A-tone-ment or At-One-ment?
We have all heard of atonement. If you grew up in the Bible Belt, you know what atonement is. It is all about the sacrifice that Jesus made for us to save mankind from sin and insure a spiritual reconciliation with the Father. It’s all right there in our Bibles and we read and read those wonderful mysterious words trying to see through the mysteries to make sense of it all.
Atonement is about making the supreme sacrifices and living such a life as Christ did. But really look at that word for a moment. It needs to be seen in a little different way before we can fully appreciate it. All of our lives we have probably only heard it as A-Tone-Ment. Well look at it another way; At-One-Ment.
Sacrifice is certainly not a concept that anyone I know enjoys doing. Although, everyday we are hearing the word bandied about more often, due to the high prices in food and energy and the cost of living in general. Most of us do everything we can to avoid having to make sacrifices but we have to for the sake of our kids. Think of what some of us have to do in order for our kids to go to college. We have to give up something that we love to do to save the money needed for those textbooks or we sacrifice our time in order to be there for some special function.
As ironic as it sounds, we will make sacrifices in one area to keep from having to make a sacrifice in another! This just proves the human tendency to hold some part of our lives closer and dearer than others—and we are reluctant to let go of even a small bit of what we love the most.
Mention atonement and sacrifice to anyone familiar with the Bible and immediately the first thoughts are of His sacrificial death at Calvary to atone for the sins of mankind. His crucifixion was indeed the greatest act of sacrifice in the history of the world and a perfect demonstration of His own teaching in John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." His supreme offering of His sinless life paid the terrible cost of all of mankind's sins for all time.
I see that Jesus, in His human life, was all about sacrifice—His whole life was a sacrifice. And His is the life that has been exalted as the perfect pattern for our own. And are we not all called to live as Christ lived; to live as we were created in the image of God? Another mystery. Does God look like me or like you or like our next door neighbor? Hmmm. What if we have been trying to make God look like our image?
In my continued studying in theology and in comparing world religions, I find that other world religions have some of the same mysteries hidden in their belief systems. In order to understand my faith, I have had to get an understanding of other faiths.
For the Christian, all we have to do is believe in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for us and to accept the fact that he became the atonement for our stupidity and sinfulness. His a-tone-ment became our bridge back to At-One-ment with the Father. Because of the greatest sacrifice, we are again able to be one with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Perhaps all of the mysterious secrets of the Holy Scriptures are actually pointing us to living in At-One-Ment with the Lord because of the A-Tone-Ment of the Son. And perhaps we will one day realize the mystery of what the image of God really is.
