Moral Influence – The problem of a corrupted heart

The Moral Influence view is probably the most misrepresented view of the atonement out there. When most people explain it, they mostly chalk it up to Jesus’ death as a good example to follow. However, that’s a gross misrepresentation and also a confusion between Moral Influence theory and Moral Exemplar theory. Two very different things. Peter Abelard, a French theologian from the Middle Ages, is credited with the development of this theory. But perhaps he did not develop his thoughts well enough and that’s why this model wasn’t very popular. I will attempt to breath new life into this theory to show what it was intended to be.

The thesis of the Moral Influence Theory of the atonement is that Jesus died to prove the love of God for us so that we would have faith and trust in God and be transformed by that love and thereby become reconciled to God. My explanation of the moral influence model may not align with what others teach about this and I believe the influence model also overlaps with other models of the atonement. Nonetheless, I will do my best to explain my version of this model and will mainly focus on the purpose of God’s love poured out for us on the cross. This is not an exhaustive and all-inclusive understanding of the gospel but one angle of many angles of a brilliant diamond.

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

What is often forgotten about in our modern-day Christianity is that the death of Jesus Christ is a demonstration of God’s love for humanity. In our western culture, we’ve exhaustively intellectualized the death of Jesus to the point of removing the emotion from it. We’ve dissected the cross into its component parts like dissecting and labeling the anatomy of a leaf all the while, forgetting to take in the beauty to appreciate the autumn tree. We’ve overanalyzed God’s love for us on the cross as if He were a robot or some kind of mathematical formula for us to solve. But is that how we treat our other relationships? How do you appreciate your husband or wife? Have you read or written books about them and have them all intellectually figured out? Do you overanalyze their love for you to try and convince yourself that they love you?

Oftentimes, we do similar things with God. We’ve intellectualized Christianity so much that many people do not have experiential encounters with God. The apologists have their go-to arguments for the existence of God and are content enough to just intellectually convert people to Christianity. The evangelists have their ready-made cookie-cutter messages that they use every time like a sales pitch and are content enough for people to pray a simple prayer, thinking that is what saves people. The preachers give a watered-down message about how to live for Jesus but never take the time to fully explain the gospel. There are people who have gone to church their whole lives without actually hearing the fullness of the gospel or of God’s great love for them. Others may have heard a message of God’s love for them but it was so intellectualized that these people have never come to experience that love. The theologians speak and debate about atonement theories but fail to preach the good news about the atonement.

“God is so good.” We often hear that phrase in church. We may even tell our friends this. But do they believe it just because you said it? God certainly may not feel good to them, so how will they believe it if no one explains it to them? Not even the church explains it. Faith does not come alive in people simply by us telling them to recite some words of prayer and confession or to adhere to this or that particular doctrine. There are many people in the church today who have said the prayer, confessed their sins, and intellectually adhere to the church’s doctrinal statement but yet aren’t alive in the faith. The people who convert to Christianity merely intellectually and ritualistically, aren’t saved. It is not enough to intellectually acknowledge the existence of God. In James 2:19 it says, “You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror” (NLT). The demons believe God but they aren’t saved. However, even their belief produces an actionable result that is in accordance with what they truly know about God. It’s a natural response to what they know. What about you? Do you have a natural response to what you know about God? If Jesus suffered and died for you and rose again that you may live, does that produce any actionable response in your life? 1 John 4:19 says, “We love, because He first loved us” (NASB).

Loving God and loving others is a natural response to seeing and knowing that Christ died for us. If you were a marine and one of your brothers in arms sacrificed their life for you by taking a bullet for you, wouldn’t that cause you to live differently? Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to take care of his now widowed wife and fatherless children? You would be there for them and provide for their needs as far as you are able because it should have been you who died on the battlefield that day. This is a belief that is alive and rightly appreciative of the sacrifice that has been made. If, on the other hand, you do nothing for the widowed family, what does that say of you? To do nothing would prove that your appreciation is not there or that you must have had amnesia that day or were blind and deaf. In a similar way, if Jesus died for us and we live no differently than before, then it proves our faith is not genuine and that we never saw with our spiritual eyes the love of God and the sacrifice that was made. But this problem cannot be remedied by mechanistically adding on good deeds to your faith. You cannot just tack on good works to your faith to convince God that your faith is genuine. You might fool yourself into thinking it is genuine but you can’t fool God. What you need is not faith plus works but a faith that truly works.

