God’s love and graciousness never left Jesus, so can never leave us if we abide in him.

It would be a pity if all my writings and recordings on the Atonement, in which I have earnestly, even passionately, sought to correct the massive error of penal substitution, were themselves to get picked to pieces dismissively on account of all my smaller errors so as to discredit THE GRAND RESURRECTIONARY TRUTH I have labored and agonized to RESTORE and ARTICULATE and CLARIFY and ILLUSTRATE in a host of ways against every weapon and bulwark of medieval and otherwise diabolical darkness.  [01/13/08]

God’s voluminous love and graciousness were never deflected from Jesus, His ever well-pleasing and beloved Son; they endured faithful ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE CROSS AND INTO HADES ITSELF!  It is for this very reason that nothing is able to separate us from the LOVE OF GOD IN MESSIAH JESUS, OUR MASTER (Romans 8:31-39), because GOD IS FOR US (Romans 8:31, Psalm 118:6-7) and our life is HID TOGETHER WITH THE MESSIAH IN GOD (Colossians 3:3), for we were RAISED TOGETHER WITH HIM (Colossians 3:1) who died and was raised FOR/OVER us (2 Corinthians 5:15).

THIS IS THE PRECISE REASON WHY THERE IS NOW NO CONDEMNATION TO THOSE IN MESSIAH JESUS (Romans 8:1), BECAUSE WHEN HE WAS TREACHEROUSLY CONDEMNED TO DIE, HIS FATHER RAISED HIM EXPLOSIVELY TO A VITALIZING FRESH LIFE BY DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS, THEREBY SIMULTANEOUSLY CONDEMNING SIN INSTEAD, and retroactively NAILING TO HIS CROSS THE SINAITIC HANDWRITING OF DECREES (e.g., circumcision, Sabbaths, festivals, etc., Colossians 2:8-23)) AGAINST US, WHICH WAS HOSTILE TO US, AND HAS TAKEN IT AWAY OUT OF THE MIDST, GETTING THE SOVEREIGNTIES AND AUTHORITIES OF THIS PRESENT DARKNESS STRIPPED OFF WITH A FLOURISH LIKE A CIRCUMCISED FORESKIN, FOR DARING TO MAKE THE EVER-BLESSED SON OF GOD ACCURSED BY HANGING HIM ON A TREE! AND GOD LAUGHED!  (Colossians 2:14-15, Galatians 3:13)  For by crucifying their Jewish Messiah, the Jews thereby KILLED THE ENMITY IN JESUS’ CIRCUMCISED BODY OF FLESH, SO RENDERING HIM A UNIVERSAL SOVEREIGN INSTEAD, BY WAY OF DIVINELY JUST COMPENSATION IN HIS RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD!  This little unintended consequence of their crucifying Jesus, the divinely approved Messiah, instantly abolished all the “just statutes for the flesh” (Hebrews 9:10) and elementary rules of culture in accord with the directions and teachings of humans that sound so wise but breed such hubris and judicial misbehavior, invalidating the Explanation of God and enslaving His free children (Colossians 2:20-23, Galatians 4:8-10, Ephesians 2:11-16, Galatians 5:1-6) by such corrupt traditions (Matthew 15:1-9, Mark 7:1-16).  [01/16/08]

 

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 Holy Spirit—Christ’s JUST/RIGHTFUL DUE for enduring the UNJUST/WRONGFUL Cross—gets filled up in us so we can superabound in JUSTICE/RIGHTEOUSNESS

To the question, “Why is there so much evil in the world?” Scripture answers that, in part. it’s because God “carries, in much patience, the vessels of indignation, having gotten adapted for destruction.”  This, in turn, serves the higher purpose of “making known the wealth of His credit on the vessels of mercy, which He prepares for credit—us, whom He calls also, not only from Jews, but from nations also” (Rom. 9:22-23).  The expression of evils perpetrated by such “vessels of indignation” cannot thwart but only advances God’s overarching purpose to bring “many sons into credit” (Heb. 2:10), although it makes them vulnerable to abuse of various sorts in the bargain.  [1/17/04]

