Evangelicals neglect God’s RESURRECTIONARY JUSTICE to Jesus

The compulsion of evangelical atonement theology concerning “averting God’s wrath,” despite the fact that this is obviously not the primary purpose and function of any of the Levitical sacrifices, may well stem from—must ultimately originate in—the conspicuous (sometimes almost candidly admitted) absence of a thoroughly understandable, just, moral, cogent, and truly satisfying explanation of how and why sins can be forgiven and cleansed. This lack (due to neglecting the proper role of Messiah’s resurrection) drives evangelicals to swing compensatorily toward an overemphasis on the clear result of such a release from sins, i.e., the dispelling of God’s indignation about stubborn sinfulness. But this is to skirt lightly over the amazing and totally unexpected means of averting God’s anger: resurrectionary JUSTICE! [01/04/08]

How is it that Calvinists—so clever at parsing the “sovereignty of God” to allow for the “freewill of man,” contradictory as they often seem—yet have not applied such intricate logic to the nettling issue concerning whether God’s righteous wrath was the active ingredient at the Cross or instead perhaps only the unjust fury of Satan and human beings? [01/05/08]

Jesus suffered wrongful abuse and thereby won glory from God. This he did not “as a substitute so that we need not suffer wrongful abuse” but precisely in order to give us expectation of glory in spite of our suffering wrongful abuse for his name’s sake, and additionally to supply us the Holy Spirit from God to console and empower us as we willingly participate in his suffering of abuse. Thus we, like Paul, may be able to say, “I am now rejoicing in my suffering of abuses for you, and am filling up in my flesh in [Messiah’s] stead (that is, as Messiah’s substitute!) the deficiencies of the afflictions of the Messiah for his body, which is the church…” (Colossians 1:24). [01/08/08]

It is not because the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah 53 suffered unparalleled abuse “in the place of others,” but because it was wrongful in the extreme, that his achievement overflowed so enormously to the benefit of so many others, for their sake and on their behalf.  In other words, it was not because he suffered “as their substitute.” [01/08/08]

Jesus saves us from God’s wrath not be alleged “substitution” but by sanctification. That is, he doesn’t accomplish the turning away of God’s anger against our stubborn sinfulness by suffering that anger’s destructive expression “instead of” us or “in the place of” us in order to “satisfy” God’s wrath, justice, law, or what have you, but to provide his own innocent blood to invoke God’s overcompensating resurrectionary justice, which supplied the gift of the Wholesome Spirit to wipe out sin and bring us agelong life and “wholesomizing” power to fill up our deficiency of glory and to help us conquer the lusts of our mortal flesh of sin in actual practice. [01/08/08]

According to John’s reinterpretation of Caiaphas’ words, Jesus did not die for the people “lest the whole nation perish,” (for in historical fact the nation did perish, and for that very reason!), but rather “to bring together” “the Jewish nation” and “The scattered children of God” (John 11:47-52). This in partial answer to Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007) p. 75.

God “CONDEMNED SIN IN THE FLESH” by RAISING CHRIST’S FLESH IMMORTAL, not ‘by punishing him for our sins’.

