Surprise! It was God Himself who performed the stupendous “ACT OF SUPEREROGATION” that “merited” Jesus with overflowing immortality and unlimited sovereignty over all the works of God’s hands.

John McLeod Campbell, by famously pursuing Jonathan Edwards [Sr.]’s, rejected option of Christ’s presenting to God on behalf of sinners “an adequate sorrow and repentance,” an “answerable repentance and sorrow,”* was after all still seeking “satisfaction” for sins. He never apprehended that God the Father himself “satisfied” (“paid”) for sin, as exhibited by the most heinous sin of the crucifixion of His very own Son—a sin SUPEREXCESSIVELY “PAID FOR” BY HIS REPAYING THE VICTIM WITH RESURRECTION TO IMMORTAL LIFE AND FURTHER ROYAL EXALTATION. This “premial” satisfaction far outshines any variation on the penal theme! [6/27/11]

In the apostolic premial explanation of the atonement it is none less than God the Father who performs an act of “SUPEREROGATION,” COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED, AND SO EXTREME IN ITS CAPTURE THAT THE WHOLE SINFUL SPECIES OF MANKIND CAN BE SAVED PROVIDED THEY BELIEVE THE EXTRAORDINARY MESSAGE. [6/27/11]

Campbell’s unreeling of Jonathan Edwards’ throwaway alternative to penal substitution, namely, into a theory of vicarious repentance and sorrow, has this against it, that it sees God as demanding imperfect sorrow for sin from human beings, and perfect sorrow from a sinless substitute, yet no sorrow, to speak of, from God Himself! For if Jesus was veritably commissioned to reveal the heart of the Father in Heaven, then where is the fatherly sorrow that is ostensively getting mirrored in this construction? To be sure, there must have been sorrow, even perfect sorrow in the Son, reflective of the Father’s own, but how could the Son, by exhibiting sorrow at the Cross, be making any kind of “reparation” back to the Father? Rather, such an obedient reflection of the Father’s own attitude concerrning sin more properly amounts to an additional virtue to evoke the Father’s impending premial “satisfaction” of his native justice via rewarding Christ with resurrection to agelong life plus an incomparably glorious inheritance of all things.

Much less can we agree with the notion that Jesus “satisfied” God by a perfect repentance since not only did he have no personal sins to repent of, but neither did God(!), whom he was commissioned to reveal, after all. Of course, God is indeed said to repent of His oft intention to do evil to sinners who themselves don’t repent of their sins. On the flip side, He can even repent of His plans to do them good when it appears they have turned back to those sins “like a dog to its vomit and a bathed sow to its wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). But this is evidently not what Campbell had in mind concerning the Cross. And in any case such measures could hardly be “perfect” inasmuch as Jesus lacked the possession of the key element indispensable to render any repentance perfect: sin and the consciousness thereof.

Furthermore, Scripture is perfectly silent about any “imputation” of sin to Christ such as Reformation-era Protestants taught (and even more so the post-Reformation). Conversely, neither could Christ’s alleged “perfect repentance” be “imputed” to human beings without some sufficient warrant from Scripture. Where is it? Many a synthesizing theologian has scoured Scripture for imputation language to justify “justification” of a Protestant variety, without notable success. What good can possibly be expected of such an ostensibly “moral” fiction any more than what, for instance, John Wesley famously observed resulting from the legal fiction of orthodox Lutheran stripe (which he himself had preached for a while, but came to regret and repent of)? [6/27/11; 5/22/24]

That God can accept mere faulty human repentance and faith as quite “sufficient” to “satisfy” the insistence of His penal justice and accordingly relax the “demand” for punishment of a sin, can only be accounted for satisfactorily by a prior supervening incursion of an event of premial justice possessing such super-compensating graciousness toward sinful humanity that God is warranted to count (ΛΟΓΙΖ-) such heartfelt—and God can see all hearts!—impulses as righteousness FOR THE SAKE OF HIS SON AND THE INJUSTICE HE SO GRACIOUSLY BORE AND ENDURED FOR THEIR SAKES, AND THEREUPON POUR OUT THE SHEER GIFT THAT HIS JUSTICE DECREED FOR CHRIST: THE HOLY SPIRIT OF LIFE! For since Christ’s perfect obedience and faithfulness to God through every trial won the promised award of God’s premial justice to such a One (according to and witnessed by the Law of Moses and the Prophets), God exerted the right and authority to dispense it at His own holy ‘whim’! Praise be to God for His indescribable Gift! [6/27/11; 5/22/24]

Was it Christ’s “earnest and honest REPENTANCE” or his loyal and faithful OBEDIENCE that won the promised blessings of the Covenant for Israel plus all other nations?

