My post entitled Arguing about the atonement has created quite a stir. In it I questioned whether people who do not believe that Jesus took their punishment might not actually be saved. I got a certain amount of flack for that, but please make sure you hear what I said correctly. I am not in any way claiming to be able to pass judgement on someone elses salvation, merely flagging up my concerns about how fundemental an issue this really is.

It is also one thing for a brand new Christian not to yet understand some of this stuff and another for someone who has been repeatedly exposed to the plain teaching of the bible but continues to reject it. Ultimately we will all stand or fall on that day alone before God.

The bible is clear that there are consequences of sin-

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Ro 6:23

These wages are not mere passive consequences, Romans 1 and many other passages are plain that unbelievers stand under the active wrath of God.

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Ro 5:9)

If Christ has not born in his body our wrath and experienced the active rejection of God on the cross where exactly is that wrath now and how has it been satisfied?

On the cross Jesus is described as beeing
-Forsaken (Matthew 27:46)
-Cursed (Gal 3:13)
-Bearing our griefs and sorrows (Is 53)
-stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, wounded, crushed, given chastisement (Is 53)
-"By his stripes we are healed".(Is 53)

2 Cor 5:21 says it well "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God"

We cannot say that the cross was merely somehow the natural consequence of sin. It was the consequence of sin because God designed and planned it that way. God is very clear that sin must be punished and he is right to be full of wrath about it.

I simply cannot accept a watered down version of Christianity that takes the fearsome holiness and wrath of God out of the equation by somehow magicing it away.