Reallocating the Locus and Role of God’s Wrath in History and Soteriology

When did we start psychoanalyzing God? In trying to rationalize why God “needed” to exert His wrath against a perfectly innocent victim in order to be able to express His graciousness to sinners, theologians have wandered far astray from their honest calling and the beaten path of apostolic explanation. For their part, the apostles taught that for his sinless, faithful obedience, Jesus was worthy only of God’s stupendous graciousness (instead of wrath) when he voluntarily surrendered (as per the divine Plan) to the envious hatred and fury of his foes, and was deserving only of God’s exaltation for that outrageous humiliation. We’re talkin’ justice here–premial justice, nothin’ penal about it! God’s wrath did show up, however, after a lapse of one generation, upon the city of Jerusalem, who had consigned God’s Anointed to a miserable cross. [4/18/12; 2/7/26]

The modern nation of Israel, which we should recognize as the prophesied Counter-Messiah, was a creation of Zionism and Dispensationalism. The latter Christian movement, under the influence of conventional secular chronology that displaces and “replaces” Biblical chronology at key points, miscalculated a host of important events in Old Testament and New Testament prophecy. Having been misled from the authentic apostolic view concerning many decisive prophecies long ago fulfilled in Christ’s career and the the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, they have spun out volumes of vain speculations that obscure the true Gospel message of the apostles, which fundamentally universalized the application of the blessings of Abraham and required Jews to get reconciled with Gentiles by seeing incorporation into one body as the consummate goal of the Savior–a joint body!

Ironically, these modern fabricators of a counter-Messiah (antichristos) dare to label the apostolic message of trans-racial unification in Jesus Christ as “replacement theology,” AS IF THEY THEMSELVES WERE NOT GUILTY OF REPLACING BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY WITH THE SELF-AGGRANDIZING ARTIFICE CALCULATED BY A NATIONALISTIC PAGAN PTOLEMAIC-ERA (305 B.C.-30 B.C.) EGYPTIAN PRIESTHOOD! But more on that another time. [4/19/12; 2/6-7/26]

The point of Christ’s abuse-taking and curse-taking is not that he “bore what we should have borne,”* but much rather that he bore what he should not have borne. Yet happily, that very injustice supplied the grounds for God to turn around his condemnation to death into a justification of life via resurrection from the dead, whereby much, much more was returned to Christ than he lost to Satan’s savage assault.

*Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 3rd ed. (Eerdmans 1965) p. 61. [4/20/12]

Faustus Socinus SHOT PENAL SUBSTITUTION ALL TO HELL, WHENCE IT HAD COME. [4/30/12]

It is LOVE that sacrifices whatever is necessary to conciliate enemies so as to make peace and re-unify those who had become estranged. [5/2/12; 2/7/26]

SCRIPTURE + GOOD SENSE

Faustus Socinus (along with several generations of his Polish successors) approached theological, ethical, and ecclesiastical issues with an explicit and honest combination of Scripture plus good sense (mostly). Wielding this double-barreled weapon with strategic skill, he levelled devastating fire against Calvin’s theory of penal substitution. That he did not happen to rediscover the correct alternative is hardly a fault peculiar to him. It was scarcely possible to get this right until Christ’s resurrection came back into prominence (since apostolic days!) as a theological locus of decisive significance, i.e., until the late 20th century. Yet, however that may be, it should be clear that holy Scripture + good sense trumps Scripture + traditional dogmatic prejudice, in principle, every time. The Holy Spirit has weighed in decisively on this controverted matter. It is not hard to guess which of these couplets is an unholy alliance. [5/7/12]

