The issue in Isaiah 53:4-5 is not whether Christ was getting punished for his own sins or ours; rather, it was whether he was being punished at all, and instead learning discipline for an awesome life-and-death battle against Satan to win peace and healing for humankind.

The righteousness, obedience, or faithfulness of the entire life and career of the Lord Jesus Christ was decisive for our salvation—including, most notably, our justification—yet not, as the Protestant Reformers theorized, because it was “imputed” to sinners (or even only to “the elect) when they believe, so as to become “their own” possession. Much rather, it was because of the EXTREME REWARD it made Christ worthy of receiving, which he, in turn, gives away FOR FREE (hence the expression “free grace“) to all sinners who, under the hearing of this Explanation and Proclamation of extraordinary divine power are thereby drawn back to God, acquiesce in faith, and consequently receive the Holy Spirit as experiential pledge of the promised full inheritance to come.

It’s at this point that the proper role of imputation (logiz-) kicks in. It is precisely this faith, generated by the power of God’s proclaimed Explanation for the cross—namely, that without such a conclusive public execution any alleged subsequent resurrection would be placed in permanent doubt and regarded as a probable hoax—that God considers, regards, credits, counts, or imputes AS RIGHTEOUSNESS! And of course the ensuing coming of the Holy Spirit “finishes” the job by maturing us in actuality into conformity with the image of Christ (including assorted fruits of righteousness). [3/3/11; 3/18/24]

The dogma of “penal substitution” is strangely reminiscent of some psychotropic drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, etc.—it all too often produces severe, disinhibited, non-characteristic, bizarre, occasionally violent, side-effects, plus disfiguring after-effects that get misattributed to non-theological influences. They are unpredictable in specific cases of adherence to the regimen (“every body is different and responds uniquely,” “no two individuals react exactly the same,” etc.) and can be surprising, out of character, and profoundly shocking. The punitive inferno of “penal satisfaction” is like a sleeping fire-breathing dragon or slumbering volcano. It might even be said that this vaunted cure for human sinfulness is all too often worse than the illness of sin itself because, counterintuitively, it strangely exacerbates sin, making people mean, vengeful, unforgiving, conceited, arrogant, self-righteous, devious, hypocritical, exclusivistic…(“Please carefully read the enclosed drug warnings concerning known side-effects, adverse symptoms, etc.”). You get the idea. It’s like so many psychotropic drugs; they produce disfiguring tics, which do not always manifest until after withdrawal from the insidious substance (which alike triggered, aggravated, and masked its own dreadful effects). Hence, the destabilized state of being “in withdrawal” from penal substitution may risk prompting the brewing resentments to finally break surface unexpectedly, with explosive consequences. [3/4/11; 3/23/24]

In commenting on Isaiah 53:4a, “Surely he hath born our infirmities and carries our sorrows…,” the Geneva Bible note “f” declares, “That is, the punishment due to our sins: for the which he hath both suffered and made satisfaction, Mat. 8:17, I Pet. 2:24 [emphases added].” On the contrary, neither scripture cited says any such thing. Matthew explains its meaning in relation to Jesus’ expelling demons and healing the sick. And Peter expressly asserts that he bore our sins themselves, not punishment for them. ‘Satisfaction‘ is nowhere in sight, nor even implied.

The Geneva notes proceed similarly in comment on the next phrase, 53:4b, “…yet we did judge him as ^gplagued, and smitten of God, and humbled.” “^gWe judged evil, thinking that he was punished for his own sins, and not for ours.” Yet nowhere is it written that he “was punished…for our sins,” and certainly not by God! Rather was he smitten by Satan, as Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 both make unambiguously clear at the outset and conclusion of Biblical Scripture, with no different doctrine sandwiched in between. The real issue in Isaiah’s text is not whether he was punished for his own sins or for ours (real answer: neither), but that he was undergoing necessary endurance training with the goal of achieving peace for us all after an ominous duel-to-the-death, winner-take-all encounter with a supremely daunting foe.

