I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of demon possession and people being forced to sin against their wills, not just Sin as transgression, but having a demonic sinful disposition toward life. I will look at Romans for this next time, but I want to start here with the idea that there are two main understandings of Jesus’s saving death in the New Testament. Ehrman provides a helpful summary:

Here is my key point:  there is a difference between an atonement for sins and the free forgiveness of sins.  Mark thinks Jesus’ death is the first (as does the apostle Paul, for example); Luke thinks it is the occasion for the second.

Here’s the difference between atonement and free forgiveness.   Suppose you owe me a thousand dollars.   But you don’t have a thousand dollars to pay me back.  There are two ways we could deal with this (apart from my taking you to court).  On one hand, you could find someone who would be willing to pay your thousand dollars for you.  If they did so, I would accept the payment and then let you off the hook.  I wouldn’t care who paid the money, so long as I got paid.  Alternatively, on the other hand, I could simply tell you not to worry about it, that I don’t need the money and you don’t have to repay me.

The first option is like atonement.  Someone pays a debt owed by another.  The second option is like forgiveness.  I forgive you and your debt and no one pays it.

Mark, and Paul, have a doctrine of atonement.  Jesus’ death is a death “for the sake of others.”  He dies in the place of others.  His death is a sacrifice that pays the debt that is owed by others.  Luke does not have a doctrine of the atonement.  For him, Jesus’ death makes you realize how you have sinned against God and you turn to God and beg his forgiveness, and he forgives you.  No one pays your debt; God simply forgives it.

Jesus’ death, then, continues to be vitally important to Luke.  Jesus is God’s messiah, his very Son, the final great prophet sent here at the end of time to deliver God’s message of forgiveness.  But rather than accepting him, the Jewish people rejected him and killed him.  When you realize with horror what has happened, you turn to him – and to the God who sent him – and ask for forgiveness for your sins.  God forgives you, and you then have eternal life.

The question I have for next time is whether this characterization holds for Paul? On the one hand, Romans begins with the atonement model for transgressions, but does something change when Paul starts to look at Sin as a divine demonic entity? Recall, Luke and John speak of Satan entering Judas, for instance, Satan’s spell being broken when Judas fully recognized what he did and killed himself in remorse.