Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this lesson on atonement.

I am Miss Kendrick.

And if you've been going through the lessons on Christian beliefs in this unit, then you'll know my face quite well by now.

In this lesson we're going to explore one of the core ideas in Christianity.

This is one of the things that underpins a Christian belief.

Because lots of people know that Christians claim that Jesus died for people's sins.

But the question is, how does that actually work? How does it make sense for one person to have died for the sins of all of humanity? So this is the question that we're going to be looking at in this lesson.

So we're going to be recapping the consequence of sin in Christianity.

We're going to be looking at beliefs about the atonement, and we're looking at beliefs about how sin can be overcome in Christianity as well.

You are going to need a pen or a pencil, and maybe a different colour pen or pencil as well, for when you're making additions and corrections to your answers.

And you're going to need some paper to write down your answers on.

The first thing we're going to do, before we look at some of the key beliefs here is make sure we're recapping some important key definitions.

These words are like our vocabulary.

Just like in a French lesson, you will not know what's going on if you don't know your French vocab.

You need to know your vocabulary for RE as well.

So you're going to spend some time learning these key definitions, using the method of look, cover, write, check, repeat.

This is a really useful way of learning things like definitions or quotations, those sorts of things that you might need to memorise so that you can recall them really quickly and easily.

And we want to really know these words.

So for example, do some, do people ever ask you what a word means and you go, oh yeah, I think I know.

I know what it means, but I can't explain it.

And what I have to say to students is, well, in that case, you don't really know what it means.

I mean maybe you can use it in the correct context, but if you can't give a clear definition, then maybe you don't fully understand it.

And what we want when we're writing about these key terms in RE is to have a full understanding of what they mean, rather than a vague understanding.

And this task look, cover, write, check, repeat, will help us to acquire that understanding.

So you're going to pause the video.

You're going to spend some time on these key definitions.

Your work should be filled with mistakes, if you're doing this properly.

if you've written it out perfectly, then you're not doing the process.

You need to make your brain think hard.

You got to let yourself make mistakes and then correct those mistakes.

It's a great life lesson generally.

So pause your video now.

Okay, well done for doing that task.

A really good thing to do is at the end of the lesson, just test yourself and see whether you still remember those key definitions.

So the title I've got here is God's justice.

Now this is a really important part of Christian understanding of atonement.

Christians traditionally believe that justice, or being just is one of God's qualities.

And that this is one of the things that makes him good.

And it's quite simple to get to an understanding of this, because if we think of people who we consider to be unjust, or if we think about injustices being carried out, we normally think of those people, or those events being bad, don't we? So if God is wholly good, then justice and fairness must be one of his qualities.

Now, traditionally, Christians believe that all humans deserve punishment for sin.

And obviously there's going to be lots of different understandings about what that punishment might be or what constitutes as sin.

But sin is an important part of Christian belief and teaching, because forgiveness is an important part of Christian belief and teaching.

And we've looked at the idea of sin coming into the world in the fall.

And we've looked at the idea of original sin, that sin that Christians often believe all humans are born with, which is the tendency to do something wrong.

Now, the Bible talks about the punishment for sin being death.

There's this idea that some Christians have that if Adam and Eve had never sinned, then perhaps humans would be immortal.

And because of this, just punishment for sin being death.

Lots of Christians would say that God should punish humans and that would be a just thing to do.

And I'm not talking about in a mean angry way.

I'm talking about in a way that would be just and fair.

That's how it's often understood.

Again, there's going to be lots of different views here.

Now, the other thing Christians believe which causes a bit of a challenge here, is that they believe that God is all loving.

That God is love.

And this means that God isn't going to want to punish humans because he loves them.

He wants to have a continued relationship with them.

And this is where this word atonement comes in.

This is a great word.

It's very theological.

The word theology comes from the study of God.

Now the word, uh sorry.

Now the word atonement was literally made up of the words at, one, and ment.

So it's the idea that Jesus, his work on the cross made it possible for God and humans to be one again.

So atonement is Jesus' work and it's at one ment, bringing God and humans back together again.

Because of this belief that sin drove God and humans apart from each other.

Now the atonement is understood in several different ways in Christianity.

And one of the sort of nice things about atonement is that Christians will often accept lots of different models of atonement and say that they don't conflict with each other, but they all just bring out a slightly different understanding, a different way of understanding how Jesus's death on the cross made it possible for humans to be saved.

Now that's not to say that some Christians will prefer some models of atonement over others, and they might disagree with some.

But on the whole Christians often don't say, well, there's this way of understanding it and this alone.

They will often say we can learn from all of them.

So I'm going to give you a couple of ways of understanding atonement in Christianity.

So the first one.

Let's imagine that you are at a museum and through your own carelessness and something you're very responsible for.

You knock over a priceless statue and its nose is broken off.

And there's no denying it was you, even you're like, yeah, to be fair that was me.

I was messing around and I've knocked that over and broken it.

But it turns out that your carelessness has huge consequences.

As the museum informs you, that you now owe them over a million pounds.

And you say that there is no way that you're going to be able to afford this.

And so you are in debt to the museum and it's a completely unpayable debt.

You're thinking, even if you give them every paycheck, you ever own, you ever earn, you're never going to pay this off.

Even if you were to go to prison because of this debt, it's never going to pay it off.

So obviously you are in deep despair wondering what on earth you're going to do.

And then imagine a mysterious stranger approaches and says to you, you know what? You are never going to be able to pay back this debt.

So I'm going to pay it for you.

And they hand over a check, not just for a million, but for two million, just in case you break anything else as well.

Now, obviously, if this happened to you, you would be in deep gratitude to that person.

I'm sure you would be saying, thank you lots and lots.