However, the Geneva Bible notes continue their error in the succeeding verse, 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was broken for our iniquities: the ^hchastisement of our peace [was] upon him, and with his stripes we are healed,” “^hHe was chastised for our reconciliation, I Cor. 15:3 [emphases added].” Yet that is hardly what this text teaches, much less the cited New Testament passage, especially not if punitive “chastisement” from God is intimated. Rather, Christ endured the Father’s discipline (LXX, paideia), without a hint of resentment or sin in response, nor of any wrath from God whatsoever.

However, Geneva is not satisfied to cease and desist. In a culminating error it next asserts at 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid uopn him the ⁱiniquity of us all,” “ⁱMeaning, the punishment of our iniquity, and not the fault itself [emphases added].” Well that’s a comfort! Nay, but the diametric opposite is the case in actuality. Scripture, like its parallels and echoes elsewhere, always speaks of (and seems to mean) precisely the “fault,” i.e., the seriously harmful, injurious felony that landed the just, holy, and innocent One on a tree, under a wickedly misplaced curse! [3/5/11; 3/23/24]

Sacrificial BLOOD was a type of Christ’s RESURRECTION

We know the blood of Jesus symbolizes resurrection from the dead because we know from Scripture that’s what happened to him necessarily after his blood was shed. The blood of cattle, sheep, and goats could ever only hint at this, but the Antitype fills it with its true, full, authentic meaning as a type of the Resurrection. [6/23/08]

One might have expected Christian theologians long, long ago to figure this out since resurrection was the unexpected key to the whole conundrum of Jewish soteriology. An actual resurrection is what unravels the whole tangle. [9/14/18]

If the blood is at the center of soteriology, then it follows that the Resurrection is at the center of soteriology.  Therefore, so is the Lord’s Supper…and in turn, Baptism…and, of course, so is the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and ever after.  There is a quite natural flow from blood to resurrection to Holy Spirit, and on to the ordinances that express them.  This concatenation of links has often gotten lost in the shuffle of post-apostolic theology and liturgy.  It’s long overdue to reconceive them both in light of the premial soteriology of the New Testament.  [6/23/08; 12/12/09; 7/06/16]

Jesus did at least one healing miracle (and thus “bore our illnesses” and “was burdened with our pains”—Isaiah 53:4) to prove that he could forgive sins—the visible to prove the invisible (all three synoptic Gospels report it—Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:3-12, Luke 5:17-26), the whole to validate the part!

Theologians routinely get this wrong because they still nurture a “penal substitution” view of the Atonement, and they can no healing in that sort of ‘atonement’. Indeed, it is not to be found there. Only on the resurrectionary atonement view can we clearly see that Isaiah’s language makes transgression, depravity and sin parallel to illness and pain, but such that the former (often invisible to humans) are included among the latter (usually visible), but all alike gathered up by the grand healing treatment flowing from Messiah’s wounding, crushing, beating, welts, humiliation, severance from the land of the living, i.e., death, via God’s vindicating justice that raised hum up from the grave with unearthly power and proof!

Thus James can likewise associate healing with forgiveness of sins (James 5:13-16), similarly making forgiveness follow healing! And Peter does something similar, drawing in fact from the very language of Isaiah (1 Peter 2:19-25). He finishes off his passage with a flourish, including all he has previously said about suffering unjustly (i.e., the very case of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant!), and, indeed, anticipating all he is going to say on the subject in the following three chapters(!) within the healing that comes “by [his] welt” (2:24; Isaiah 53:5)!

This should put to a much deserved rest, once and for all, those disparaging voices that claim to credit forgiveness of sins “in this age” but without its validating proofs and witnesses in healings of our sick, wounded, mortal bodies. Let’s get with the Kingdom program for this age of God’s lavish graciousness since the resurrectionary atonement manifested in His Son and our Savior, Jesus, the Lord of all, for goodness sake! [6/23/08]

There can be no greater proof that God is propitious toward us and our sins than that He raised Jesus from the dead instead of destroying his killers! And that’s why his blood is protective of us. It signals God’s righteousness into lifesaving, rescuing action on behalf of his needy, struggling, beleaguered, oppressed Covenant partners, i.e., all who trust His reputation for amazing salvations! ]6/23/08] His blood, being innocent in the extreme, never evoked God’s wrath so always triggers the flow of His graciousness to all who imbibe it with faith. [9/15/08]

