C.S. Lewis | Mere Christianity
Book II | What Christians Believe
Chapter 4 | “The Perfect Penitent”
To me, Chapter 4 of Book II feels like an aside. Lewis has been building to
“a frightening alternative,” that Jesus is who he said he was or is a crazy person or is something worse. But Lewis says that “it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.”
So now the question is,
Question: Why did Jesus come to the earth?
Answer: To teach for sure, but Lewis points out that when people study the New Testament or read Christian writings, you find “something different.” People are talking about Jesus dying and coming back to life. And this is most important part of the story. “They think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.”
Q: Before Lewis became a Christian, what was his impression of the first thing Christians had to believe?
A. “One particular theory as to what the point of this dying was,” which was that God “wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off.”
Q. What changed for Lewis?
A. He came to understand “that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity.” Theories help us understand how the death of Jesus “has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.” There are “a good many” of these theories about “how it works,” but “what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work.”
Q. What analogy helps make sense of this?
A. Lewis uses an analogy of food and nutrition. He writes, “All sensible people know that if you are tired and hungry a meal will do you good.” And then he talks about how “the modern theory of nourishment” helps us to understand “all about the vitamins and proteins.” His point is that people ate “and felt better long before the theory of vitamins was ever heard of.” In other words, theories of nutrition may come and go but we will keep eating.
Q. So what is the thing Lewis wants us to remember?
A. Lewis says, “Theories about Christ’s death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works. Christians would not all agree as to how important these theories are.” His point is that “the thing itself is infinitely more important than any explanations that theologians have produced.”
Christianity is not a theory about Jesus you are asked to accept. The theory is simply something to help you to understand better. If the theory helps, great, but if not drop it. In the same way that “A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him . . . A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works.”
Q. What is the essential part of Christianity that must be believed?
A. “Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself.” Any theories about how this works are “quite secondary.” Additionally, we can’t know “how it works until [we] have accepted it.”
Q. What theory does Lewis offer about how he death of Jesus did this?
A. Jesus took our punishment for us. Lewis says, “on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was prepared to let us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible point could there be in punishing an innocent person instead?” Lewis says it’s better to think in terms of debt rather than punishment, in which case, “there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not.” We were in trouble and Jesus, “a kind friend,” got us out of it.
Q. What kind of trouble were we in?
A. We were in a hole of our own making. We thought we belonged to ourselves and ignored our Creator. We are not in need of improvement, but we are “a rebel who must lay down his arms.” This means we must surrender—repentance is the biblical word.
Q. What is so hard about repentance?
A. It’s a kind of death to pride, which “means killing part of yourself.” You need to be good to repent but there’s a problem: “Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.”
Lewis wants us to remember that “this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like.”
We need help from God “to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die,” but “Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked.”
And so this brings us back to Jesus. Lewis wonders, “supposing God became a man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. . . . He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.”
Q. Why do some object to this theory?
A. They say this “must have been so easy for [Jesus].” And Lewis says this is true: “The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God.”
Q. What is Lewis’ answer to the objection?
A. He uses the analogy of “drowning in a rapid river.” If someone with a foot on the bank gives you a hand that saves your life, should you complain, “No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank”?
Lewis says the “unfair” advantage is the only thing that makes it useful. You need help from someone stronger than yourself. And this is how Lewis looks at the Atonement. But Lewis cautions, “But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it.”
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