Gospel Quote

I got this "gospel quote" from quite an unexpected source-- a memoir of an Orthodox Jew-turned- Christian; Lauren Winner, whom I had the pleasure of hearing & meeting when she came to speak on Chastity at Furman. Well, that the Gospel was in that particular book wasn' the surprising part; the surprise was that it was in the midst of a section enunciating the differences between Yom Kippur (modern Day of Atonement) and Good Friday, particularly quoting rabbis disdaining the Christian view of sin, redemption, and man.

"Judaism [and any other religion, really] and Christianity's different understandings of atonement derive from different understandings of sin. To oversimplify, for Jews, sins are acts. To violate a commandment is to commit a sin. Christians, too, understand wrong deeds-- lying, stealing, fornicating-- as sins, but for Christians, sinful acts are always undergirded (and overshadowed) by our sinful state, endowed at the Fall. [...]
The Christian God is certainly interested in individuals' repenting of their sinful ways, but because sin is a state, not simply a collection of misdeeds, there can be no atonement without Christ's bearing our sin for us on the Cross. Jews can perfect their behavior; Christians can never be good enough to be reconciled to God without His sacrifice on Golgotha.
No one is more eager to point out these differences than the rabbis. In 1945, Joseph Solevitchik, the leader of modern Orthodoxy in America, wrote that, for Christians, "Only the supernatural, miraculous intercession of God on behalf of the sinner" may cleanse one's sin. The Christian "is a passive, pitiful creature who begs for and attains divine grace." Three years later, Leo Baeck described the Jewish notion of atonement, which stands in obvious contrast to Christian ideas about the Cross. Atonement, Baeck wrote, "is no mere act of grace, or miracle of salvation, which befalls the chosen; it demands the free, ethical choice of the human being.... The sinner himself is to turn to God. ... No one can substitute for him in his return no one can atone for him.""

~ Girl Meets God, "Pentecost," pp 273-274. by Lauren Winner, 2002.

Praise the LORD that Baeck is wrong, and that Solevitchik's caricature of orthodox Christian beliefs is remarkably close to Reality! We never could be good enough. Sin permeates our being... defines us before God. Yet there was One who was sinless, who could and DID substitute for us, not just in a return to God, but in a life of perfect never-leaving-God's-side, and DID atone for us, in a death utterly forsaken and separated from God's mercy. The wonder of the Cross.

Rejoicing in the Cross,
--Christina
PS- I finally finished this book today, and loved it! More to come... and I'll gladly loan it to you if you want to borrow it! Comes with all my bonus quotations and notations all over the margins. :)