With only the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, and other miscellaneous teachings of Jesus, even though they occupy the very apex of ethical instruction possessed by the human race, we are no better off than Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and so many other mere admirers of Jesus the rabbi.  Did I say “mere admirers”?  I should also have included ardent followers of his teaching, for many have assayed to scale these lofty precepts in actual practice only to tumble off the heights and plunge into despair or disillusionment.  For if Moses’ Law was “a yoke…which neither our fathers nor we are strong enough to bear” (Acts 15:10) in the waning strength of deteriorating human flesh, yet the “kindly” yoke of Jesus is incomparably more burdensome without the power of his own Wholesome Spirit “sent down from heaven” (1 Peter 1:12) as the rightful award to compensate for his unjust suffering of abuses and degrading execution after a career of miraculous benevolences.  A Jesus without miracles is no Messiah.  He could not save us from the evil consequences of our attempts at such a noble obedience in this present vicious age!  The current age of this world hates and persecutes those who dare to follow Jesus’ upright teaching, not to add his glowing example.  For following his example in truth will necessarily lead us to our own crosses.  He actually taught as much.

So away with the half-hearted though well-intentioned moves to accept only the ethical teaching of Jesus, full of undeniable marks of divine origin as they are.  For he taught more than that.  He taught the necessity of suffering abuse if we would walk his ethical path, if need be to the death.  He also taught that endurance in such trust to the bitter end would make us worthy of a resurrection into agelong life.  His is no ethic to make us comfortable, rich, and famous in the eyes of our contemporaries.  We have to be able to grasp the vision of our inheritance on a New Earth if we are to survive the buffeting of this current age for our wildly noble lifestyle.  It makes them look bad, and they “despise the shame” of it.  Out of envy Jesus was crucified by the Jews, who could neither boast the miraculous deeds nor merit those astonished ascriptions of authority from his audiences wherever he went.

In sum, Jesus’ personal righteousness, not to say sinlessness, and his peerless teaching, plus his powerful healings, as well as his public denunciations of hypocrisy and corruption, heaped humiliation and shame on the leaders of the Jews.  They returned the favor by humiliating him on a cross, but because of the joy of his coming exaltation, glory, and Kingdom, though he “despised the shame” of the injustice, he nevertheless endured it to the end.  [1/24/04]

The ‘problem’ with God’s Proclamation about His Kingdom is that it makes its adherents and practitioners, as a community, ‘successful’—truly successful.  It heals them up; it makes them happy; it makes them loving toward the brethren; it makes them respectful toward those in authority; it makes them open and helpful to outsiders as well as immigrants in their midst; it makes them thrifty, brave & cheerful; diligent, generous & healthy; wise, creative & kind, even to enemies.  (Parenthetically speaking, it is difficult to flaw the old “Scout Law”— “A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent”—except to say that without an operative Holy Spirit, the noble pastiche remains but glittering idealism and may occasionally breed cynicism among disillusioned ‘realists’.)  Yet saying no more, those are reasons enough to breed jealousy and hostility against followers of Jesus, the Messiah.  And these we should be prepared to expect.

Therefore, although the instructions of Jesus will, other things being equal, generate prosperity among his true followers, that very fact will, during this vicious age of the world, raise up enemies who will move to oppress them, impoverish them, persecute them, scatter them, and otherwise destroy them and steal their rightful prosperity, the all-too-enviable fruits of their faithful labors.  Given these evils that their very good works sets in motion against them, amid the leering offspring of Satan, they will often seem to be losers and fools.  But things are not as they seem.  The children of darkness now have their day, only to be overturned utterly when Messiah returns as Judge to set the record straight and grant the amenable their just due—an allotment in his agelong Kingdom on the New Earth that’s impending and for which they wait with joyful assurance and endurance.  [1/24/04]