The human need for the SHOCK VALUE of a Resurrectionary Demonstration, or, the RECREATIVE POWER of putting “Humpty Dumpty” together again

“For where there is a covenant, it is necessary to bring in the death of the one getting covenanted, for a covenant is confirmed over the dead, since it is not availing at any time when the one getting covenanted is living” (Hebrews 9:16-17). Why is that? Well, for the elegantly simple reason that until and unless the innocent covenant victim (“the one getting covenanted”) is unjustly slain, God’s just judgment cannot kick in to fulfill the otherwise empty promise that was covenanted—in this case, namely, THE INHERITANCE OF THE AGELONG ALLOTMENT OF GOD’S ROYAL ESTATE, i.e., HIS KINGDOM AS A REWARD! So not until the Lamb of God died (thus, in effect, losing out on God’s personally covenanted and vouchsafed (by oaths!) promises to him, could God be roused to overcome the humanly irreparable loss by exerting His recreative power to…PUT “HUMPTY DUMPTY” BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. The wrongful slaying of the innocent Lamb was the necessary occasion for God to act to fulfill His oath and promises and thereby display the full MIGHT OF HIS RIGHTEOUS POWER. And if we suppose this to be unnecessary for His own name’s or reputation’s sake, then we are forgetting our human need for such proof in order to start to grasp the worth and value of the salvation being offered and thereby start to loosen our grasp on unworthy substitutes. Such a demonstration has SHOCK VALUE! Sullied, jaded, and distracted as we all are, WE NEED THIS! [11/12/07]

If the blood of the sacrifices always signified the living soul of the resurrected Jesus, then we might conclude that the soul of Jesus REALLY GETS AROUND! AND THAT WOULD BE CORRECT. Wherever his Holy Spirit shows up, you find the soul of Jesus, as it were. That is, you find his “personal presence,” “personality,” or “character.”  [11/13/07]

God “IMPUTES” RIGHTEOUSNESS to us not because we are righteous, but because we are going to be. How can He possibly do this and still be righteous Himself (an old question raised to increased prominence by the Protestant Reformation)? He can do this—He can declare sinners (“the guilty”) as “righteous” IF THEY HAVE FAITH IN MESSIAH JESUS—BECAUSE FAITH IS THE OPEN CHANNEL FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT TO ENTER AND WALK US INTO AN AUTHENTIC, EMPIRICAL, VISIBLE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOOD ACTIONS THAT FAR, FAR EXCEEDS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES OF OLD (a virtue which Jesus seems to assume would be visible to ordinary observers!  [4/06/16]). FAITH OPENS THE DOOR FOR GOD’S VERY OWN SPIRIT TO MAKE US ACTUALLY RIGHTEOUS AS SONS OF GOD, FOR THIS IS GOD’S EXACT GOAL FOR EVERY ONE OF US DURING OUR SOJOURN ON THIS EARTH IN THIS CURRENT VICIOUS AGE, WHERE TO DO GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS ACTS IS TO STAND OUT AND INVITE SCORN, ENVY, RIDICULE, NOT TO ADD OUTRIGHT HATRED FOR MAKING OTHERS LOOK BAD BY COMPARISON. THE APOSTLE PAUL SAYS WE LIVE IN “EXPECTATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Galatians 5:5), WHICH MEANS TO HAVE FAITH IS ONLY A BARE START, QUITE LITERALLY, BUT THE RIGHT START, SINCE FAITH (TO ACCORD WITH GOD’S GRACIOUSNESS) IS NOT A WORK OR ACTIVITY AT ALL—IT IS NAKED OF ACTS, BUT YET IT IS THE ONLY—ABSOLUTELY ONLY WAY TO START PRODUCING THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT, WHICH CONSTITUTE “OUR” “RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM JEHOVAH”! AND WE DIDN’T GET THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, THIS SPIRIT OF WHOLESOMENESS, WHICH IS THE SPIRIT OF JEHOVAH BY WORKS OF THE TORAH (circumcision, Sabbath keeping, food regulations), BUT BY FAITH ALONE. (In the following passages, I specify the most pertinent verses within the larger running contexts that are germane to the above topic: I Corinthians 1:30-31, Galatians 2:21-, 3:6-14-21-26-29, 4:6-19-29-, 5:5-16-18-25-, 6:8-15-16, 2 Corinthians 3:1-6-8-9-17-18-, 4:7-11-16-, 5:4-5-21-, 6:6-14, 7:1, 9:8-10, Ephesians 4:23-24, 5:9, Philippians 1:11, 3:9-16, 1 Timothy 3:16, 1 John 1:9, 2:1, 29, 3:7, 10, 12, 4:11-13, 5:3-4, 1 Peter 2:24, 3:14, 2 Peter 1:1-, 2:20-21, 3:13) [11/13/17]

