[This is the third part of a three part series on God’s Forgiveness. Part one is “Did God Forgive Before Jesus?” and part two is “Does God Need Blood to Forgive?“]

God did and is doing far more through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to redeem and heal us and our world than I could write about here. It is something that I am learning more about in an intellectual and experiential way all the time. For now though, we’ll continue the theme of forgiveness by focusing on what Jesus has to do with God and forgiveness since God was already forgiving people long before Jesus and that God didn’t need Jesus or anyone else to die in order to be able to forgive us.

The key thing here is that – just like the sacrificial system found in the Old Testament – Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is about changing our position on God, not changing God’s position on us. It is about God doing what God has been doing since the fall of humankind – working to redeem and rescue broken people living in a broken world.

This may be helpful , not perfect, but helpful. Imagine there is a table in the middle of a huge room. It is a table of redemption, reconciliation, atonement (at-one-ment), and forgiveness. There are also three characters in the room – God, Jesus, and Humanity.

Now, a common and wrong way of viewing what is happening in the room is to think that Humanity and Jesus are sitting at the table of redemption or atonement. Humanity wants God to come to the table, wants to not be separated from God, to not have a broken relationship with God, while God is somewhere off in the room, turned away from the table and either unwilling or unable to come to the table because of the sins of Humanity. Enter Jesus. Jesus, being perfect, gets up from his place at the table next to humanity and crosses the room and persuades God, or makes it possible for God, to come to the table – to forgive Humanity, to be reconciled with Humanity, to be at-one with Humanity.

A better and more biblically accurate view of what is happening in the room is this. Humanity is off in the room, away from the table, with his or her back turned away from the table. There is a part of Humanity that would like to be at the table but Humanity would also like to do Humanity’s own thing. Humanity doesn’t trust God. The distance and alienation from God make Humanity feel like God has rejected Humanity. Guilt, shame, fear, and pride keep Humanity from coming to the table. God has been at the table of reconciliation for a long time, calling out to humanity, offering love, forgiveness, and belonging (if Isaiah 1:18 starts playing in your mind at this point that is quite appropriate).

At some point God turns to the one beside him at the table, Jesus, and sends him out to rescue and bring back humanity. Jesus goes to Humanity’s dark corner of the room and becomes Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus shares the message of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy, God’s rescue with Humanity in ways that Humanity can see, touch, smell, and hear. Through Jesus’ life and ministry, Jesus shows Humanity who God really is. Jesus tells stories of lost coins being found, lost sheep being sought after and brought home, and lost sons being run after. Jesus’ life is all about helping Humanity turn around and see God for who God really is – standing at the table of reconciliation, the table of atonement, the table of redemption with love in his eyes saying “come home.”

This is true of Jesus’ life and it is especially true of his death. There is no clearer revelation of who God is and who we are than this. There could be no purer at-one-ing sacrifice than this. At the cross all of Humanity’s pride and fear and violence were drawn out. Everything that is dark and frightening and ugly in us that we try to pretend isn’t there or isn’t that big of a deal was drawn out and exposed for what it truly is . . . and in that same moment, through Jesus, God met our darkness with God’s never ending never giving up love and forgiveness. And it broke something in us. It broke something in the centurion who had supervised the torture and execution of Jesus like he had done to so many people before – but this time, this hardened soldier looked at the man he had just killed and said, “Surely he was the Son of God!” It broke something in the crowds who had spent hours demanding Jesus’ torture and execution, mocking him, and spitting on him. When this Messiah, this Servant of God, this Emmanuel, this God with us, took all they had to spew out on him and gave them unending love, compassion, and mercy in return, it broke something in them and they left the crucifixion they had demanded and cheered on with the heads hung, beating their breasts in grief.

In no more profound and powerful way did God ever deal with the guilt, shame, fear, and pride that keeps Humanity from joining God at the table of reconciliation and atonement than at the cross of Jesus. It was and still is God’s greatest act of rescue for all of us and through it God continues to draw people back to the table.

God was never the one that needed changing. God coming after us has always been the story – and Jesus the greatest part. Jesus being the atoning (at-one-ing) sacrifice for our sins was never about God’s need for blood or God’s inability or unwillingness to forgive our sins. It was always about God coming after us. About helping us see who we are and who God is, so that we would finally come home to the God who has always and will always love us and long to make us whole.