Jesus says in John 6:40 “everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day” (NASB). To behold means to see, to truly see. Faith is more than intellectual belief; it is spiritual sight. And true spiritual sight produces genuine love and good works. It is unfortunate in our modern-day Christianity that beholding the Son is not a top priority. We are too easily content to give a quick intellectual answer or a long theological or philosophical discourse on who God is or of the nature of saving faith without beholding the Son and the love which He had for us on that cross. And so we might bring people to the edge of Christianity and maybe by the grace of God they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But how many are actually saved? How many are actually transformed? Jesus said He came to set the captives free and to heal the brokenhearted. It is a true spiritual sight of the love of God that produces this freedom and healing. Whether you don’t believe in Jesus right now or you have been believing in Jesus your whole life, the solution is the same. You must behold the Son. You must truly realize the depths of God’s love for you to be healed and set free. The problem you have won’t be solved through more intellectual debates on real vs. fake Christians or on the topic of whether or not you can lose your salvation or if you’re producing enough good works in your life to be considered genuine. The answer you need is God’s love.

This love must not only convince the mind but also penetrate the heart. Once this love acts upon the heart through faith, something spiritual happens. That is, apprehending the love of God affects not just the natural mind, psychology, and biology. It effects the soul and spirit as well. The moral influence theory/model of the atonement goes beyond the natural and transcends to the spiritual. However, some people speak of this model of the atonement as merely God showing us how to live and motivating us by example how to be better human beings. They see it in a very naturalistic sense but don’t seem to understand how the natural merges into the supernatural. God begins by operating upon our natural senses and once we apprehend God’s love through faith, the supernatural love of God comes in and cleanses our hearts. And the more and greater we behold the Son, the more we shall become like Him.

Evil and Suffering

God came to demonstrate His love for us because humanity had a hard time believing in God’s love and goodness. Ever since the devil deceived Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, humanity has looked upon God with suspicion and unbelief. In the garden, the devil’s lie was that God was holding back what was good for Adam and Eve. “Did God really say?” “Does God really love you?” “Does God really want the best for you?” “Is God really good?” The devil’s tactic is to have us doubt and question God’s goodness. He did it with Eve and now he much more easily does it with all of humanity in this sin fallen and cursed world. People now question all the time: “If God is good… why this? Or, why that?” “Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?” “Why were my parents murdered?” “Why did the baby or mother die in childbirth?” “Why are there so many starving people in the world?” “How could God let these things happen?” “Even if God were real, I couldn’t believe in a God like that…”

Many people blame God for these things but it is us who have created this messed up world that we live in through all of our evil. From the beginning of humanity, all of our choices have led to all of our suffering. Sin also produces death both spiritually and physically because evil is the absence of God’s life like darkness is the absence of light. God graciously provided laws to Moses (the ten commandments) for the Israelites so that they would obey them and live and thrive. God’s laws are good and they are for our benefit. God wants us to have an abundant and happy life but we can’t have that if we choose to cut ourselves off from the source of life by abundantly sinning. The world also cannot be a better place if we contribute to its own demise by our selfishness, bitterness, arrogance, greed, and lust. We corrupt the world, destroy ourselves, and continue to do so. Meanwhile, we bite the hand that feeds us and growl at the one who is trying to help us. Sin has made us broken, shameful, fearful, and unbelieving. Other people have also contributed to our broken condition. Like a dog that has been abused by a previous owner, we bark and growl and bite because we’ve been hurt and we can’t trust anybody and there is no love in our hearts. But if we would dare to entrust ourselves to a loving owner, we may find ourselves healed by their love and care.

Unfortunately though, many churches and Christians today have made it harder for people to believe in the goodness of God by preaching about how much God hates people and how hell will burn hotter for them. However, when Jesus spoke about hell, He never embellished it like some of these fire and brimstone preachers do today. Furthermore, we cannot be absolutely certain that the coming fire of God’s judgement will be a literal fire or not. In the book of Ezekiel, almost every time the word “fire” is used in relation to God’s coming judgement, it’s used metaphorically, not literally. The wrath of God in Scripture is most often the wrath of God’s abandonment where He withdraws His life and protection from a group of people because they have decided they don’t want God who is the source of all life. This would expose them to suffering and destruction from invading armies. The wrath of God spoken of in Romans 1:18-32 is God giving people over to their sinful passions and desires to do what they want to do and think how they want to think because they want nothing to do with God. The essence of hell is the absence of God. He will not force people to be with Him if they don’t want to.