The disclosed secret of the Cross vs. the remaining mystery of our cross-wired perceptions of it.

Ever since Christ’s 40-day ‘short course’ for his community of followers immediately after his resurrection, there is no longer any mystery about the Cross itself; the only mystery remaining is our modern (I suppose I should say medieval) cross-wired understandings of it!  However, we can hardly attribute those tangles to the ‘silence’ of Scripture on the subject, as I hope to show. [4/6/06; 12/19/06]

The Father allowed the Son to be “made a curse” (Gal. 3:13) precisely because of the yet further aggravated injustice of it! It was “for our sakes” because it happily justified God to overcompensate him all the more by blessing him with the superabundant gift of Wholesome Spirit—his just due (dikaioma) as legal damages for being strung up so outrageously.  So it was the Father’s desire that the Son bear these terrible sins “in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24) (cursed as it was) so that He could “make an example” of the vicious chief priests and Pharisees and lawyers and scribes and elders of the Jews (Matt. 26:47,57, 27:3,20; Mark. 15:10-11,31; Luke 23:10, 13,23; John 11:4,51) and likewise of the feckless Roman authorities (Matt. 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 18-19)—in short, “the sovereignties and authorities” (Col. 2:15). God made a spectacle of them all, shaming them in stark contrast to the glorification and exaltation He rendered His Son and chosen Messiah! [4/6/06]

At/on the Cross, Jesus offered up to God his entire life/career of faithful obedience and sinless innocence, letting it get sacrificed by vicious sinners who did not recognize or admit his righteousness at all. They only wanted him dead, because of their own seething envy (Mt. 27:18; Mk. 15:10).

Through offering himself up to God Himself by surrendering himself to the forces of evil, Jesus put his fate in his Father’s just and capable hands to show who was really right in this sordid affair.  By letting the sovereignties and authorities of the Jews and Romans play out their seemingly victorious hand to its ostensibly successful denouement, Jesus was submitting humbly to God’s own judgment…awaiting God’s own timing, and not, as he himself would have preferred, at the Cross or, better yet, even before the terrifying scenario ever started playing out—in fact, even prior to his being apprehended.  For this son of man did not personally wish to drink this cup to its bitter dregs at all, yet faithfully acquiesced and left the outcome in God’s righteous hands, trusting his ultimate fate to the everlasting arms beneath the bloodied dramatic stage to break his fall.  In due time God exalted him in graciousness—the identical graciousness in which he would “be getting to taste death for the sake of everyone” (Heb. 2:9).  It is such unmatched human behavior that characterized Christ Jesus the “Prince of Peace” and proves credible the exhortation, “For Messiah’s sake, be conciliated to God!” (2 Cor. 5:20).

In antiquity, God on occasion accepted this voluntary offering—this “sin[-offering]” (hamartia—alike in 2 Cor. 5:21, Rom. 8:3, and throughout Leviticus, etc., in the Greek Septuagint)—“with fire from heaven,” visible even at Pentecost (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; Acts 2:3), consuming “living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1) as acceptable, sweet-smelling offerings made wholesome by God’s promised gift of the Spirit, besides justly compensating for Satan’s violent enormity against the Son of His love.

