Dock Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 6 July 2025
Summary
In this week’s Romans Revisited talk, Brigid unpacks how the cross of Christ answers some of our biggest questions about sin, justice, and God’s love. Drawing on Romans and the rich tradition of Christian theology, she explores four key atonement perspectives — Great Love, Overcomer, Appeasement, and Trade — showing how each reveals a facet of what Jesus achieved on the cross. With clarity and compassion, she invites us to see Jesus as the Greatest of All Time: the one who overcomes evil, demonstrates radical love, satisfies justice, and restores us to God’s presence. The cross is not about divine vengeance, but divine self-giving — an invitation to live loved, forgiven, free, and close to God.
Key Points & Takeways
The Problem of Sin:
Romans names the deep brokenness in the human heart — not to shame us, but to show our need for rescue.
The Wrath of God:
God’s wrath is not rage, but his settled opposition to all that destroys his good creation. It is love that refuses to be indifferent to injustice.
The Atonement Explained Through ‘GOAT’:
Brigid explores four major atonement theories using the acrostic G.O.A.T.
G – Great Love (Moral Influence):
Jesus’ death is the ultimate demonstration of sacrificial love, awakening us to change and inspiring us to love others.
O – Overcomer (Christus Victor):
Jesus defeats sin, death, and evil. The cross is a victory, and we share in that triumph.
A – Appeasement (Satisfaction/Penal Substitution):
Jesus absorbs the consequences of sin, fulfilling justice and showing mercy. God doesn’t ignore sin, but deals with it in love.
T – Trade (Sacrificial/Substitution):
Drawing on Old Testament imagery, Jesus is the final sacrifice who removes our guilt and makes relationship with God possible.
No Single Theory Is Enough Alone:
Each atonement theory gives us a partial view; together they reveal a fuller picture of the beauty of what Christ has done.
Dock Discussion Questions
What image or phrase from Brigid’s talk stood out to you most — and why do you think it struck a chord?
(Was it something about love, justice, sacrifice, or victory?)
Brigid said the cross shows us we are “more broken than we think, but more loved than we could ever imagine.”
How do you experience that tension between brokenness and love in your own life?
Each atonement theory highlights a different truth — love shown, evil overcome, justice satisfied, relationship restored.
Which of these feels most relevant to your faith journey right now?
What would it mean for you to “live loved, live free, live forgiven, and live close” this week?
Are there practical ways you can respond to the cross in your everyday life?
Long-form, editted transcript
Romans Revisited.
Jesus is the GOAT: Atonement Theory and the Wrath of God
Morning everyone. Welcome back to Romans Revisited.
Frist,
Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?
Judi Dench or Maggie Smith?
Beyoncé or Aretha Franklin?
Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey?
Who’s the G.O.A.T?
We’ll come back to that.
We’ve been working through Romans, looking at some of the challenging and really important themes in this letter. Over the first few weeks we looked at some of the big moral and cultural questions that shape life and faith today.
Last week we switched gears a little, looking at deeper theological roots that underpin it all, and shape how we understand God, ourselves, and his relationship with us. All still found in the book of Romans.
And last week, Phil spoke about the question: ‘What is wrong with me?’. Paul, the author of the letter to the Romans, puts it like this: ‘Why do I do what I don’t want to do, and don’t do what I do want to do’?. We explored the inner conflict between our desire to do good, and our tendency to fall short.
And we know that Paul points out this conflict not to shame or discourage, but to remind us that we need help. There’s a brokenness in our world, and indeed in the human heart. This is what the Bible calls sin.
Paul’s cry for rescue becomes our own, and his answer points us to Jesus, the one who meets us in the mess and sets us free. Far from being hopeless, this doctrine sets the stage for the good news of Jesus: we are more broken than we think, but more loved than we could ever imagine.
But there’s also another aspect of this that Paul talks about in Romans that we need to talk about.
Romans 1:18 says: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people.
In Romans 2, Paul writes: Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath.
Romans 3: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 9: What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction?
These are uncomfortable passages to read, because wrath and judgement is an uncomfortable thing to think about. And these lead us to questions we’ll look at this week.