Calvinism is like a dandelion. Although you may pull up all visible flowers, leaves, and stems (the “five points,” “original sin,” “predestination,” “sovereign decrees,” “imputation of Christ’s righteousness,” “eternal conscious punishment,” etc.), unless you manage to pull up the toxic root—”penal substitution“—this ‘lion will come roaring back, in due time, with all its well-known visible appendages bristling. Penal substitution harbors, at root, every distinctive of Reformed soteriology (especially in its more complete and thorough post-Reformation guise). No superficial pruning will eradicate these outgrowths that reside implicit in a rigid adherence to and elaboration of the penal/economic logic of this artificial core doctrine. One of the most striking and instructive examples of inner contradiction on this topic is the greatly enlarged second edition of the monumental study by Laurence M. Vance intended to refute the Five Points of Calvinism, The Other Side of Calvinism, revised edition (Orlando, FL: Vance Publications, 1999) 800pp: the author remained an undaunted, if foolhardy, champion of penal substitution (esp. pp.414-32)! [5/24/12; 2/5/26]

“T U L I P” Some playful toying with the Five Points of Calvinism (which so many painstaking students of Scripture have found hard to take seriously, as well.) Obviously these whimsical takes are not intended to represent their adherents’ own too-sober exposition of the points at issue!

1. “Total Depravity“—Theology in general has become depraved in many respects, but Calvinism is a textbook example of total depravity at work—every one of the Five Points is a corruption of Gospel truth, accordingly attended by psychological malaise and behavioral deviance, as candid observers have repeatedly noted.

2. “Unconditional Election“—God chooses everyone who believes the Gospel without any conditions attached! However, He rejects those who distrust the News about His Son.

3. “Limited Atonement“—Christ’s atonement is strictly limited to Adam’s descendants—human beings. Angels are not included in its benefits.

4. “Irresistible Grace“—God’s graciousness is almost irresistible. Sadly, many people do manage to resist the Holy Spirit of grace and hence eventually suffer the wrath of God and get destroyed forever. Moral: Don’t resist the drawing power of the gospel story!

5. “Perseverance of the Saints“—People must persist in faith in order to remain holy (wholesome), i.e., “saints.” [5/24/12; 2/5/26]

SUICIDE MISSION WITH A TWIST ENDING

The dogmatic insistence on the part of penal substitution theologians that “reconciliation happened ‘objectively,’ ‘once and for all,’ at the Cross” is based on the erroneous supposition that “God needed to be reconciled to sinners.” Of course, since God is a singular party, then IF He actually did need to be reconciled, then it does seem plausible that this should occur at a single historic moment. But this is a specious need, hence the trend of apostolic language toward conciliation as occurring in a multiplicity of discrete moments whenever and wherever sinners one by one believe the “Explanation of conciliation” (2 Cor. 5:20). Paul Peter Waldenström, in principle, secured this crucial advance in the history of soteriology in the early 1870s. (See post for April 3, 2012, “The Nature of Conciliation with God.”)

God chooses our faith on account of Christ’s faithfulness, who was the Inaugurator (arch-) and Perfector (-tel-) of our faith. Even faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. Therefore God reckons the tiniest degree of true faith to be uprightness worthy of reward for Christ’s sake, whose own faithfulness, when matured and perfected, won the just award of his resurrection from the dead, since one who is righteous by faith, as Christ was, shall inevitably live, regardless of “impossibilities” even as “irreversible” as lethal public execution itself. Jesus proved it so that we could have solid expectation and therefore would endure in faith through our own severest trials. Faith is the genuine article; every other virtue stems from the power of the Holy Spirit that Christ’s perfected faithfulness won from God’s justice in answer to the extreme injustice he underwent. [4/3/12; 1/25/26]

Jesus died for us so that we could get the Holy Spirit. That’s the bottom line of the New Covenant he inaugurated by his sacrifice on the cross. He died for our sins so that the Holy Spirit could cleanse away those sins and give us immortal life in exchange for the death that is otherwise our looming, inescapable, and final fate. [4/4/12; 1/25/26] Christ Jesus was on A SUICIDE MISSION WITH A TWIST ENDING. [4/5/12]