Reading the Old Testament, some of us might think that God is just super vengeful and out to smite everyone. But what some of us don’t see is God’s mercy in His wrath. Humanity got to a point where every thought they had and every inclination of their heart was only evil continually. At that time, they lived much longer than we do now and that means they had much more time to devise evil schemes and get good at defrauding one another, murdering people without getting caught, and all kinds of other things. Now imagine if God didn’t do anything about that, how evil and wicked the world would become. Imagine how much more suffering there would be on this earth. So in response to this, God flooded the whole world to purge evil from it. God used Noah to preach to people to turn away from their sins so they could be spared but no one listened or turned away from their sins. As a result, they died in the flood. It was just Noah and his family that escaped. God was ridding the world of evil and suffering so that the future of humanity could have less suffering. God even provided many years of opportunity for them to turn away from their sin but they chose to be selfish to continue to propagate the problem.

Evil is ultimately the cause of our own destruction and suffering. God has often acted in the past in such a way to destroy the works of evil. He gives people the opportunity to turn away from their sins but when they don’t, their evil ends up spreading to other people and like a virus, it spreads everywhere. For this reason, God finds another way to deal with that evil by destroying those evil persons to contain the spread of evil. God is the one who has given them life and He is the one who has the right to take it away. He does this for the benefit of all and their destruction is provided as an example for others to be warned not to follow the same path. God desires that all would come to Him to receive salvation, life, and healing but people are prevented from being saved because of all the evil that draws them away from God. Whether it be their evil, or the evil of society. Therefore, if salvation is to be achieved for any, wrath is required. Evil men must be awakened from their slumber so that they might realize the disastrous consequences of their own sin and turn to God.

From the Old to the New

Throughout much of the Old Testament, God sends His prophets to warn the people about their sin and to plead with them to turn from their evil ways. But for much of the time, the people don’t listen. They continue murdering, defrauding one another, oppressing the orphan and the widow, and sacrificing their children in the fire to the false god Molech. Throughout the ministry of Jeremiah, he spent his whole life warning Israel of their coming destruction but only a few people listened and turned from their evil. God’s judgement finally came through the Babylonian army after the many years God had mercifully put up with them. The words that came out of Jeremiah’s mouth from the Lord were like fire and like a hammer that shatters rock (Jer. 23:29). There was a weight to his words which carried the glory and presence of God and it was strong enough to shatter stone hardened hearts yet the hearts of this people were so hard that not even these words could get through to them. Throughout the Scriptures, God shows us just how broken and hardhearted we are in our evil ways.

God had a very difficult time keeping His people obedient to Him. Warning after warning. Prophet after prophet. Discipline after discipline. Consequence after consequence. And they still didn’t turn from their evil. They didn’t even budge. So, what’s the solution? How do you fix this? Nothing was working. God could continue to be patient and offer more time for them to turn from their evil but that seems to only make them harden their own hearts to be obstinate. God could send another prophet to speak fire from his mouth from the very words of God—to speak with words as strong as a hammer to pulverize stone hearts. But not even that works. Messages of fire and brimstone and judgement and condemnation don’t seem to do anything. People’s hearts are still just as hard and stone cold as before. Everything just goes in one ear and out the other. Only a few people here and there obeyed the word of the Lord throughout Jeremiah’s life. God had a plan though. The Babylonian captivity where both Judah and Israel spent seventy years in exile, this humbling and suffering that they were going to experience was supposed to soften their hearts so that they would seek the Lord and turn back to Him. Then the Lord would return them to their own lands and restore all their fortunes once the seventy years were complete.

But even during their exile, it was only Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-nego, and Daniel who stood for their faith and sought the Lord with all their hearts. Everyone else bowed down and worshipped the idol that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. There was only a very small remnant. No one else had faith. No one else believed. It was just them and that’s it! So, nothing worked. And this is why Jesus needed to come to enact a new covenant—a better covenant, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second,” but God found fault with the first covenant and so that is why He did away with it (Heb. 8:7).