If, rather than the throwaway remark Jonathan Edwards [Sr.] did make—“Could God be satisfied by Christ’s earnest and honest REPENTANCE on behalf of humanity, or was his death necessary for satisfaction, forgiveness, and atonement to occur?” (all emphases added)—he had instead quipped something like, “Could God be satisfied by Christ’s loyal and faithful OBEDIENCE such that he was deemed worthy of receiving all the Covenant blessings promised of old, and could thereafter rightfully mediate their redistribution on behalf of humanity, or etc.?” Edwards might have put John McLeod Campbell onto a fruitful path of discovery, or rather rediscovery, of a more authentically apostolic gospel. Instead, not only was Campbell led down a rabbit trail, but his results prompted a further wayward bit of trailblazing by Robert Campbell Moberly at the dawn of the twentieth century. Results, of course, were mixed, as usual. But on the plus side came a fresh plowing of the field conjoining the doctrine of the Atonement with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and none should begrudge Moberly that solid advance. After all, this result was not so ‘far afield’ from the revivalist Jonathan Edwards’ own labors, as it turns out. May we be blessed to see yet more, greater, and even deeper revivals as long-term fruits! (2/17/11; 2/18/24)

The Protestant so-called “doctrine of justification” is only secondary to and derivative from the more fundamental “doctrine of atonement.” i.e., the climactic Messianic event of the Gospel. Once the Atonement is properly understood, the matter of justification follows naturally in due course. By contrast, a “penal substitution” assumption concerning atonement will cause any subsequent treatment of justification to boggle. This is because the Atonement, in actuality, entailed the exclusively premial execution of divine justice, not its penal manifestation in any respect. So the justification of all who trust this Gospel is premised on the positive divine judicial decision of doing justice to the Lord Jesus Christ via resurrection on earth and enthronement in Heaven, along with the subsequent sending of the Holy Spirit to all who believe, in order to perfect/mature their faith by good works in the New Covenant version of justness (apart from the prosthetic of Moses’ Law). [2/21/11; 2/19/24]

Penal satisfaction (in tandem with its fraternal twin, penal substitution) is so deeply entrenched and nearly ineradicable for the simple reason that it “satisfies” the reflex for instant punishment and gratifies the carnal urge for immoderate revenge, all under the hollow pretext of God’s need to punish every sin to the fullest extent of the law, i.e., to get full satisfaction/payment for all his injuries from human beings.

The appalling example this sets for human behavior, which is quite sufficiently punitive without it, should go without saying. But the risky job of actually saying it, in view of the consequent punitive backlash it is likely to provoke among a smugly orthodox officialdom, still remains to be done and its disturbing effects to be exposed. May God grant the grace to declare this singularly disgraceful state of affairs without flinching, regardless of predictable acting out by its defenders. [2/23/11]

The vigorous alleging of a penal atonement serves to justify its defenders to behave in similar manner via mimetic reflex. It has, accordingly, become an historic habit, contrary to the general tenor of the entire New Covenant ethic of Jesus and his apostles. How can this be? How can this continue? [2/24/11]

When we say that a person is “righteous” or “just,” do we first of all or above all or, yes, even at all think of them as “PUNITIVE AGAINST EVILDOERS”? Rather, don’t we first of all think of them as upright, honest, judicious, virtuous, kind, merciful, tolerant, thoughtful, forgiving, generous, true-to-their-word, gently corrective, and so forth? Why, then, when it comes to God’s righteousness, do we get it all backwards and upside down? How have our theologians and preachers so betrayed us…nay, betrayed God and His clear Word? [2/24/11]

Closed-system, zero-sum mundane economics and commercial finance cannot comprehend either the ex nihilo wealth-creation that exclusively accounts for the vast super-compensation rendered to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Creator for bearing outrageous injustices, nor can it fathom the gratuitous giveaway program of welfare to unworthy sinners that came in its wake. PENAL SATISFACTION is thus perpetually at cross-purposes with PREMIAL RESTITUTION.

Perhaps the central ‘gratifying’ or ‘satisfying’ feature of penal substitution is the sense that a certain ‘number’ or ‘quantity’ of sins can be ‘completely paid for,’ thus supplying a kind of ‘closure’ to the system, also psychologically. Everything seems ‘symmetrical’ and ‘clinched.’ But this is illusory. In fact, it creates a false security that, in practice, actually compromises a dynamic, vital, covenantal relationship with the living God. The ethical results of such an impersonal—even mechanical or automatic—schema are often appallingly dis–grace-ful. False security can breed conceit and arrogance, clannishness and sectarianism.

The inner certainty and spiritual assurance we crave as fragile mortals are founded on the solid proof of God’s graciousness in spite of any ‘amount’ of sin. That proof has been granted in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from a crucifixion by vicious sinners who were thereby spared immediate, well-deserved termination.

However, when the authentic original interpretation of the ‘Crossurrection‘ composite of integrally linked events comes to be denatured into a penal event followed by a mere resurrection rubber-stamp, then the full impact of those tandem Messianic events is debased and disempowered from delivering its intended full redemptive payload and veers off its divine trajectory. But properly understood and proclaimed, the ‘Crossurrection‘ trumps any other conceivable method or means of providing confident assurance of God’s gracious acceptance, and all without breeding unbefitting presumptuousness. This is because God deliberately made sure there were plenty of qualified, diverse, and independent eyewitnesses to both of its key historic components as well as to Jesus’ career of powerful miraculous deeds, peerless ethical instruction, and prophetic fulfillments in startling sync with literally scores of ancient prophecies recorded in Israel’s ancient Scriptures.