We know that God is loving, and merciful, right? So how could God also be wrathful?
How can a holy, perfect God reconcile a broken world? How can God be both just and merciful?
This is where we meet the doctrine of atonement.
The way that Jesus saves us, and helps to answer these tricky questions.
Well here’s how it could be explained.
[Draw on FLIPCHART]
This image is often used as a ‘gospel presentation’ - a way to explain the gap between humanity and God when sin gets in the way, and opens up a gap in our relationship with God. The idea is that the cross closes the gap - through the cross humanity can access God again.
It’s a helpful image to some extent but what does the cross actually do? What’s actually going on on the cross? That’s what the doctrine of atonement answers.
The word ‘atonement’ is actually an invented word, coming from its literal parts - at one ment. It’s about what God does to make us and all creation ‘at one’ with God again.
John McLeod Campbell, a 19th century theologian put it like this: “Atonement is to be regarded as that by which God has bridged over the gulf which separated between what sin had made us, and what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become”.
We are going to look at four of the main understandings of atonement, built upon through Christian tradition and human history to help us.
And as we do that, it’s important to know that some truths are best grasped not with a microscope but by seeing multiple angles. Atonement is like a diamond: we turn it, see it shimmer differently from each facet. Each angle is good, but no one view could fully capture the beauty of the whole thing. No single angle captures the whole.
Most scholars would say that any understanding about atonement can’t be reduced or confined to a singular one of these lenses without doing an injustice to their ideas. Each offers a true but partial perspective. And when held together, they give us a deeper view of what Christ has done.
But at the centre of this diamond is a man, who is both completely human and completely divine. The Son of God who mysteriously and beautifully creates the ability for us to know our Creator. It’s no exaggeration to say that Jesus is the GOAT.
The Greatest Of All Time. Which is convenient because the four lenses I want to present to you today can be summarised in those four letters.
G O A T.
So let’s dig into them one by one.
G - Great love
Firstly, great love. This is an understanding of the atonement that says that Jesus’ death on the cross is the most important demonstration of love in history. Indeed, that was the purpose of it. To show us what love really is.
Another name for this theory of atonement is the ‘moral influence theory’ and it’s one of the oldest ways that Christians have tried to understand what Christ’s death means for humanity.
This understanding of atonement helps us see that Jesus’ death holds us a mirror to the human condition - we see as the crowds shouted for his crucifixion, and jeered and scorned, as he died a painful death - our need for forgiveness and rescue is exposed. And at the same time, Jesus’ forgiveness and radical love and self-sacrifice is opened to us.
This kind of love, of course, is not just an emotion, or a fluffy sentiment. Love at its best, God’s love, is patient, enduring, sacrificial. The cross showcases God’s extraordinary, radical love.
This is the kind of love that stays awake through the night caring for a sick family member. The kind of love that sees parents go without food in order to make sure their kids have eaten. The kind of love that gives time, energy, and resources regularly to support those who have nowhere else to turn.
Some medieval scholars described this kind of love like the love of a compassionate mother in labour, enduring pain to bring life because of deep love.
Paul summarises it perfectly in Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And this radical demonstration is meant to move the human heart: to awaken us from our self-destructive ways, to draw us toward repentance, and to inspire us to love others as God loves us. Through seeing Christ’s willingness to suffer for sinners, we are transformed from the inside out. Jesus’ death on the cross gives humanity a blueprint for the kind of love that changes cultures and communities.
It’s like Jesus put it himself in John chapter 15: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.
Now there’s lots of this angle of the diamond of atonement that’s really helpful. It helps to showcase God’s character - a character defined by radical love that will go to any length to demonstrate that love. It captures the deep desire that God has to be in relationship with humanity. God isn’t distant or indifferent, He’s involved and determined. And it gives us an example to follow. And a great picture of love that can change things.
However, it has limitations that scholars have recognised over the years. For one, many started to acknowledge that redemption can’t just come through a knowledge of how to be better. We do what we don’t want do, and don’t do what we do want to do.
And especially after WW1 and WW2, ideals about fundamental human goodness were really challenged.
