“Becoming a curse” did not entail “imputation” of sin.

According to one of the favorite scriptures of Penal Substitution doctrine, Galatians 3:10-14, those who are “of works of Law” are “under a curse” because Deuteronomy 27:26 declares, “Accursed is everyone who is not remaining in all that has gotten written in the scroll of the Law [of Moses] to do them” (Galatians 3:10). Therefore, by the logic of their theory, we should expect that the Lord Jesus was cursed because those lawlessnesses were all “imputed to him.” This teaching is pervasive among those who hold the position. BUT THAT’S NOT HOW IT HAPPENED! Galatians goes on to say that “Christ reclaims us from the curse of the Law, becoming a curse for our sakes, for it is written, ‘Accursed is everyone hanging on a pole, that the blessing of Abraham may be coming to the nations in Jesus Christ, that we may be obtaining the promise of the Spirit through the faithfulness [of Christ]” (Galatians 3:13-14). So there is no need of “our sins/transgressions/lawlessnesses” being imputed to Christ at all in order for him to “become a curse for our sake.” Rather, he became a curse by a completely separate provision than either sinning himself or getting “our sins imputed.” Is anyone paying attention here? Jesus was cursed WRONGFULLY, not “rightfully on account of imputed sins so that God could exhaust His holy wrath against the sins.” So because he suffered WRONGFULLY, God was justified in REVERSING THE CURSE (which obviously entailed death) by RAISING JESUS FROM THE DEAD AND SUPERCOMPENSATING HIM WITH “THE BLESSING OF ABRAHAM” SO THAT WE COULD OBTAIN “THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT THROUGH THE FAITHFULNESS [OF CHRIST].” There is a whole new WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between these “two ways of getting cursed” and their results!

Furthermore, Scripture does not speak of “bearing the curse” as our theologians and hymn writers are wont to do. That strikes of the popular false interpretation of “bearing guilt/penalty” instead of bearing (i.e., enduring) inflicted sins. Moreover, Christ did not “bear our curse”; he suffered under his own, albeit deviously invoked. Still, all these curses derived from the Law of Moses, so when his curse was FLIPPED INTO A BLESSING BY RESURRECTIONAL JUSTICE, the rumble was felt throughout that old decrepit covenant and shattered its temporary authority over the children of Israel. [9/24/08]

“Those who are by nature finite, and have fallen captive to decay because of having turned away from God, are presented, through the calling back of the One into eternal life, with the hope, indeed, the certainty, of following after him (I Cor. 15:21-22).” —Hans Urs von Balthasar, CREDO: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed (San Francisco: 1990 [Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1989]), p. 59. [9/24/08]

Jesus died “for” (huper) our sins so as to benefit us thereby precisely by getting subjected to or “surrendered to” (Isaiah 53:6) those sins of wrongful abuse and crucifixion, for it was these that evoked God’s righteousness to raise him from the dead with manifold recompense and glory/proof. THE ONLY BENEFIT TO US WAS IN THE SUPERCOMPENSATING AWARD TO HIM WHICH HE GRACIOUSLY SHARES WITH ALL WHO BELIEVE IN HIM…PERSEVERINGLY. [9/27/08]

“With what shall a man repay God?”

The prima facie superiority of the early church “ransom to Satan” angle on the Atonement vis a vis the much later “vicarious satisfaction” and “penal substitution” theories is that it seemed fair and just, whereas they have always evoked stiff, highly rational and sensible objections on this score. To be sure, it was often attacked (at least in its increasingly elaborated forms) as “grotesque,” or “intolerable, monstrous and profane,” in the overly derogatory adjectives of R. W. Dale.  [10/25/07]

Anselm writes, “God upholds nothing more justly than he doth the honour of his own dignity” (Cur Deus Homo, i.xiii). (Quoted in John Stott, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity, 1986), p. 119.) This would explain why God raised His dishonored Son from the dead and gave him honor. Why, then, doesn’t Anselm ever draw this obvious conclusion? [10/25/07; 8/27/08]

Scripture never teaches that if a person could repay God what his sins took away from Him, then he could be saved. It never so much as hints at such logic. Scripture never leads us to explain the problem of sin and the solution of salvation in such terms at all. Anselm hereby set up a misleading problematic. Only if a person gets caught in this strange web does s/he find Anselm’s answer in any way appealing or cogent. But in the absence of such legalese, his solution vanishes without a trace. [10/25/07]

John Stott writes, “To be sure, neither ‘satisfaction’ nor ‘substitution’ is a biblical word, and therefore we need to proceed with great caution” (The Cross of Christ, p. 112). Unless they dare presume to walk on water, their venture into quicksand may well be a fateful step even for the great evangelical doctors of the church. [10/25/07]

