God’s grace comes to us “THROUGH Christ” only because it came TO HIM FIRST, nonstop and limitless.

The good News of the Gospel is not that God assaulted His beloved Son “for our sake and for our salvation” but that God permitted sinners to assault him without immediate destructive repercussions–not that God’s wrath fell on Christ justly to punish him as our “penal substitute,” but that Satan’s fury fell on him unjustly in order to justify God to intervene and execute premial justice to him directly and of sufficient magnitude to benefit every sinner who merely trusts God for this unanticipated boon!  For Christ’s resurrection from the fatal assaults of sinners inspired by Satan soared over the top as a revelation of God’s righteousness/justice and power.  Thus did God’s Kingdom invade the kingdom of Darkness without warning to make a clean sweep of its usurpations!  [9/24/10]

To talk about God’s grace poured out or expressed toward us “for the sake of” or “on behalf of” (huper) Christ means little if it does not signify that God for some reason expressed it toward Jesus Christ first of all, and thence toward us.  Penal substitution teaches that instead of extraordinary graciousness coming to Christ (for some reason) and thence to others, to the utter contrary extraordinary wrath (for some reason) came upon him, and that grace somehow was the fruit of that venting of indignation.  What that sort of mechanism teaches about God’s character can be seen all too well in the bloody history of our own Protestant legacy up to the very present.  Wicked people all too easily draw the facile yet logical inference that if God’s graciousness derives or follows from His unburdening of wrath, then so must their own!  [9/24/10]

Thinking through the logic of penal satisfaction, we are led to ask the question, “If God’s justice against human sin was satisfied at the cross of Christ penally, then when does justice ever get done to Christ premially as due recompense in order to reward his faithful obedience to the very death, especially such an undeserved death of a cross?”  In other words, when was that grave injustice SATISFIED BY GOD’S EXECUTION OF JUSTICE FOR CHRIST’S OWN SAKE?  And if the answer is “at his resurrection and ascension,” then WHY IS THIS NEVER, EVER ARTICULATED BY PENAL SATISFACTION CHAMPIONS?  Why do they never speak in terms of a PREMIAL SATISFACTION in tandem with their stock punitive categories?  Why do they only grudgingly speak of a lackluster “vindication” of Christ at his resurrection that only amounts to a rubber stamp of a “more objective” display at the cross?  WHEN DOES REAL, SUBSTANTIVE JUSTICE EVER GET SERVED TO JESUS HIMSELF in their scheme?  Their scenario must not be mistaken for being merely superficially lopsided; it is fatally incoherent, intrinsically so!  [9/24/10]