This understanding alone cannot explain how the cross deals with the horrors of the 20th century. Or war and famine and racism and all the aspects of human brokenness that need deep, world-turning-upside-down transformation and justice.
Human brokenness runs too deep to be healed by inspiration alone.
O - Overcomer (Christus Victor)
So that’s where we come onto our second understanding of atonement.
We’ve had G for great love, next we are onto O which stands for overcomer.
This theory that we’re calling the Overcomer, and Christian tradition would call Christus Victor, portrays the decisive and definite victory that Jesus’ work on the cross wins over the powers that enslave humanity - sin, death, the devil.
In this view, the cross is not just a place of suffering for love, but a battleground where Jesus willingly enters the worst that evil can do and triumphs over it from within. Early church fathers like Irenaeus and Gregory of Nyssa described Christ as the conquering hero who breaks the chains of bondage and liberates all creation from its captivity to corruption.
In this understanding, though we have done nothing, we get to benefit from the victory that Jesus has won.
This is God not staying distant or detached, but stepping right into the midst of the world, experiencing the full force of human brokenness and breaking its power from the inside. On the cross and through the resurrection, Jesus rescues us from forces we could never defeat alone. He’s not just a teacher or an example; he’s our champion, our Overcomer, our Victor.
After the world wars, and through the ensuing years of social, political and economic oppression, this understanding of atonement was really key.
A whole strand of theology called liberation theology came from it, particularly out of Latin America. This understanding says that a big part of the rescue that God brings is liberation from structures and systems that crush people, bringing justice especially for the marginalised.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, often called the father of liberation theology, wrote: “The struggle for a just society is not an alien element in the salvation brought by Christ. Salvation and liberation are intimately linked.”
James Cone, a leading voice in Black theology, writes: “The Christian gospel is more than the announcement of personal salvation; it is the message of liberation in an unjust world.”
This is good news for anyone who has faced oppression or persecution, anyone who envisions the world without broken systems and hopes beyond hope that one day that world will come.
In this understanding, the cross doesn’t just bring us new knowledge of God’s love and how to live well. It makes possible a new mode of existence for us. Victory of Christ creates victory in us, speaking hope into oppressive situations and structures.
In Romans 8, Paul declares that we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). This is Christus Victor in action: because Jesus has won the decisive victory over sin, death, and every force that tries to separate us from God, we now share in his triumph. We don’t fight for victory, we live from it. The cross and resurrection show that nothing, not even death itself, can defeat the love of God for us in Christ.
But again there are limitations if we were to consider this the only aspect of the diamond of atonement. The language sometimes used around this theory can imply we’re just passive spectators, rather than active participants in faith, repentance, and discipleship. Like spectators at a football game who enjoy the win but don’t contribute to the game play, we can think that because Jesus has won, we don’t have any action to take following the cross and resurrection.
And, on its own, it can underplay the personal and moral dimension of sin. It can make it feel like sin is playing out far away over there, rather in the inner conflict in our human hearts.
A - Appeasement
And that’s where we get to the A in GOAT.
We’ve looked at Great Love, Overcomer, and next we are onto appeasement.
The appeasement or satisfaction theory of atonement focuses on the idea that Christ’s death deals with God’s righteous anger toward sin. In this view, especially developed by theologians like Anselm of Canterbury, sin is not just moral failure, but a deep offence against the holiness and justice of God. Because of this, a response is needed. God cannot simply ignore sin without compromising his nature. But because of the deep-seated nature of human sin, there’s nothing we can do. Christ steps in as the only one who can make that satisfaction on our behalf. As fully God and fully human, he absorbs the penalty due for sin, bearing divine judgment so we don’t have to.
This view is often presented like a courtroom. Picture this:
You stand guilty before a judge, with overwhelming evidence against you. Justice demands a penalty. But the judge, who loves you deeply, steps down from the bench, removes the robe, and says, “I will take the punishment myself so you can go free.”
Paul writes in Romans 3: God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear.
Now if you’re like me, you might have wrestled with this angle of the diamond, because it might make you ask: ‘How can a God who is loving and merciful want this penalty, or punishment, for sin?’ ‘Is God really raging with wrath about the world’s brokenness?’. Or from the other perspective, ‘How can a God who is perfectly holy, righteous, good, actually forgive sin?’. Even the sin of really evil people.
