Hi, Charlie
Great topic! 
I think that one’s view of the meaning and mechanism, etc. of the atonement would have a big impact on the ideas you’ve presented here. I’m guessing that you’re more or less assuming penal substitution? If that’s the case, certainly it makes sense. You bring up the analogy of a court ordered fine being paid. I have an experience with this. Someone (a bank) once mistakenly paid my property taxes. The county treasurer would then not allow me to pay them because they were already paid. It was pretty weird. Even when I figured out who it was and called and wrote to them, they couldn’t get their books straight, so that half a year I went tax free. Now if it was ME, I’d have found THAT mistake in a hurry. 
If you go with PS, then I think that’s the end of it. The sin is paid for and that’s all that matters; you’re in. PS, imo, minimizes our need to be freed from SIN as opposed to our being freed from the alleged PENALTY of sin. The PS advocate sees death as the penalty of sin (or usually, he sees ECT as the penalty for sin). The other atonement theories leave room for, I think, a more comprehensive and complete remedy for sin.
The WAGES of sin is death – SIN (not God, in this passage) is said to pay a wage, and that wage is death. But the gift of God is life in Jesus Christ our Lord. So sin leads to death, but Jesus made a way for us to have life. That life comes through death, in dying to ourselves (I think that means dying to our flesh/sarx, to the law, to sin) by having been, of God, placed in Christ on the cross. In Christ, all those of the first Adam are gathered together on the cross, and we died, in Christ, the 2nd Adam, we are made alive unto God. In this view, Jesus isn’t paying for our sins so much as He is making a way for us to DIE to them, gain victory over the flesh/sarx, and live holy lives pleasing to our Father. PS doesn’t really do that. It just gets us off the punishment for sin. It doesn’t propose a way to make us pure, as far as I can see. We’re led to believe that some magical something happens at death or at the resurrection and we will no longer be enslaved to sin. I’m not sure it works that way. If it did, then why not an instant fix at the moment of conversion, or at the moment of Jesus’ death? What is this something that will suddenly perfect us through no will of our own? (There are certainly universalists who believe this, and that’s fine, but I’m not convinced . . . .)
I guess I would say that everyone is welcome, invited, commanded to return to the Father – every prodigal son will be received – whether they know it or not. God does NOT need to be reconciled to us. He’s waiting, scanning the hills, longing for us to return to His loving embrace. God our Father is AMAZING. HOW could ANYONE love so much??? He’s standing there searching, His heart heavy and aching, for the first sight of a beloved, traitorous son to come dragging his heels home just because he’s run out of funds and is starving. It doesn’t matter to Him. Everything else will come later. His son is HOME and for now, nothing else need be said. Be assured though, that son will need to learn love or he’ll never be happy in the Father’s house, and the Father is able to teach him love. But that’s beside the point of your post. The thing is, it isn’t that Father needs to be reconciled (as by a sacrifice for sin) to us. The bible never says that. It is WE who must be reconciled to HIM – He isn’t the barrier. It’s our stubborn refusal to come home.
Really, He’s always been ready to receive any of His beloved children who long to be reconciled to Him. Did He refuse to receive David’s repentance? Did He say, “Well, that’s great, Davey – I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. The thing is, I can’t forgive you until they sacrifice My Son on the cross to appease My justice. You’re just going to have to hold on until then.” God forgave him right then and there, and it wasn’t like, “not valid until payment is made in full for the sin in question.” It was done. Just like it was done when Jesus forgave the paralytic and others. No mention of this needing to be redeemed once Jesus had died and thereby made payment for the forgiveness He’d fronted out to a few lucky souls.
I think Jesus died to break the hold on us that sin had through the law, not to appease the wrath of God, or to pay a legally mandated fine to mollify an offended Justice. He died to set us free from sin, not just to get us off the hook.
Since the death of Jesus allows us to become free, and calls to us, “Be reconciled to God,” we need to actually come to our Father’s outstretched arms and reconcile ourselves (through the power of Christ) to our position as His children. We need to accept HIM. HE has always accepted us. So, if we don’t know it – if we don’t come to Him – I’m not sure how that could be called reconciliation. If an earthly child refuses to return and receive the love of his erstwhile rejected father, how can we call that a reconciliation? That is only a continuation of the status quo – a father longing, yearning for his beloved daughter or son to return to him, and the son or daughter preferring to feed pigs in a foreign land where no love is.
So . . . that’s my take on it. I agree that everyone has the means to be free, is welcome to return to the Father, and CAN return through the power of God in Christ Jesus (having been given the power to become the children of God), but as GMac said, “No one ever got home without GOING home.” You do need to go home, whether as the bedraggled starving son, or as the coin discovered behind the sofa by the Holy Spirit, or as the stray hapless sheep carried home over the shoulders of the rejoicing Shepherd. SOMEHOW or other, we have to GO home if we’re ever to BE home.
Blessings, Cindy
). I think that’s why we as the firstfruits/ “elect” have been given the ministry of reconciliation. We are here to help others recognize what they already have in Christ so they can be fully reconciled to God, and actually experience all of the benefits of that.