For those preachers who have the main emphasis of your message as fire and brimstone, as condemnation and judgement, as the wrath of God and turn from sin! Realize this, you are doing it all wrong. As it has been clearly demonstrated in the book of Jeremiah, those messages do not bring life. They do not cause people to change their minds and turn from their sins. They do not bring people to salvation. Those messages don’t work most of the time. If all you preach is fire, then you may only bring a couple of people to salvation. But if you preach the love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, that’s where the power is at. It’s the love of God through Jesus that has the power over sin, death, judgement, and all the forces of evil. Stop preaching all your old covenant messages that hardly have any power! Preach the new covenant message of the love of Jesus!

Now, of course, this doesn’t mean we neglect speaking about sin and judgement. But the church needs to re-focus and get their emphasis and priorities straight. The Apostle Paul said that it is the love of Christ that controls us (2 Cor. 5:14) and it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance (Ro. 2:4). We even see this kind-heartedness of God displayed in Jeremiah 2-3 to remind Isreal of God’s goodness and love towards them but they were unmoved. Now, this doesn’t mean that the message of God’s love is ineffective. It only means that the message of God’s love wasn’t loud enough. That’s why Jesus came—to make it loud and clear for us.

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. However, His methods can change. The methods God used in the past didn’t work well. That’s why He enacted a new covenant with new methods. God was very hard on sin. He was very stern because He is holy and He is jealous of His people’s love. He also knew that if they didn’t keep themselves unstained by the world, then they would follow after other gods and abandon Him. He knew that if they had one foot in the faith and one foot in the world, the world would pull them away from Him very easily. And so His laws were strict. His judgements were severe. He was trying to keep a pure people for Himself that was completely separate from the world because that was the only way to keep them holy and loyal and in the faith. But it didn’t take much for all of Israel and Judah to gravitate away from the Lord. To get them back was nearly impossible. And so that’s why a new method was enacted—a new covenant. This new covenant has staying power. It enables God’s people to obey Him because God places His very own Spirit inside them to live in them, to cleanse them, and purify them so that they can walk before the Lord and be blameless. And the entrance into this covenant is in believing both Jesus’ and the Father’s love for us through the cross. Once we really understand and grasp that, it won’t be a raging battle against sin anymore. We will want to obey the Lord and we will delight in following His commands. Instead of offering “things” to God like animals as sacrifices, we offer our own bodies as living sacrifices which are holy, pleasing, and acceptable to God. This is our spiritual service of worship when we give to God praise, honor, prayers, obedience, relationship, and our hearts. Because that is what God really wants most of all—our hearts. It’s not about laws and it never has been about laws; it has always been about love. This whole time God has been for us. He has always been for us. He has always loved us.

There are various reasons why sin is a problem for us but it could be that for some of us, the reason sin is a problem is because sin produces shame and fear and shame and fear produce unbelief. Unbelief—in God’s love for us. After Adam and Eve sinned it wasn’t God who was hiding from them. It wasn’t God who was afraid to step into their mess. It was humanity that was afraid of facing God because they couldn’t believe that God still loved them and that God was still for them. And so they hid. Their shame and guilt were too overwhelming for them to believe. And so they made for themselves fig-leaves which represent self-righteousness, man-made religion, and all the things we try to do to earn God’s favor so that we will feel better about ourselves and have better confidence that God will accept us. But those fig-leaves were not acceptable because God provided better clothing for them from animal skins. God Himself covered them in these skins. This symbolically represented God’s forgiveness. This was God making atonement for them. The Hebrew word for atonement literally means “to cover” and sometimes is translated in English as “forgiveness.” To cover means to forgive. This event foreshadowed the day when Jesus died on the cross to cover us in the blood of His forgiveness.

Ignatius, in his letter to the Trallians says, “… I foresee the snares of the devil. You, therefore, must arm yourselves with gentleness and regain your strength in faith (which is the flesh of the Lord) and in love (which is the blood of Jesus Christ)” (8:1). Ignatius directly equated the blood of Jesus with the love of God. And it is by design that we should see it this way because not only is the life in the blood but love is in the blood, for it is from the heart that blood flows; and it is from the heart that love flows. Therefore, when Jesus as the High Priest sprinkles our hearts clean with His blood, He sprinkles our hearts clean by the force and power of His love. It’s the love of God that cleanses our hearts from evil. It is the love of God that softens our hearts and purges us from evil. It is the love of God that makes us whole and dispels the darkness. Christianity is not a try harder, do better, religion. It is a faith in the love of God that transforms our entire being from the inside out.

