At least It’s not quite as awkward as when your Facebook friend says her grandma is on hospice dying of cancer and you “like” it to show you care.
I agree. I agree that I disagree with some penal substitution folks if they see the main point of the cross as appeasing God’s violated justice. But I also don’t think we can conflate “God’s justice” with human justice systems, and I’m not convinced that we can transfer concepts we use to describe and rationalize human justice systems to God. Human justice is imposed on disorder to deter crime and exact restitution for injured parties so that communities can live peacefully, given the fact that people are by nature sinful and selfish. You can’t assume there is perfect correspondence with God’s cosmic justice which is by definition, perfect order and shalom. Can God be the injured party who is owed restitution? That doesn’t sound right. And the punishment for sin can’t be conceived of as a deterrent if all humans inevitably incur it.
When I hear of “God’s justice” or “God’s rule” I think the concept means everything in order and harmony the way God intended things to be, God’s reality, the way things are in his perfected Kingdom. I don’t think of a “justice system” that must be upheld.
I don’t see how you get away from the idea that sin has a punishment. Or a consequence. Or an associated curse. Or a sentence. However you want to phrase it. I understand that some people have spoken of guilt being transferred to Jesus and I understand your objections, but I always thought of that as a word picture more than a precise and objective description of reality. I think the idea that something must be done to remove the punishment/curse/consequence is the important part. The cross does that, and the substitutionary model attempts to picture how. Jesus became a curse for us (Gal 3:13) in some real way.
But the snakes weren’t just some sort of natural disaster that unfortunately befell Israel and God stepped in to heal. The snakes were a punishment and a curse sent by God as a consequence for Israel’s sin of rejecting his leadership and the leadership of his appointed representative. But God in his mercy provided a way for the punishment to be lifted and the curse to be reversed through faith. I totally agree that the analogy is important to understanding the atonement, but we have to get the whole context right, and the whole context is a people under a punishment/curse. The snake, the curse itself, was lifted up and somehow became the path to healing. Jesus became a curse on the cross for our healing.
So I think the key question is why does God punish sin? If it’s not really a deterrent since none of us is capable of sinlessness, and it’s not making restitution since none of us is capable of repaying our debt, and and it’s not about God exacting revenge on people since God is abounding in love and kindness, why does there have to be a punishment? And if God can heal and forgive without punishing, (which I believe he can) why wouldn’t he?
I guess I don’t have a good answer other than to say that I think this is where the cosmic battle between God and Evil comes into play. Somehow both sides are constrained by certain rules of engagement and the rule that sin incurs a punishment is one of them. It’s not that God personally needed to be satisfied, but the rules of the reality God has decided to set up and play by needed to be satisfied.
I agree with everything you wrote about sin being a disease for which the only cure is new life in Christ’s resurrection. Absolutely. I just don’t think we need to settle for one model/metaphor/explanation of the atonement, nor do I think any one model will get all your theological ducks in a row and make sense of everything Scripture claims. All the models and metaphors break down at some point because nothing in our reality is completely analogous to what Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection.