Giving Away One’s Own Reward Is One Thing; Assuming Someone Else’s Punishment Is Quite Another

On the Day of Pentecost came a power surge from Heaven resulting from the spillover of graciousness toward the Lamb of God whose faithful obedience through the jaws of Death made him worthy of a tremendously overcompensatory reward from God.  In turn, Jesus directed that surging wave of pure energy to needy mortals who trust him for what is impossible for wrongdoers ever to deserve.  In this very surprising way, God’s justice–premial, not penal–brings salvation to the undeserving on account of the deserts of Another–Christ Jesus the justly risen Lord!  [8/24/10]  (I would only issue a reminder that giving away one’s own deserved reward is one thing; taking on someone else’s deserved punishment is quite another.  [1/6/22])

If God had destroyed the crucifiers of His Son for their crime, how would that kind of justice (i.e., penal ) have done Christ any good ? To put a finer point on the matter, how would that do him any justice at all? A grand show of wrath upon them would have sufficed to demonstrate God’s hatred of sin (in particular, the monumental Sin of their crucifying His beloved Son [1/6/22]), but that is already sufficiently evident from the historic trail of calamities befalling stubborn sinners through the ages, as Romans 1:18-3:20 makes perfectly, if frightfully, clear.  No.  God had something quite different–qualitatively and quantitatively–in mind:  He did good to Jesus instead, in order to show His goodwill to humankind in spite of even their worst Sin!  That’s how justice triumphed in his Cross via his Resurrection.  [8/24/10; 1/6/22]

If God himself could forgive the abysmal sin of hanging His precious Son on a cross, without immediately retaliating, then what must He expect of us?  The Father and Son already and unmistakably (almost!) set the example of love, and that particular example just happened to be ATONING in ITS EFFECTS!  That’s a high recommendation for any example, and the ethical significance lies right on the surface.  God’s eventual destruction of those who hoarded up His wrath by going on their merry way ignoring the warning signs and testing His patience should hardly be surprising.  Since their evils were continuing to destroy His creation and injure His children, they were only getting what was coming to them–what they were dishing out!  [8/25/10]

The premial Gospel is a powerfully therapeutic message!  To fully grasp how the Father and Son actually related both to each other, through the Holy Spirit, and to the whole of humankind (but specifically toward those who executed Jesus) has a grippingly conciliatory effect.  To come back to God is to return to the source of healing from every abuse–think of Jesus’ own abuse-taking!–and every wound, no matter how deep and festering.  [8/26/10]

Which Justice Shall Prevail in Redemption—Penal or Restorative?

The truth that the blood represents the outflowing power of the resurrection from the dead was hooted down in the early 20^th century by orthodox Evangelicals under the delusive influences of penal substitution. [2/06/9]

Theologians may quibble over the “recipient” of Christ’s “payment” (apodo–) or ransom, and whether it was literal or figurative, etc. But why, then, do they not hassle over whether and how and to whom God “gave” (dido–) His Son? Has pedantry sucked the vitality and simplicity right down a black hole of fruitless wrangling when aggregate New Testament contexts could elegantly clarify the common use of these words? [2/06/09]

It may seem commendable to stay loyally, even ferociously, attached to the only concept of justice one can see in Scripture and to reflexively denounce, accordingly, the usurpation of its exalted status by other redemptive categories when the issue of atonement is at stake. Good enough. But what if the penal justice so roundly invoked and defended in this connection is only half the picture delineated by Scripture…and not the redemptive, saving half? This is precisely the situation confronting the many centuries long dominance of “penal substitution” within theology.  The challenger of “penal substitution” as the modus operandi of atonement is no longer some other category, such as love, mercy, forgiveness, grace, or what have you, no matter how they may be variously conceived.  No, the new contender is a superior justice—a category that will not give way to the claims of other categories, legitimate as they surely are within the proper limits of their inspired contexts. This category will stand its ground against the stream of opposition to diluting God’s righteous claims—a prerogative proudly clutched by the proponents of “penal substitution.” The issue has now been drawn, and the battle pitched, on level ground: WHICH JUSTICE SHALL PREVAIL IN REDEMPTION, PENAL OR RESTORATIVE? Who shall take the field and securely plant the banner of victory: a penal justice deflected from its deserving objects to a sinless Savior, or a restorative justice directed to a deserving Savior and therein magnified to the surprisingly enormous benefit even of undeserving sinners? This is the NEW BATTLEGROUND. [2/06/09]

God surrendered His Son, Jesus, to the “tender mercies” of sinners and their injustices in order to prove His own justice was powerful enough to reverse the injuries and, in the process, overcompensate him for them so that all sinners could avail themselves of that eruption of graciousness, too! THUS DID GOD’S TENDER MERCIES “REPAY” OURS! [2/09/09]

It was not Adam’s intention to die when he ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In fact, he was assured by Satan that he would “not surely die.” The generality of history, down almost to the person, has proven him sadly, tragically, wrong. With One Supreme Exception. Adam proved only that sin leads to death. Jesus proved that righteousness leads to life…superabundant life! This is the way he took away the sin of the world—of anyone who believes, regardless of ethnicity or personal history. By giving us back an authentic foretaste of the healing from the diseases that sin brought and even of the resurrection life that will one day completely engulf and expunge the death that is sin’s ultimate dread fruit, Jesus released us and liberated us from our sin. ALL FOR FREE! All for the taking, “without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1)! [2/10/09]

The BLOOD of Christ does not ‘pay off our debts’ but cleans off our sins and makes A PROTECTIVE COVERING around them.

In order to be saved, we must be released/pardoned/forgiven/let go of or cleansed of our sins, for sins have not been and never can be “paid for”; they are forever and irrevocably under the indignation/anger, and condemnation of God and will drag anyone and everyone down to destruction who remains in them.

Happily, however, the innocent blood of Jesus is available for free, gratuitously, without cost to us, precisely for the erasure and cleansing of our sins and debts, thus making peace…if only we “drink” his blood (John 6:47-66), taking his payment into our selves—our heart or core of existence—by faith, thereby invoking God’s Wholesome Spirit to enter and bring divine, uncreated life (John 7:37-39), the very antidote of the death which “passed through upon all human beings“ from Adam (Rom. 5:12).  This remedy is kindly available from God for all sinners without distinction or exception, but it is inoperative apart from trust.  Our proclaimed pardon by God remains unactualized and ineffective for us unless and until we start to believe this Message, this vivifying Explanation.

The Explanation of God’s Kingdom itself (i.e., the Proclamation of the Resurrection-avenged Crucifixion of Jesus) possesses—has been invested with!—the power of God for our salvation, for part and parcel of that Message is the proof and testimony associated inextricably with it in the story of God’s action as Savior in Jesus, His Only-born, chosen Messiah, and exalted Master of the universe.

We human beings are not consistently capable of freely, wholeheartedly, graciously forgiving our debtors unless and until we ourselves recognize, understand, and believe, and thus render operative and actual our own pardon from God.  Only then are we capable of sustained forgiveness of others, because only then does God bestow the power of His own Spirit—the Divine nature and wholesome contents of favor and truth—into our hearts.  This pledge, guarantee, and downpayment of our full future inheritance within God’s Kingdom gives us an expectancy of such a magnitude of wealth and blessings in Christ that our present losses—and in this connection, also those things we pardon, forgive, release, relinquish, or let go to others of what they owe us on account of their injuries and sins against us—shrink to near insignificance by comparison.

This is why the Holy Spirit is such an indispensable consoler or counselor for us.  It reminds us of all that the Father has given the Son—as that boon is coming also through him to us who stay in the Son by trust.

However, where room is made for chronic unforgiveness, space is prepared for evil spirits to take up residence; in other words, place is given to the Adversary (διαβολ-, Eph. 4:26-27, cf. Rom. 12:19-21).  So when God’s favor/grace is withheld or not extended to fellow humans when they sin, injure, and incur debt or obligation too burdensome to repay, then the seedbed is laid for fury, rage, and wrath to build up.  Legions of demons commence their march toward sites of gathering wrath to stir up a havoc-wreaking vortex.  They can smell the battle from afar as tempers heat and flare up.  Demons appear to be messengers (“angels”) of wrath/anger/indignation in God’s terrestrial economy.  [4/11/02]

Be it noted that the “blood of Jesus Christ,” as the instrument or means of our forgiveness, is no less a metaphor or figure or symbol per se than is the fruit of the vine. Both the blood of the vein and the blood of the vine are stand ins for life; they equally represent the Spirit of life from God in repayment (in fact in superabundant overpayment) to Messiah Jesus as his just award for laying down his earthly bodily existence for our sakes.

Therefore it should pose no more of a stumbling block to Christians that communion wine/juice does not actually become blood than it should have to Jews when Jesus declared they must drink his blood to have life in themselves.  For vein blood and vine blood have, in themselves, an identical ontic status:  fleshly, earthly (as to source/origin), whereas both, as signs or symbols, represent the promised Gift of the New Covenant:  the literal vivifying Spirit of sonship from heaven!

No single earthly fluid, whether wine, water, oil, or blood itself, could fully represent every property, power, and function of the Wholesome Spirit, the core essence of God’s Kingdom, the ‘fullness‘ of love, graciousness, truth, joy, refreshment, cleanness, nourishment, energy, power, light, strength, life, consciousness, heat, cure, healing, relief, lubrication, payment, etc.

The above fluids are all alike shadows of the real—the singular Spirit of life, alone.  The shadows have not entirely outlived their usefulness, of course.  The water of baptism/ immersion, the wine-and-bread of communion/ participation in the Lord’s Supper, and the olive oil of healing/ anointing are still retained under the New Covenant in Messiah’s divinely-avenged blood.  [4/11/02]