Adam’s one offense that brought death to the whole race of mankind was more than countered by Jesus’ one just award, repaid him by God the Judge as damages in fair exchange for Satan’s fatal assault, and which brought life superabundant and gratuitous to all who believe this stirring Proclamation!  (Rom. 5:18)  Adam’s disobedience constituted many as sinners, yet Messiah’s more-than-countervailing obedience, due to its evoking superexcessive and superabounding graciousness toward him from God (Rom. 5:15,17,20), through his mediation constituted a multitude of others also as just nonetheless! (Isaiah 53:11, Rom. 5:19, 1 Peter 2:24)   [4/7/06]

JESUS BORE SINS BY REFUSING TO RETALIATE AND INSTEAD TRUSTING GOD TO DO JUSTICE …TO HIM!

Christians should be able, on occasion, to joke about death.  Now life, that’s another matter entirely!  “Life is sacred.”  But in light of our solid expectation of being raised from the dead, the joke’s on Satan.  So give a hoot!  [5/12/02]

For Jesus to “carry up our sins in his body on the pole” (1 Peter 2:24)–did this mean to not retaliate, especially in view of the fact that as Messiah, and as innocent, he had the right to avenge these injustices and call more than twelve legions of messengers to destroy these vicious enemies?  It would appear so.  Peter says, “he does no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.”  Yet he says that Messiah “being reviled [i.e., sinned against], reviled not again“ and ” suffering abuse [i.e., sinned against], threatened not,“ but “surrendered to the One judging justly” (1 Peter 2:22-23).

In this way, instead of striking back, he bore with those sins, receiving them on his body, in his flesh, and then offering this marred, injured, bleeding object of victimization up to God for His judicial inspection and appropriate judgment in response.  Messiah voluntarily absorbed the wrongful assaults, carving out a last-ditch, one-generation window of opportunity for Jerusalem’s repentance, while breathing out only forgiveness toward the Romans nailing him down and casting lots for his cloak.  What choice did God have?  He must honor His dear Son’s merciful requests:  reprieve the presumptuous city for a while and pardon his clueless executioners outright.  That left only one option for fulfilling justice to the Victim:  Raise the Innocent from the grave!  [5/26/02; 9/20/12]

Getting the Holy Spirit is like catching a disease, only in reverse!  If you ‘catch’ the Spirit, it gives you health and life.  It’s the downpayment of God’s Kingdom, and we’re free to spread the contagion further in any appropriate God-crediting way we choose.  It endows us with powers of the coming age that accredit the Truth about God’s Kingdom that Jesus taught us.  [6/7/02]

If the Messiah had not been the one in, through, and for whom the universe itself had been created by God, his suffering and death would not have been a sacrifice weighty and worthy enough to justify God in overcompensating him for it with a salvation sweeping enough to embrace the whole world, capacious enough to swallow Death whole, powerful enough to regenerate the universe into a New Creation—heaven, earth, and all!  None less than the Mediator of creation could possibly have mediated a salvation of this magnitude.  May praise and credit agelong be rendered to the Father and the Son for their wisdom and love, now even spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit!  [6/9/02]

Even as Adam ate the flesh of the fruit hanging on the Tree (ξυλον—Genesis 2:2; 3:3,6,11-12,17 LXX) of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and thus inherited death, so must we eat the flesh of the Last Adam, hanging on the pole (ξυλον—1 Peter 2:24), who thereby became a curse for our sakes in order that we could inherit life agelong.  Eating the fruit of the last tree far overcompensated, indeed atoned, for eating the fruit of the first tree.  [6/9/02; 9/20/12]

God, by giving His divine Son a body of mortal human flesh, prepared the window of opportunity whereby Satan, by wrongfully depriving the Son of that body through his unjust crucifixion, justified God in overcompensating His Messiah with a new body of human flesh–the assembly of which Messiah is the Head—through his resurrection from the dead!  Thus was the Deceiver deceived into opening the window for our salvation as Death disgorged its Prey alive and whole!  God conferred on His Son the right, by a just verdict, to inherit a new and vastly larger body into which any human being can be immersed/implanted by trusting him, believing his Proclamation of peace through the blood of his cross.  [6/9/02]

The blood guilt for murdering Jesus the Messiah is on Satan.  That’s how Satan was convicted and will be conquered by the blood of the Lamb of God.  [7/11/02]

Exchanging the Resurrection for the Cross results in a ‘SUBSTITUTE’ GOSPEL!