Only Christian, i.e., New Testament (New Covenant) principles and precepts can build safe, caring, and prosperous civilizations. Granted, without the presence and welcoming of the Holy Spirit of that New Covenant, made available as a result of the shedding of Christ’s blood and God’s prompt, marvelous, and counter-intuitively merciful response to that gross human miscarriage of justice by raising him from the dead with power and glory and explosive graciousness to dispense freely to all who believe this Proclamation—I repeat, without that Spirit of Wholesomeness such progress is greatly inhibited, even stalled. But there is no other path to true progress in any sector of society. Every other proposal eventually shows its true colors as a cover, a masquerade, a facade for corrupting self-interest, and such “progress” gets exposed as only a tawdry secret history of mounting injustices preparing the way for Divine judgments.

Accordingly, we need to focus on the Christian rudiments of civilization found in the teaching of Jesus and his select apostles. These principles far transcend the letter of Old Testament Scripture, while extending its very Spirit of tough love and public justice. Frederick Denison Maurice, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens (recall, e.g., Marley’s remark to Scrooge about “responsibility,” and “duty,” especially in business), Abraham Kuyper, Henry George, Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, Walter Rauschenbusch, Toyohiko Kagawa, et al, caught glimpses of this noble imperative as overriding individualistic selfishness, utilitarian self-interest, corporate capitalistic greed (“which is idolatry,” Colossians 3:5–devotion to “Mammon”), etc., engendering a rugged moral ethos of care and even starting to flesh out creative and worthy structural alternatives with varying degrees of acceptance and success, giving rise to diverse reform movements around the world from which we can still draw inspiration. [4/17/12; 1/25/26]

If God could not experience and feel genuine suffering from evils occurring in His creation, then how would it be possible for us to become like Him, knowing and emulating His just behavior in response to evils?

Is it just possible that our experience of suffering evils is somehow intended to help us understand how God suffers from evils? Can He experience suffering? Did He experience suffering from evils only in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t it a part of becoming like God in character that we learn to experience and feel about evils the same way God experiences and feels about them? Doesn’t this require God to experience or know evils somehow the way we human beings do? And doesn’t the Lord Jesus simply reflect and reveal his Father’s own feelings and attitudes toward evils? How could we mature into the image and likeness of God Himself if He can’t feel evils and then respond in a normative manner that we could emulate? [3/8/12]

So-called “penal substitution: is impossible no matter how we construe the meaning of “penal” or of “substitution.” If by “penal” we refer to an attitude of God, then it is impossible because no such attitude could be expressed by a just God against a sinless man, nor is any postulated in Scripture by a fair reading. Nor could such a penal expression toward a sinless person serve as a “substitute” for others so as to prevent penalties from falling either on recalcitrant evildoers to avert their ultimate destruction or on erring believers to correct their misbehavior before it becomes habitual and destroys their faith.

On the other hand, “penal” could hardly refer to the attitude of those who inflicted wounds and abuse on the Lord, because that suffering assuredly does not substitute for ours. In fact, he informs us that no servant is greater than his lord, so we should expect similar ill-treatment from the world. [3/8/12]

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead justified him from any sin that had been ascribed to him by his wicked accusers and false witnesses (Rom. 6:7, cf. 2 Cor. 5:16, 1 Tim. 3:16, Rom. 4:23-5:2, 18, 21; 8:1-4, 10-11.) [3/10/12]

The power of Christ’s resurrection rectifies sins by reversing their evil effects, even as it reversed, yes, even more than reversed, Christ’s death—the effect of his cross. This is how Christ’s work deals with and in fact expunges sin, i.e., via the vivifying, death-and-evil-reversing power of the Holy Spirit, poured out of heaven superabundantly on believing sinners as a fruit of Christ’s unjust abuse-taking getting reversed by God’s premial justice to him, then overflowing graciously to us from there! Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift! [3/28/12]

