Spot-checking Some Distinctives of the Premial View

PISTIS (ΠΙΣΤΙΣ) should usually be rendered “faithfulness” when attributed to Jesus Christ.

HAMARTIA (ΆΜΑΡΤΙΑ) can denote “sin-offering” in key New Testament passages reflecting the ritual sacrificial language of Leviticus (LXX).

HAIMA (ΆΙΜΑ)—blood (of sacrificial rituals) represents the diverse powers of resurrected life.

Romans 5:8-10 equates “blood” with “life,” when the syntactical structure is accurately aligned, not with “death.”

DIKAIOMA (ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑ) in Romans 5:16,18 & 8:3 signifies a “just award” (judicially granted Christ by God, namely, the Holy Spirit of life via resurrection), and not either a “righteous act/deed” (done by Christ, i.e., “suffering the cross”) (5:16,18) or “righteousness” (in the sense of inner moral virtue) (8:3), as traditionally translated.

“The righteousness (dikaiosune) of God” in the New Testament is almost entirely premial (never exclusively penal!) and was supremely exemplified by God’s historic act of raising Jesus from the dead.

The cross was a place of diabolical rage and fury plus human condemnation, but decidedly not a locus of divine wrath or condemnation in any sense whatsoever.

The victory of the cross was that Jesus remained sinless even in the face of the most extreme and unjust suffering of abuse, rather than either justifying himself or using his rightful messianic prerogatives to avenge himself, or even simply reviling his tormenters. He waited for God’s justice/justification. Therefore, he won the just award of immortal life, and some!

God’s justice toward His Son was exclusively rewarding (premial), not at all penal.

God’s justice toward His Son was ultracompensatory.

Jesus’ ransom was a heroic exchange and not at all a penal substitution (so there was no economic equivalence or parity at play).

Jesus was not “forsaken” in the Unseen (ΆΙΔΗΣ, hades), Acts 2:25-28, Psalm 16:8-11 LXX, and only briefly “forsaken” (Psalm 22:1) on the cross to permit the strategic death of his body and compassionate cessation of his suffering abuse (which, after all, was never intended as any sort of exchange currency whose gross amount must weigh in on the extent of mercy or grace or atonement or salvation or anything else in God’s possession for that matter, neo-liberal, zero-sum economics to the contrary notwithstanding).

God’s wrath/indignation fell not upon His Messiah at the cross, but upon all Jerusalem before that generation passed away (70 A.D.), on account of what they perpetrated by the cross as well as toward earlier prophets.

To “bear” sins is to “absorb” whatever harm and loss they cause, instead of retaliating (i.e., avenging oneself). Therefore, it denotes forgiving or pardoning others of their sins against us, not some phantom notion of “getting imputed with sins” and “rendered guilty” ourselves, much less “deserving punishment accordingly.”

We should leave avenging of ourselves to God, not because avenging is wrong per se for human beings (after all, that’s what “the higher authorities” have been officially appointed by God to do, Rom. 13:1-7), but because only God can do so with truly satisfying justice, sans overreactions or lurking self-interests and hidden agendas. Even a veteran human judge may on occasion need to recuse herself from a case in which some personal involvement may appear to compromise disinterested judgment. Not so with God.

Adam’s sin was not “imputed” (ΛΟΓΙΖ-, counted, accounted) to his descendants (rendering them guilty for it, too).

Our sins are not “imputed” to Christ (rendering him guilty before God and worthy of wrath).

Christ’s righteousness is not “imputed” to us who believe (and allegedly rendering us righteous before God).

The Holy Spirit in superabundance was part of Christ’s just award from God for his enduring obedience to his Father’s precepts even through a treacherous, prolonged public execution.

The Holy Spirit in abundance overflows to believing sinners and actually effects the internal cleansing from our sins.

The Explanation of the Proclamation is the power of salvation and alone possessses the ability to generate faith because it provides the abundant eye-witness testimony required to validate it.

The function of believing is an ineradicable capacity of divinely-crafted human nature, which God fashioned to be dependent on evidence and proof for its proper foundation and direction.

All who are “in Christ” by faith and baptism are “dead TO” sins, offenses, lusts, and foreskin/’uncircumcision’ (Eph. 2:1, 5, Col. 2:13, properly translated, cf. Romans 6:1-14); no scripture speaks of anyone being “dead IN” sin, etc.

When Adam sinned, death “passed through to all mankind, whereupon [ΕΦΩ, literally “on/upon which”] all sinned” (Rom. 5:12), i.e., precisely the inverse causality from the Vulgate’s (Jerome’s) culpable mistranslation, “because” (which in Greek would require ΔΙΑ, with the accusative case), and Augustine’s notorious further exploitation of it. “Original sin” is therefore a serious misnomer and can only lead to spurious inferences and doctrinal confusion.

