Creeds and confessions of faith have quite routinely, if unintentionally (“for the best of reasons”), mutilated the body of doctrine in Scripture and thus, reflexively, likewise mutilated the body of Christ in the world, leaving the church dismembered, fractured, and bleeding from multiple gushing wounds. [4/22/11; 4/29/24]
We are commanded by the Lord Jesus not to avenge ourselves. This is not because avenging is inherently wrong, but only because sinners are constitutionally unqualified to avenge their own cause with equanimity, so should recuse themselves from such a destabilizing role. Only God is, of course, ultimately qualified to avenge us with perfect justice and total impartiality, giving us our rightful due as well as giving our offenders their just due. Yet He has also appointed human judges to perform analogous functions on behalf of their fellow citizens to learn the ropes of just rule. God alone will, in the final judgment, right all wrongs. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead is the ultimate historic proof of that. Therefore, God teaches us to “wait upon the Lord” for ultimately fair judgment rather than taking such matters into our own unequal hands.
Ergo: avenging as such is not wrong but is liable to overreactive misuse by the sinful (that’s us!), especially when exercised on our own behalf. Nevertheless, it is not, per se, a prerogative reserved to God alone. [4/26/11; 4/29/24]
By Jesus getting raised from the dead, he was getting paid back by God for his lifetime of faithful obedience and willingness even to be unjustly executed at the hands of wrongdoers. However, at Pentecost he was paying it forward to those who believed what he claimed and proved about himself, passing along for free the gracious benefits of his hard-won salvation. [4/26/11; 4/29/24]
Until the resurrection of Christ actually occurred, it would have been impossible to surmise that the ancient ritual use of sacrificial animal blood signified the vivifying, healing, restorative, cleansing power of Christ’s resurrection life, superabundantly repaid him by divine justice, and hence available at large for every salvific function. Only the well-attested historic fact of Christ’s resurrection finally provided the missing link that would close the hermeneutical circuit of Biblical Explanation about salvation.
Sadly, the perennial irresolution concerning the Biblical contours of the Atonement can be traced to recurrent neglect of this most prominent of all features of apostolic proclamation. An exclusively penal concept of God’s justice evolved during the Middle Ages to dislodge the premial justice of raising Jesus from the dead from the spotlight into virtually obscurity. The conscience-piercing laser of the original Gospel was thereby tragically dimmed, relegating the church to wandering in a perpetual fog. [4/28/11; 4/29-30/24]
The penal substitution opinion regarding the Atonement actually defiles the motives and intentions of God in relation to salvation. This defilement seriously compromises the integrity of the apostolic gospel and hence the effectiveness of proclamation to draw sinners back to the Light of Life. And even when they do return to Him despite this serious hindrance—the apostolic witness in writing, after all, still manages to surmount the limitations of many a grievous human failure to represent it correctly and fully—the inferior version can plant seeds of suspicion that sully the purity and sweetness of the new relation with God the Father by the steady flow of His wholesome Spirit. Such compromise of truth is a serious snare to the advancement and proliferation of fruitful, integral, winsome Christian faith. May God grant fuller comprehension of the age-old Proclamation once for all delivered authoritatively to the likes of us fallible saints! [4/28/11; 4/29-30/24]
Once the nature of the Atonement is properly comprehended, the nature of Justification is easily resolved into its native contours and follows in due course. Since the Atonement did not entail penal justice or divine wrath of any sort, then the Cross was not a place of divine condemnation in any respect either. This fact necessarily and salutarily deflects the issue of justification away from the Cross and onto the Resurrection. This decisive reassignment, in turn, radically alters the nature of justification forever, as a “doctrine,” and not a moment too soon, historically speaking! [4/28-30/11]
I wager that once a critical mass of saints finally see this riveting truth for the first time, they will never be able to unsee it. Accordingly, they will become uniquely qualified “as one[s] untimely born” (1 Cor. 15:8, KJV), like the apostle Paul, to blaze forth this ineffaceable bedrock of his own Explanation forcefully into the nearly ubiquitous doctrinal twilight that has descended upon Protestant soteriology to herald a bright new day of intelligent zeal for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom throughout the nations of earth. [4/29-30/24]
The traditional dominant orthodox Protestant “doctrines” of the Atonement and Justification are both counterfeits, with just enough verisimilitude on their face to let them squeak by on a Hail Mary. They both, especially in combination, seriously misrepresent the Gospel to a world more than ever in need of an ostensibly fair and believable saving message with tangible power and palpable authority. The unveiling and unleashing of the crystal clear and restored Original is the crying need of the hour. [4/28/11; 4/30/24]
The Premial Atonement 