God forgave sins all through the Old Testament — so what exactly did the cross ADD that God couldn't already do on His own?

• L

  Leo4w ago

  Hebrews 10:4. 'It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.' The whole Old Testament sacrificial system was a holding pattern. A promissory note. God was forgiving sins on credit, and the cross is what actually paid the debt retroactively. This is not complicated if you actually read your New Testament.

  183Reply
• Q

  Quinn3w ago

  My grandmother never went to church a day in her life but she loved everyone around her fiercely, raised my mother basically on her own after my grandfather left, and gave half her food to neighbors who had less than her. I refuse to believe she's in hell because she didn't hear the right theological argument before she died. I just refuse. Whatever the cross is doing, I don't think it's drawing a line that puts people like her on the wrong side.

  176Reply
• N_

  Nina _x3w ago

  I've read this whole thread and I think the most honest answer is: the cross doesn't 'add' forgiveness that God couldn't have done otherwise. The cross reveals the COST of that forgiveness in a way that changes everything. God could have just declared forgiveness. But then we'd have no idea what sin costs, what love costs, what holiness requires. The cross is God making visible what was always true. That's not a legal trick. That's revelation.

  165Reply
• F

  Feli3w ago

  I don't understand half the words people are using in this thread and i genuinely have attended church my whole life. Which is either a comment on me or on how bad we are at actually teaching people what we believe

  153Reply
• N_

  Nina _x4w ago

  This question kept me up until 3am once. Genuinely. Because I couldn't explain to my atheist brother why a God who apparently forgave David just by David saying 'I have sinned' (2 Samuel 12:13) needed a blood sacrifice 1,000 years later. The math doesn't add up unless you rethink what the cross is for.

  147Reply
• MM

  Maya M.3w ago

  I'm gonna be the person who says it: this thread is asking the RIGHT questions and most churches will never let you ask them from a pulpit. I've been told I have 'too many questions' by two different pastors. Two. Questions are not the enemy of faith. Suppressing questions is.

  144Reply
• C_

  Casey _x3w ago

  I'm a 62 year old woman who grew up Baptist, became Catholic in my 40s, and I can tell you both sides of this conversation are talking past each other because they're operating with completely different definitions of what 'forgiveness' even means. Until you settle that, you're going to argue forever and nobody's going to budge.

  139Reply
• J

  Jordan3w ago

  If you want to know what the cross adds that the Old Testament sacrifices couldn't — look at the direction of the movement. In Leviticus, humans bring something to God. On the cross, GOD brings Himself to humans. That's not just a bigger sacrifice, it's the complete inversion of the whole sacrificial logic. That's what changes everything. That's what's new.

  134Reply
• RR

  Reese R.3w ago

  Because for a lot of people in a lot of churches, certainty IS the product being sold. Doubt is bad for attendance. Questions are bad for the offering plate. I don't say that to be cynical, I say it because I watched it happen in my own church when I was on the elder board. The pressure to project confidence is real and it is institutional, not just personal.

  122Reply
• NM

  Nina M.4w ago

  ^ okay but that raises its own problem. if God was forgiving sins on 'credit,' who authorized that credit arrangement? God did. So God just... decided He'd accept IOU forgiveness for a few thousand years and then eventually cash it in with His own Son's death? Like, who exactly needed that transaction? God? Himself?

  121Reply
• C

  Casey3w ago

  ^ It's not you. Most churches have completely dropped the ball on catechesis. We taught people worship songs about the cross but not what the cross theologically MEANS. Then we wonder why people are confused when hard questions come up.

  117Reply
• M

  Morgan3w ago

  Because quoting Hebrews to answer a question about Hebrews isn't an argument, it's circular. The question is whether that theological framework is coherent, not whether it's IN the text. Of course it's in the text. The question is whether it makes sense.

  112Reply
• M2

  Morgan 213w ago

  This right here. Forgiveness as legal acquittal vs forgiveness as restored relationship vs forgiveness as ontological transformation. Three completely different frameworks. The Old Testament operates primarily in the relational register. Most evangelical theology operates in the legal register. The cross addresses ALL of them but people keep talking past each other because they're in different registers.

  108Reply
• R

  Reese3w ago

  Here's what nobody wants to say: maybe God forgave in the Old Testament AND through the cross AND still forgives through whatever genuine turning-toward-God looks like outside explicitly Christian categories — and the cross reveals something TRUE about God and human sin without being the ONLY mechanism God ever uses. The problem is that 'exclusivity' has become so tied to evangelical identity that you literally cannot float this idea without someone calling you a universalist heretic.

  107Reply
• R

  Reese3w ago

  The 'I have to take the text seriously' line always makes me wonder — which text? Because you've already decided which interpretive tradition to use when reading the text. Nobody just reads the text. Everyone reads it through lenses. Yours are just invisible to you.