This is a little bit like saying, “To be sure, the Bible aims the big guns of neither God’s ‘wrath’ nor His ‘condemnation’ at Christ, our Head, and therefore we need to aim them there and pull the trigger with great caution.” ]8/27/08]

The way Jesus was cursed was decidedly not for his being one “who is not remaining in all things written in the scroll of the Torah to do them” (Galatians 3:10, Deuteronomy 27:26), but by “getting hanged on a timber” (Galatians 3:13, Deuteronomy 21:23). This means that “imputation of our sins,” had nothing to do with it! Therefore he was not cursed for “bearing the guilt of our sins as our substitute” at all. This is an artificially fabricated substitute explanation, i.e., a different gospel! (Galatians 1:6) He was accursed because the Jews dared to cause his crucifixion in order to anathematize him wholesale! Yet “no one speaking by God’s Spirit is saying ‘Jesus is anathema’.”  Rather, he is the resurrected and blessed Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3)! [10/26/07]

At one time or another, virtually every analogy of the Atonement (patristic fishing analogy, Anselm’s honor-satisfaction analogy, Calvin’s penal substitution analogy, Grotius’ governmental analogy, Abelard’s exemplary analogy, Aulén’s Christus victor analogy, etc.) has been forced to walk on all fours. Such humiliation may be expected to cause a backlash and disaffection. Still, we could fondly hope for some fortuitous evolution of primitive, at times even “grotesque,” four-footed analogies into full-fledged (feathered!), upstanding theories that might actually take off and soar to unrivaled prominence and universal acceptance. However, the absence of such a prospect on the horizon suggests that this is all a fruitless reverie. Something more serious is afoot in this perennial struggle for survival of rival analogies or contention among complementary ones. [10/26/07]

 

The Post-Resurrection Explosion of Favor from God, through Christ

The reason God appears so often “wrathful” in the Old Testament but so largely “gracious” in the New Testament, is because the Law of Moses–the Old Covenant–was not able to vivify (Gal. 3:21)  and therefore could not justify its subjects but only convict them of sins and injustices, which, when persisted in, brought upon them God’s indignation, anger, or  wrath.  “For the Law is producing indignation” (Rom. 4:15); “the Law through Moses was given; graciousness and truth came to be through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1:17).  Thus there is indeed a vast difference between the face and disposition that for the most part characterized Jehovah under the Old Covenant, and how He much more perfectly became characterized after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ His own Son, who was commissioned to “take away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29) and thereby unleashed an utterly unprecedented, even astounding, torrent of favor!  Yet God’s attitude toward sin had not altered one iota between the Old and New Covenants.  He remains the very same God throughout every era and eon.  The change was on our part when we “realized the favor of God in truth” (Col. 1:6) and trusted Messiah Jesus, thus receiving God’s gratuitous justification and remission of sins and thereby entering God’s favor and Kingdom!  So the problem had been entirely on our side, not on His, for the Law was impotent (Rom. 8:3) and without benefit (Heb. 7:18), its weakness (Heb. 7:38) due to our weakness of flesh (Rom. 8:3, Heb. 7:16).

However, that weak Law did become an escort (paidagogos) to Messiah for the Jews (Gal. 3:24), the superinduction (epeisagoge) of “a better expectation, through which we [also those of the nations] are drawing near to God” (Heb. 7:19).  But it is an escort no longer!  (Gal. 3:25)  Now that we (both Jews and those of the nations) are sons of God by trust in Messiah Jesus, we have our Father’s very own motivation, and so are no longer “under law” (Rom. 6:14-15, 7:1-2, 6, Gal. 3:23, 25, 4:5, 21, 5:18), which is to say,  “under guardians and administrators” (Gal. 4:2), “under the elements of the culture” (Gal. 4:3), and due to our fleshly weakness,  “under sin” (Gal. 3:22, Rom. 7:14), hence “under a curse” (Gal. 3:10).  

Messiah Jesus has reclaimed us from the curse of the Law of Moses (with any attendant anger of God) against our sins.  It is, much rather now the favor of God that is our starting point for conduct and behavior.  Moses’ Law is no longer our ethic, training us by the use of disciplinary curses and object lessons of anger and destruction (which might easily lead to the notion of a constitutionally angry Deity).  Jesus’ favor now takes actual priority since it has invaded a creation still disrupted by sin, and in spite of sin (Rom. 5:6-8), and even overwhelming it (1 Tim. 1:14), taking it off guard, so to speak (1 Cor. 2:6-13), and triumphing over all our enemies in high places (Col. 2:13-15, 1 Cor. 15:8-28).  The saving favor of God is now our trainer (Tit. 2:11-15), our discipliner in ethics (Heb. 12:1-15); the Wholesome Spirit of graciousness is now our coach (Jn. 14:16-17, 26, 15:26, 16:7-14)!  [11/24/97]

God might have spared ancient Israel their tormented history, as we know it, by not giving them the Law/Torah of Moses at Sinai in the first place.  The Law aggravated their sinfulness, thus exposing them in a higher degree to God’s anger than the surrounding nations who had less knowledge of God’s desire, so were less liable to disciplinary action for conscious violations.

