Let's think for a bit about ransom. It's a very accessible picture for all of us, for we can immediately think of stories from past and present where a ransom is paid. Someone is captured by his enemy, who demands a ransom from his friends to release him. Every effort will certainly be made by his friends to rescue him without paying the ransom, and sometimes they do outwit or overpower the enemy and get him back without payment. The size of the ransom depends - a 'king's ransom' has come to mean some stupendous sum, because the king is the most important person in the realm.
All Piper's arguments fall in the face of this simple truth: ransoms are always paid to an enemy. I am baffled how famous, subtle thinkers can miss something so well known.
The most distressing aspect of Piper's atonement theology is that it turns our loving Father God into our enemy - God forbid! This cannot of course ever be spoken about, for it goes against everything we need to believe about Him. So it is pushed deep down into our hearts, beyond the reach of our conscious minds. But like all repressed attitudes, though, it affects us - we do not experience intimacy with our Father, and then to feel OK about that we prefer images of Him in His majesty, power and sovereignty. The character of the Father seems different in our minds and hearts from that of Jesus, and we feel more comfortable praying to Jesus who gives us the compassion and intimacy we crave.
No, our enemy is Satan. Search the scriptures, and you will never find God described as our enemy. What happens is that we turn ourselves into His enemies (James 4:4, Romans 11:28), because we side with Satan. In Christ, God intervenes to rescue us, paying Satan more than a king's ransom - for you and me, just one among millions. But on the third day, that ransom melted like water through Satan's fingers: Christ was raised back to life! In the end, Satan got nothing. He was absolutely defeated.
I recommend reading again the final chapters of C S Lewis' 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. It is a wonderful retelling of Christ's Passion: the price of his own life which Aslan paid the Witch for Edmund, and her very short-lived triumph.
I agree that 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' presents a vivid picture of Christ's sacrifice for us. The key problem with it though is that it implies that it is only extraordinarily bad people who need to be ransomed. I am sure that is not what C S Lewis believed, but nevertheless, the implication is there.
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