You have heard that Jesus died to appease the God of wrath.
This implies that God would do to himself what I deserve to be done to me which takes sacrificial courage as the way of love. It also implies that this happens because of the wrath of God rather than because of the love of God that wants to lead us into living with "sacrificial loving".
I say Jesus died to please the God of love and to model for humanity the willingness to sacrifice (humility), the wonder of serenity (honor), and the witness of substance (honesty) that we might be transformed by the renewing of our being into the mindset in which we were created. He took our place to bring us to his place of serenity, sacrifice, and substance. He took our place to transform us from living with and for our own agendas and self interest into living the way of true loving. Love that is about all of us not just me is transformational loving. The focus is not me being loved but about me loving and then I will be loved. Substitutional atonement without transformational atonement is one dimensional love. Cooperative and collaborative loving is multidimensional and promotes multi-versality, multiversity and multiplicity not duality or duplicity.
Atonement attunes us to the essence of our creator: the presence and practice of internal peace and eternal love. Jesus was and is our substitute not so we would not have to suffer but to teach us how to suffer (CS Lewis). Jesus provided a model for us to walk in his ways, love in his way, and live in his way.
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