Wrath is uncomfortable to think about - therefore I think appeasement can be.
This is where many people get stuck. But Paul talks about all this, and so we want to, because engaging with it and understanding it, in the wider context of what Paul is communicating, is actually really important. Rightly understood, this view is not about wrathful angry vengeance - it’s about justice and mercy held together.
Let’s consider what Paul means by wrath - what it is and what it certainly isn’t.
In some ways it’s a bit of an old fashioned word, but I suppose you might say:
‘Oh she felt the wrath of the internet after that controversial post’
Or ‘You’ll feel your mum’s wrath if you break her favourite mug’.
But it all feels a bit Clash of the Titans, Avengers Endgame. An angry bad guy wanting to smite stuff.
This is not what Paul means by wrath here. This isn’t God having huge amounts of rage or uncontrolled anger. A way to understand God’s wrath is as God’s settled opposition to everything that corrupts God’s good creation. If God were indifferent to injustice, or indifferent to the devastation caused by sin, He wouldn’t be loving. Wrath is God's love refusing to make peace with evil.
And I actually would argue that we want this kind of wrath against all that is wrong. Human decision making capacity makes love and goodness possible, but also makes harm possible. That’s why we end up with the world we see around us.
But the Bible doesn’t just leave us there.
When we see horrific crimes, abuse, exploitation, or evil that goes unpunished, something in us longs for real justice, for a judge who sees it all and won’t just look the other way.
Acts 17: He has set a day when he will judge the world with justice.
God’s wrath is not about cruel revenge; it’s his fierce, holy love saying, “This will not stand.” It means the wrongs done in secret will not last forever, and evil will not have the final word.
Now we will all bring different things to this, with our own experiences of the brokenness of the world. We actually need God’s wrath because it shows us that he cares deeply about injustice.
Over its history Christianity has been condemned for being too judgemental, or too interested in threatening people with ideas around heaven and hell in order to moderate behaviour. It can distort God into a tyrant.
But to see only this, to understand God’s wrath only this way, is to miss how much the human heart longs for justice.
My heart aches when I learn about the number of children in this borough who are growing up in poverty - one in two - and when I read about people facing food shortages or lack of medical care, or even shelter, in the war zones across our globe.
And we may not see civil justice done.
But the promise of the Bible is that every person will stand before God’s perfect justice one day. Every perpetrator of violence, every war criminal, every domestic bully.
Every person. Each of us is in some way victim, and in some way perpetrator. We face the inner conflict of brokenness, the capacity to do good and do harm. And all of us will be held to account for the ways we have acted.
We might think ‘we aren’t as bad as abusers or war criminals though, how can this be an equivalent? If I just lose my temper a bit, shout at my kids, or whatever.
But the truth is, sin isn’t just about those terrible headlines. Sin is anything that damages our relationship with God, others, or ourselves. It’s our pride, our selfishness, our grudges, our indifference to the suffering of others, the ways we wound with our words or close our hearts in judgment. Even the “small” sins twist the good that God intended for us. That’s why we all stand in need of forgiveness. Not to shame us, but to set us free and bring us back to the wholeness and love we were made for.
And the good news is that God wants to make a ‘not guilty’ verdict possible.
Out of love, God provides the very means to satisfy that justice: sending Christ to take the punishment sin deserves. This satisfies God’s holiness while at the same time expressing his mercy. As Paul writes in Romans 3, the cross allows God to be both "just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." The judge is judged. Mercy and judgment don’t cancel each other. They are both fulfilled in Christ.
Properly framed, this angle of the diamond reveals the great cost and the great compassion of the cross. It reveals the full extent of sin, so that the full extent of sin can be taken from us.
But what about the ongoing need for reconciliation that we find in our world? Brokenness and sin isn’t just a one off to be fixed? How do we continue to find healing from this brokenness?
T - Trade
So finally we reach the T of GOAT, which stands for trade.
This view of the atonement draws on the rich imagery of Old Testament worship.
