The reason why, in the 2nd century Christian author Irenaeus’s ‘recapitulation’ explanation of the Atonement, “not only the death of Christ but also the life/career of Christ has redemptive significance,” is simple. What the Father overcompensates Christ for, in and by his resurrection and exaltation, is his unsurpassed career of obedient, righteous deeds that was unjustly dishonored and violently cut short by the sins of the Jews and failures of the Romans under the common inspiration of Satan. Even a generous recompense is only in proportion to its base injury or ‘mass’ of infraction. Legal damages are calculated proportional to loss. 10 or 100, or even 1000 times 0 = 0. Justice must have material to work with. Jesus docked up a life of consistently (not to say exclusively!) worthy behaviors conformable to his Father’s desire, and well-pleasing to Him. This he sacrificed, likewise at his Father’s wish, to established authorities whose duty was to dispense justice to the poor, distressed, injured, humiliated, and cheated. But those authorities defaulted on their divine duties of due diligence! A murder takes on greater ‘volume’ and value and virtue in the scales of justice in proportion to the good that it wrongfully snuffs out. God paid damages far, far outstripping Messiah’s loss; He would not have been right to repay less. [4/9/06]
“Fear is not in love, but perfect [telei-] love is casting out fear, for fear has punishment [kolasis]” (1 John 4:18), therefore love must not have punishment! [4/10/06] As God’s own Son is our Exemplar, he must have had no fear of punishment by God at the cross. He well knew this event held no divine penalty whatever, but only amounted to “buffeting [kolaphiz-]” from Satan (2 Cor 12:7-10, Matt. 26:67, Mk. 14:65, 1 Cor. 4:9-21, 1 Pet. 2:20-24) and “contradiction [antilogia] by sinners” (Heb. 12:3), to be endured as filial “discipline“ (paideia) from a loving Father (Heb. 12:5-9) in order to bring him to perfection (telei-) or maturity of wholesomeness (agi–) and love (agape) (Heb. 2:10-11, 12:10-14, 1 Jn. 5:17-18) through his learning obedience (Heb. 5:7-9, 7:27-28) to God’s desire (Heb. 10:5-14), so that he might receive superabundant graciousness from God (Heb. 2:9, 12:14-15, 18, 1 Pet. 2:19-20, Rom. 5:15-21) because of his humiliation by Satan, his Adversary (1 Pet. 5:5-10, James 4:5-10), and all so that we his friends, too, might be able to share in his wholesomeness, and hence his graciousness (2 Cor. 12:7-10), and likewise learn to effect his desire on earth and give God the divine service He deserves (Rom. 12:1-8). [8/26/07]
Jesus’ honoring of Levitical Law by his true, spiritual keeping of the Law, paid whatever tribute was necessary to it. But it must not escape us what this true obedience actually, phenomenally, looked like. This brand of Law-keeping was repeatedly condemned by the teachers of the Law—the scribes, Pharisees, elders, and chief-priests of the Jews. Their brand of ‘holiness’ was brittle, fragile, breakable—highly breakable! In stark contrast, true righteousness is supple, stretchy, conformable to the actualities of daily variation in real circumstances—the spirit of the Law was conformable to reality. The letter of the Law refuses to adapt to human variations and needs, which it can override, trample, and kill. Jesus proved this—profoundly demonstrated what such abortive ‘virtual’, literalistic, ‘Law-keeping’ will do to One who is actually a perfect, flawless Law-keeper. By vindicating true obedience, Jesus outright condemned every such misuse of Moses’ Law. He came back to life—agelong life!—after wrongful official ‘Law-keeping’ had condemned and executed him! “A Greater than Moses” has arrived to light up the true way of life for us: durable,correctly-invested faith that justifies. [4/10/06]
The New Covenant Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, as the fulfillment of Old Covenant prophecies, in reality filled to overflowing the mere letter of those prophecies. That is, the actual fulfilment in Jesus, the Christ or Messiah, had more glory than hinted at in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves! This is one reason why the New Testament use of the Old Testament often looks so strange to us. A Jew of Jesus’ day, reading the Hebrew Scriptures, was not thereby prepared to see, hear, or understand Jesus. In fact, their antiquated, labored interpretations actually blinded them to the Truth when he appeared! They only expected mere literality (this method was at the heart of Zionistic Judaism and has been adopted with no better, but only bitter, results by its Christian counterpart and clone, Dispensationalism). What Jesus proclaimed was superabounding spirituality—the very power of the age to come! Jesus was actually equipped with life superabundant and free for all who trust him as God’s appointed and anointed Son, the inheritor of the universe (not merely a plot of ground in the Near East)! Jesus exploded the eentsy weentsy, teeny weeny notions of the scribes and Pharisees and their pitiful expectations. They hated him for puncturing their parochial hopes, popping their bubbles of bigotry, and skewering their self-important aspirations. The antitype exceeds the type by far, through God’s power! [9/10/97]
Every miracle, every divine healing, is a proof of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every sign, every wonder, is an ally of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom. Every such act of God in current history is a testimony that the resurrected Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living and true God. “Is healing in the Atonement?” No, if we must answer such a question; much rather, “atonement” is in the healing!Since, “that you mayknow that the Son of Mankind has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Rise! Take up your bed and walk!'” (Mt. 9:6, Mk. 2:10, Lk. 5:24) The association is unmistakable; healing and pardon are two fruits of the very same powerful operation, the first visible (thus its probative function to certify the other), the second invisible (hence, otherwise doubtful to sinful mortals, thus requiring an external sign). The supreme sign of the Resurrection of Christ is thus refracted in every other exertion of divine power on behalf of redemption, however nuanced.
