Ancient sacrificial blood testified to God’s justification, by resurrection to immortality, of Christ’s sinlessly just soul. THUS DID GOD AVENGE HIS MURDER IN PEACE.

Select points summarized from The Blood of Jesus (translated from Swedish, 1888) by Paul Peter Waldenström:

Cleansing from sin effected by the blood of Jesus, not by his death (p. 6)

Not as “a perfect value before God as a payment for man’s indebtedness through sin” (p. 7)

Not by “faith in” the blood, but the blood itself cleanses (p. 7)

Not “the value of the blood in the sight of God” cleanses from sin, but the blood itself (p. 7)

Not a word about “the blood of Christ being a payment to God for our sins” / nor the Old Testament sacrifices as such a payment (p. 7) [4/13/11]

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION:

Pre-empted immediate avenging of Jesus’ unlawful execution upon his killers

Made peace without violence on the part of God and Jesus

Justified God and Christ before the world

Proved the graciousness of God in spite of human viciousness

Proved that God had all along been conciliatory toward mankind

Proved that God rescues the righteous against all odds

Proved that Christ’s crucifixion was unjust in the extreme

Proved that Christ never suffered God’s wrath at all

Proved that God was more intent on repaying His Son with life superabundant than on repaying his slayers with death…pending their hopeful turnabout

Proved that God Himself was bearing the capital sin of His Son’s crucifixion instead of avenging and retaliating, hence making God a full Partner in human salvation

Constituted God’s ransoming of Jesus from death and the Unseen (hades), i.e., from the culmination of human sin against Him

Proved that the wrath so evident at the Cross must have been diabolical rather than divine

Proved that God did not forsake His Son [in the Unseen (hades)] after all

Proved that the cross was not an exhibit of how much God hated sin but of how much humans hated righteousness

Constituted God’s rejoinder to that hatred. They penalized Christ with death, which they alone deserved; God rewarded him, in starkest contrast, with what he truly deserved—immortality, graciously more than compensating him for his abuse-taking! [4/14/11]

The fact (!) that the actual rationale for blood sacrifices is never given in the Old Testament should have given a good many more Protestant theologians pause before improvising and imposing one of their own devising (concerning an alleged penal payment to God for sin). By the time of the New Testament, it finally dawned that this puzzling silence had been strategic, in order to protect the antitype from sabotage by Satan—clever Devil that he is—the very enemy to be irreversibly overturned by the coming sacrifice! That the extremely surprising significance of the sacrifices for sin should happen to have resurrectionary content was at least hinted at by the diverse uses of sacrificial blood in the Old Testament scriptures, for it had unusual powers inexplicable on any other basis. The power to release from, cleanse from, wash away, and atone for, sins should have been strong clues, but its power to heal and cure leprosy was yet more suggestive. These capabilities all point to the power of the holy/wholesome, hence life-making, Spirit of Christ unveiled at his resurrection from the dead (in perfect continuity with his manifest powers to heal sickness, release sins and even revive the dead during his ministry following his baptism by John with the Holy Spirit at the Jordan River), and further distributed at Pentecost to all his loyal brethren. Accordingly, sacrificial blood testifies to God’s justification (through resurrection) of Christ’s innocent—in fact utterly sinless—blood, representing Christ’s just and righteous soul. Thus did God AVENGE HIS MURDER IN PEACE for all who believe it, (but in eventual, mercifully delayed wrathful destruction for the unalterably stubborn). [4/14/11; 4/23/24]

Was Phinehas’s Outbreak of Righteous Indignation a Precursor of God’s Ultimate Demonstration of Atoning Justice to Christ?