In Israel’s temple system, sacrificial offerings removed guilt and uncleanness from the people so that after they’d messed up in some way, they could come into God’s perfect presence again. They could come close to the Creator who loves them.
On the Day of Atonement, a particularly special festival, two animals had roles to play.
One animal - probably a lamb, would be sacrificed by the priests as a way to cover the people’s sins before God. Another animal - a scapegoat, an actual goat - was sent into the wilderness by the priests, representing not only the forgiveness of that sin, but the carrying away of Israel’s sins to remove any barrier between the people and God. All impurities and brokenness was cleansed through that sacrifice, so that the people could come close to draw, step into God’s presence again.
And Paul uses this imagery in Romans. In Chapter 3 Paul writes that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. The word that Paul uses here for atonement is ‘hilasterion’ which was also used in the Old Testament. It is the word used to describe the covering or the lid for the Ark of the Covenant - the very place in the temple that represented and carried the presence of God.
By making this comparison, Paul is pointing to Jesus as both the high priest and the offering, the scapegoat. By giving himself, Jesus achieves two things:
He allows God’s right anger against sin to be turned away.
He removes our guilt and shame.
This trade, Jesus in our place, means that Christ’s pure life was given in place of ours, so that we can enter into God’s holy presence fully forgiven and made clean.
We are no longer defined by shame or sin. The beginning of Romans 8 reminds us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and this is why. You don’t have to fix or atone for yourself. Jesus has done it. It is finished. It’s an invitation to live forgiven, cleansed, and welcomed into God’s presence.
In the Old Testament, sacrifice was never about manipulating God or paying him off. It was about restoring a broken relationship so God’s people could dwell in his presence again. The same is true in Christ: he is the final and perfect sacrifice, once for all (Hebrews 10:10–14), so there is no need for repeated offerings. What God really wants is not endless rituals, but a reconciled, living relationship with his people.
Conclusion
That’s why it’s vital to remember with all of these theories that they are not contradictory but complementary. They form a full picture of what the cross means.
Together, this diamond of understanding around the atonement, with Jesus, the Greatest of All Time at the centre, reveals to us what Jesus’ work on the cross did.
Love demonstrated
Evil overcome
Justice satisfied
Presence restored
Ultimately, Jesus died because we, humanity, put him onto that cross. It was humans who shouted for his arrest and crucifixion, because they were jealous or angry or scared.
God did not demand violence in order to forgive. But in the face of our rejection, God absorbed the consequences. The cross is not God’s requirement. It is God’s self-giving response to human sin.
So what does this mean for us?
We live loved. If the cross shows God’s extravagant love, then our response is to love God and others with the same self-giving commitment. We no longer see ourselves as worthless or unloved — the cross declares our worth in Christ. It calls us to radical love, forgiveness, and peacemaking in our relationships.
We live free. If Christ has overcome sin, death, and evil, then we don’t need to live in fear of those powers. Addiction, shame, oppression, injustice — they do not have the final say. We join Christ in resisting evil and working for liberation and justice in the world. The victory is his, but he invites us to live in its freedom.
We live forgiven. If Christ took our penalty, we don’t carry it anymore. We don’t minimize sin but we don’t live in shame. We see God not as an angry deity to appease but as a loving Father who bears our burdens. We are forgiven, so we can forgive others. We don’t have to earn God’s love or punish ourselves for past mistakes. Instead, we rest in the deep assurance that justice and mercy meet perfectly in Christ.
We live close. If Jesus’ sacrifice cleanses us and removes the barrier between us and God, then we have constant access to his presence. We don’t stand at a distance — we are welcomed into the Holy of Holies, invited to live as a royal priesthood, offering our whole lives as worship.
Let me end with a small bit from Romans 5.9-11
And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
May we never lose sight of the wonder of this. And may we be people who carry that hope into a hurting world. People who know we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, and who invite others into that same reconciliation and freedom.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus,
You are our champion, our substitute, our sacrifice, our great high priest.
Thank You for revealing the depth of Your love, the seriousness of sin, and the beauty of grace.
May we live as people shaped by the cross—freed, forgiven, and forever Yours.
Amen.