The resurrection of Jesus was the supreme historic event where God was justified and Jesus was justified. On the strength of that event, all who trust God are likewise justified and, accordingly, receive the Spirit of Life.

Jesus was not saved at the cross but, much rather, destroyed there, in sight of throngs of eyewitnesses (or haven’t you read the Bible?). He was saved by his resurrection, and that salvation by God precipitated the salvation of all others who trust him as Savior.

Human sovereignty and authority, also over our own bodily and psychical faculties, have not been revoked; they account for what is commonly, popularly, but erroneously categorized under the rubric of ‘freewill.’

God’s graciousness was not ‘bought‘ by Christ’s sufferings of abuse, therefore it is not limited, calculated, metered, or dispensed commensurate with them.

Sins have not been “paid for“; they neither need to, ought to, nor can be. Sacrifices were never intended for “payment“; much rather, they prophetically pre-figured the voluntary self-sacrifice of the blameless Son and Heir of God, the King of Israel, in order to win a just repayment from God in return for that incomparable injustice so as to ransom sinful humanity from death and its sting alike.

Adam’s posterity ‘pay for’ (if you insist…but see Romans 6:7 and enveloping context) their own sins simply by dying. However, to gain newness of life we need to identify with Christ’s wrongful death and rightful resurrection by means of faith and baptism.

God only warned Adam of death if he should ever eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but not of ‘spiritual death,’ much less ‘eternal death‘ (Genesis 2:16-17). Christ’s own death (not some postulated ‘eternal‘ or ‘spiritual‘ vagary) was a quite sufficient injustice inflicted upon this sinlessly innocent man so that God was stirred to render him the supercompensating justice of resurrection from the dead plus royal exaltation to David’s promised throne over the earth. Oh, and did I mention the inexpressible boon of the Holy Spirit, for good measure?

“The righteousness of God” and “the faithfulness of Christ Jesus” are complementary covenantal components as employed by Paul’s arguments in Romans, Galatians, and Philippians.

2 Corinthians 5:21 makes reference to Christ being made a “sin [offering],” not a “sin” per se! Such normative usage is marbled throughout Leviticus. The clincher? The very function of that ritual “sin” was precisely to constitute the offerer ritually “righteous” again. Christ Jesus ushered in the prophesied real McCoy once for all on Golgotha; that real “righteousness,” in turn, was dispensed abroad at the following Pentecost, i.e., God’s promised Holy Spirit in colossal outpour (2 Corinthians 3:2-9)—God’s very own personal righteousness to all who dare to believe His shockingly gracious News!

Romans 8:3 also makes reference to God sending His own Son an “[offering] concerning sin.” This was God’s quintessential conciliatory, propitiatory, peacemaking gesture vis a vis a long-alienated, still-desperate humanity starving, thirsting, gasping for life.

The evengelical concept of the Levitical blood sacrifices regards them as prophetic figures of the most extreme sin[-offering] of treasonously crucifying their designated Savior. Their aggregate fulfillment and radical supercession by way of the Savior’s resurrection forever nullified and dismantled the Levitical ritual system going forward.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans nowhere develops a “theology of the cross” in even the slightest degree; quite the contrary, a “theology of the resurrection” is his obsessive focus. [5/2,4-6/11; 5/1-2/24]

If we never learn to warm up to God’s GRACIOUSNESS, we start activating His default program.

The resurrection of Christ proves that you can’t do injustice to the just and get away with it.  But if you don’t learn your lesson from the graciousness of the resurrection, then God has a back-up plan.  The unspeakably horrific events of 70 A.D., “before this generation passes“ (Matt. 24:34, Mk. 13:30, Lk, 21:32) proves–what else?–that you (any more than those casehardened Jews who rejected their own Messiah) can’t do injustice to the just and then reject God’s GRACIOUSNESS in OVERLOOKING your injustices and still expect not to suffer His wrath…eventually!  [4/30/10]

God Raised Jesus Above His Enemies in Order to Save Them…

God HAD TO stack the odds against Jesus ENORMOUSLY and PUBLICALLY so that we COULD BELIEVE in His GREATER POWER when He OVERTHREW them! He needed a sufficient FOIL and BACKDROP of EVIL in order to sufficiently dramatize and play out His own GREATER POWER OF JUSTICE by contrast. [10/09/08]