Penal Substitution defenders must minimize and downgrade the fierceness of Christ’s contest against Satan at the cross. That is the only way they can “glorify” their pet hobby horse—Christ’s “suffering God’s wrath”! This means that the REAL BATTLE AGAINST SATAN GETS POOH-POOHED, DIS-HONORED, AND MARGINALIZED TO MAKE ROOM FOR A MYTH OF DEFAMING MAGNITUDE! From such slander how does God save His honor? With penal substitutionary theologians for friends, why would God need enemies! For if the Son suffered the Father’s wrath, then the Father suffers the penal substitutionary advocate’s slander, misrepresentations, in a word, DISHONOR. And this, in turn, means that God suffers the repulsion, repudiation, rejection, withdrawal, and recoiling of sinners in need of His redemptive love and authentic, premial justice! God gets wretchedly disgraced! Is that not, then, a “doctrine of demons” that dares to defame God by turning the cross into a demonstration of divine wrath and away from a divining of demonic rage! [3/21/12]

How ironic it is that the ‘evangelical’ Protestant theory of Christ’s “penal substitution should be met by the Islamic conjecture about Jesus’ “penal substitution by a luckless lookalike! The simplest way to subvert such a “poetic” twist of penal justice is to reassert premial justice at Christ’s resurrection, which entails the gracious inclusion of all who believe it! [3/31/12]

Not a theologia crucis but a theologia resurrectionis is what we need, indeed, that is exactly what Paul’s Epistle to the Romans actually teaches, or rather harps on over and over again! [3/31/12]

Satan was clueless that by slaying God’s Son he would automatically invoke God’s restorative justice to reverse that outrage with incomparable cosmic restitution, including his own ultimate deposing.

Satan had no clue that his divine Victim was going to RANSOM the human race from his diabolical clutches by escaping from death and Hades. He had absolutely no clue that by shedding Christ’s innocent blood, he would be evoking God’s justice to rescue him even from the extremity of death. Satan was totally clueless that his murder of the perfectly sinless “Lamb of God” would actually demand that God exert His faithfully covenanted promises declared in Israel’s holy Scriptures and call him back to life to inherit them!

Several patristic Christian authors were therefore quite mistaken to assert that there was some sort of agreement between God and Satan (as there had been some eighteen centuries earlier with Job—see note following Job 42:17, LXX). There was no deal with the Devil. He was caught totally by surprise, fair and square. [2/28/12; 11/12/25]

Old Testament justice required RESTITUTION by the offender to the victim. This was the “penalty” it demanded from the offender, and it is obviously restorative for the victim. Moreover, the restitution expected was not merely an equivalent restoration but entailed the addition of an extra or surplus as a ‘fee’ (‘penalty’ in the narrow sense). This superfluity was not intended as a ‘punitive’ measure for the offender, although it was certainly meant to have a sting! Yet it did actually have a ‘restorative’ effect for them, as well, for clearing their conscience via ‘making satisfaction’ (i.e., legal payment) for their theft, causing loss, injury, etc., to avert ongoing anger, reprisals, vendettas, blood feuds, clan wars, and similar cycles of revenge.

That entire system of criminal justice, therefore, fostered reconciliation and peacemaking. It can only with due qualification be termed “retributive” justice, even though it did stipulate paying back the victim, plus a bonus. This was not characterized in a vengeful or vindictive way, but simply required as an ‘evening up’ of the inequity introduced by the breach of the peace so as to restore the peace or shalom and defuse simmering wrath and brewing retribution. Hence, Darrin Snyder Belousek (Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) renders his analysis of divine justice liable to confusion. He would have to label or categorize premial (i.e., rewarding or restorative) justice as “retributive.” This designation poses an inner contradiction. He then proposes to dispose of all “retributive” justice, so interpreted, in favor of so-called “covenant(al) justice.” which is characterized by him as not “distributive” (i.e., “retributive,” so not presumably plagued by the reward/punishment dialectic). But since when was the ancient covenantal code of Moses not stamped with a binary distributive function? Although not after the fashion of much later Roman law, the Mosaic law had to deal with the same perennial realities of inter-human relations (and human-environment relations as well). These aims are not optional, dispensable, or replaceable. All societal law is intended to restore peace agreeably among contending or aggrieved parties…somehow.