How did God “condemn sin in the flesh” when “sending His own Son in the likeness of sin’s flesh and concerning sin [i.e., “as a sin-offering,” cf. Leviticus, LXX]” (Rom. 8:1-4)?  What was the precise mechanism or process or procedure?  The common popular evangelical answer is that God ‘vented His wrath on His own Son at the cross’, thereby condemning sin.  But it’s not that way at all.  Much rather, the sin of condemning the sinless Son of God—this overwhelmingly wrongful deed of the Jews (leaders, populace, and disciples alike!), this fury of Satan in cahoots with all his witting and unwitting henchmen and hangmen (Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, Peter, the chief priests, the Roman soldiers, et al)—was itself openly, overwhelmingly, publicly demonstrated to be wrongful and unjust—outright SIN— by the display of God’s righteousness in raising Jesus the Messiah from among the dead (Rom. 3:21-26)! For in this exacting manner all his opposition were swept away decisively and irrevokably and unanswerably. The Resurrection shut every accusing mouth and opened every unhardened heart. It was calculated to melt all the opposition who were not adamantly confirmed in viciousness. Yet every age has its Pharaohs who progressively reject every merciful moment God extends them, “bartering the graciousness of our God for wantonness, and disowning our only Owner [who, in that assigned role, bought us back!] and Master, Jesus Messiah” (Jude 4), and harden their hearts, stiffen their necks, the “unbelieving…who are stumbling also at the Explanation [about God’s undeserved, completely unexpected, and even unimaginable graciousness and mercifulness], being stubborn, to which [stumbling] they were appointed also [by their own self-determined, rigid distrust]” (1 Peter 2:7-8).

In sum: God condemned sin by justifying Jesus in the Resurrection to agelong life so that we who simply trust this stunning message might inherit this same just recompense deserved by Christ’s sinless career, willing surrender, and obedient submission to the vicious, murderous sovereignties and authorities of this age—namely, the same agelong life that his obedience won triumphantly on our behalf!  Thus did he triumph by his cross (Col. 2:14-15), condemn sin, and bestow gratuitous life for us who are undeserving sinners!  And all we have to do to enjoy this boundless boon is to be “in Messiah Jesus” (Rom. 8:1, 2), which transpires at immersion, by faith, which in turn accomplishes implantation (Rom. 6:5, 6) into his body.  [4/10/06]

So where does “divine punishment” fit into the picture of “atonement” within Scripture? It most emphatically fits exactly nowhere within holy Scripture! Our salvation was not achieved by resorting to punishment of our sins. “Agelong punishment,” far otherwise, is the fate of all who reject a salvation so great that it did not need any divine punishment factor! It circumvented divine punishment altogether. The abuse suffered by Messiah was not divinely punitive in any sense, any more than Job’s was. The assault of Satan at the Cross was, to be sure, divinely appointed, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with divine wrath or the disfavor of Heaven. Jesus “tasted death”—“even a death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8)—“in the favor of God” (Heb. 2:9, Phil. 2:9).

In the meantime, whoever get destined for adoption experience divine discipline, yet such measures are corrective and for our good (Psalm 94:10, 12, Isaiah 53:5, Heb. 12), and thus are inescapable for any of us sons of Adam who are now children of a heavenly Father whose goal is our maturity.   This often painful procedure equips us to rule with Messiah in the age to come.  (Corrective discipline can be “atoning” only in a derivative and secondary sense.  See David Bercot’s “What the Early Christians Believed about the Atonement.”)  [4/10/06]

It was not while “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6) that God’s Son won our salvation, but only after becoming a human being—a “son of mankind.”  It was in this form and after this fashion that he achieved full maturity of sinlessness, by learning obedience under the Law of Moses, an escorting disciplinarian (Gal 3:24-25), submitting to sinful authority (it could not be otherwise—whether parents, Jewish leaders, Roman occupiers), getting immersed in Wholesome Spirit, performing astounding acts of miraculous power to free his fellow human beings from the enslaving tyranny of the Adversary and, at the last, by being betrayed by one of his inner-circle friends and getting surrendered to his enemies, bearing their injustices patiently, not deserving their abuse, but giving it all over to Him Who judges justly.

In this flesh he got vindicated, the Highest Judge reversing the lower court’s decision.  As a human being he received overcompensating damages for his trouble, and that is precisely why he had the right to “give gifts to mankind” (Eph. 4:8, Ps. 68:18)—gracious presents of splendid varieties, salvation, and agelong life in his Father’s Kingdom, receiving these boons from his divine Father as the Son of God, and bequeathing them all to his human brethren as the son of mankind—the true Mediator between Deity and humanity.  [4/10/06]

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]