The logic of the Crossurrection is simply this: IF GOD COULD RAISE JESUS FROM THE DEAD, HE MOST CERTAINLY POSSESSED THE POWER TO PREVENT THE CRUCIFIXION IN THE FIRST PLACE, YET DID NOT USE IT TO DO SO! OTHERWISE WE WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN THAT HE POSSESSED SUCH POWER OR THAT HE WAS EVIDENTLY REFUSING TO USE IT FOR SOME REASON. BUT HEREBY EVEN THAT ASTONISHING REASON STARTS TO DAWN WITH NUCLEAR ILLUMINATING FORCE: GOD WAS NOT ACCOUNTING THAT OUTRAGE OF SIN—CRUCIFYING HIS PRECIOUS SON—AGAINST THEM, BUT FORGIVING THEM INSTEAD, JUST LIKE JESUS REQUESTED HIM TO DO! AND WITH SUCH A CATEGORICALLY AMAZING DEMONSTRATION, HE SOUGHT TO WIN US OVER AND CONCILIATE EVEN HARDENED FOES, THE APOSTLE PAUL SERVING AS EXHIBIT “A”! (Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 2, Colossians 2, Philippians 2, Galatians 1-2, 1 Timothy 1, Acts) [10/09/08]

In Romans 3:24-26, God is displaying in front of all nations His covenantal righteousness to JESUS by RAISING HIM ABOVE HIS ENEMIES. This is “the righteousness of God” about which Paul is writing here and elsewhere (in Romans, Galatians, and Philippians). By this startling act of justice done to the Messiah almost without delay, God stunningly revealed a power that might have been otherwise effectually directed to the devastation of his foes. Therefore, the Resurrection proved, retrospectively, that God was indeed in Messiah, “not reckoning their offenses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). That whole six hours of Messianic agony was, moment by moment, declaring “I love you and would rather suffer this from your sins now (although you cannot possibly be aware what a cosmic injustice you are doing), than to avenge myself on you by the angelic force available to me, for that would tragically destroy the very objects of my affection, the designated beneficiaries of my entire rescue operation and Messianic career! Such a win would ironically defeat its own purpose.”

So because he didn’t get what he deserved at the Cross, then by the divine alchemy of a more perfect justice than we ever dared imagine, much less hope for, we don’t need to get what we deserved because the superabundant judicial payback that God eventually rendered on the Third Day directly to Jesus constituted the firstfruits of all that God reckoned he deserved for being obediently willing to go down as an ignominious failure. [10/10/08]

“SPEAK SOFTLY BUT CARRY A BIG STICK”

Theodore Roosevelt’s famous epithet has a striking application to the relation between the central messianic climax of “Crossurrection” and the historic judgment of A.D. 70 upon Jerusalem. In the Resurrection, God spoke softly in contrast to what by rights He could have done. But 40 years probation was up in 70 A.D., and a judicial review called for the threatened “stick” against the incorrigible. [10/10/08]

Jesus never facilely renounced the pursuit of justice when he denounced retaliation, i.e., self-avenging, as a means of achieving it. He both taught the way of righteousness and exposed injustice and viciousness in high places without fear or flinching. But he also knew that his boldness would catch up with him, although he did not recklessly chase it down. Yet he did allow it to catch him, in submission to his Father’s desire, so as to reveal the LARGER, MORE ENCOMPASSING JUSTICE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY SAVE EVEN ENEMIES! [10/10/08]

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]

Provoking Satan’s FURY prefaced God’s FAVOR!

In what sense(s) did the Resurrection vindicate Jesus?  Supremely, it vindicated him, including by implication all he had claimed about himself. Thus his vindication by the Father would have to embrace his claims to be without sin, to be subject to the Law of Moses, to be the prophesied Messiah, to be the very Son of God, to be the Master/Lord of all nations (even Jehovah in the flesh!) and hence to be the Savior of the world, the promised Chosen One of God. Nothing less than this full-orbed identity of Jesus is implied by his getting raised from among the dead.

Jesus fully and completely kept the Law of Moses in the only way in which it was ever meant to be kept:  from the heart, in spirit, and by the Spirit’s power. His conflicts with the scribes, Pharisees, and other leaders of the Jews were never over any real violation of Mosaic Law, at least anent the manner that God Himself actually intended it to be observed. That this must be the case is exhibited by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This endorsement from God Himself decisively vindicated Jesus’ own take on the Law of Moses! In other words, it certified Jesus’ method of interpretation or ‘hermeneutic’ in the face of his self-endorsed enemies and murderers.  It showed them up as nigglers and hypocrites, petty and tricky, haughty and envious, vicious and treacherous—in a word: Law-less.  This was an elite crowd of habitual Law-breakers with entrenched impunity.