Of course, in capital crimes it is not possible to make restitution properly by restoring what has been taken (think of murder, amputation, etc., but also lesser cases where the loss is irreparable or the injury irremediable). This presents difficulties that various civilizations and cultures have handled very differently. Yet they all alike are faced with the identical reality of death, which cannot be surmounted satisfactorily by nominal restoration in this age.

Accordingly, this is precisely the territory of human experience where a truly restorative solution was bound to gain universal attention and acclaim, if not acceptance. The contents of God’s proclamation about His Son is ideally suited to appeal to the ultimate need for a more powerful and more completely restorative and satisfying justice among human beings. Not only does God’s raising the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead provide “the final solution” to the problem of death, but its very circumstances and long prophetic anticipation frames it in such a manner that it necessarily alters the way all justice is viewed and administered…or at least should be. But personal habits are hard to change, and culture-wide habits harder still. Thus Western law has never adequately incorporated the premial premise and precepts of the Gospel into its criminal justice proceedings or institutions with anything like full consciousness, much less, consistency and rigor. However, the Restorative Justice (RJ) movement, launched in 1989 by Howard Zehr’s landmark book, Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times, Third ed. (Harrisonburg, VA; Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 2015), has launched a splendid revolution with that noble goal.

The elephant in the room is Roman law with its categories and procedures. Islamic law also entered Western Europe, notably during the Moorish era in Spain. These have came to domineer native legal traditions, but also to weigh in against uniquely Gospel-enlightened influences. [2/28/12; 11/12/25]

Roman distributive justice was intended to give each person his/her “due.” Isn’t this also what ancient Israelite justice was mandated with? Although not framed in these terms, God’s covenant was about returning to the injured what they were owed by their perpetrator, where possible. So “getting one’s deserts” was a central issue, although not construed in narrowly punitive terms and sanctions, and not bearing necessarily retributive overtones. Its purpose and practical function was to repair a breach of justice and so make peace by reconciling the conflicted parties.

So, when we come to the New Testament, we are not faced with an overturning of such traditional institutions of justice, for there was nothing inherently objectionable about them, per se. Instead, we behold in the Gospel the INTERVENTION of a JUSTICE powerful enough to repair and restore even from the injury of death itself. It could, moreover, give God’s sinless Son his due—his just deserts even after the ravages of torture and death had seemingly already decisively and irreversibly ‘conquered’! [2/28/12]

“ALL MY GOODNESS” Exodus 33:19

Jehovah’s words to Moses on Mt. Sinai amounted to an elaboration or elucidation of God’s righteousness/justice. This means that all of the characteristics mentioned there, including their nuancing and mutual conditioning, are elements of His Covenant justice toward His chosen people. The founding words at Sinai reveal the bedrock of all God’s royal actions toward Israel. God’s words are “cupelled seven times,” so are purified, worthy of our closest scrutiny. Compare especially Exodus 34:5-10; Numbers 14:17-24; Deuteronomy 7:9-11; Psalm 99:8.

Notice that there is a built-in ‘if-then’ subtext in these passages, showing that God’s justice is contingent on the responses of those creatures made in His own image and after His likeness. Therefore, when Israel’s God has a dispute (רִ֗יב) with them, He argues, cajoles, pleads, accuses, beseeches, hints, implores, queries, weeps, promises, warns, reminds, threatens, etc. Here is no rigid, harsh, unbending, vindictive, irritable, short-fused, unreasonable deity of popular misrepresentation. He bends over backwards to be reasonable. “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Moreover, a God this gracious, loving, merciful, tolerant, longsuffering, and full of lovingkindness and benignity has the right to make ‘reasonable’ demands of his Covenant partners, His continual supply of “good things” to His children qualifies Him to warn them sternly against indulging in evil things that would harm others and themselves. [3/1/12; 11/12/25]

Up from the Grave He AROSE!

