The Divine Son never fell out of his Father’s good graces–neither on the Cross, nor in Hades itself!

Romans 3:25-26, in the light of Romans 2:3-5, seems to assume that God’s righteousness includes kindness, patience, forbearance, etc.  It is the unrighteous who are unkind, impatient, intolerant, etc.  Yet a penal satisfaction ideology blithely overrides, even bulldozes, this gentle yet stubborn intercontextual observation.  How did we ever obscure this simple fact regarding common decent behavior?  Do we grade God on a different scale of righteousness than we do humans?  Moreover, is it a less ‘humane’ scale of assessment than we deem proper even for mere mortals?

So even though Romans 1:18-3:20 does focus on God’s wrath/indignation against the stubborn, both on the Day of Judgment as well as before, Paul makes a decisive shift in 3:21 to another kind of righteousness–the kind that does not punish the hard-hearted but rewards the amenably faithful ON THE GROUNDS OF CHRIST JESUS THE UTTERLY FAITHFUL ONE!  This may be why Paul even bothers to bring up the observation about God’s forbearance or longsuffering, BECAUSE IT FURTHER ILLUSTRATES THE NATURE OF REWARDING OR PREMIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS/JUSTICE IN RELATION TO THE FAITHFUL COVENANT PARTNERS WHO HAPPEN TO BE SINNERS IN NEED OF GOD’S PROTECTIVE COVER/SHELTER AROUND THEIR OFFENSES.

For His part, God is faithful and just to “set forth,” provide, and proffer such a wrath-proof protective method on behalf of all who trust Him for it, thereby releasing them from their sins.  This provision in particular entails the wrongful shedding of blood so innocent, flawless, and sinless–i.e., full of faithfulness to God’s will–that God Himself was justified in intervening virtually immediately to avenge (ekdik-) it BY RAISING THAT MURDER VICTIM FROM HIS GRAVE, NOT MERELY ALIVE, BUT IMMORTAL, WITH ROYAL GLORY AND UNIVERSAL PRIESTLY AUTHORITY TO INTERCEDE ON BEHALF OF HUMANKIND CONCERNING THEIR SINS. (A just deed of that superlative quality is a tough act to follow with a needlessly punitive one! [1/13/22])

It was by virtue of this authority, rooted in Christ’s own personal and historically demonstrated faithfulness to the true spirit of the Old Covenant, that he himself constituted a protective shelter concerning the sins of all time, both before his timely appearance in human flesh, but also, and with considerably more understanding and widespread publicity, after his well-attested resurrection from the dead.  This all means that the source of Christ’s power and authority to provide such indemnity lies in a perfect sinlessness that, in line with God’s justice, would not permit his disgraceful demise but insured, instead, a glorious restoration, not to favor–FOR HE NEVER FELL OUT OF GOD’S GOOD GRACES, NOT EVEN WHILE ON THE CROSS OR IN THE UNSEEEN–but rather to AN EXPLOSIVE MAGNIFICATION OF GRACIOUSNESS, ALONG WITH ITS OVERFLOW OF DIVINE SPIRITUAL GIFTS (charismata) IN ORDER TO BLESS THE HUMAN RACE IN ITS GRAVE NEED AND MORTAL PERIL.  This is the capacious legacy of God’s atonement on our behalf.  [9/20/10]

Riddle: Did Jesus bear the WRATH of GOD or the SIN of HUMANS?

Answer:  Jesus Christ did not come to bear ‘the wrath of his Father’; he came to bear the sin of his brethren!  There is a world of difference and a great gulf fixed between the two ideas, and with nearly opposite implications for God’s character.  Jesus came to manifest the authentic image of the Father.  Without such a transparent magnification, God ends up with a serious “image problem.”  For then Jesus appears to “pay off,” “pacify,” “appease,” or “satisfy” an alleged aspect of God’s character instead of mirroring the whole of it and commending it to us for our own imitation and emulation.  The behavioral repercussions of a misrepresentation here can be ugly indeed, and in any case dictate sprawling evil ramifications for ethics.  Christ died and rose from the dead not “to pacify and reconcile God” but to pacify and conciliate us!  [10/16/96]  (Refer to chap. 8, “Atonement,” in the “BIOGRAPHY” link under Barton W. Stone, on the right.)