You might say, oh my goodness, I owe you! If you ever need anything, I'm your man, I'm your woman.

I'll come and help you.

Because you would be so thankful.

Now, in this case, many Christians believe that the debt owed due to sin is a person's life.

Because we looked at that idea, that the consequence of sin is death.

And therefore they believe that Jesus pays this debt with his own life.

Now this is one way in which Christians can understand atonement.

That Jesus took on the debt which humans owed because of their sin.

So before we look at another way of understanding this, I'm going to get you to pause and answer some questions.

Well done for answering that.

I hope you've got a good explanation down.

Now some of you might ask the question, how would the death of one man cover for the sins of all humanity? It's all very well and good having this idea of someone paying off a monetary debt, if they're quite wealthy.

But if a judge were to decide that they only needed to punish one person who has stolen, and that this would cover the crime of all people who had stolen, so they didn't need a punishment.

We would probably say that that is unjust, wouldn't we? Now the following way of understanding atonement can help us to solve this question.

So we've already talked about the idea that sin separates humans from God.

So the words that can be used here is alienated, sometimes.

Now Christians would believe that salvation is achieved through Jesus' whole life, but it's focused particularly on what he did on the cross.

So they would say that in teaching people how to live, Jesus brings salvation and in healing people and doing miracles and things like that, Jesus brings salvation.

But the main thing he does that brings salvation is his work on the cross.

So what you can see here in this diagram is we've got humans all in sin and we've got Jesus who is in, what we call righteousness.

Now someone who has righteousness, it means they are good, they are sinless.

They have not done anything wrong.

And Christians believe that Jesus was fully human, but that he also lived a perfect life.

He is completely innocent.

Now, traditionally Christians believe that on the cross, Jesus took on human sin and that humans then took on Jesus' righteousness.

And this is known as the great exchange.

This idea that there's, there's sort of been a swap.

So Jesus took on the punishment that humans deserved for sin.

So the New Testament talks about Jesus' death in terms of a sacrifice.

And I've explained a little bit before that in Jesus's time he was Jewish, and all of his community that he was preaching to were Jews.

And when they talked about sacrifice, they would have thought about sacrifice in the temple.

In which if somebody had sinned, or done something that alienated them from God, they would sacrifice an animal to show that God was more valuable to them than their animal.

That to show that they wanted to be in a close relationship with God again.

Now the problem that Christians believe that there was with this system, was that humans would carry on sinning.

You know, they would do a sacrifice, and then they'd sin again, and they'd have to do another sacrifice.

And day after day, these sacrifices were taking place that could never take away sin.

Christians believe that Jesus, because he was the son of God.

And because his life is infinitely valuable.

They believe that when he died, his death covered the sins of all people.

And it's partly because of this idea of value.

In my previous example, I talked about the idea of this mysterious stranger giving extra money, more than was needed just in case you broke something else in the future.

And here we've got this idea of an unlimited value.

Because Christians believe that Jesus was God, His life is more valuable than all of humanity combined.

And therefore there's an offer of abundant forgiveness, it's forgiveness that would never run out.

And therefore, it's not just that the punishment of one person has been dealt with on the cross.

But the punishment of the sin of all of humanity is dealt with on the cross, according to Christians.

This is one of the reasons why the cross is seen as the most enduring image in Christianity.

Christ crucified, God crucified.

There's one Christian song that says hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered.

It shows this idea that God humbled himself to become human and take on human sin, and take on that punishment.

And that in doing so Christians believe God made it possible for all humans to be forgiven.

Because they believe he took on the sins of the world.

So we've got some really big ideas there.

I hope that you found that helpful in terms of understanding why many Christians claim that Jesus' death on the cross made it possible for all people to be forgiven.

We're going to pause now so you can answer some questions.

We're going to pause now.

So you can see if you can use those diagrams that I've shown you to explain Christian beliefs about atonement.

So there's one more thing that's really important when understanding Christian beliefs about atonement.

And this is grace.

Grace in Christianity is the freely offered gift of salvation.

So we're talking about the belief in grace here, rather than perhaps the practise.

Because sometimes Christians will call saying a prayer for meal, saying grace.

So here, we're talking about the belief that Christians have that this forgiveness made possible by Jesus' death on the cross is given freely.

So Christians believe that there's nothing you could do to earn this forgiveness.

So for example, when I talked about the example of, you know, destroying a statue in a museum.

I was saying that there'd be nothing you could do to make up the cost of that thing you've broken.

Even if you were to work your whole life, even if you were to go to prison for your debt, there'd be nothing you could do to bring back that priceless statue that you've damaged.

Christians believe that there is nothing that humans can do to earn salvation.

There's nothing they can do to make themselves worthy of going to heaven.

But they believe that God out of love offers this freely.

That all they need to do to receive this gift is to believe in God or that's what many Christians believe.

Next lesson, we're going to look at different beliefs about judgement and how Christians believe this gift of salvation can be received.

Just to be clear.

They don't believe that it can be earned, but they believe there's certain things that can be done so that it can be received.

I hope that's a peaked your curiosity a little bit.

I definitely find it very interesting.

So we've got one more task for you to do before we finish this lesson.

Got a couple of questions to answer.

You need to get down your corrections and feedback, and then it we'll be ready for you to do the exit quiz.

Thank you so much for all of your hard work in this lesson.

Just have a look at everything you've written and you know, it's really, really great if you've gotten down all of that feedback and things like that, you're going to have some really strong answers, some really strong knowledge, when you come to doing your GCSE examination.

I would encourage you to see if you can still remember those definitions that you learned using cover, write, check, repeat earlier in the lesson.

And to also complete the exit quiz.

And hopefully I'll see you next time for Christian beliefs on judgement.