God barely squeaked by in His promise to raise up His vanquished Son in “three days”! HE COULD BARELY WAIT! You must see what it meant for God to have to wait “so long” before DOING JUSTICE! “How Long O Jehovah? Shall You be concealed permanently?” (Psalm 89)

Then on the “eighth day” of that week, God answered from heaven and UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE, WITH A MIGHTY TRIUMPH O’ER HIS FOES! [4/21/06]

No force on earth or in heaven could have wrestled Jesus onto that cross or pinned his hands and feet with nails! He permitted it—graciously permitted it!—causing no loss of life…except his own, on that dreadful day. This means that he bore or carried that towering crime against his just soul instead of resisting it. He did “not resist the vicious,” but instead prayed for them. Thereby he “absorbed” their evil in his own body of mortal flesh, “sin’s flesh.” So instead of avenging himself, he awaited God’s just avenging, and God came through with “a VENGEANCE”! God glorified him with immortality (which he evidently did not possess before this, or he could not have borne/carried our sins to their just deserts: death). Without his death “to a finality” there could have been no reversal, exaltation, and enthronement “to a finality.” (Heb. 10:1,14) [4/21/06]

The cleansing of our consciences from dead works (Heb. 9:14) and sins was achieved by the Savior’s SELF-ABNEGATION since it was exactly and precisely his soul/self whom we offend whenever we sin, do a misdeed, do wrong, etc. the honor and rights we infringe are the honor and rights he gave up and NEGATED for our sakes, on our behalf, on our account, for us! That’s the essence—the concentrated essence—of what Jesus, Messiah, Son of God accomplished by the cross.

On the other hand, what God, the Father, did at the cross was…exactly nothing…but observe with a giant-sized—a divine-sized—measure of “satisfaction” the faithful, reliant, dependent, expectant surrender of His Only-born to the ravages of the most sinister malevolence ever stirred up by man or demon, while in perfect subordination to the directions of his Father in heaven. (This can only have a good outcome…I can feel it!)

The Father deliberately, designedly, strategically passed by any and every opportunity to play His hand at the cross at all, period. He, as it were, allowed His liberating, rescuing, avenging, vindicating pressure to build up a head of steam till all heaven hissed with the barely contained fury of his impending release. And when God the Father unleashed the dynamo of his justice into a cold tomb, it transformed into the warm womb of a brand new, fresh, sustainable, immortal creation! AND THE SON CAME FORTH INVINCIBLE! The terrestrial recoil was so mighty that even more graves opened to disgorge their surprisingly revivified contents! Laugh if you want; the fun has only BEGUN! [4/22/06]

The divine Son’s humble incarnation, displayed in a Jewish manger, found its culmination in his humiliating “incarnage,” displayed on a Roman cross. [4/22/06]

Rachel Joy Scott as “Sacrificial Lamb”

Rachel Joy Scott sacrificed herself—an innocent, good (even when her five “good” friends were not, and abandoned her), forgiving, kind, spotless virgin (decisively giving up her boyfriend and giving up the hope of marriage) lamb (“rachel” in Hebrew) to become a sin-offering (αμαρτια) as a protection, shelter, or shield (ιλαστηριον—“propitiatory shelter,” “mercy-seat“) concerning the sins or offenses of her high school (particularly bullying). Not only that, but also concerning the sins of her parents in divorcing.  Rachel’s willing, voluntary self-sacrifice in accordance with God’s desire, brought the overcompensation of God’s graciousness to her whole family, giving back to her father Darrell a vast ministry of salvation in high schools across the nation, along with her mother Beth (plus both of her parents’ new spouses), as well as her sisters and brothers.

Rachel Joy Scott, by her heroic self-sacrifice, also delivered Columbine High School from a manifold worse devastation than it did suffer in fact.  Bombs placed in the cafeteria refused to detonate, thus sparing hundreds of lives!  Only twelve students (“disciples”) and one teacher (“master”) died…although many more were wounded.

