From Timothy Keller and his book ‘The Reason for God’:
In the mid nineties, a Protestant denomination held a theological conference in which one speaker said, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all; I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.”7 Why can’t we just concentrate on teaching how God is a God of Love? The answer is if you take away the cross you don’t have a God of love.
In the real world of relationships it is impossible to love people with a problem or a need without in some sense sharing or even changing places with them. All real life-changing love involves some kind of exchange.
It requires very little of you to love a person who is pulled together and happy. Think, however, of emotionally wounded people. There is no way to listen and love people like that and stay completely emotionally intact yourself. It may be that they feel stronger and more affirmed as you talk, but that won’t happen without you being quite emotionally drained yourself. It’s them or you. To bring them up emotionally you must be willing to be drained emotionally.
Take another example. Imagine you come into contact with a man who is innocent, but has been hunted down by secret agents or by government or by some other powerful group. He reaches out to you for help. If you don’t help him he will probably die, but if you ally with him, you—who are perfectly safe and secure—will be in mortal danger. This the stuff that movie plots are made of. Again, it’s him or you. He will experience increased safety and security through your involvement, but only because you are willing to enter his insecurity and vulnerability.
Consider parenting. Children come into the world in condition of complete dependence. They cannot operate as self-sufficient independent agents unless their parents give up much of their own freedom for years. If you don’t allow your children to hinder your freedom in work and play at all and if you only get to your children when it doesn’t inconvenience you, your children will grow up physically only. In all sorts of other ways they will remain emotionally needy, troubled, and over dependent. The choice is clear. You can either sacrifice your freedom or theirs. It’s up to you. To love your children well, you must decrease and they must increase. You must be willing to enter into the dependency they have so eventually they can experience the freedom and independence you have.
All life-changing love toward people with serious needs is a substantial sacrifice, if you become personally involved with them. In The Cross of Christ, John Scott writes that substitution is at the heart of the Christian message: The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We . . . put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God . . . puts himself where we deserve to be.8
If that is true, how can God be a God of love if he does not become personally involved in suffering the same violence, oppression, grief, weakness, and pain that we experience? The answer to the question is twofold. First, God can’t. Second, only one major world religion (Christianity) even claims that God does. ~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (Penguin Books, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, 2000, 2018), 201-202