  99Reply
• RR

  Reese R.4w ago

  Bro the cross isn't primarily about FORGIVENESS. It's about union. Reconciliation. God becoming fully human, entering into death, and pulling humanity out the other side. David was forgiven, yes. But he wasn't united to God through the incarnation. Those are different things and this whole debate collapses the minute you realize it.

  98Reply
• C

  Casey3w ago

  This is why I've slowly become more sympathetic to Christus Victor. Not because penal substitution is wrong exactly but because it stops the story too early. The cross as a legal transaction is complete the moment Jesus dies. The cross as cosmic war against death and sin — you need the whole arc. Including the resurrection. Including ascension. The story isn't over at Good Friday and our theology shouldn't act like it is.

  96Reply
• E

  Elena3w ago

  Okay here's my actual problem with all of this: if God COULD forgive David outside the cross, and the cross makes it possible retroactively, then what stops God from doing it the OTHER direction? What stops God from forgiving people who come AFTER Christ without the cross? The logic seems to make the cross contingent on God's will, not metaphysically necessary. And if it's just God's choice, why this particular method?

  93Reply
• IR

  Iris R.3w ago

  That's actually a beautiful way to put it and I've never heard it framed that way. Saving this comment.

  91Reply
• IS

  Iris S.3w ago

  I want someone to explain to me how this question — which is a serious and legitimate theological question — is compatible with the idea that ordinary believers aren't supposed to wrestle with this stuff. Christianity has a two-thousand-year intellectual tradition. The greatest minds in human history grappled with these questions. Why do we treat it like asking them is somehow unfaithful?

  88Reply
• Y

  Yuki4w ago

  Orthodox Christian here. This is exactly why Eastern theology has always been suspicious of the Western obsession with penal substitution. The cross, in our tradition, is primarily about defeating death — theosis — not about satisfying a legal penalty. The West reduced the entire mystery of salvation to a courtroom drama.

  88Reply
• M

  Morgan3w ago

  The idea that sin has corrupted human nature at a deep level and that salvation isn't primarily about guilt being pardoned but about human nature being healed and divinized. The cross on this view is less a courtroom acquittal and more a surgery. God in Christ enters the sick body of humanity to heal it from the inside. That's theosis. That's what the Orthodox mean and honestly it tracks with way more of the Gospels than the legal framework does.

  86Reply
• C

  Casey3w ago

  Anselm's satisfaction theory is literally medieval feudalism dressed up as theology. He was mapping God onto a feudal lord whose honor had been offended. That's a HISTORICAL and CULTURAL framework, not a timeless metaphysical necessity. Anselm isn't the final word on anything.

  84Reply
• DL

  Diego L.3w ago

  Nobody here is saying all interpretations are equally valid. They're saying YOUR confidence that YOUR tradition's reading is obviously correct is not as warranted as you act like it is. Those are different claims.

  82Reply
• NT

  Nina T.3w ago

  And I've seen faith weaponized to keep people from thinking. Both things are real. The answer is probably 'questions in the context of genuine pursuit' which requires both intellectual rigor and humility. Which is harder than either questioning everything or accepting everything.

  79Reply
• T

  Taylor3w ago

  That's genuinely the question I've been wrestling with since seminary and nobody has given me a satisfying answer. Not once.

  77Reply
• Q

  Quinn4w ago

  With respect to the Orthodox brother, I think you've built your entire theology on avoiding a problem rather than explaining the texts that say things like 'without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness' (Heb 9:22). You can't just call penal substitution 'Western obsession' and walk away. Engage the actual verse.

  74Reply
• R

  Reese3w ago

  Because death is the actual problem. If God wanted to enter the full human condition and defeat the thing that separates humans from God, He had to enter death itself and come out the other side. The cross without the resurrection is just a tragedy. It's the WHOLE event — incarnation, cross, resurrection — that does the thing. You can't isolate the cross.

  73Reply
• LK

  Leo K.3w ago

  Honestly I think a lot of this confusion comes from reading the Old Testament as if it's describing the same God-human relationship as the New Testament. The Mosaic covenant was SPECIFIC and TEMPORARY and NATIONAL. It was for Israel. The sacrifices weren't universal forgiveness tokens, they were covenant maintenance within a specific national/priestly system. David being forgiven isn't really the same category of thing as what the cross does. Those are different covenants doing different things.

  71Reply
• D

  Drew3w ago

  if you disagree that the cross is necessary and not just illustrative, explain how you're okay with a God who lets His Son die for essentially aesthetic reasons — to 'show' us something He could have just told us. That's not a loving Father. That's theater.

  69Reply
• O9

  Omar 923w ago

  I love how this forum always has someone who thinks 'that's circular reasoning' is a mic drop. The framework's coherence is exactly what Hebrews argues for. You'd have to engage its actual argument. Which is detailed. Which is logical. Which involves typology and the nature of covenant. Just saying 'but is it coherent though??' and walking away isn't the gotcha you think it is.

