The bad blood between Protestant liberals and evangelicals

The bad blood between Protestant liberals and evangelicals has borne more evil fruit than the latter imagine. It has induced them unconsciously to overreact against the veracious teachings of Jesus as if they were the inferior property of bleeding-heart liberal theologians rather than the Law of Christ, the supreme norm for authentic Christian behavior! Satan has slyly manipulated evangelicals to minimize the very instrument and discipline of their highest maturity. To hear evangelical preachers and theologians berate the liberal tendency to exalt the Lord’s teaching is to be struck by grief at the immense loss that Satan’s craftiness has inflicted on the church. [4/10/09] Our ethic rings hollow and all but ignores immense, looming evils as if they were “not our business.” But aren’t they? And how, exactly, should the church/Kingdom of God address them? [12/20/16]

Everything the Cross and Resurrection reveal to us concerning God’s character, they also urge upon us, His believing people. For the ‘Crossurrection’ was and remains the central, nuclear, and radical moment when the deepest depths of God’s theretofore hidden person became unveiled before a core of veracious witnesses who were commissioned to herald the sacred truths of the event to all creation. There could be no inner contradictions, no logical incoherencies, no nagging conundrums, no paralyzing mysteries to impede the full and harmonious unraveling of what up to that point in human history had been deliberately, strategically, ever-so-wisely kept under wraps of enigmatic mystery—a secret so sacrosanct that neither prophet nor angel, much less devil, could divine its sacred idiom.

The sublime simplicity of what was unfolding on that dread hill and in that grim tomb must be utterly clear and incomparably gripping to human consciences, for it would constitute the paramount sample and example of redeemed, indeed, redeeming human behavior. What the Lord Jesus accomplished to perfection not only supplied the Spirit of power to energize all others to perform accordingly, but he furnished the paragon paradigm that cuts the pattern of our own conduct and program of divine imitation.

All of this could hardly mean that we are to courageously bear God’s wrath and demand that others pay us what they owe us in order that we may justly forgive them their debts! The near lunacy of such a popular (although often tacit) notion should stop us cold in our treacherous tracks. We should instantly bring to mind many a parable of Jesus and then, if we still harbor remnants of the above thoughts, pause thoughtfully on our slippery slope until we satisfactorily solve the contradiction between our private assumptions and his public teaching and example. [4/12/09]

God’s righteousness was displayed not (as penal substitutionary theologians insist) because “sin had been paid for at the Cross, and God could not rightfully demand such payment twice (because He would thereby be guilty of imposing “double jeopardy” [5/11/09]), and therefore God raised Christ from the dead.” Much rather, IT WAS BECAUSE CHRIST’S MURDER WAS WRONG THAT GOD THEREFORE MUST IN HIS COVENANTAL RIGHTEOUSNESS REVERSE SUCH A DEATH WITH ABUNDANT GLORY AND A STUPENDOUS GIFT: THE HOLY SPIRIT! [4/12/09]

Can God FORGIVE debts without GETTING PAID BACK FOR them?

Was it really a profound sense of God’s “holiness,” “majesty,” and “honor” that moved Anselm to propose a theory of the Atonement that made it impossible for God to forgive debts unless He got paid back for them? Or was it a profoundly impaired sense? Is it possible that Anselm is depicting a deity suffering from Anselm’s own forgiveness-challenged medieval image of humanity, or at least of the prevalent social order? This is no “majestic” deity but a Scrooge. We might even expect such a god to demand from an indebted humanity high interest on his loan of three score and ten years of “totally depraved” lifetime. Ah, but there I’m anticipating John Calvin by some four centuries. So back to the 12^th century…

How profound an honor is one that, when wounded, does not take extenuating circumstances or good intentions into account, much less exerts a noble mercy on the weak and infirm slaves of dark powers, but demands the last farthing. No, not a Scrooge’s, but a Simon Legree’s!

Furthermore, how profound a holiness is it that cannot spare a measure of healing, restoration, or life to pathetic, miserable mortals without expecting it all back? Could such a god be the Creator and Origin of such a universe as we behold on every hand—the One who will one glorious day be at long last “all in all”?

What clues had Anselm gathered regarding the majesty, honor, and holiness of the God who actually is there? A taste for his time-bound, culturally relative, and all-too-crabbed theology of atonement must be an acquired one; I seriously doubt it could ever come ”natural” to someone deeply familiar with and committed to the conceptual accuracy of Biblical Explanation.

Emil Brunner is said to have declared that “punishment is the expression of the divine law and order, of the inviolability of the divine order of the world” (The Mediator, p. 449, as quoted in John W. Stott, The Cross of Christ [IVP, 1986], p. 123). Surely this is a limping, lopsided, and benighted angle on God’s will as expressed in His giving of, e.g., the Torah to Moses.

God’s desire is that we grow into His likeness by obeying His explicit written norms, in the face of temptations to violate them in order to acquire life and goods in the wrong way. If this is the plan, then punishment can only have a distinctly subsidiary role simply to keep things on track. But forgiveness is a most prominent factor with an indispensable role, without which the process has insufficient “stretch” to make room for learning, trial (!), and error (!)…in other words, GROWTH! Thus Brunner’s notion of “inviolability” is seen to hold a dysfunctional and unbiblical prominence in his thought. For is “law” somehow more “the expression of the will of the Lawgiver, of the personal God” (p. 459; p. 123 in Stott) than forgiveness, which must ever attend its human, i.e., supple and effectual and merciful use? Such an emphasis makes God’s program of human maturation wobble way out of balance…dangerously so for human health and wellbeing. [10/26/07]

What was Messiah (indeed, “God in Messiah) doing on the Cross if not “DENYING HIMSELF”?!  John Stott denies that God could possibly do such a thing because “he cannot and will not “deny himself.” But the issue turns on different senses of the expression. Indeed, if there is to be a proper ethical response to God’s own gracious revelation of character at His Son’s cross and resurrection, then GOD MUST BE DISPLAYING EXACTLY THIS TRAIT WHICH HE, IN MESSIAH, “COMMANDED US TO DO” (Stott, Cross of Christ, p. 128).