If we assume that Phinehas the priest’s mediation (Psalm 106:30) on behalf of sinful Israel, by slaying a presumptuously and contemptuously sinning couple, did make a protective cover (kopher/hilasterion) over Israel (Numbers 25:13) so that the plague was checked and it “was reckoned for righteousness/ justness to him” (Psalm 106:31); and furthermore, if God’s wrath and fury were in no way evident at the Cross of Christ (as I everywhere demonstrate), then should His wrath, which eventually and certainly did fall on Jerusalem at the “abomination of desolation” (Daniel 9:26-27) in 70 A.D., somehow get shoehorned into playing a role in the ultimate Atonement by Christ himself, presumed to have been effected some 40 years earlier? Have theologians tended to overlook this later righteous display of divine fury in its possible atoning function (whatever that may be) because of their preoccupation with an alleged manifestation of God’s wrath at Calvary? (Consider the published dissertation of Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement [Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2005].) [11/7/10] Moreover, please observe that it is exceedingly problematic to construe Psalm 106:30-31 in orthodox Protestant terms as ‘the righteousness/justness of Christ imputed to’ Phinehas, as their dogma would imply. [10/10/22]

Only the Gospel message of God’s raising from the dead the Jesus whom sinners criminally crucified can possibly quiet the human conscience. His once-for-all sacrifice could exclusively accomplish this extraordinary feat for the simply satisfying reason that it prompted God’s once-for-all resurrection of him from the horrible results of their murderous madness of assult upon the Son of His love. GOD MADE IT ALL BETTER! THAT IS WHAT RELIEVES OUR CONSCIENCES OF THE WEIGHTY BURDEN OF SIN. KNOWING (though only in retrospect) THAT A GOD OF LOVE PLANNED THIS MOST REVEALING EVENT IN ORDER TO PROVE THAT EVEN OUR WORST SINS AND THEIR OFTEN SEEMINGLY IRREVERSIBLE RESULTS CAN ACTUALLY BE FIXED BY GOD HIMSELF BY HIS BOUNDLESS POWER, OUT OF HIS EXTRAORDINARY LOVE. The conscience can only be pacified and ‘tranquilized’ properly, effectually, permanently, sustainably by KNOWING that the tragedies we cause by our sins, wrongdoings, misdeeds, failures, and outright crimes CAN BE CANCELLED, COVERED, INDEMNIFIED, REDEEMED, REVERSED, HEALED, AND MORE, BY THE SAME GOD WHO OVERCOMPENSATED JESUS FOR HIS EXCRUCIATING ABUSE-TAKING AND LOSSES.

The blood of bulls and goats could scarcely bear the weight even of symbolizing such a mighty cosmic corrective and possessed, naturally, no real efficacy to achieve such peace with God. The Lord Jesus Christ’s career, death, and resurrection accomplished it all with indelible permanence. It’s on record in Heaven! [11/8/10]

CHALLENGE: Try to figure out the inner logic of penal-substitution-style eisegesis, particularaly why and how exactly such theologians can so rigorously import their assumptions into every otherwise innocent passage of Scripture and then dare anyone to dispute their artificial imposition. This should be an exceedingly illuminating exercise to learn how they operate the controls of their bulldozer. Try to find out how they justify their abundant non sequiturs, ready insults, and withering criticisms of challengers. Notice especially how they override their own uneasy conscience and the ‘plain’ meaning of Scripture texts to maintain their case. [11/9/10]

I find it really, really hard to BREAK THE GOOD NEWS to some folks, especially theologians who might be expected to receive it with open arms and minds as the long-asked-for solution to many a bedeviling conundrum in atonement theory, justification doctine, reconciliation diplomacy, what have you. Not so! They, the official gatekeepers, by long practice and the steady build-up of heavy ‘apologetic’ defenses under the abrasive friction of hard reality and the contradictions of truth, are most prejudiced of all, and their proteges fall right in line like dutiful lemmings. If anything ‘really fundamental’ to theology were out of line, wouldn’t we know it by now? Wouldn’t we know it first? And wouldn’t we be the ones to fix the problem, after all? Could we have been so long deceived about any basic blunders, or so completely blind to any really radical misapprehensions? I hesitate to articulate the incriminating answers to such conceited queries, so shocking are they to mere academic sensibilities. The theological profession may too readily cast a barricade before the Savior’s passage through the gates of his own kingdom sooner than admit a mistake about the Atonement or Justification. We shall shortly find out. But I wager it will be left to others to sufficiently digest the premial Gospel, to assimilate its essence and to recommence its fervent proclamation to “every family, tongue, land, and nation” in THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. [11/10/10]