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]

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]

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]

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]