For the same reason, any talk of ‘merits‘ here is unbiblical—a vain attempt to ‘compute’ a conjectured economic exchange rate between sins and pardons. All such recourses are carnal calculations with deceptive utility and positive harm. Such fundamental departures from native biblical vocabulary and conceptuality are shoals easily avoidable by prioritizing concordant analysis of recurrent biblical patterns of usage, whether of words, numbers, names, metaphors, themes, or even whole narrative episodes. [2/6/11; 10/11/23]

In addition to the eyewitness testimony of the disciples of Jesus to his career, crucifixion, and resurrected existence, the miracle-working testimony of the Holy Spirit ever since Pentecost may be added to those weighty considerations that establish God’s extraordinary graciousness and forgiveness, and which far surpass the deceptive grounds of ‘penal substitution,’ i.e., a conjectured ‘penal satisfaction of God’s penal justice‘ by Christ, which is but quicksand.

Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism (at least in the form of its influential but idiosyncratic articulation by Hugo Grotius), and Amyraldianism, each in varying degree, suffer under the imaginary burden of establishing a surer ‘economic’ basis for God’s amazing grace than the unalterable written witness of the New Testament conjoined with the continuous experiential witness of the Holy Spirit. [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

By the Cross, Satan imagined that he had successfully stamped out his rival for rule of planet earth along with his miraculous restorative powers. But it so happens that these creation-restoring powers of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to Jesus as Messiah were his right, due to his lifelong maturing obedience to God his Father. Therefore, when Jesus was deprived of his life, including those powers that were his property and rightful possession, Satan committed a criminal act deserving, by the rules of divine justice, DUE COMPENSATION, which, in this unexpectedly exceptional case, just so happened to be ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING! And it is this unparalleled supercompensation that Christ personally bequeaths to us as a pure gift—immersion in the Holy Spirit of unquenchable life. Without Christ’s brutal experience of abuse unto death, this compensation would never even have existed for us, because never called into existence by the exigencies of reparative justice to him. Praise God from Whom such Blessings flow!

This peculiar feature of divine justice—supercompensation—may also account for the necessity (in view of God’s intended outcome of salvation for ALL who trust Him) of His Son’s even suffering a curse of the Law of Moses (which God Himself had stipulated, of course) as well as temporary abandonment at the cross. For THESE EVILS (although by no means to be construed as ‘divine punishments’ administered substitutionarily on behalf of sin/sinners who all ‘deserved’ them), WOULD LIKEWISE NEED TO BE JUSTLY SUPERCOMPENSATED BY GOD. And such compensation would constitute proof that those particular abuses were not ‘signs of God’s wrath’ but definitive precursors, even beneficent enhancements, of His impending justly due GRACIOUSNESS, indeed, His very SPIRIT OF GRACIOUSNESS! [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

Generally speaking, an “atoning” deed is whatever may be deemed necessary to bring peace in a particular circumstance of hostility or grievance. It ‘makes everything alright,’ relatively speaking. It induces conciliation and friendly relations between contending parties by joint agreement. However, the Atonement that God pre-planned far surpassed the limitations and relativity of the countless cultural conventions for achieving nominal interpersonal amity post-conflict. For God’s own method, at last, satisfactorily tackled “the Last Enemy,” Death itself, which hovers menacingly behind every terrestrial animosity and injury. (See, for example, Don Richardson’s noteworthy account in his famous book, Peace Child.) [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

“Var står det skrivet?” (Waldenström)

Where is Calvary, Golgotha, the Cross ever declared in Scripture to be an exhibit of God’s judgment?  “Var står det skrivet?“—in the words of the famous slogan of Paul Peter Waldenström (1838-1917), leader of the Swedish free church movement and theologian of the Atonement (somewhat more accurately understood, Acts 18:24-26)—”Where stands that Written?” in covenantal Scripture.  Answer: nowhere at all.  [4/17/06; 11/14/25]

What’s the purpose, for Heaven’s sake, of letting sin (and its consequent evils) linger interminably on planet earth?  Why has God allowed it…allowed for it…designed it into the very nature of interpersonal relations as a possibility…even a virtual certainty?  Is it not so that we have room to learn to hate it and avoid it and seek a solution to it?  God’s ultimate intention for human beings is our maturation, and that necessitates voluntary keeping of His directions to maturity.  Sin has its own built-in evil consequences within the created order.  Why need God superadd more ‘penalties’ onto the shoulders of Jesus at the Cross in order to “pay for sin“—something never even attributed to Christ’s crucifixion?  Sins need to be forgiven, pardoned, released, washed away, cleaned off, erased, etc.  But “paid for”?  “Where stands that Written?”  Wasn’t the deadly-‘successful’ crucifixion in itself a demonstration of pardon, whereby God relinquished his divine right to avenge His beloved Son’s unjustified execution?  How much more so was it a sign of Heaven’s forgiveness back to back with the decree of resurrection that magnanimously paid back His viciously victimized Son with super-compensating life in tandem with absolute sovereignty over the created universe!  Such an incomparably exalted destiny far more than reverses—indeed, thereby truly and satisfactorily avenges with ultra-compensation—the crime of the cross.  [4/17/06; 11/14/25]