The Judaizing, the Phariseeical, ways of ‘honoring’ Moses’ Law were shallow, superficial, burdensome, overwrought, unbalanced, a colossal charade—in a word, profoundly unjust! The confrontations of Jesus with these petty tyrants gave scope for him to expose their obsession with the letter of the Law while missing the core justness of God altogether and tragically misleading God’s people down the path toward the national ruin of 70 A.D.  Jesus’ yoke was, by contrast, easy and his legal load, light. His directives were what he had heard from his Father, and they were life agelong. His own resurrection unmistakably confirmed that end result with a great weight of glory (evident proof).

In order to save the earth, this extraordinary work of His hands, from utter destruction as a result of sin, its attendant evils. and consequent death—sin being inextricably necessary within a scheme of things where the ultimate goal is to bring up mature offspring who would need to learn, in the face of seductive temptations to do otherwise, how to voluntarily choose what is right and pleasing to their Creator so they could qualify eventually to inherit and justly manage all the works of God’s hands, bringing them to fullest fruitfulness, life, and glory—God would have to conceive and execute a cosmic plan that somehow would justify Him in returning agelong life, our seemingly lost legacy, to the human race for free, in spite of sin and its just due, death. Such a plan would also have to make a shelter, shielding, or protective covering (–hilas–) around sins so that, since their accumulation evokes God’s just/rightful indignation, they do not destroy the inheritors whose very advance toward full human maturity is predicated on their often learning from trial and error (transgression/offense) against God’s just directives.

The exquisite solution entailed allowing, and in a sense even provoking, Satan. A key tactical element of this plan was the choice of Judas to be a disciple, who would betray the Savior into the hands of leaders whose envy was aggravated by his righteousness, wisdom, and miraculous restorative powers from on high. They, in turn, could be expected to falsely accuse, mock, insult, dishonor, variously abuse, and at length crucify God’s Chosen One. It was this dastardly process, irresistible to Satan out of long mendacious and murderous habit, that God leveraged to justify Himself in reversing it for the sake of the world’s salvation.  Satan took the Bait and vented himself with terrifying rage upon God’s Son.  He found Judas, all too amenable to his infernal enticements by then, and filled him with depraved determination to sell out his own Master for a paltry 30 pieces of silver. After all, he was a well-practiced thief. Was he trying to cover a debt so as not to be discovered, in hopes that Jesus would make a miraculous getaway somehow?  Some have conjectured as much.

However that may be, it was this monumental sin of the Jews, in combination with Roman Imperial injustice, foreknown by an all-wise God, that triggered Him to bare His righteous arm from heaven and rescue His just servant on earth, whose innocent blood, viciously shed, cried out from the ground for avenging better than the blood of just Abel. And so God did avenge almost instantly by manifesting celestial justice (dikaiosune) in tandem with its just recompense (dikaioma) before the stunned astonishment of angels in heaven, mortals on earth, and, before long, even to those “under the earth” to whom the soul of Jesus heralded his mighty triumph-to-be and who were invited to faith in him—a faith he then dramatically certified by getting exalted out of the Unseen by the Spirit of his Father on the third day. Such a spectacle had no historic precedent, even among the deeds of Jesus himself, in terms of glory, power, and permanence, even Lazarus notwithstanding. [4/8/06]

The Prince of Peace impartially judges his subjects for avenging themselves

Jews are not in a flattering position who condemn the Christian church for inciting pogroms against them.  It is, in point of fact, only a corrupt church that could do such a thing.  And the evaluation of the church as corrupt requires a higher norm by which to judge it.  That higher norm—the apostolic Scriptures—arrives at a judgment of “apostate” and “corrupt” regarding the church that would sponsor a pogrom (or even just look the other way) by the same criterion as it condemns the Jews as corrupt for crucifying their own Messiah, Jesus.

Thus a judgment against Christians for persecuting Jews, by the same token, implies a judgment of Jews for executing Jesus and the prophets, and for persecuting Christians.  We must ever remind Jews that the early Christians, regardless of suffering persecution by corrupt Judaism, never taught or practiced or justified retaliation of any sort whatever against those Jews.  They loved and prayed for their enemies, giving over to God, exactly as their Master did, a just reprisal, while totally denying this privilege to themselves or their survivors.  [3/19/03]

