In every church I remember attending for the first several decades of my life (which ran the gamut from Southern Baptist to General Baptist to “SBC in everything but the name on the sign out front”) I heard the Gospel described in pretty much the exact same way. It went something like this:

God created humanity knowing we would screw up first thing out of the gate. Since He wanted a relationship with us despite our innately evil natures, God sent His only son Jesus to suffer and die on the cross as a sacrifice to cover our sinfulness, to atone for our wrongdoing. If we mentally and verbally assent to this sacrifice on our behalf, we will be saved from the eternal, fiery torment we so richly deserve.

Not long after leaving the evangelical church, I started to spot some glaring issues with the version of the Gospel I had grown up with. (Folks who weren’t raised in some version of conservative evangelicalism probably don’t have to deal with the fallout from this way of thinking. But maybe they have their own set of issues, I don’t know.)

First off, why can’t God just forgive without killing someone? You or I can choose to forgive the kid who broke our window with a softball. Some of us are actually able to forgive those who have hurt or killed our family members or close friends. But somehow, God, all powerful, omniscient creator of the universe, just can’t let it go. There are really only two options here: God is either incapable of forgiveness or unwilling to forgive.

If He is incapable of forgiveness, is it because of the hardness of His heart? Does he demand death and suffering for things to be right between Him and His creation? Or is there some higher power keeping God from forgiving without precondition? Is He a prisoner of His own holiness, prevented from joyfully embracing His creation by His own nature or some separate manifestation of His deity?

Many people might say, “But God sacrificed His son on the cross in order to provide a means of atonement!” I understand where they’re coming from. I get what they’re saying but payment isn’t forgiveness and atonement is legal language. If someone is fined $5,000 in a criminal court and I pay that fine for them, has their penalty been forgiven? Has the court expunged the record of the convicted criminal? Not at all. The debt was still very much in place. It was simply I who paid the other’s fine. I picked up the tab so the guilty party didn’t have to.

Is this what we have reduced God to? Is He the ill-tempered, snowy-haired man in the clouds who just won’t let go of His need to punish people for offenses He knew beforehand they would commit? Or is He like Jesus who rebuked James and John in Luke 9 when they wanted to follow in Elijah’s footsteps and call down fire on the unbelievers? Luke says that Jesus told them, in effect, “You don’t know who you serve!” Does that sound like the God used by pastors around the world to frighten little children with visions of hellfire?

John 1 says no one has seen God at any time, Jesus came to reveal Him. In John 14, Jesus says, “If you have known me, you have known the Father.” What did Jesus do while he was here? How did he act? Did he forgive without precondition or did he demand payment, did he demand that someone make things right before they could be forgiven? No, Jesus loved, forgave, and came to establish the Kingdom of God here on Earth.

We would do well to remember the example of Jesus’s love and forgiveness instead of the hard, unmerciful wrath of an angry deity the next time we hear about a God who can’t forgive without someone first paying the price. If you and I can forgive without demanding payment, God certainly can, as well. To expect less of God is to demean His character and cheapen His divinity.