Furthermore, if sin got “paid for at the Cross,” then what do words like pardon and forgiveness even mean?  REPAYMENT AND PARDON COUNTERMAND ONE ANOTHER!  So if God forgives because He got ‘repaid’ by the death of His Son, we have a problem!  As God is our model for righteousness, we too would be justified in forgiving a debt ONLY AFTER REPAYMENT!  [4/18/06; 11/14/25]

Why has the so-called Second Coming (παρουσια—“Presence”) of the Lord been delayed?  In light of the “CROSSURRECTION” dyad that spelled the arrival of the Kingdom at Pentecost, A.D. 30, the answer becomes clear.  The Messiah had a right to fellow-heirs in his Kingdom-come on the new earth.  But it takes time to raise quality sons.  They have to be tested for faithful obedience to the royal directives so that they become mature and qualified to manage a whole planet.  This process is not the work of a day or a year or a century or even a millennium.  This day of salvation and graciousness has been prolonged…yet not interminably.  We individually must endure to the end…and will all together graduate to inherit our joint allotments with Christ when he appears in his Presence.  (Heb. 11:39-40)  [4/18/06]

According to the apostolic understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, that pivotal event was not the outcome of his ‘being divine’ but rather the award for his being obedient and subordinate to his Father’s desire for him at every point, every stage, through every trial of his human life and career, in light of the radically unjust deprivation of its mounting, natural, rightful outcome:  the crown and throne of Israel.  This wrongful reversal cried out to Heaven for a SUPERVENING REVERSAL BY WAY OF RIGHTFUL OVERCOMPENSATION, in line with the logic of Israel’s Old Covenant with the Lord.  God had made irreversible, inalienable pledges and promises and oaths to Abraham and Jacob and David.  These must be fulfilled at all costs, for the reputation of Jehovah Himself was at stake…as well as the credibility of Scripture.

Thus Jesus was recalled from the Unseen in a stupendous climactic coup that left everyone gasping with astonishment and wonder!  Jesus was alive again!  He was back!  And he was…mad?!  HEAVENS NO!  He was brimming with the vibrancy of celestial power, demurely veiled, but not without evident tokens of the supernal realm of which he was the very first citizen and forerunner.  He was HAPPY! He was back to make the joy of others complete!  He commissioned the Proclamation of human emancipation from demonic thralldom!  We were to start exerting the rights of our newly unveiled image of sonship—the character of nobility, the regal bearing of heirs apparent to the universe!

And we were to herald—shout!—this Proclamation of God’s Kingdom having descended in the tangible power of God’s super-abundantly granted Spirit of graciousness to every nation.  For Messiah had won GRAND PRIZE:  THE NATIONS, FOR HIS INHERITANCE! (This special offer not good where forbidden or otherwise restricted…Not!…subject to all applicable local laws…Not!)

None of the above makes good sense merely as ‘proof’ of Messiah’s ‘divinity.’  To be sure, he could not have achieved these without having been, in truth, the only-born God, Jehovah in-the-flesh for our salvation.  [4/18/06; 11/14/25]

CROSS-WIRED: PENAL SUBSTITUTION

The dominant so-called “orthodox” Protestant doctrine of “atonement” has been handed down to us badly cross-wired. The evangelical legacy of “penal substitution” has negative leads attached to the ‘pole’ and a very loose positive connection to the tomb, so it barely lights up at all when the switch is thrown. The terminals have corroded so there’s hardly any power flowing from the sepulcher. Meanwhile, the cross has been collecting a massive negative charge of ionized vapor—a smoke screen—that surrounds it with a repellant and repulsive magnetic field of violent magnitude that threatens all life forms within range. The old high-resistance circuitry is obsolescing and in danger of total meltdown in case of a power surge. The primitive, in fact downright medieval, wiring has been heretofore heavily insulated, but bare wire has repeatedly been exposed in recent times, whereas repairs seem less and less effectual. Sparks have been flying, and even the circuit breakers are broken! The old dynamo appears less dynamic, and by all indicators more heat than light is being radiated.  [4/16/06]

“THE FRUIT OF THE LAW”?

The Law of Moses scarcely demanded, much less produced, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, amenableness, or self-control. And although it did very explicitly, even primarily, command love, yet this, too, it was powerless to evoke.