POGROMS:  THE VIOLENCE OF “CHRISTIANS” WHO WERE NOT CHRISTIANS UPON “JEWS” WHO WERE NOT JEWS

When did Christians start killing Jews?  It never happened in the early church era, because Christians at that time were all non-retaliatory like their Master Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, had directed.  In fact, it typically did not occur until centuries later when Christians, sadly, became mimetically like the Jews who persecuted them!  Pogroms never happened until so-called “Christians” learned how to take up the sword—for, as in the ironic words of the song from South Pacific (1949) by Rodgers and Hammerstein (both of Jewish extraction), “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”  But they first fell victim to their own warlikeness when, after Constantine (272-337A.D.), they battled “heretics” and one other in disgraceful episodes that echo the unspeakable crimes that similarly warlike Jewish zealots perpetrated upon one another within the walls of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., thereby fulfilling the dire prophecies of Jesus against those Jews “after the flesh” who refused to learn the ways of peace by accepting him as the Messiah promised by Jehovah their God.  Internecine warfare was the inevitable conclusion of God’s covenant with a disobedient, stiff-necked people—the dischosen descendants of Abraham who “say they are Jews but are not, but are liars,” a “synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9, 3:9) who, like their real father, the Adversary, are man-killers and liars (John 8:44, 1 John 3:14-15).

How did Christians ever fall so low as to imitate the Jews who persecuted them and killed them?  It is because they were beguiled away from the pure teaching of their Master, who had forbidden them from taking up the sword or resisting the vicious person.  They therefore became non-Christian, anti-Christian (“antichrist,” ironically!) by slaying one another.  It was only a matter of time before they would start in on the Jews.  By this time they were scarcely Christians but now reflecting the phoniness of Jews who themselves were “not Jews.”  [1/10/04]

SALVATION FROM SIN, NOT FROM ROMANS

The leaders of the Jews in Jesus’ day were so ignorant of their own Scriptures that they just didn’t ‘get’ the message of their own fifteen-century history as a distinct nation!  They should have seen the obvious fact, writ very large indeed from generation to generation ever since Moses had to suffer their whining, idolatry, and lawlessness in the wilderness, and in spite of God’s abundant, magnanimous wonders end on end!  Stephen, in his inflammatory speech in Acts 7, only barely got a running start on the enormous subject when he was stoned to death for daring to face them with the grim facts:  Israel always got oppressed by enemies, by famines, by pestilence, by plagues, and even by their own kings (which, however, they themselves had fatefully demanded), because of their own sins!  God even demonstrated with them that they could live relatively happy in captivity within a foreign land, Babylon, if they remained faithful to Him.  Think also of the young Israelite maid who became captive to Syria and served in Naaman’s household.  She was a wonderful blessing to others even there.

Ergo:  what Israel needed salvation from was not foreign enemies or alien rulers, but her own native sins.  Her own sins with tedious regularity brought on the oppressions.  So to regain peace she needed a Savior from sin.

However, Israel’s leaders, by Jesus time, had it backwards.  They ignored their own sinfulness while seeking for a Messiah who would drive out foreign oppressive rule.  Had they never read the Book of Judges or the Former Prophets?  Didn’t they, after all, understand their ultimate and fundamental need?  Didn’t they see that they actually, ultimately, and always needed One who could save them from themselves?  If they could become wholesome and righteous and clean from sins, oppressions would melt away!  If they could make peace with God, He would stop making war on them by sending them oppressors to enact the covenantal curses on their heads for their sins.  Simple, really.

Please note, however, that this by no means implies that this Kingdom of Heaven is not earthly!  There is no contradiction or paradox or dialectic, much less war, between heaven and earth.  The struggle is between the Kingdom of God, from the heavens (where His throne is), and the Kingdom of darkness, from the world, deluded by Satan.  Both of these kingdoms contend for the earth, but with different rules.  (See Zechariah’s Song, Luke 1:69-79.)

This all implies that, although the Jews rightly expected a Messiah who would make an earthly difference, they didn’t understand the only rules that would really work to bring peace with the Romans, prosperity for themselves, along with true happiness, joy and liberty.  Had they known this, they would never have crucified Jesus—their only hope against the might of Rome and its local puppets and deputies, such as Herod and Pontius Pilate.  This Jesus was their true Messiah.  He had demonstrated in outward, tangible, practical ways, the love, joy, peace, graciousness, mercy, provision, kindness, tolerance and amenableness, not to mention honest-to-goodness healing and miracles, potent enough to change the weather, that made for enduring peace.  He showed them, in short, God’s Kingdom and justice in earthly substance.

But, at the last, the Jews wanted none of it!  The majority still wanted to wave swords and spears!  They still yearned for the good old-fashioned blood-and-gore methods of winning over their enemies!  They wanted revenge.  They wanted ‘respect’.  And so they reaped the “abomination of desolation” of Daniel the prophet and the most horrible internecine warfare of their fifteen-century history—70 A.D.  They did it to themselves.  They even called down a curse on themselves and their children just to get Jesus executed!  They did not know “the day of their visitation” with judgment, their date with grim destiny.  “They that usurp the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matt. 26:52).

