When the offense is serious enough, the only payment acceptable to justice is death – hence the moral validity of capital punishment. The human instinct not to kill is overridden by the requirements of justice. God wills that humans kill other humans under these circumstances because the most important value is God’s justice.
In this theological framework, the doctrine of the atonement enters the picture here. Due to the extremity of the offenses of human beings against God’s law, the only way God can relate to human beings is if there is death from the human side to restore the balance. God cannot relate to human beings simply based on love and compassion; God’s justice, i.e. holiness, trumps God’s love. God can relate only if God’s holiness is satisfied.
As it turns out, the only way this can happen is through the enormity of the death of God’s own Son, Jesus, whose righteousness is so powerful that it can balance out the unrighteousness of all of humanity. Jesus’ atoning death provides a way for God to relate to repentant human beings. Human beings, when they confess their own hopeless sinfulness, may claim Jesus as their savior from the righteous anger of God, anger based on human violation of God’s laws. As a consequence, salvation itself does not go counter to the basic nature of the universe as founded on impersonal holiness. Salvation happens only because that holiness is satisfied through the ultimate act of human violence – the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The basic nature of the universe does not change, and hence the pattern of restoring the balance by punishment when violations of God’s law occur remains intact.
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