When the shadow of the Cross falls across the entrance of the Open Tomb, it has gone too far.  It must be ruled offsides, out of order.  In Western theology a cruciform moon has eclipsed the resurrected sun.  It is worn as an amulet, a spiritualized talisman, a fetish.  Sadly, such practices actually obscure the irruptive dazzle of the henceforth ever-living Son!  [1/25/02]

Is evangelical rhetoric about ‘vicarious’ ‘substitution’ itself a substitute for the authentic apostolic emphasis on Messiah’s resurrestion (rather than His crucifixion) being the locus of God’s righteousness/justice as the saving event of history? 

The doctrine of a ‘Divine exchange’ is entailed in the Protestant emphasis on ‘substitution’ in the manner it is usually expounded.  ‘Christ’s righteousness‘ (not a Pauline—not even a Biblical—expression at all!) is ‘imputed’ to the sinner while the latter’s sin is ‘imputed’ to Christ.  This (partly early-17th century) formulation of the Protestant Reformation’s doctrine of ‘Christ’s imputed righteousness‘ goes beyond the Pauline explanation that faith itself is counted or “imputed” as righteousness/justness by God precisely because it is not an activity at all but simply a firm acceptance and avowal of God’s Proclamation as being true and trustworthy.

To be sure, Messiah “carried/bore“ sins in his body onto the cross (Isaiah 53:11,12; Heb. 9:28; 1 Peter 2:24).  The Mosaic ordinances of sacrifice give depth of shading to this image.

But since we now know that the actual locus of God’s display of His answer to the human injustice of the crucifixion was Messiah’s resurrection—for notice how Peter significantly integrates Christ’s expectancy toward “Him Who is judging justly“ (1 Peter 2:23)—how must this realization alter the traditional Protestant insistence on ‘substitution alone’?  [4/27/02]

The friction of continual resistance to the Explanation of the Proclamation concerning God’s Kingdom causes a callus to build up around the core (the heart) of a stubborn personality.  This results in a darkening of one’s apprehension (-νο-) and understanding (συνιε-) and a dulling of perception and powers of observation (Isaiah 6:9-10; Matt. 13:10-17; John 12:37-43; Acts 28:23-29).

Resistance to the power of the Proclamation, and to the corroboration of God’s Spirit along with it, is triggered by an alternative love in opposition to the love of God made clear in God’s Proclamation.  That counter-love is a love of darkness as a cover up to vicious acts and bad practices—businesses, corporations, nay, entire industries included!  (John 3:19-21; 12:35-50; 1 John 2:8-17).  This amounts to a love of the culture/world, characterized by cravings of the flesh, cravings of the eyes, and the ostentation of livelihoods (1 John 2:16).  These all have the power to snatch away or snare or stifle the good Seed of God’s Explanation, which, when implanted and rooted properly (Matt. 13:3-23)—i.e., “blended together with faith in those who hear” (Heb. 4:2)—has the power to save a human existence.

God has ‘sovereignly’ set things up this way so as not to nullify His own image and likeness in human nature.  We were created to reflect His own ‘sovereignty’ via our self-determination (αυτεξουσιοτης—auto-authorization).  When God gave humankind the so-called ‘cultural mandate’ of Genesis 1:28, He included this authority over ourselves within it.  Logical!

The power of Christ’s resurrection, with signs and miracles following, has no worthy competition from the waning and ultimately mortal powers within our nature.  But we can still put up a fuss with whatever we have remaining and then make a big stink against God’s kingdom of favor.  God has sent out, nonetheless, an open invitation for all to trust Jesus, His Son.  Our choice.

Through the public events of Messiah’s crucifixion/resurrection, and in light of Jesus’ brilliant career of liberation, God extends a free ticket, at His own expense, to every human being to hop aboard the passenger train destined for the capital of His Kingdom, where we have been “begotten above (anothen)” and thereby qualify as naturalized citizens of the New Jerusalem (Psalm 87), which is destined at length to descend upon the New Earth.