For another 250 years, the Christians around the empire persisted in demonstrating what the Kingdom of Heaven over earth could look like.  It wasn’t a perfect representation—certainly no “utopia”—yet it was still ‘good enough’ to score an indelible historic point.  They would exhibit its community, charity, wholesomeness, unity-in-diversity, generosity, resilience, amity, clemency, concord, compassion, etc., just long enough to make others either jealous enough to get in on it themselves, or envious enough to pursue and oppress them often to the point of death for presuming to teach the nations these odd doctrines of peace with God and reconciliation with one other.

Under such conditions, the leaders, who knew the teaching of Jesus the best, were the first targets, leaving the younger generation somewhat imperfectly taught and trained in this counter-cultural explanation and practice of life and destiny.  Over the decades and centuries, something was bound to get lost from memory and practice, despite the continued existence of the missionary writings of the first generation, which became known as the “New Covenant.”  Even so, the widespread existence of these documents held out the promise of recurrent revivals, renewals, restorations, reformations, reconstructions, etc.  Thus has God’s Explanation continued to race on and get glorified or accredited generation after generation (2Thess. 3:1).  Nor shall it ever cease until Messiah Jesus’ conquest of the world and its kingdoms is made complete by his actual return from on high to consummate the foregone conclusion of his Resurrection from death-by-crucifixion.  Amen.  [1/10/04]

The New Testament allegorizes Old Testament specifics for universal application

Jesus gave us a new directive that we be loving one another “just as I love you” (John 13:34, 15:12).  And how was that, exactly?  “Greater love than this has no one, that anyone may be laying [down] his soul over (υπερ, on behalf of, for the sake/benefit of) his friends (-φιλ-).  You are my friends if you should be doing whatever I am directing you” (John 15:13-14).

However, Jesus only could do “what he should be observing the Father doing, for whatever He may be doing, this the Son also is doing likewise.  For the Father is fond (-φιλ-) of the Son and is showing him all that He is doing” (John 5:19-20).  Evidently, They were very good friends, even bosom buddies (John 1:18)!  Clearly this means that Jesus was directing his learners to do no more than the Father had done for him:  “Just as the Father loves me, I also love you.  Remain in my love.  If ever you should be keeping my directives, you will be remaining in my love, just as I have kept the directives of my Father and am remaining in His love” (John 15:9-10).

And all this is “that the world may know that You commission me and love them just as You love me….for You love me before the disruption of the world….And these know that You commission me.  And I make known to them Your name and I shall make it known, that the love with which You love me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:23-26).

Thus the Father Himself must have laid [down] His own soul for His Son, His friend (-φιλ-) of whom He was so fond (-φιλ-).  And the Son saw this.

Now comes the inevitable question, of course: What did the Father do for the Son before the disruption of the world that was observed by the Son and became, hence, the model of self-sacrifice that the Son, in turn, modeled for us by surrendering himself to be crucified?  What did the Son see?  What precisely was the nature of the Father’s “laying [down] His soul“ on the Son’s behalf?  [1/29/02]

OLD TESTAMENT ALLEGORY

When I speak of understanding Old Testament names, places, or events as allegorical, I mean that in relation to the New Testament era inaugurated by Jesus the Messiah, not in relation to some imagined ‘supernatural’ (and in this sense ambiguously ‘spiritual’ realm.  These two meanings are literally worlds apart!  The first, or Messianic, sense signifies a fulfillment via universalizing what in the Old Testament is merely localized nationally.  God’s original (and historically ultimate) intention is the reception of His salvation by all nations, not just Israel.  Jehovah’s historic covenant with Israel was intended to exhibit, in fine, His comprehensive intentions in a comprehensible narrative, i.e., one with literary and chronological limits.  To universalize the acceptance and application of that Hebrew narrative required a number of methods.  One of them was to convey the original message into the Greek language as well as Aramaic and, according to ancient tradition, Latin (in the case of the Gospel of Mark).  Another method was to allegorize the audience addressed from Jews to Christians, from Israel to the church.  Other New Testament authors do this, and Paul actually gives it the classical label, “allegorizing,” in Gal. 4:24.  By citing dozens of passages originally addressed to the nation of Israel and applying them to the church of God, New Testament authors, in effect, transfer Israel’s Covenant blessings (conditional on faithful obedience) to the new humanity in the Messiah (all who trust, whether Jew or not).

This sense of allegory, however, does not derogate in the least from the historicity of the Old Testament narrative.  In fact, such an allegorical application in order to be valid for human life Anno Domini, requires that the Old Testament be historically true, for the Old Testament history is revelatory of God’s covenantal faithfulness, i.e., troth or truth, such that what He actually declared, whether blessing or curse, was actually fulfilled before the eyes of its original hearers and/or their accompliced descendants.  That is, it truly revealed His age-abiding permanence.

