(July 31, 2014 at 10:32 am)alpha male Wrote: Hardly. The servant is told that he should have forgave because he had been forgiven.
In respect to God, we'd be forgiving each other because we were forgiven by him, but with respect to each other, we are to forgive without expecting any compensation or punishment.
So, why couldn't God simply do that with us? Why does there need to be some sort of atonement to seed the whole process?
And before you say something about God's nature or forgiveness without atonement isn't "just": how does one person's atonement pay for the sins of other? What did God gain from it? Jesus didn't really atone for anything anyway, because he's sitting in heaven. There was no sacrifice; there was no atonement.
