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. We can think of them as the baseline for first-century Jewish decisionmaking and atonement.

In the same sermon, Jesus tells the multitudes that if they want to atone with God they need to be at one with each other. “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:24 , cit. 9). Jesus was raising the bar for atonement by adding forgiveness and love for one another.

This teaching is put to the test when an adulterous woman is brought to Jesus
(see John 8:1–11 , cit. 14). According to the laws of Moses (see Leviticus 20:10 ; Deuteronomy 22:22–24 ), both she and her counterpart should be stoned, but the crowd only demands the stoning of the woman. When asked by the scribes and Pharisees, “What sayest thou?” Jesus prays, then stands up and says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” No one casts a stone. They, “being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one.”

Augustine, a prolific fourth-century interpreter of the Bible, pointed out that the men realized that they, too, had sinned. However, Augustine adds, “Therefore the Lord did also condemn, but condemned sins, not the sinner” (Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT IVa, p. 277). We can imagine that as Jesus was praying, he might also have forgiven the men for their sins. In turn the men may well have been able to forgive the woman and walk away. Jesus’ love for everyone concerned created a sense of atonement, or at-one-ness, with God. 

Mary Baker Eddy points out that “Jesus’ prayer, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ specified also the terms of forgiveness. When forgiving the adulterous woman he said, ‘Go, and sin no more’ ” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 11 , cit. 10). Science and Health furthermore explains: “The scientific unity which exists between God and man must be wrought out in life-practice, and God’s will must be universally done” (p. 202 , cit. 16).

Millions of people from many Christian denominations repeat this line from the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 ). However, when we are put to the test, do we seek atonement as Jesus taught or do we seek condemnation?