This initial horizon of God’s communications with mankind spanned the entire Old Covenant from Sinai till 70 A.D.  There was, however, an overlap of 40 years—one generation—during which the fleshly descendants of Abraham were “harvested” throughout the Roman Empire for the sake of the New Covenant inaugurated by their Messiah, preceding the complete dissolution of the Old Covenant, along with its architectural, ceremonial, and political symbols.  Its verbal symbols, however, inscripturated enduringly in the Old Testament, instead of being abolished altogether, were transfigured by Messiah’s Explanations and actions in a demonstrably authoritative way so as to transfer their application from the Israelite nation to the Messianic humanity and thus transcend their original geographic, ethnic, lingual, and political constrictions.

This second horizon of God’s Old Testament communications is the object and recipient of its allegorical application or fulfillment.  This is its Messianic universalization to “all who believe.”  We are now “true Israel,” “true Jews,” true sons of Jacob, true Covenant partners, true inheritors of allotments, true citizens of Jerusalem, true worshipers at Mt. Zion, having eaten of the one true Sacrifice, having been unnaturally grafted into the one Olive Tree, being the New Nation bearing good fruit for God, being the true priests of God (1 Peter 2:4-10), etc., etc.

Yet there is also a third horizon—the New Heavens and New Earth (the truest terra firma). It is there that all those who truly believed the Messianic promises of the Old Testament and, since the advent of Jesus, truly believe that despite their own temporary mortal experience and suffering to the contrary he was the solely worthy and authentic recipient of those promises, would all together inherit allotments on this soon-to-be-liberated planet that will eclipse anything utterable in any language of earth-yet-unliberated, whether in its literal constrictedness or its allegorical expansiveness!  This third horizon, new skies and earth alike, can best be left to the understatement of John’s Revelation 21-22, and thus to hallowed imagination.  But, for sure, it’s beyond calculation by any human calculus.

It should be clear from the above that the New Testament meaning of allegory is no mere ‘spiritualizing,’ ‘[e]vaporizing’ of Old Testament depictions of covenanted blessings.  Said differently, its prophetic revelations are never intended to be ‘verticalized’ into some ‘upper storey’ fulfillment in a ‘supernatural’ realm, but rather, only further ‘horizontalized’ in anticipation of the New Creation of Revelation 21-22.  This means that we must wait with yet a little more historical groaning and agonizing until the complement of the nations has been implanted into the one universal New Humanity of Messiah, by faith, and then the fullest possible realization of those darkly stated prophetic premonitions will be upon us in a blinding flash and materialize before our quivering, fresh, immortal bodies in the person of Reality himself—Jesus, the promised Son of king David, the last Adam, the Lamb of God sacrificed and raised again to make our new life possible, the only true Master of all, the Sovereign of the created universe, the only-born Son of God, Firstborn of Deity, brought forth after His own Kind.

To get ‘down to earth’ about such a Reality in this present vicious age (Gal. 1:4) necessitates not some dematerialization of their actual earthly embodiment, but a more solid grasp of their future, more glorious actuality in the New Earth. So this does mean a present enjoyment primarily, though not exclusively, in Spirit.  After all, this is the only locus within Israel’s historic past as well as in our own present, and even in the most distant future—of God’s Kingdom anyway!  For from there it ramifies to impact creation-at-large.

Moreover, and most curiously, even this present interim reality of God’s Holy Spirit (the most characteristic promise and gift of the New Covenant, let us never forget) is a more powerful manifestation and revelation of God’s creation-restoring Kingdom than any testimony to be found in the Old Testament.  So even though the ultimate revelation of that power will entail and encompass the rejuvenation of the whole disrupted visible-and-invisible created universe, yet even now we may taste those same powers of the impending age within this age as signs of its sure and certain advent in the Father’s good time.

Thus the “spirituals“/”gifts“ (1 Cor. 12) given to the-new-mankind-in-Messiah are solid, confirmed, corroborating signs of the Kingdom’s yet more glorious future.  It is mandatory, therefore, that this “assembly of the firstborn” (Heb. 12:23) actually make a point of practicing and preparing succeeding generations of saints to practice the just and wholesome use of these wonderful and miraculous and astonishing powers as our proper and rightful testimonies to Messiah and his present-and-future Kingdom.