From our vantage point in the darkness of sin and evils, where we all have perilously walked, we can track the bright lights shining from the windows of the coming train.  Out of our present danger of hazards lurking in the dark, we can board this train to safety and walk in the Light.  If we stay on the train, believing that, regardless of its twists and turns and adventitious storms, it will take us to the Announced destination, we shall surely arrive in the promised peace of that glorious Realm.  For all who stay on the train are ipso facto chosen for safekeeping and ultimate sonship, plus a vast inheritance that accords with it.  We’ve got a ticket to ride!  [5/02/02]

Jesus taught that no one could come to him or trust him unless the Father drew and gave them to him (John 6:37-48).  He also taught the flip side—that the Father was about to provide the means to make it possible for all to come to the Son:  the exaltation of His own beloved Son upon a cross to die and be buried and get raised from the dead (John 12:26-33).  Simple.  In other words—how could Jesus have made it any clearer?—none of us can come to Jesus, or ever would have come to him (after all, even his disciples left him before the crucifixion!) except via the Fatherly power and justice exhibited in reversing the evil of Messiah’s crucifixion by the ensuing resurrection.

Whenever Jesus would start informing his learners about his future death by execution, many of them would leave him—the very same reaction they had to his telling them that no one could come to him without his Father’s drawing power.  His Explanation in John 12:26-33 was meant to clarify matters, but…

until the events actually were fulfilled historically, virtually all the people who ever heard his Explanations were offended by such teaching and turned away from Teacher and Teaching alike, his own Twelve included!  Not until God Himself acted with power from on high to prove and accredit Jesus as His Son, the Messiah, the Master of all, by resurrection, did anyone make their way back to the fold of safety!  [5/8/02]

The extent of OUR SALVATION is the flip side of the magnitude of INJUSTICE DONE TO CHRIST.

Jesus carried our sins in his own body onto the cross at Calvary (Heb 9:28, 1 Peter 2:24), having accepted or ‘taken responsibility for’ them all—the whole world’s!—and in this way cleansed us of them, “taking them away,” leading them off to death and the grave for the ages!

But the Lord did yet more, as the apostle Paul explains.  Since the power of sin, which reigns in death, was the Law of Moses itself (1 Corinthians 15:56-57), at least for Jews, who were covenantally bound to its letter (2 Cor. 3), then by Christ’s victory over death at his Resurrection (being innocent of any sin whatsoever, and therefore of any cause that might have justified his crucifixion) he virtually nullified Moses’s Law of precepts in decrees that were arrayed against weak creatures of mortal flesh.  He virtually erased their handwriting, taking it, too, along with the sins—which it both made known and revived, both exposed and aggravated—out of the midst, nailing it to the Cross!  (Col. 2:11,14)

But even that is not all.  Jesus, the Messiah, in obedience to his Father, by surrendering himself to the sovereigns and authorities who by misappropriating that Law for unjust purposes had stripped him of his righteous and sinless flesh via crucifixion, in turn stripped off their very sovereignty and authority by his subsequent Resurrection out of the death to which they had wickedly consigned him!  So although Caiaphas thought to make an example of him (John 11:46-53), he turned the tables triumphantly and made an example of them instead!  Hallelujah!  (Eph. 2:13-16  Col. 2:15)  [9/24/01]

If we insist, with our medieval soteriologies, on teaching and instilling the notion that God was pouring out His fury and wrath on Jesus at the crucifixion, then we cut the nerve of our consciousness that Christ was suffering abuse unjustly, that he was bearing an outrage, a hideous miscarriage of justice.  Yes, he did it voluntarily, he did it for our sakes, he did it all for our benefit.  But it was wrong!  What happened there on the Cross was a towering enormity, an intolerable crime…a SIN in the very highest degree!  Not a misdemeanor.  Not even a felony.  It was far worse than we have even forged a legal category for!  It was so bad, in fact, that God did not respond in the usual way.  This vicious display of raw Satanic fury and human complicity was avenged by repaying the Victim with life superabundant and overflowing!  God’s justice further promoted him to the paramount authority in the created universe.