For many years, people offered to God gifts which were sacrifices of thanksgiving and fellowship offerings to God. This is what is done in many cultures when you have been invited into someone’s house to stay or have a meal. You bring something for the host. In the Old Testament, the temple was God’s house and so when people entered into God’s house, they brought a gift to God and the animal they brought was a meal that was shared between God and the people. The priests ate the meat and the rest of the animal was burned on the altar. In this way, we can say that this was God’s way of consuming or eating the offering. But God always wanted the very best—like a lamb without spot or blemish. People gave to God their very best and their first-fruit offerings. Then in John 3:16 it says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (NASB). Though it was our duty to give God the very best and He was not obliged to give us anything, God gave an offering to us anyway. He gave to us His very best—His One and only Son. Jesus was a spotless lamb. Without sin. Without any evil. He took away our diseases. He healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons, and demonstrated to us the love and mercy of God for humanity. He suffered greatly, both physically and psychologically. We should have received this love offering from God with gratitude yet it was our violence and wrath that put this innocent man to death. Yet for those who crucified Him He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He offered forgiveness to the worst of offenders—to those who crucified God Himself. One would think that the Father would smite everyone on the spot for this heinous crime but both the Son and the Father were in agreement and they came to prove God’s love to the world. He showed to us His love not in word only but in deed. Could God’s love in Him laying down His life for His enemies shout to us any louder? Could God’s love for us be any clearer? On that day, He clearly proved to us that since the very beginning when we questioned His love in the garden thinking that God was holding back from us what was good and right, He did not hold back giving His One and only Son but He gave Him over for us all so that we could have life. Then He resurrected from the dead to prove to us that we also could be raised to life united to Him. Do we need any further proof? Should we question His love any more? Let us fully believe that God loves us and always has and let us let the light of His love into our hearts. Jesus willingly gave up Himself for us and the Father willingly gave up His Son out of His abundant and overflowing love to us to save us from sin and death. This whole time, God wasn’t the problem—we were. Our pride, selfishness, and violence have kept us from God and kept us from love and life and wholeness in Him.

Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:10 says that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” To those who set themselves as enemies against God and crucified Jesus, He said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). When Judas betrayed Jesus, Jesus did not respond in anger or revenge. He didn’t cuss him out or beat him up. Rather, He responded to him graciously. How do we respond when our friends or loved ones betray us? Do we get back at them? Do we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness in our hearts? Jesus told us to love our neighbor and to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and bless those who do evil against us. He commands us to love our enemies because He Himself loves His enemies. He offers forgiveness and reconciliation to those who crucified Him and to whosoever believes in Him. No evil that we have done is beyond His willingness to forgive or beyond His power to save. Imagine a world where everyone got along with each other or at least extended grace to those they don’t like: Republicans and Democrats, Russians and Ukrainians, blacks and whites, Israelis and Palestinians, etc. Do we extend love and grace to those we dislike or disagree with? God demonstrated His love towards those who hated Him and to those who constantly do evil. He said, “All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people,” to “A people who continually provoke Me to My face” (Ro. 10:21; Isa. 65:2-3). As a loving Father to which we are all His children, He opens His arms wide to us to welcome us back home to Him like in the parable of the prodigal son (Ac 17:29; Lk. 15:11-32). In this parable, the Father freely receives us back without any payment made from us or any price made on our behalf. He has the fattened calf slaughtered and prepared for a feast. Jesus is that calf/young bull. The Father had already loved us and offered forgiveness. He didn’t need to sacrifice anything to remove any barriers from His end because the barrier was on our end. We were the ones who messed up. We were the ones who made a disaster and waste out of our lives despite all the gracious gifts and chances we’ve been provided. But the father forgave the prodigal son and to prove his love to him so that he would fully believe it, he slaughtered the fattened calf. This is what our heavenly Father has done for us in giving us Jesus. Jesus died for us to prove to us how abundantly the Father loves us. This love is meant to purify our hearts so that it dispels the darkness and breaks the power of sin over us. Jesus purchased us with His blood (Ac 20:28; Rev. 5:9). The cost was His incarnation, life, death, and suffering. The money was His love. The object was our hearts.

Isaiah 55:7

Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.