Thus the great superiority of our getting the Wholesome Spirit in this age, post-Pentecost, is that these multifaceted traits actually do get sprouted and bud and blossom and come to mature fruitage within us. And it is the duty of senior/elder learners in our assemblies to test for these fruits regularly. Against such character qualities, there is no law.  [4/17/06]

We pass, as if through a magnifier, from this age into the future age, for in that age, whatever is done intentionally in this one is superabundantly overcompensated. This is what Scripture teaches us about God’s Justice. There is a transformation between the ages. Even our bodies are as seeds in comparison to what their planting will manifest and unfold on the other side of the first death. The first resurrection (by our faith, which implants us into Messiah’s already consummated resurrection, exaltation, and glorification—that is, transformation—via water and Spirit immersion) enables us to enjoy a foretaste of that future so that we can even here and now start to realize and recognize Messiah and be transformed into his image, “the eyes of [our] heart having been enlightened for [us] to perceive what is the expectation of His [the Father’s] calling and what the wealth of the glory of the inheritance of His allotment among the wholesome ones, and what the transcending greatness of His power for us, who are believing, in accord with the operation of the might of His strength, which is operative in the Messiah, raising him from among the dead and seating him at His right hand among the celestials, up over every sovereignty and authority and power and lordship, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is future, and subjects all under his feet, and gives him, as Head over all, to the assembly, which is his body, the contents with which all in all is getting filled.” (Eph. 1:18-22)  [4/17/06]

GOD’S ANGER AGAINST INCORRIGIBLE VIOLATORS CANNOT BE BOUGHT OFF; CHRIST INDEMNIFIED THE SINFUL BY STEPPING BETWEEN THEM AND SATAN, AT THE LOSS OF HIS OWN SINLESS LIFE, YET IN RELIANCE ON GOD’S JUSTICE TO REVERSE IT WITH DUE COMPENSATION

Scripture does not represent God as “the righteous judge who requires the propitiation which Jesus alone can offer” (á là Thomas A. Smail in The Forgotten Father, 1981) so that He can pardon sins gratuitously.  This strikes us as downright stingy, crabbed, and warped…not to add, ‘mechanical.’  ‘Payment’ for sins is sufficiently exacted by the wrath of God periodically released against persistently stubborn rebels as frightful object lessons to the rest of us.  And if that were not payment enough, the last farthing will be collected soon enough at the Lake of Fire.  For the anger of God against unrepented wickedness cannot be bought off at any price.

However, having said that, the “propitiation” (better:  protection, shielding, shelter, or indemnification) that the Father sent and officially commissioned His faithful Son to make on behalf of the entire human race effected with astounding thoroughness the whole heroic feat!  How?  By placing himself between “him who had the might of death, even the Adversary” (Heb. 2:14)—”that Great Dragon“ (Rev. 12:9), fire-breathing and red with rage—and us fated victims, helpless in our corruption and weakness.

This “chief of the authority of the air (Eph. 2;2),” using his agents, “the chiefs of this age (1 Cor. 2:6, 8),” unloaded his full payload of viciousness at this Target, with evident deadly results.  So far so bad.  But the story wasn’t over.  Allowing a few grim hours for the full realization of this deadly blow to sink in to all those who had perpetrated and witnessed it, God the Father Himself answered this enormity of infernal assaultiveness with TRANSCENDENTLY OVERWHELMING, SUPERABUNDANT OVERCOMPENSATION that totally exploded the most generous calculations of the actuaries.  Such exuberant super-excessive repayment was OFF THE CHARTS.  THUS WERE WE INDEMNIFIED BEYOND MEASURE, UNSTINTINGLY!  THAT’S GOD THE FATHER’S GRACIOUSNESS ON FULL DISPLAY.  [4/17/06]

THE VICARIOUS SACRIFICE OF CHRIST WAS NOT PENAL

Jesus did, to be sure, suffer abuse ‘vicariously’ on our behalf—the Just One on account of the unjust multitude.  But even more surely, this vicious abuse was not at the hand of God but of Satan, the “Great Dragon” (Rev. 12:9) who wished to destroy the Son of Mankind and his seed.  God’s Chosen and Anointed One bore the humiliating crime of the Cross, instigated by the Adversary, so that his Father could openly demonstrate in the most persuasive and endearing manner conceivable the overwhelmingly overcompensating magnitude of his righteousness by rescuing Jesus from the inveterate foe of humanity and yanking his stinger out forcibly.

Viewed from this apostolic perspective, we can finally grasp clearly and fathom precisely what this ‘vicariousness’ shields us from:  not the wrath of God but the fury of Satan.

By ‘paying‘ such a ‘vicarious’ ransom to our diabolical captor, Jesus effected a de facto exchange that Satan by no means intended, but which his foolishness could not forestall:  we went free!  Hallelujah!

The exact mechanics of this liberation bear closer scrutiny.  By suffering this radically unjust abuse and death, Jesus won for us, as our divine Champion, the compensatory award (δικαιωμα) of agelong life, including the present, phenomenal down payment of that future allotment:  the promised Wholesome Spirit of Life. This charisma (χαρισμα), in all its variegated splendor (especially against the backdrop of a creation in the throes of remorseless entropy) is the empirical right of all those who by mere (!) faith are honored by a just God with the status of sons/daughters and heirs in His future Kingdom.  It is precisely this gift (δορημα) of agelong life, including its foretaste in Wholesome Spirit, that liberates us from Satan’s authority, because it both frees us from slavery via fear of death and furnishes an internal power source to resist Satan’s corrupting blandishments.