What we must better understand in this context is that the teaching of Jesus when he was here on earth is more in accord with what is now possible, given the coming of the Messianically promised Present of the Wholesome Spirit, than anything found in the teaching of Moses.  Jews today may dispute this, no surprise; yet more tragically (because we expect more of those who claim to follow Jesus as their Messiah and Master) Christians of a dispensationalist  persuasion also deny it by disclaiming their Master’s teaching as even applying to themselves in this ‘age of grace,’ as they like to say.  Such disowning of Jesus’ teaching amounts to a partial disowning of “the Master who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1)!  They thus have overreacted from the hypernomianism of various especially Protestant or Reformation traditions into a nearly (though happily, because virtually always inconsistently) antinomian stance in terms of so-called ethics.  For without Moses or Jesus, they are left predominantly with the apostle Paul.  But Paul better understands the New Covenant than do his wannabe devotees.  Thus we find everywhere throughout his letters—roughly the second half of most of them—ethical or so-called paraenetic injunctions clearly derived from the teaching of his Master, Jesus, when he walked this earth.  Better secondhand than not at all!

Yet even so, a full-on Messianic ethic will start with the Gospels as anticipating the soon-to-descend Power of the age to come, in order to realize and actualize Christ’s directives in every sphere of human endeavor.  For this is the impulse and aim of graciousness!  God’s fully unveiled favor for all of mankind, available for the taking by faith, is ’embodied’ or ‘incarnated’ in His own Spirit that, upon entering our hearts, enlightens us to grasp Messiah’s often strange teaching, and hence to ’embody’ or ‘incarnate’ it yet further within all our human relations and activities, especially though not exclusively in company with fellow saints.

We can now see that the necessity of allegorizing the applications of Old Testament prophetic imagery in this New Age is accompanied by the introduction of a higher law than Moses ever taught or could have uttered.  It would not have been possible to obey Jesus’ teaching while still under the Old Covenant, “old and decrepit” (Hebrews 8:13) as it was even way back then.  For its subjects would have needed a “new heart” and “new spirit” for the new and higher ethic to have made headway in this darkened planet.

However, headway is exactly what God desires for the new Royal Law of Love that Messiah Jesus communicated during his first sojourn on earth.  It is hardly conceivable that such headway should await a Jewish millennium where, as dispensationalists have generally maintained, the localized shadows of the Old Covenant should be resurrected into literal fleshly culture, as if Messiah had never once-and-for-all banished those shadows by the full, literally spiritual fulness of his own glorious radiance!  “Go into all the world; herald the Proclamation to the entire creation” (Mark 16:15).  “Going, then, make learners of all the nations…teaching them to be keeping all, whatever I direct you” (Matthew 28:19-30).  This is our mandate in the present vicious age:  to make headway with the advancing edge of Messiah’s troops, by the sword of the Spirit—Messiah’s Explanation from God for us in the Gospels.  If we love him, we must labor to keep his directives ourselves, and teach transgressors his ways, too.

Christians must—we are duty-bound to—extend Messiah’s universal authority into every sector of earthly life.  We thus ‘take dominion’ over the earth in the only normative and legitimate way to ‘beat back’ the interlopers.  His Spirit’s power energizes our subordination to his Explanations so that our further subordination of the works of God’s hands is done in justice, peace, wholesomeness, and wisdom, bearing good fruit to God.

Therefore, to “be disposed to that which is above, not to that on the earth” is simply to orient ourselves to “the Zion above,” “the New Jerusalem“—the capital of “the New Earth“—whose descent down to earth awaits the return of Jesus in final judgment, who will then completely and finally avenge all acts of rebellion against the “Law coming out of Zion”—allegorically, and therefore evangelically and veritably, the Explanation and motivation (Spirit) of Messiah Jesus.

The Christian/Messianic subculture within the human race stands as an entrenched colony of God’s universal reign, often besieged by diversely armed enemies out in the far hinterlands of Jerusalem-above, ‘mother’ of all loyal citizens.  We do not hanker for any return whatever to the legislation or customs of Moses and the Jews of old.  That old ethic is, thankfully, passé, superseded heart-and-soul by the New Legislation of Jesus.  But this New Ethic is no less earthly or robust than that of Moses, though less juvenile in its restrictions and requirements.  “The Royal Law of Love” is custom-designed for humankind in its majority.  God has come near in Immanuel.  His Spirit is superabundantly available to all who trust him—daughters and sons, even youngsters and slaves!  It’s a new day!  We can enjoy in this present darkness the Light of Life even as we “are hoping for New Heavens and a New Earth in which justice is dwelling” without unseemly impatience, much less rebellious resistance (2 Peter 3:13).

We can fling ourselves away for the salvation of others from the same self-sacrificial love the Father demonstrated to the Son, and the Son, in turn, to us, and be none the worse for it!  For the Resurrectionary Event proved once and for all that death is not fatal for those who trust Jesus!  [1/30/02]