And God was pleased, well-pleased, propitious, gracious, and thousands more have been saved across the nation and beyond, as a consequence.  [4/21/06—the 7th anniversary of the Columbine massacre; 12/31/25]

God, throughout the Old Covenant with Israel, required that the regular sin-offerings employ a flawless lamb (a virgin animal), white (“without spot”).   Why?  Obviously, to depict sinlessness.  That being the case, the offering portrayed a sin against the creature itself—the harmless, amenable animal.  This ritual act, in effect, depicted wrong or injustice, per se.  In this precise way, the sin-offering (αμαρτια) truly did depict a sin (αμαρτια).

Thus did the sinless sacrificial victim bear “the string of sins,” in the words of Rachel Scott, Columbine High School martyr, leading up to its slaughter and death, by accepting all these injustices without complaint and without self-defense, vengeance, or retaliation.

Jesus had the right from his Father to not bear those brutal injustices—no one could have taken his life from him (John 10:17-18); he could have called more than twelve legions of angelic messengers to save himself if he had chosen.  (Matt. 26:52-54)  Yet many bystanders erroneously taunted, “Others he saves!  Himself he cannot save!”  (Matt. 27:42)  Not! Rather, he carries their “string of sins“/”strings of sin” without reviling and without threat (1 Peter 2:23-25).  By those savage “welts” we are healed (Isaiah 53:5), precisely because God avenged them by healing his flesh at resurrection, then proceeding to overcompensate him with superabundant  healing for us in the bargain!  (I love this Gospel, I do!)  Jesus’ only choices were to avenge himself or to bear those sinful assaults.  He willingly gave up what our sins had deprived him of.  He chose to not avenge himself, to not vindicate his own honor, to not use his own authority, which he had direct from his Father.  He laid it all down, surrendering himself instead into his Father’s hands—”Him Who is judging justly” (1 Peter 2:23).  And that would mean, in the meantime, surrendering himself to his vicious enemies whom he loved, many of whom, by his subsequently demonstrated mercy and  graciousness came to trust him after all and got saved!

The medieval notion that at the Cross God avenged His insulted honor is 180° backwards.  Messiah bore or carried that dishonor instead of avenging himself (although the legitimate authority to do so had never been, nor could ever be, taken from him). He waited for Jehovah’s righteous judgment to avenge the enormity.  It is from LOVE that the Savior died instead of lashing out in revenge to decimate his enemies.  The supernal wisdom behind love aims at “winning souls” back to amity and friendship.  God’s goal was not to incinerate the sinner but to conciliate the silly (from a word suggesting “deserving pity,” meaning feeble-minded, showing little sense, judgment, or sobriety; foolish, stupid, absurd, ludicrous, etc. [Colloq.]:  dazed, senseless, as from a blow.  [Dial.]:  helpless, weak.  [Archaic]:  feeble, infirm.  [Archaic]:  simple, plain, innocent.).

To conclude, the ancient sacrificial lamb, appointed by covenant and well-pleasing to God, got consumed by fire—burning wrath, anger, indignation, fury.  Yet dare we allege that these represented the disposition of God?  The cross of “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36) illuminates the truth that yields the true interpretation.  That fiery holocaust depicts the furious hatred and wrath of Satan and the viciousness he propagates in the world.  Yet the smoke rises “into God’s nostrils” as a memorial testimony of faithfully obedient submission depicted and figured by the unblemished lamb.

The raising up of the serpent in the wilderness onto a pole (John 3:14) likewise graphically symbolized the future crucifixion as a heinous sin.  [4/21/06; 12/31/25]

MORAL INFLUENCE WITHOUT MIRACULOUS EFFLUENCE

Why didn’t Horace Bushnell’s (1802-76) view of Messiah’s self-sacrifice really catch hold? Because it did not include the absolutely critical factor of proper justice. Bushnell correctly saw that the Anselmian version of God’s justice was very far off the mark. But he did not yet see the contours of God’s hyper-transcending justice in raising Jesus up from his submissively-obedient-but-viciously-malevolent crucifixion. It was on the cross that virtuous subordination and vicious insubordination met and clashed, accompanied by a mega-ton flash of Truth so gigantic that the gracious fallout is still coming down to this day!