This means that the divine solution to ‘the sin problem’ (as Evangelicals are so fond of putting it) comes by way of the reversal of the death sentence against our sin, as was so fully and satisfactorily proved by the outpour of agelong life—along with its undeniable evidences, including the performance of signs, miracles, powers, and healings—-into the hearts of those who get sprinkled with the innocent blood of Christ, by faith.

Thus sinners actually, amazingly, get indemnified, and their sins get removed, erased, cleaned off, released/forgiven, by the very ‘stuff’ from which our sins alienated us—tangible life itself!  The innocent blood of the Lamb of God does everything for us!  It is God’s UNIVERSAL ANTIDOTE (literally, a remedy to ‘give in answer/response‘ or ‘counter‘ to a poison).  It solves everything redemptively:  it absolves wrongdoing; it dissolves opposition; it resolves alienation.  Within the blood of Messiah resides agelong life, salvation, justification, forgiveness, sanctification, deliverance, freedom, cleansing, erasure (of sins), peace, conciliation, ransom, and more.  This blood is figured in the water of baptismal immersion, the wine of the Lord’s Supper, and the oil of therapeutic anointing.  The living soul is “in” the blood.  Thus, by permitting the guilty shedding of his own innocent blood on our behalf, Messiah surrendered his Jewish flesh to injustice only to win it back again, glorified beyond ethnicity, along with a justly overcompensated surplus of life to give away gratuitously to whomever desires it, regardless of ethnic or national origin or any fleshly distinctions whatever that have divided human beings.

In sum, Jesus suffered the abuse of Satan’s full fury ‘vicariously’ for us so that we might escape death, thus also the fear of death, and consequently abject slavery to Satan and sin.  But did this effect an escape from God’s wrath, which burns against incorrigible sins?  The decisively unambiguous answer to this ‘burning’ (ahem) question must be “yes and no.”  No, if you mean this ‘vicarious’ fact ‘deflects’ God’s indignation away from our sins (and we must be warned against mistaking God’s delay or stay of execution for ostensive ‘deflection‘); but yes, if you mean that this ‘vicarious’ shedding of innocent blood for guilty flesh achieves removal of sin from the guilty sinner, thus removing the cause for wrath in the first place.

It is this simple distinction that accounts for the seriousness with which the early church took the Lord’s Supper.  For here they were collectively (think: Passover) feeding on the flesh and blood of the Lamb of God/Good Shepherd (!) who hereby takes away sin.  [4/10/06]

Yet for all this ‘vicarious‘ action by Messiah Jesus on our account, there is not the slightest hint of a ‘penal’ substitution.  ‘Penal substitution’ is premised on a compromised notion of God’s righteousness that imagines it appearing at the Cross, though in fact God did not show up until three days later to play His hand by ipso facto CONDEMNING THE CROSS as a horrible miscarriage of justice…in fact, an out-and-out  mortal sin! Even so, nothing that can’t be corrected by a little divine power and timely action.

This was “a secret having gotten hushed during agelong times” (Rom. 16:25), “having gotten concealed from ages and generations” (Col. 1:26) yet now unveiled for our wonderment: the incomparable wealth of glory of this secret—-Christ among us, our expectation of future glorification (Col. 1:27)—-which salvation is graciously accessible via the “obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5, 16:26)!

Yet in this connection, there is still one more piece of the ‘puzzle’ that theologians have made out of the Atonement that, once we see how it fits, will take our breath away!

At the Cross there is not the slightest hint of ‘penal’ or ‘punitive’ action against Jesus’ enemies and killers.  This must be absorbed at full value before we can adequately appreciate Messiah’s abuse for what it really was:  SATAN’S SIN. For God all along knew who the ultimate enemy was.  Therefore, He did not go after Satan’s pawns; He was laying a trap for big game.  After all, Jesus came to save the world, not to condemn it.  These are collateral benefits of nullifying the works of Satan.

Vindictive human justice predictably would have ladled out reprisals, punitive overcompensations, penal ‘satisfactions’ as the price of the crime of the Cross.  Christ’s enemies should have ‘paid for‘ their premeditated enormity!  God should have crushed them with brimstone and incinerated them with fire from heaven!  But all in good time…

Are we disappointed?  Are we unsettled, ‘unsatisfied’ that God did not break forth with evident penal, punitive retribution to ‘fully satisfy’ His wrath on those wretches?  Isn’t it enough that He fully exposed Satan’s intended trickery and forever crushed his head, shattered his authority over Adam’s heretofore doomed offspring?  Must He also vent Himself on Satan’s wretched slaves and dupes?

What an injustice that would have been!  Petty reprisals are beyond the intentions of the Savior of the world.  Yet did we perhaps expect God, alternatively, to unleash that anger upon His own obedient Son as a ‘substitute’ somehow for not doing it to his envious, hateful, embittered enemies?  How hideous!

