When God, the “Knower of hearts” (Acts 15:8), sees the “the blood of His Own” (Acts 20:28) sprinkled on our hearts by faith, He “avenges” it in a similarly overcompensating manner that He did when it “cried out” to Him in sinless innocence from the cross of Jesus, for in his death he himself was savagely silenced. In the case of the Messiah, he was overcompensated with immortality, exaltation, and enthronement…for starters! In our case, we are overcompensated for our faith—perfectly empty of labor or toil, for which otherwise we might indeed reasonably expect at least some meager compensation via divine indebtedness—by an overwhelming flood of pure divine graciousness—unearned, undeserved, absolutely unimagined! And all for Messiah’s sake and to his glorious credit!
Here we can behold how much more than being “just forgiven” (as the bumper sticker has it) came bounding our way when God peered into our hearts and saw humble faith. FOR WHEN GOD SEES TRUST, HE DECLARES, “JUST!” and responds with the judicial awarding of the Holy Spirit of resurrection power and agelong life, “poured out on us richly through Jesus Messiah, our Savior” (Titus 3:6), yet even so, but a mere earnest of our future full inheritance together with Messiah and our fellow believers.
It is right for God to do this for us because His only-born Son suffered abuse beyond measure, therefore he must legally get reparations—including Wholesome Spirit—without measure (John 3:33). ‘Even-steven’ doesn’t cut it in God’s courtroom. Furthermore, he gets to give away his wealth if he wants to! It’s his. Therefore his own loving heart is visible in how he bestows his beneficence to us—his enemies, on account of vicious deeds and hateful thoughts…and unworthy theologies!
“Yet he who is stubborn as to the Son shall not be seeing life, but the indignation of God is remaining on him” (John 3:36b). Ouch! That abiding anger of God is not some residue of a merely partial unloading of it on the Cross, for Scripture gives no evidence of anger from Heaven against Messiah Jesus at any point in his career, not even excepting his cross! Rather, mediate revelations of God’s anger are displayed on an “as needed” basis throughout the uneven drama of disrupted human history. (A decisively paradigmatic instance took place in 70 A.D. to close out God’s long patience with the physical seed of Israel who had despised and viciously chased and oppressed any who showed receptivity to God’s utterly unprecedented graciousness and, in their bitterly intolerant racism, had forbidden even its communication to other nations and peoples.) But its final terrifying unveiling awaits the Lake of Fire for all who have never repented and entered God’s favor.
Clearly then, it is the repudiation of the Father’s and the Son’s steady, undeviating graciousness, offered in the Proclamation of the Kingdom, that accounts for any advent of Their indignation/anger/wrath upon sinful human beings (for They are and ever have been absolutely and indivisibly ONE in this trait). [4/19/06]
How had God conciliated us to Himself through Christ unless by extending us graciousness (), including the gracious gift () and gratuity () of Wholesome Spirit when, in His response to the offenses of the world, culminating in the crime of crucifying His own Son, the rightful King of Israel, instead of avenging the Cross by destroying his murderers on the spot, He in fact stupendously reversed the fatal crime itself by an unheard of act of justice to Jesus that transcends by far every created means of possible accomplishment, and thus also every sober expectation or speculation!
That kind of totally awesome justice, by way of avenging, heralded a reprieve of destruction for all Messiah’s enemies while simultaneously announcing in unmistakable terms the tandem fact that this resurrected Man must then undeniably be who he said he was…and then some! That could only mean that he had EVERY LEGITIMATE RIGHT TO WIPE THEM OUT, YET DID NOT! THIS FURTHER IMPLIES THAT HE WAS LEAVING THEM FREE IN THE MEANTIME TO BOW IN SUBMISSION TO HIS VINDICATED CLAIMS, OR WAIT UNTIL HIS DREADFUL COUNTER-SENTENCE AGAINST REBELS WOULD BE HISTORICALLY EXECUTED AS PROMISED. THEIR MOVE.
WHAT AN UNHEARD-OF WAY TO TREAT MORTAL ENEMIES! YET THAT WAS GOD’S WAY OF PEACEMAKING. HE ACTUALLY LET THEM MURDER HIS OWN SON, THEIR KING, AND ‘GET AWAY WITH IT’! BUT ONLY THAT ONCE! FOR ONCE WAS ALL IT TOOK TO PROVE ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT JESUS WAS TRULY A MERCIFUL SAVIOR. Further rejection of His terms of peace and surrender could be met with terrifying consequences. It was this frightful possibility that the “Abomination of Desolation” in 70 A.D. was intended to etch indelibly on the slate of human history and racial memory thenceforth. [4/19/06]
The Premial Atonement 