The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, God’s only-born Son, in combination with the Resurrection that immediately followed, constitute proof that God is the kind of person Who is both able and desirous of absorbing the cost of personal injury against Himself without demanding repayment or satisfaction of any kind. Such stupendous grace/favor toward us obligates us, much rather, to ebullient gratitude toward Him and repentance for our injuries (for injuries they remain!). There is no greater demonstration imaginable of the true contents of the loving heart of the invisible God—namely, favor—than to send His only-born offspring in visible flesh and blood, to surrender himself to the viciousness of sinful humans and their corrupt justice, and then to radically and totally and overwhelmingly reverse their fatal judgment by the counter-verdict and rightful award of agelong life via Resurrection from among the dead and exaltation to His own right hand! For by so doing God, in effect, remitted the avenging due his murderers (for so they were, and not mere executioners), proclaiming, instead His favor to all who merely repent of their sins (that Big One included!) and trust Jesus as the Messiah/Christ.
Thus we can visibly behold what otherwise, even using the “best” of Old Testament shadows and types, we can yet barely visualize—indeed, that which was routinely misunderstood and unrecognizably twisted. The only “satisfaction” God desires is the satisfaction of seeing His highest creature turn away from destructive sins and start growing into the image and likeness of Himself as seen clearly in His Son Jesus. So by instructing His faithful Son to sacrifice himself, including his royal rights as the authentic King of the Jews, God was preparing to exhibit openly and unmistakably on the public stage of eye-witnessed history, what had always been and would always be unalterably true: Jehovah God does not demand or require or desire payment or recompense or compensation or sacrifice to Himself by anyone in the universe (neither sinners nor His Son) for sin. Much rather, He forgives or pardons sins gratuitously, for free, and “demands” or “requires” that we do likewise, on penalty of our own sins remaining ominously unforgiven by Him!
This is the most startling, life-transforming truth of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom, and we all have far to go to absorb its full force. It should “extort” from us superabundant and never-ending praise and thanks. Not for a moment should such a staggering revelation of God’s self-sacrificing character, conduct, and disposition motivate us to dishonor or trample His explicit desire for our obedience. Our obligations toward Him are nothing less than that we behave ourselves toward one another as He has behaved toward us, i.e., that we become like Him, as exhibited in the conduct of Jesus Christ His uniquely-begotten Son, for this is our very destiny if we seriously believe his words: all who trust Christ are destined by Old Testament Scripture to become sons of God, morphing into His likeness and image. Good gracious!
The Mosaic law was but a shadow of this desire for us. Jesus was the Light that cast Moses and his Torah in the shadows forever. Jesus was greater than Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon combined! The Old Covenant has all but evaporated for those who are in Christ. The grace that Christ received from his Father for obeying Him even to the death of a cross burst into history for our human appropriation and enjoyment at Pentecost, if we do not resist it as the Jews did in Jesus’ day. For our resistance to the Wholesome Spirit of God’s favor will win for us later generations the same just deserts (dikaioma) that God poured out on the stubborn generation of vicious Jews who perished under His wrath when the “abomination of desolation”—the Roman legions of Titus—surrounded and besieged Jerusalem, the “Holy City,” and vaunted temple in 70 A.D., exactly 40 years to the week, one generation, after they viciously dispatched their Messiah. The judgment of “Gehenna,” the Valley of Hinnom where Titus cast the bodies of the dead during Jerusalem’s self-destruction and subsequent cleanup, is the repulsive foretaste of what awaits all who, like those perfidious Jews, remain stubborn to the Son (see Psalm 2), refusing to repent of their sins and acknowledge their rightful Master and royal superior. Thus those who harden themselves to the outpouring of God’s favor are only setting themselves up for the outpouring of His indignation. Our choice is between a baptism of Spirit or of fire. For God delays His anger, not desiring any to get destroyed, yet prolongs His kindness so that many may repent and be saved. He appeals to us, “Now is the day of salvation, repent and trust Me!”
Thus it is clear that no “payment of sin” is even conceivable in Biblical terms! God Himself “pays for sin” (an expression never actually used by Scripture) if in any sense, by absorbing the “cost” into Himself and countering with a gigantic donation back! Furthermore, God proclaims such a great salvation even to His bitter enemies so that even they may get conciliated to Himself! He chose Saul of Tarsus as the great exemplar of such receipt of favor. No wonder that Saul—now Paul—agonized over his remaining stubborn co-Christ-persecutors and fellow-Messiah-murderers. For he now knew that even they could be saved if they would! Jesus himself prayed outright for the forgiveness of his Roman executioners while he was still on the cross, while they were still enemies: “Father forgive them, for they are not aware what they are doing!” (Luke 23:34) How much more had he longed to gather Jerusalem under his wings of protection, but they would not consent (Matt. 23:37-38; Luke 13:34).
God has lavished demonstration upon display, exhibit upon example, proof upon parable, that nothing from His side prevents or ever has prevented or ever will prevent or ever can prevent the superabundant expression of His favor to any and every sinner who only believes His explanations and acts accordingly in consequence, confessing before humans the favor and truth of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. [9/27/97]
The Premial Atonement 