The work of total obedience was completely finished at the Cross; all that was now called for—all that Messiah’s absolutely innocent blood (i.e., “just soul“) was “crying out” for—-was proper avenging.  This observation necessarily implies that no avenging of any sort—especially no penal satisfaction, no punitive action whatsoever—by his Father could conceivably have been present to sully the pure, stark, stunning faithfulness, obedience, subordination, surrender—-Jesus’ filial love, openly, publicly, uniquely, exhibited on that cursed tree…of LIFE!  Accordingly, to perceive the Cross as the key to everlasting life we must see how it was indissolubly linked to the impending Resurrection that would actually—-historically—–set things right, restoring the harmony of the created universe disrupted by sin.  Once this cosmic fact is resolutely grasped, every deficient impulse to compromise the transparency of this radical criminality by imputing divine punitive, penal motives into its ordained significance will melt away in the beaming sunshine of divine love—both Son’s and Father’s—radiating Their rescuing wisdom untainted.

So, Peter Abelard was right…but only half right; he was right about the Cross but wrong in his silence about the Resurrection.  Yet even if he did have that detail wrong (or out of view), Anselm was no less wrong.  For although he would surely have sensed Abelard’s explanation to be incomplete, yet he himself presumed to add words without knowledge and ventured far beyond the apostolic pattern of sound explanations.  (This, at least, Abelard did not dare to do at this point.)  Yet both suffered virtual blindness about the justifying significance of the Messiah’s resurrection.  Even Paul Peter Waldenström, who perhaps came closer than most writers since the early Ante-Nicene church, and until the late 20th century, to understanding the nature of the Atonement, did not fully explore, expound, and secure this indispensable, and by his time still long-missing, link.

All penal, punitive theories of the Atonement are dead wrong and have proven to be deadly for far too many discerning prospects who, sadly, even tragically, took offense.  Is this the Devil’s revenge?  Is Satan making a comeback by twisting the liberating Proclamation of God’s Kingdom into a dull, incomprehensible God-dishonoring caricature—a grotesque gargoyle, ironically, in his own infernal image?  If so, then theologians have been his most amenable agents in this crafty stratagem of disinformation.  They have insinuated penal motives and punitive impulses between the virgin lines of wholesome Scripture.  They see penal satisfactions and divine wrath around the turn of every page.  Such theological rigor is akin to rigor mortis.  It reads death into the words of life!

But, sadly, there is more.  By reading penal or punitive elements into the Cross they underplay, neglect, ignore, and suppress where such elements actually did turn up on the historical stage, and by clear prophecies from both Old and New Testaments!  For Daniel the prophet as reiterated by Jesus himself in the Olivet Discourse pointed a long warning finger in the direction of 70 A.D., one generation—”this generation“!—beyond the Cross.  Exactly 40 years after their execution of their Messiah, the citizens of Jerusalem below, Jerusalem “after the flesh,” having remained stubborn to the graciousness of Jehovah Who gave them this merciful reprieve, suffered the terrors of God’s punitive, penal avenging to a degree that utterly defies polite description.  The “abomination of desolation” (Daniel 9:26-27) exhibits the wrath of God in no uncertain terms, with bold and bloody strokes!  These pathetically doomed Jews had hardened themselves to the proffered graciousness of Jehovah in Jesus, their Messiah, spanning forty years of mercy, tolerance, patience, and kindness by Israel’s God.  Their cup of wrath was now full and brimming over, recollecting, ironically, the fateful extermination of nations they themselves had started displacing some 15 centuries earlier.  When the Christians in Jerusalem beheld, even in reportedly awe-inspiring portents in the sky, what was looming, they fled in obedience to their Master’s warning a generation earlier and narrowly escaped the barely describable internecine slaughter that the imbedded Jewish reporter Flavius Josephus less squemishly recorded for the instruction of later generations.

For their murder of their own Savior Jerusalem paid with horrific suffering of brutal, merciless mutual savagery that beggars sober, much less polite, description.  Josephus is our window into this unleashing of divine retribution in his eye-witness account, The Wars of the Jews.

Yet for all that, it did not atone!  Their national destiny was irreversibly cut off.  The Covenant with Jewish Israel was over and done with, having been exhausted in the covenantal curses against her national ethnic disobedience, shockingly climaxing in their savage coup de ‘grâce’—hanging “the King of the Jews” on an inglorious gibbet for gawkers to mock, scorn, and shame.  This singular culminating crime sealed their spiraling doom. God henceforth would choose all who dare believe His ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ concerning Jesus to become “a chosen race, a ‘royal priesthood’, a ‘wholesome nation’, a procured people,” so that they “should be recounting the virtues of Him Who calls you out of darkness into His marvelous light, who once were ‘not a people’ yet are now the people God, who ‘have not enjoyed mercy’, yet now are ‘being shown mercy'” (1 Peter 2:9-10) and shall thereupon inherit allotments in His impending kingdom.  And in this way—that is, standing in faith (Rom. 11:20,23)—shall all Israel, that is, “true Israel” who do not remain stubborn to the Son be likewise saved and equally grafted and incorporated into the one body of Messiah.