  67Reply
• JS

  Jamie S.4w ago

  The standard answer you've heard your whole life is Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. Seriously. Read it. The author lays it all out explicitly. The old covenant was a shadow. A copy. The real thing was always Christ. This question is genuinely addressed in canonical Scripture and people act like it's some unsolvable mystery.

  63Reply
• D

  Diego3w ago

  Christus Victor is genuinely underrated in American evangelical circles. Gustav Aulén's book on this changed my understanding of atonement more than anything I read in seminary. We got so fixated on satisfaction/penal frameworks that we forgot the motif that dominated the first thousand years of the church.

  62Reply
• J

  Jamie3w ago

  John 17 is literally Jesus praying that believers would be one with God the way He and the Father are one. That's not transactional language. That's union language. You can't say theosis isn't in the Gospels when the Gospel of John breathes it on almost every page.

  61Reply
• RB

  Riley B.3w ago

  This is exactly the kind of postmodern 'everyone has a lens therefore no one has truth' move that sounds clever and is actually paralyzing. Yes, everyone has presuppositions. That doesn't mean all interpretations are equally valid. You still have to actually do the work of showing which reading is better supported. Acknowledging lenses doesn't get you out of doing exegesis.

  58Reply
• J

  Jamie4w ago

  My pastor would say the Old Testament sacrifices weren't actually forgiving anything — they were ceremonially cleansing people so they could approach a holy God, but the real spiritual forgiveness was always pointing forward to Christ. That's the standard answer I've heard my whole life. I'm not sure I fully buy it anymore but I don't have a better one.

  56Reply
• L

  Leo3w ago

  The answer is the nature of divine justice. God doesn't just CHOOSE arbitrarily to require payment — His holiness is not a preference, it's His nature. Sin offends the infinite holiness of God and therefore requires infinite satisfaction. The cross is the only logically possible solution given what God IS, not just what He decides. Anselm worked this out in the 11th century and you're acting like it's never been addressed.

  55Reply
• R

  Reese3w ago

  Yeah okay that's going to sit with me for a while. I don't know if it solves everything but that's the most thoughtful framing I've seen in this whole thread.

  53Reply
• H

  Hana3w ago

  That IS universalism. Calling it something else doesn't change what it is. And universalism has a serious exegetical problem: what do you do with John 14:6? With Acts 4:12? These aren't peripheral proof texts, they're direct claims by Jesus and Peter about exclusivity. If you want to argue around them fine but at least be honest that you're arguing around them.

  51Reply
• H

  Hana3w ago

  It's beautiful but it still doesn't fully answer why God chose DEATH as the means. If God wanted to bring Himself to humans He could have just... showed up. Why the specific method of a brutal execution? The 'direction of movement' point is elegant but it doesn't explain the mechanics.

  48Reply
• F

  Feli3w ago

  Whether Anselm was influenced by feudalism is a historical observation, not a refutation. Ideas can arise in cultural contexts and still be TRUE. You'd need to show his argument is WRONG, not just that it was written in medieval Europe. This is basic epistemology.

  47Reply
• E

  Elena3w ago

  So God had one deal with Israel and a different deal with everyone else? How does that work for, say, non-Jewish people living between Abraham and Christ? Were they just... out of luck? Or was there some third covenant nobody talks about?

  44Reply
• LT

  Liam T.3w ago

  I understand that feeling and I don't say this to be cold — but 'I refuse to believe' is not a theological argument. Our feelings about who deserves to be saved don't determine what's true. I've lost people I loved too. But I have to take the text seriously even when it's uncomfortable.

  43Reply
• D

  Drew3w ago

  I actually went and read Hebrews 9 and 10 after seeing these comments. The author says Christ's sacrifice was 'once for all' and covers sins committed under the FIRST covenant (9:15). So retroactive coverage is literally IN THE TEXT. Why is this even a debate

  41Reply
• L

  Liam3w ago

  Hard disagree that theosis tracks better with the Gospels. Jesus says 'your sins are forgiven' repeatedly in clearly transactional/relational language. The parable of the prodigal son is fundamentally about forgiveness and restoration, not ontological transformation. Jesus doesn't use that kind of language. That's John and Paul's interpretive layer, which is valid but secondary.

  39Reply
• L

  Liam3w ago

  The Noahic covenant. Still in effect for all humanity. Romans 2 also addresses Gentiles who follow the law written on their hearts and will be judged accordingly. Paul didn't think pre-Christian Gentiles were simply damned by default. The theological infrastructure is more developed than people give it credit for.

  38Reply
• R

  Riley3w ago

  With love — sometimes the people with 'too many questions' are using questions as a way to avoid submitting to anything. Not always. But sometimes. I've seen it. Perpetual questioning can become its own kind of pride.

  37Reply
• I

  Iris3w ago

  okay smarty pants what's the 'ontological transformation' register then because im curious

  22Reply

More debates people can't stop arguing about