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Notes -
I feel that over-emphasizing the forgiveness of the passion clouds a full understanding of the event. Yes, the whole world knows that Christ took past sin bodily on the Cross, those before you knew him, that it was blotted out. But what about all the other elements? The wrath of the Father coming down on ungodliness because we killed His Son; the depravity of human sinfulness that would kill their own savior and utopian redeemer (and the likelihood that we would be active or passive participants if we were there); the purchasing of our souls by the priceless blood which makes us slaves to righteousness, obliged to obey Godliness, not of our own will or interest, but almost as if in bondage, not our own; the notion that deliberate sinning now becomes so bad that if we do so, it would be better to never have known Christ at all; the power dynamic of the worldly Leaders crucifying the true Leader (a punishment reserved for crimes against social hierarchy)…
Indeed in Peter’s first preachings, in Acts 2 and 3, forgiveness is not the primary mode of understanding the Passion. It’s the opposite! It’s the weight of the sin that makes the hearer’s heart pierced, who now wishes to be saved from their “wicked generation”, and is then compelled to repent [change the heart] and is forgiven. The forgiveness, in a way, can only come after we have first understood the primary modes of the Cross. If you acknowledge only a simple statement like “Jesus took away all our sins by dying on our behalf”, this is akin to “Jesus died so we don’t feel any guilt at all”, and if you don’t feel guilt you can’t care about sins, and if you don’t care about sins then the Cross loses the very meaning that drew you in — it’s totally self-nullifying. In a way, it shows you the profound dangers of misinterpreting religious language & meaning.
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