Here, then, was authentic and well-deserved penal recompense, yes, divine avenging; yet ‘satisfaction’ scarcely covers the goods. Where does wholesome Scripture so much as allude to such outpourings of righteous indignation as ‘satisfying‘ to God, (i.e., as ‘paying off’ an accumulated debt of sin)?  Such tragedies are only cause for mourning, for the staggering losses seem irreversible.   “The indignation of God is getting revealed from heaven on all irreverence and injustice of humans who are retaining the truth in injustice“ (Rom. 1:18), as was pre-eminently the dubious state of highest spiritual privilege from which the ancient nation of Israel so ignominiously, shatteringly plummeted.  It may be mercifully delayed, yet not averted from stubbornly unrepentant sinners.

What certainly did ‘satisfy’ God was His Son’s obedience regardless of the torments inflicted by the ones his love sent him to save. Satan was remorseless and hopeless, so will suffer for the ages of the ages the torments of the Lake of Fire.  Human beings who refuse to accept God’s appointed means for getting rid of their sins will also be tormented commensurate with their sins and be ultimately consumed by the fires of judgment.  This is no small loss.  Some measure of it can be gauged by the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12; 13:42,50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28) that attends the contemplation, while in the Unseen, of their own final extermination in light of what they might have gained—–agelong joy, life, glory, and rule over a new earth where no injustice will exist to diminish happiness.  What a loss!  What a destruction!  Yet HOW GREAT A SALVATION is awaiting those who keep on trusting and obeying!  [4/11/06]

WHEN DID JESUS GET “ALL AUTHORITY”?

It must be understood that Jesus had been given authority at least over all the earth, but probably over all of heaven, too (see Luke 10:17-20), as soon as he conquered Satan in temptation (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13; cf. 1 John 2:12-17, 4:4-6, 5:1-5, John 16:33), for immediately thereafter, he started heralding the Kingdom of the Heavens (Matt. 4:17)/of God (Mark 1:14-15), having returned “in the power of the Spirit“ (Luke 4:14) into Galilee, declaring that Isaiah 61:1-2a had been “fulfilled” (Luke 4:21) and then curing everyone in sight (Matt. 4:23-25)!

So when Jesus declared to his disciples before his ascension, “Given to me was all authority in heaven and on earth“ (Matthew 28:18), this was not (or not entirely) a fruit of his later resurrection, but of his victory in temptation, which commenced his ministry with power from on high as the consequence.  This is why he was authorized to give authority to his disciples, as well (Matt. 10:1, Luke 9:1, Mark 6:7) even before the Resurrection and Pentecost.  But granted, the power was more abundant after his resurrection, for after all, he had become victorious again in his last and much more severe temptation at Gethsemane and the Cross, where he was in such a struggle that he sweat blood, and a messenger from heaven came and strengthened him (Luke 22:43-44, cf., Matt. 16:18), as after his first trial (Matt. 4:11).

This two-phase granting of authority and the power of the Spirit for signs and miracles and cures and healing, etc., may explain why Jesus breathed on his disciples ‘early,’ before his ascension, to get Wholesome Spirit (John 20:22) and be authorized to forgive as well as to hold (i.e., not forgive) anyone’s sins—in effect the “keys of the Kingdom” (Matt. 16:13-20).  [3/21/05]

OVERCOMPENSATION and JOY

God’s justice demands an overcompensation for injury.  In other words, the injurer must pay back the victim of the injury and add a surplus (sometimes several fold) beyond what the theft or injury cost the victim.  The reason?  TO RESTORE JOY to the victim.  This is an essential element of God’s Kingdom (Rom. 14:17).  The one who stole joy is obliged to ‘repay’ it.

And, naturally, as we would expect, this fundamental truth of the universe is best illustrated by the Cross/Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah.  In this case, however, the abusers of Jesus could never have repaid him for their unjust injuries against him.  Rather, God Himself intervened, out of uncreated love, and reacted in graciousness to overcompensate His Son and give him his due! So whereas under the Old Covenant murder was too heinous a crime to be overcompensated by any amount of money or property—an ‘in kind’ payment of the living soul of the murderer was required instead—the New Covenant was inaugurated when God the Father Himself acted miraculously from His celestial throne to overcompensate His grievously abused though completely innocent Son with resurrection from the dead, exaltation to sovereignty over the entire created order, and the indescribable Gift of superabundant favor—the promised Spirit of wholesomeness—to give away gratuitously to all who trust this Proclamation!

It is this divine graciousness (χαρις) that restored fulness of Kingdom joy (χαρα) to the mortal human race, thus inviting their endless, boundless thanksgiving (ευχαριστια) to God!  [6/23/05]

NOT BY INSURRECTION BUT BY RESURRECTION

It is clear from both the teaching and practice of Jesus that he came to liberate humans from the respective bondages of medical, financial, political, military, and religious AUTHORITY by DISPLACEMENT, not REVOLUTION—in other words, not by INSURRECTION but by RESURRECTION!  Thereby he inaugurated a New Creation…a New Humanity that responds to Messiah’s headship and his Spirit’s leadership.  [1/21/06]

If the complete RESURRECTION of the body is ‘in the Atonement,’ then surely the current HEALING of the body must be!  [2/9/06]