This may not be fair to the later Bushnell (after the publication of his Forgiveness and Law Grounded in Principles Interpreted by Human Analogies in 1874, two years before he died). But it is still worth engaging the recurrent problem of his sentiment in his sermon, “The Power of God in Self-Sacrifice,” published in Sermons for the New Life, 7^th ed. (NY: Charles Scribner & Co., 1868), pp. 346-63. There he writes,

Just here, then, we begin to open upon the true meaning of my text—Christ the power of God. There is no so great power even among men, as this of which I now speak. It conquers evil by enduring evil. It takes the rage of its enemy and lets him break his malignity across the enduring meekness of its violated love. Just here it is that evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue against every thing but suffering patience, this disarms it. Looking in the face of suffering patience it sinks exhausted. All its fire is spent. (p355)

Not by a long shot! For there is no justifying resurrection in sight within a country mile of this paragraph! And without God’s historically vigorous vindication of Messiah’s virtuous disposition this exposition falls limp, ineffectual, feckless!

Yet Bushnell somehow picks up and trudges dutifully onward:

In this view it is that Christ crucified is the power of God. It is because he shows God in self-sacrifice, because he brings out and makes historical in the world God’s passive virtue, which is, in fact, the culminating head of power in his character. By this it is that he opens our human feeling, bad and blind as it is, pouring himself into its deepest recesses and bathing it with his cleansing, new creating influence. There is even a kind of efficiency in it and that the highest, viz., moral efficiency; for it is moral power, not physical, not force. It is that kind of power which feeling has to impregnate feeling; that which one person has in good to melt himself into and assimilate another in evil. Hence it is that so much is said of Christ as a new-discovered power—the power of God unto salvation; the Son of God with power; the power of Christ[;] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. The power spoken of here is conceived to be such that Christ is really our new creator. We are his workmanship created unto good works; new creatures therefore in him, transformed radically by our faith in him, passed from death unto life, born of God, renewed in the spirit of our mind, created after God in righteousness and true holiness. All the figures of cleansing, sprinkling, washing, healing, purging, terminate in the same thing, the new creating efficacy of Christ, the power of God. It is the power of character, feeling, a right passivity, a culminating grace of sacrifice in God (pp. 355-56; emphasis added).

Is that so? Is that all? The bathos of it all! Where’s the power for our weakness in this “power”? This salt lacks savor, flavor—it’s insipid! Here is moral influence without miraculous effluence! Messiah’s own moral influence could not have won the day—did not win the war—until the God of heaven answered the blood with the Spirit of resurrection power! [1/19/06]  In this passage, Bushnell eloquently extolled the power of God at work in the Lord Jesus, but did not apprehend the indispensable mechanism by which, alone, God was able (because justified) to transfer it to us in our desperate need.  So close…yet so far away.

The “power of the Cross” (which is not, incidentally, a biblical phrase at all!) is precisely that it called forth by ineluctable divine justice the supervening power of the Resurrection (which is liberally and exuberantly taught all over the New Testament)! The compounding of divine and human elements in Jesus rendered him ultimately “unstable” in the presence of “normal” injustices of worldly equilibria. He was a volatile mixture whose crucifixion triggered a timing mechanism that, in three days, detonated a planetary explosion. And that released unearthly magnitudes of radiated energy of wholesomeness, which can vivify, in turn, what was dead. [4/19/06; 12/24/25]

The death-dealing violence of the Cross is overmatched by the life-giving vigor, vibrancy, vivacity, vitality, victory, and vindication of the Resurrection! [4/19/06]