Atonement without participation?

Perhaps our most famous Christian account of redemption is commonly known as substitutionary atonement. It runs something like this: in the beginning, God created the earth, and it was good—but then we messed it all up. We fell, because of our choices, into sin—a great sin against God’s infinite mercy and justice and goodness.

Because we mucked up the world, there was no way we could put it right; indeed, God would have been perfectly within his rights to destroy humanity. But God’s mercy got the better of his anger. He came up with a solution. For while his infinite mercy may have allowed him to let things rest, his infinite justice demanded that payment for sin be made. Only an infinite payment would do—something only God could offer.

But here’s the problem: it was humans who fell in the first place, so the payment had to come from the human side—otherwise it wouldn’t be a real payment. God came up with this cunning plan: send his son into the world as a man so he could pay the price. Since he was human, his son could fulfill the human requirement; because he was God, he could make an infinite payment. And that payment was made on the cross. The full and sufficient sacrifice. A blood sacrifice of the son covers the sins of those who choose to follow him.