AN ODD WAY OF MAKING PEACE

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]

XTREME JUSTIFICATION

In the Old Covenant, the priests ate from most of the sacrifices, with the exception of the sin[-offering] and trespass[-offering]. This prefigures our living from Messiah’s sacrifice, deriving life from his sin[-offering] for our sakes. This is now also figured by the Lord’s Supper. But the deeper reality is that his self-sacrifice justified God in reversing the objective injustice of what was done to him precisely because of his perfect obedience in subjecting his just soul to such an outrage of indignity, dishonor, abuse, and mortification. His right broke through their wrong by the act of God’s Solomonic judgment simultaneously conquering evil and vindicating good…in one Wholesome Breath!

Therefore we very well can speak (pace Jürgen Moltmann) of “the resurrection of an expiatory offering” (The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology [Harper & Row, 1974] p. 183), provided that expiation is not regarded as including “propitiation,” i.e., a “paying off the Judge” (a bribe!). But the Old Testament does not reckon them as “propitiatory” either, so there is no contradiction or tension between the covenants.

The sacrifices of the Old Covenant also had, therefore, a resurrectionary outcome in the figurative shadow of their bestowing life on those who consumed them. And even the inedible sacrifices pictured a life-giving function within the nation of Israel that would have suffered death and destruction by disease, pestilence, and enemies had they not been faithfully performed…although the exact mechanism involved has often been mistakenly interpreted as “propitiating” God’s righteous indignation against their sins. No, no! These rites called down God’s graciousness, to be sure, but not because they staved off His wrath against sin. And when Israel thought otherwise, God even shattered their ritual practices—think of the Exile!—rather than allow them this illusion of “sacrificial, propitiatory protection” available for the mere mechanical performance. For they all prefigured the accomplishment of Messiah’s personal protective sacrifice, the exact mechanism of which was a subjection under the undeviating favor and well-pleased heart of his Father—a graciousness now shown us, in turn, for Messiah’s sake! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

What we behold on an intimate viewing of Jesus’ crucifixion-and-resurrection are the two epicenters of salvation. In their juxtaposition is justification—for the Father’s actions, for the Son’s actions, and for human salvation from God’s threatened wrath against stubborn unrepentance. It’s all right there. What’s more, there’s eminent justification for the evil in the world, temporary and ultimately reversible as it is.

This is the secret hidden since the disruption of the world by sin. The exact circuitry of this decisive turning-point in the history of mankind was never before made known in such a concentrated manner until now. Here was an amplifying circuit achieved by a feedback loop secured in a firm covenant containing mutual promises between the Father and the Son from time immemorial. Here the sub-critical mass of human injustice was explosively thrust into xtreme proximity with the sub-critical mass of divine justice, yet safely within the protective shield and shelter of a single Mediator who, as both divine and human (besides being perfectly sinless while in principle mortal), could both suffer xtreme injustice (all the way through death and beyond, to the Unseen), but then enjoy xtreme vindication within moments, historically speaking. THE BLAST WAS COSMIC! THE BLINDING LIGHT HEALS OUR BLINDNESS! THE DEAFENING SOUND CURES OUR DEAFNESS! XTREME LIFE SPRANG FORTH AND DEATH WAS ANNIHILATED! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

By raising Lazarus, Jesus overwhelmingly reversed Mary and Martha’s brief sorrow. Yet even Jesus wept only moments before this jubilant resurrection, effected by the Father, by the Hand of the Spirit, at His Son’s request. There is a time to weep and a time to joyfully dry our tears. [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

One would have thought that Paul Peter Waldenström’s superb (if gently devastating) treatments of the “wrath-of-God-against-Jesus” theme would have put it to rest in its well-deserved grave once and for all. Yet it came back to life again and buried him in obscurity instead. Why is that?

If the strange misrepresentations of Waldenström’s position in theological encyclopedias and dictionaries are indicative, it may be largely because he did not quite achieve resurrectionary closure to bring his basically correct understanding to the triumphant climax of a satisfying victory. But with the elapse of a century that milestone has been reached…and overreached! [4/18/06] So when’s the victory celebration? Where’s the party?

“THE GRACE OF GOD”

All my life, I have never quite understood “the grace of God” as it is formulaically known. It never really computed. It did not make sense. It always seemed like the highly processed byproduct or residue of lofty, arbitrarily selective calculations pertaining to a rather complicated manufacturing process using precise conversion units and high-heat, high-pressure molecular-exchange mechanisms. Once the theologianeers finished laboring over the arcane procedures, the product resembled something cranked from an assembly line, churned out of a factory. And after all that rigamarole, the thing still didn’t compute!

Not until every last joule of divine wrath was banished from the cross did the calculations really start to click in the core of my understanding. Ever so slowly, the ultimately simple and universal formula—the E=mc² of theology—started to take shape in my mind. The inner mind of Messiah was unfolding in magnificent, wondrous, marvelous perfection at long last! The Father’s heart was peering through the evaporating mists of well-meaning but² obscure “words without knowledge” that long usage and speciously hallowed tradition had passed down as “Gospel truth.” The new computations, to the contrary, actually yield an answer that comports with real life. All the math works! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

“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]