How do we know that GOD IS NOT EVIL OR ESSENTIALLY WRATHFUL?

How do we know for a certainty that God is not ultimately evil?

Answer:  The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, God’s own Son.  The very allowing—in fact appointing!—of the Cross, Christ’s participating in suffering abuse, like us, in connection with the complete reversal and superabundant overcompensation of that unequalled evil via resurrection from among the dead, all prove irrefutably that God is ultimately, in the final analysis…in the Last Judgment, just and good.  And He’s on our side!  [3/9/03; 7/27/07]

What’s more, we also know the ultimate love and goodness of God by the Spirit that He has put in our hearts when we believe.  (Romans 5:5)  [3/9/03]

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us:

1. God’s precepts to keep, directing us to maturity
2. God’s promises that raise hope, motivating us to endure
3. God’s power through His Holy Spirit, helping us obey
4. God’s pardon for our misdeeds, cleansing our conscience

What more do we need to inspire us to advance toward genuine human maturation as worthy citizens of His Kingdom?  [3/18/03; 9/16/25]

There wasn’t enough blood in all the cattle and sheep and doves of ancient Israel to cleanse, in addition to the priests, Levites, and sanctuary with all its furnishings and utensils, also the other eleven tribes plus all their houses, buildings, possessions, storehouses, livestock, orchards, vineyards, etc., etc., much less to do that gigantic task every day.  Such culture-wide wholesomeness is only possible in wake of the New Covenant with the overwhelming outpouring of the Spirit of wholesomeness resulting from Messiah’s sacrifice and outpouring of his own blood for cleansing and life-giving.

The shadowy images of the Old Covenant were but hints of what is now made possible by the indwelling power from on high.  The very inner character and contents of Deity is now on the loose in the earth so that “Wholesome to Jehovah” may be inscribed on every cowbell and ratchet wrench!  [4/6/03]

When Christians confess that “God is one,” we mean the Father and the Son are one in the Holy Spirit.  This construction is discernible even in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one Deity—the Son begotten from the Father, after their kind, before the ages were even blueprinted.  So, as we might suspect, They are identical in nature and contents—graciousness and truth.

When the Son subsequently was born as a human being—Jesus of Nazareth—he always submitted to his Father’s desire as that became known to him.  Accordingly, he learned obedience through the discipline and even abuse he suffered on earth.  Remaining yet sinless, he could qualify to die for our sins because he was eligible to be raised from the dead even if slain, with all the overcompensating gift of the Holy Spirit as promised.  This he gives away in abundance to any and every sinner who trusts him, thus providing lasting life and pardon to all who desire to receive him.  [5/16/03; 9/16/25]

Is it possible, when we forgive people of their offenses against us while they remain unrepentant of those offenses, that God will then take up our cause and do the avenging Himself, in His own time and as He sees fit?  His explicit desire is that everyone should come to repentance concerning their sins and start loving innocently, without offense, in purity of motive and response.  People who remain stubborn even after being forgiven by many faithfully obedient forgiving Christians, must necessarily evoke God’s eventual indignation for continuing to cause harm to others and refusing to change their minds and habits.  [7/2/03]

God did not mind in the least that His dear people asked of Him signs and miracles.  It’s only when He gave them a whole history of them and still they would not trust Him that He ran out of patience.  It was only when He finally sent them His own beloved Son, the one begotten from His own bosom, yet, regardless, they continued demanding signs, having already murdered him and wiped their mouths from blood, but clamored for still more proof, that God finally said enough is enough.  Very well then, you may go to hell since you resolutely insist.

Scan forward to 70 A.D. and desolating abominations.  After 40 years of divine mercy following their crucifixion of their own Messiah, whose resurrection constituted the greatest sign and wonder ever bestowed on mankind—and on Jews in particular!—that still calloused, stubborn, hardhearted, stiff-necked generation was wiped out in such a show of internecine murder, torture, and even cannibalism as the nation had never before witnessed, nor ever since.

God is generous and kind to give sufficient extraordinary proof in every generation of history, but He wants to see some fruit from it, not petulant whining for more and more, because that’s simply bald disbelief masquerading as a sincere prayer request. [9/18/03]

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #32)

 32.     What is the meaning of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement?

The scapegoat ritual on Yom Kippur in the ancient Jewish festival cycle prefigured the release of Israel’s sins by their transportation into a wasteland of oblivion.  In other words, it revealed half the meaning of atonement—forgiveness.  The ritual with an identical goat, that was sacrificed, whose blood was poured out, collected, and spattered around the most holy/wholesome area in the sacred precincts, represented the other half—the dispersal of the payback from God Himself for the future wrongful slaying of the sinless existence of His Son, more specifically, the greatly increased pouring out of the Holy Spirit of immortal life via an eminently justified, honest-to-goodness Resurrection!  This dual procedure prefigured the single sacrifice of Christ in both its aspects—something only a resurrected sacrifice could actually fulfill in toto.