The Atonement is basic.  It is to the universe what the fundamental particles are to that subset of the universe we call physics.  Christ is the foundation stone in part because his atonement is part of what makes the universe what it is.  The cross is the Big Bang.In Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis encounters a prison where a giant called the Spirit of the Age tries to show him what things “are really like.”  The giant’s eyes make what the fall on transparent, so he can see the food digesting into poop inside one person and the cancer inside another.  “That is what they really are,” the giant says.

Lewis says no.  People are not really transparent.  Our insides are  not meant for viewing.  Seeing bowels is an artificial, unnatural experience.  Insides are meant to be felt.  Warmth, hollowness, distension, pain–that is what bowels really are.  In some ways, the surface of reality is the real thing.

We are heirs of the Spirit of the Age.  We believe that sin is the real thing.  They reveal a person’s darker impulses, which is what they really are.  We believe all that.

Our beliefs are lies.

Sin is just the inside of repentance.  Repentance is the real thing.

We only see a slice of objects in three dimensions.  God sees them as they really are, in their full extension throughout time.  We see sin, but He sees the real, full shape of things.  He sees repentance.

Ultimately, real sins are just building blocks of repentance that are unnaturally, abominably, kept from taking their destined shape.