Dawkins Dilemma: How God Forgives Sin

In 'The God Delusion', author Richard Dawkins asks: "If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment . . . ?"

The answer depends on three things: What is sin? Why does God oppose it? How can God justly forgive it?

Note: Dawkins begins with the axiom that God does not exist. The article in the link below begins with the axiom that God does exist and the Bible is His written Word. Click on the link for details.

https://creation.com/dawkins-dilemma

OLAADEGBU:


Dawkins Dilemma: How God Forgives Sin

In 'The God Delusion', author Richard Dawkins asks: "If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment . . . ?"

The answer depends on three things: What is sin? Why does God oppose it? How can God justly forgive it?

Note: Dawkins begins with the axiom that God does not exist. The article in the link below begins with the axiom that God does exist and the Bible is His written Word. Click on the link for details.

https://creation.com/dawkins-dilemma

1. What is sin?

When God created Adam and Eve, He made human beings who were not only dependent on Him for existence and life, but who He intended to enjoy a relationship with Him of sharing in His life and love. Sin, in essence, is the desire of mankind to be free from this dependence on God, and indeed from any relationship with God at all.³

When men and women assert themselves against God, they are asserting themselves to be God.
When Satan⁴ tempted Eve to disobey God, the 'bait' he used was the assertion "you will be like God."⁵ Thus, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit that God had forbidden them, they were defying God, repudiating His authority over them, and elevating their own wills above God's will.

Sin does not primarily refer to isolated acts (sins), for they are only the outworking of human self-will. It refers primarily to the rebellion of men and women against God, which may range all the way from careless indifference to the hell-bent hostility of which Dawkins' posturing is an extreme example. Since sin is defined by this opposition to God and his standards, if God doesn't exist, then the concept of sin becomes meaningless.

OLAADEGBU:


Dawkins Dilemma: How God Forgives Sin

In 'The God Delusion', author Richard Dawkins asks: "If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment . . . ?"

The answer depends on three things: What is sin? Why does God oppose it? How can God justly forgive it?

Note: Dawkins begins with the axiom that God does not exist. The article in the link below begins with the axiom that God does exist and the Bible is His written Word. Click on the link for details.

https://creation.com/dawkins-dilemma

2. Why does God oppose sin?

The Creator God of the Bible (Elohim in Genesis chapter 1) is the great "I am who I am" (Yahweh in Exodus 3:14), who claims to be the one and only holy, true, and loving God, whose word and authority are binding on us all absolutely. Cf. "I am the Lord your God … you shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2, 3).

Sin an attack on the 'Godness' of God
Sin opposes God's holiness, repudiates His authority, and rejects His self-giving in love. God remains God whatever happens, and so by His very 'Godness', i.e. His eternal will as God to be who He is, God must and does oppose sin. If He did not, He would not be God, and there would be no ultimate difference between God's will and the sinner's will, or between good and evil. Hence sin merits God's 'curse' (Genesis 3:14–19) and God's wrath.

God's wrath
God's wrath is not petulance, but is His holy anger against man's rejection of the truth about Him (Romans 1:18). It is a measure of the gravity of sin. Inasmuch as sin opposes God's infinite holiness, God's perfect justice requires the exercise of His holy wrath. Otherwise He would cease to be God.

The fact that God personally opposes sin makes sin 'something infinitely terrible, ineradicable by man, and quite irreversible by the sinner'.
Nothing trivial about sin

When we see sin as deliberate rebellion against an infinitely holy and loving God, it is obvious that God cannot "just forgive" it, as Dawkins naïvely suggests. Sin is not just a matter of things we have done, but of what we are in our attitude to God in the light of His perfect holiness, i.e. our polarization against Him. Dawkins' 'wave-of-the-hand forgiveness' implies that all this is so trivial that it doesn't really matter. Such indifference on God's part would only encourage us to continue in our rebellion against God, confident that we could do so with impunity.

One result of Adam and Eve's sin was that they produced offspring with a tendency to sin. We have all been born with a sinful nature—so sin belongs irrevocably to the nature of mankind (Romans 5:12).⁶ And as long as we are in this condition, God can no longer admit any of us to His presence, apart from judgment.

Darwin is another one of those emotional low-level atheists'

OLAADEGBU:


Dawkins Dilemma: How God Forgives Sin

In 'The God Delusion', author Richard Dawkins asks: "If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment . . . ?"

The answer depends on three things: What is sin? Why does God oppose it? How can God justly forgive it?

Note: Dawkins begins with the axiom that God does not exist. The article in the link below begins with the axiom that God does exist and the Bible is His written Word. Click on the link for details.

https://creation.com/dawkins-dilemma

3. How can God justly forgive sin?

Christ the Son of God
Since the whole of the human race is under God's condemnation, we can't initiate reconciliation; it must come from God. And, in His love for us and His grace, He has done just that. His plan to redeem us involved God Himself, in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,⁷ entering our humanity in order to deliver us from our captivity to sin.

The deity of Jesus Christ is essential for our salvation, for unless salvation is an act of God it would be worthless. Furthermore, our Redeemer must be fully divine to endure God's infinite wrath. A mere creature could not withstand it, and the death of anyone else would have no redeeming value. If Jesus is not God, then there is no Gospel.