In tandem with this provocative intrusion of revealed demands that could not help but heighten Israel’s culpability and expose them to the danger of disciplinary avenging by God, He conjoined sacrificial provisions that promise pardon/ release/ remission/ forgiveness from sin.  But in reality those sacrifices, in themselves, accomplished exactly nothing whatsoever to effect that forgiveness.  They had this one benefit:  they were attached to explicit Divine promises concerning forgiveness, thus faith in God was required to keep offering them.  It was this faith that pleased God to pardon the Law’s infractions, though any essential and perpetual cleansing of the conscience could not actually be attained by the operation of those sacrifices.

Upon reflection, this is truly astonishing!  It means that “in the forbearance of God” He “passed over the penalties of sins which had occurred” throughout Israel’s entire tortured history long “before” the essential cleansing was made available through Jesus, the Messiah (Rom. 3:25, Heb. 1:1-3).  So it was not so much the ancient sacrifices that God was after (to be sure, He even despises and overtly denounces them in no uncertain terms at decisive moments throughout their history), but rather their trust that He really had pardoned them their sins.  The ancient mechanism was in itself but a sign, the obedient performance of which could only be a fruit of their belief that God forgave them when He saw the sign (for He saw their repentant, trusting heart impelling it,  [12/26/22]).

However, with the work of Messiah accomplished, the Truth was fully unveiled, and the whole scheme of things was inverted!  Wrath and grace were transposed; anger and favor  got counter-emphasized.  Now grace/favor could vaunt over wrath/anger for a change, because Messiah’s Crucifixion had justified God in bursting forth from heaven to avenge his unjust execution by Raising him from the dead and exalting him to highest heaven, above all enemies of God’s Kingdom, and giving him superabundant favor as an agelong recompense!  Such an expression of God’s hidden heart was historically impossible prior to Messiah’s barbaric murder.  That heinous deed forced God’s hand to intervene in history and natural processes (uh…His own design, as we know…) beyond all precedent.  This divine judgment precipitated a new age in which the entire Old Covenant Law was itself pointedly “nailed”!  God Himself nailed it fast and blew it to Kingdom come!  The supreme standard of righteousness it is no longer!  What the Father did for the Son, what God did for His chosen Messiah, far surpasses every precedent of justice.  And, mercifully, it even left the culprits alive in the bargain so that they could have time to repent and trust God anew!  The human imagination had never conceived such love from any deity.

The spiritual polarity of the universe was reversed in an instant on Resurrection morn!  Then at Pentecost, 50 days later, the circuit between heaven and earth was closed and the juice turned on, in order to blow Satan out of the water in the first of a new series of shattering encounters with his resurrected, exalted, and now enthroned Foe!

For us who trust the Victor, Messiah Jesus, this compact scenario heralds a new order of the cosmos!  The old-fashioned Law of Moses cannot possibly hold the New Wine of God’s Wholesome Motivation thereupon injected into human affairs.  God’s favor has taken over!  The Regime of Grace now demands supreme allegiance.  Accordingly, the first words we communicate among strangers to this Truth must be words of favor from God in the Messiah—favor that “overwhelms  (huperpleonaz-) with trust and love in Messiah Jesus” (1 Tim. 1:14).  Thus Paul can add:  “Faithful is the explanation, and worthy of all welcome, that Messiah Jesus came into the world to save sinners, foremost of whom am I.  But therefore was I shown mercy, that in me–foremost!–Jesus Messiah should be displaying all his patience, toward a pattern of those who are about to be believing on him for life agelong” (1 Tim. 1:16).

Moreover, it is then precisely this favor that proceeds to become the pivot of our way of life in this age, in contradistinction to the old-fashioned Law of Moses.  Our ethic, our morality, our very customs must become  powered by favor so that God gets full credit for every good action and activity we do.  God’s own Motivation of Wholesomeness is now our inspiration for good projects and fine deeds.  “Don’t fence me in by antiquated rules” could well be our byword in the face of inveterate judaizers; “Don’t tread on me,” our rejoinder to hypernomian tyrants who dare devalue and disdain the motivational dynamic of Divine favor set loose to stimulate every human potential to the very zenith of glorious achievement and integrity.  [11/25/97]