In order for our sensibilities—our ’emotions’—to be properly educated in accord with the New Covenant and desire of God, so that we respond appropriately to the Message of Jesus and his apostles in matters not quite so central, we must get this central Explanation straight.  For to cut the nerve of our consciousness is to cause our indignation at the outrage, our joy at the outcome, and our boldness at the outset, alike, to fade and wither.  [9/29/01]

Jesus did not die on the Cross ‘so that’ God could forgive sin.  He did not submit himself to crucifixion to force the Father to show mercy to sinners.  Christ’s horrific execution did nothing whatever to pacify the wrath of a righteous God against sin.  The gratuitous slaughter of the sinless Son of God justified his Father in overwhelmingly reversing the dread sentence of death and exalting Jesus with resplendent honor and majesty above all his (and therefore our) enemies and giving him superabundant gifts of miraculous power to bestow as he wished on sinful human beings who might change their minds and trust his mercy and favor for pardon, even of the enormity of sin entailed in impaling a certified Messiah!

Thus Jesus did not change God’s mind (i.e., cause Him to ‘repent’) in the least.  Much rather, he revealed God’s mind at the very core!  This was something impossible to achieve without God sending His Son to earth.  Apart from Jesus and his unique career, in all its recorded details in the New Testament, God had no other, no sufficient, no worthy recourse to display or demonstrate His deepest heart’s desire for humankind.  God is trans-material; Jesus materialized Him for us.  His flesh is something we can ‘sink our teeth into’….  [10/2/01]

The popular postmodern and deconstructionist epithet ‘totalitarian,’ attributed to all modern, Enlightenment ‘metanarratives,’ is a charge we may readily concede as Christian scholars even to the Biblical Scriptures, which—to set the record straight—were never actually intended by Jean-François Lyotard to be classified as a ‘metanarrative’ at all, for it lacked the necessary qualifying indicators he had specified.  The pejorative overtones aside for the moment, ‘totalitarian’ is well suited to characterize the unconditional and universal claims of Biblical explanation and narrative (allowing, of course, for the parenthetical function of the Israelite sub-history to furnish an authoritative sampling of universal human realities).  This insight should be more than grudgingly admitted, it should be readily owned and even built upon.

The claims of Jesus to be the Son of God uniquely, to be Lord (i.e., Jehovah-in-the flesh-for-our-salvation), and to be Messiah, the Anointed Sovereign of God’s Kingdom over the universe, is as close to a legitimate claim to ‘totalitarian’ as humanity will ever see.

But this ‘totalitarianism’ has none of the marks of oppressiveness, savagery, arbitrariness, barbarity, and self-serving partiality that we naturally associate with worldly embodiments of total and universal claims to sovereignty.  Christ’s reign, as historically demonstrated and dramatized in his voluntarily undergoing unjust crucifixion to allow God to overmatch Satan’s cruel usurpation by raising him from among the dead and showing inconceivable mercy to his vicious human executioners, wins our confidence as nothing else conceivably can!  It, in a word, conciliates.

Such a total claim, making room for human cultural freedom and variation as it does, pulls the sting out of ‘totalitarian’ as an accusation.  Yet the post-modern awareness of the total claims of vaunted ‘objectivity’ in attempts at ‘neutral,’ ‘scientific’ historiography, including the pejorative connotation it lends that attribution, is to be heartily affirmed.  Here we are co-belligerants.  We must cheer them on in their whistleblowing.

Yet is there not some means of arbitrating the totalizing alternatives (including, we must insist, to be entirely consistent, all attempts by postmodern historians themselves, special pleadings to the contrary)?  The postmodern mood inclines against such a possibility as simply more of the same Enlightenment foundationalism, which is to say, partisanship.

On the contrary, we should argue, there are and always have been—in bold, bald fact, long before ‘rational,’ ‘scientific’ fact usurped exclusive rights to persuasive legitimacy—historic demonstrations of the identity of the one true Creator-Deity.  God has not left Himself without witness, indeed, a wealth of miraculous testimonies.  Alas, what an embarrassment of riches!  [10/11/01]