We know that all of God’s people, whether before or after Pentecost, will inherit God’s Kingdom at the general resurrection.  On this score there is no distinction between them.  But the death and Resurrection of Christ did interpose a profound difference between our respective pre-resurrection experience of God’s future Kingdom.  We will all inherit God’s Kingdom after the Last Trumpet sounds, when the dead are raised and the living changed.  But we who trust Christ and his Proclamation in this age may enter that Kingdom even now, and receive the Wholesome Spirit of sonhood whereby we can taste its great powers and giftings (charismata).  This is why it was said by Jesus that even the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist, for John never experienced this outpouring of the Spirit and, indeed, didn’t do one sign!  (Jn. 10:41)  While even the least in the Kingdom may now have miraculous giftings routinely and even do greater things than Jesus (John 14:12)!  [07/08/07]

Christ’s lawless and unjust Crucifixion justified God in repaying him superabundant life.  This extraordinary repayment was God’s just award (dikaioma) to him for his unjust suffering on our behalf.  Christ’s Resurrection to immortality, in other words, was his just award for suffering unto death, and equates to the justifying of the verdict of superabounding life in return!  (Rom. 5:17-21, Gal. 3:21-22, Heb. 7:15-19, 1 Tim. 3:16, 1 Cor. 15:45)  This means that Christ was indeed “raised because of our justifying” (Rom. 4:25), both because the verdict of justification was, in effect, declared immediately at his unjust execution, even though not carried out until “three days” later by the actual bestowal of his just award of getting raised to life agelong, but also because the award was sufficient in magnitude for “whosoever will”!  (Rev. 22:17)  [11/01/96]

We seldom approach the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead by considering Jesus’ own experience of it.  What was its function for Jesus himself?  Is it possible that this very touching memoir intends also to teach us how much the Father loved His Son and wanted to assure him of His own full power and intention to raise him from the dead as he faced his own sure and certain death in Jerusalem?  The trial in the Garden of Gethsemane, not to mention what followed, was inconceivably grueling.  It reveals much about Jesus’ humanity.  No one could take his existence away from him; he laid it down voluntarily, yet not without great struggle, in which that foretaste of the joy lying before him—so recently manifested in the resurrection of his own dear friend Lazarus—must have contributed considerably to his resolve.  [11/04/96]

It is astounding to consider that the Jews themselves, by self-concerned execution of their own legitimate, divinely-attested, miracle-working, super-wise, graciously merciful, life-saving Messiah were by their own hands essentially slitting the throat of their own fondest hopes and covenanted blessings!  For what was the nation without its true King except doomed!  The Jewish leaders had allied themselves with the Herodian dynasty of almost unspeakably corrupt non-Jewish usurpers!  Jesus had both taught and exemplified the way of justice and peace, of wisdom and prosperity, of liberty and joy for Israel’s national life.  By highhandedly rejecting Jesus as Jehovah’s Messiah, they sealed their fate as a nation and invoked the curse of Moses’ Law upon their own heads:  “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” they had cried unbelievingly (Mt. 27:25).  So be it.  Yet even so, for any who still might repent and trust Jesus there would be safekeeping from the Divine wrath coming upon Jerusalem and the Temple and the Jewish people within one generation of their treason, their treachery, against God’s Anointed and Chosen One.  From then on, “election” would have to be understood as the status of all–whether Jew, Greek, Circumcision, “Foreskin,” barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, male, or female (1 Cor. 12:13, Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11)–who by trust get immersed in Christ for the washing away or release of their sins and thereupon obtain the Holy/Wholesome Spirit of promise, the Spirit of sonship, the blessing of Abraham, the father of all the faithful, for all the nations of earth.  [11/06/96]