Messiah’s career, death, and resurrection fulfilled “every jot and tittle” of the Law of Moses (Matt. 5:17-18), one consequence of which was “erasing the handwriting of the decrees against” both Jews (“a yoke…which neither our fathers nor we are strong enough to bear” Acts 15:10) and the nations (“in nothing discriminat[ing] between us [Jews] and them, cleansing their hearts by faith….But through the graciousness of the Master, Jesus, we are trusting, to be saved in a manner even as they” (Acts 15:9, 11), for it “was hostile to us,” so God “has taken it away out of the midst, nailing it to the Cross, getting it stripped off; the sovereignties and authorities, with boldness [God] makes an example of, triumphing over them in [the Cross]” (Col. 2:14-15).

In the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount following Matt. 5:17, Jesus proceeds to alter Moses’ Law to make room for “a righteousness superabounding more than that of the scribes and Pharisees” (5:20).  However, to fulfill his changes in Moses’ directives requires a greater love, one “spread abroad in our hearts through Wholesome Spirit” (Rom. 5:5), the Promise of the Father in the New Covenant, whereby (to distill Heb. 8:6-13) He imparts His laws to our comprehension and inscribes them on our hearts, being protective over our injustices and under no circumstances being reminded of our sins and our lawlessnesses.  Such superabounding love is operative in us likewise to fulfill the Law, “For love is the contents [the ‘filling‘—the ‘stuffings‘!) of Law” (Rom. 13:10).

God’s Spirit of promise vivifies us (2 Cor. 3:6), through our trust in Jesus, the Messiah, so that we can discharge the Royal Law of Freedom, to “Love your associate as yourself” (James 2:8,12; 1:25; Gal. 5:14; Rom. 13:9) and even to “be loving one another” (the brotherhood) just as Jesus loves us (John 13:34)!  For if we “walk in Spirit“ (Gal. 5:16), “walk according to Spirit” (Rom. 8:1,4) or “get led by God’s Spirit“ (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18), then we walk free, as sons of God, without condemnation, not still under the Law of Moses, not consummating flesh’s craving, the rightful award of the Law being filled up in us (Rom. 8:1,4, 14; Gal. 5:16,18)!  [1/27/04]

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #28)

28.     Didn’t Christ become a curse for us?

The Jewish leaders maneuvered the Roman governor to impale Jesus on a wooden stake or timber—the customary Roman penalty for treason against the empire—hence deliberately, though ironically, placing him under the only curse of the Mosaic Law not necessarily conditional upon actual personal sin.  Thus by a loophole the Jewish leaders managed to engineer a condemnation of Jesus (if possible) even by God Himself!  By manhandling God’s wholesome Law to Moses and wickedly misusing its power to curse in order to condemn the Innocent One, they sealed the doom of that Law itself and thereby rendered it a lame duck as an ethical rule for God’s people; nevertheless, it does still retain a measure of utility with respect to the lawless.  In the meantime, Father & Son, Inc. simply forged ahead, working their plan regardless, and practiced what they preached:  “Bless those who curse you”, and so fulfilled their Contract under deadline.  However, the agent of the curses was Satan, originally an angelic servant submitting to God’s control.  His eventual foreseen rebellion did not divest him of his authority to activate them, however, and within his discretionary authority he misused the curse power God gave him.  The Cross mightily deactivated all such curse decrees, whose hostility was there aimed at the Son of God himself—the Father in effect erasing that  handwriting, nailing it to the Cross, getting it stripped off; conspicuously making an example of the governing sovereignties and authorities, triumphantly dragging them in tow!  The contest was unequal; the curses lost.  Yay Jesus!  In this epic sting operation, Satan took the bait and played the Joker, as foreknown.  But his evil was transmuted by God into resplendent good as the chrysalis of curse burst open to release the soaring blessing of Abraham, now taking wing to every family, tongue, land, and nation dwelling in darkness.  Who could have guessed!