We’re family! Family doesn’t have to pay!

Now that we’re God’s family, through getting born above and adopted, we don’t have to pay for our keep, WE GET PAID (better:  REWARDED) FOR OUR WILLING OBEDIENCE. WHAT A GRACIOUSNESS! [7/12/07]

In God’s Grand Champion Tournament with Satan, His opponent had chosen his heaviest club for a shoo-in shot and NAILED it! But God, Who seemed way behind in the game, with steady gaze and measured gait, commencing “with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace” (with apologies to Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven”). picking up “deliberate speed,” with calculated deliberation, reaching for His elegant, pristine 5 IRON with “majestic INSTANCY” and GRACE SWUNG FOR A LONG SHOT.  

WHOLE IN ONE!!! GAME SHOT! [7/13/07]

WHOLESOMENESS CODE: CREATIONAL RESPECT

Could “unclean spirits” actually gain access to an Israelite by the latter’s violation of Israel’s laws from Moses concerning touching unclean things? Was this maybe one of the reasons why God gave them such detailed and wide-ranging wholesomeness laws? Moreover, was this perhaps a principal reason for the prohibitions against idolatry and all its associated practices? To go a step further, is a primary result of idolatry demonization?

The entire Levitical “holiness/wholesomeness code” was to instruct Israel in respect and honor for the integrity of God’s creatures. It promoted life and fruitfulness and prosperity and harmony on earth. Especially it was to warn them against idolatry, which would open the door to demonization, i.e., the invasion of bad, vicious, unclean, unwholesome spirits to rule the human order, thereby displacing God’s highest creature from that noble estate. In short, the wholesomeness laws constituted a hedge against decadence and its consummation in death (the greatest defilement of all, 11/10/15).  [7/13/07]

ISAIAH 64:6

The Levitical laws pertaining to wholesomeness (the “Holiness Code”) all had to do with keeping the Israelites safe from threats to life. [7/11/07]

ISAIAH 64:6

“And we are becoming as unclean, all of us,

“And as an ornamented garment is all our righteousness.

“And we are decaying as a leaf, all of us,

“And our depravities, as the wind, are carrying us away.”

Isaiah is here confessing that all the presumed “righteousness” of the people is only external, stitched on, pasted on, superficial, for show, hypocritical, a mere cover for decay. This, regrettably, is the exact case also with the much-vaunted “imputed” righteousness taught by the Protestant Reformation. This is why it was so often characterized as a “garment” to be worn. And notwithstanding that such was declared to be “Christ’s righteousness,” with much fanfare and evident piety, yet it is contrary to the sound explanations of the apostles.

Paul teaches that faith is imputed or reckoned as or for righteousness because it accords with the graciousness of God Who was thereby able to be just in giving us the gratuity or present of His Wholesome Spirit without price or obligation. For faith is not a work and hence cannot hold God indebted. It is an attitude of thankful receptivity evoked by the Proclamation of God’s covenantal lovingkindness, graciousness, and peace, ushered in by the faithfully obedient and sinless life of Jesus surrendered to sinners and their horribly sinful actions to the very death of a cross, as a sacrifice to a faithful God, in order to prove before an ignorant world that God is love since He thereupon brought back Jesus alive from the dead, immortal, completely impervious to any further harm, having won supreme authority both in heaven and on earth, AND YET DID NOT DESTROY THEM, NOR WAS HE ANGRY AT THEM FOR WHAT THEIR SINS MADE HIM SUFFER, BUT INSTEAD COMPLETELY FORGAVE THEM AND EVEN COMMISSIONED THEM TO HERALD THE PROCLAMATION OF FORGIVENESS TO ALL THE REST OF THE NATIONS, TOO, BECAUSE NOW HE WAS LORD OF ALL! [7/11/07]

The “solution” to the Atonement “puzzle” has been right under our very noses all along! But perhaps it takes a bloody nose to shock us into realization. The blood of Jesus links together every aspect of our great salvation into a single unified, seamless fabric—not a fabrication, that is, not a theory. His blood shows up in association with virtually every single expression or facet of salvation in the New Testament. This should have told us something, since it’s so obvious (using a humble concordance does help).

This simple fact then forces us to reflect on the full meaning of blood in all the Scriptures. We will eventually find, if we follow out the textual clues, that the blood signifies the soul or embodied life of earthly creatures. So when it gets poured out, it signifies the escape of life from the creature. Furthermore, if it gets extracted wrongfully from an innocent creature by slaying, it then demands avenging[; for if not, the land will be defiled, 7/14/08]. But whereas the Law of Moses required restitution paid to victims of crimes by their victimizers, this is impossible in the case of murder. Therefore the life of the murderer was required in exchange [as a token of justice, 11/10/15].

The sacrificial system played on these realities to the max. A flawless lamb without spot or blemish (signifying sinless innocence) was slain and its blood poured out, collected, and splattered virtually everywhere (what a mess!). This sprinkling would have suggested to every Israelite the need for avenging. But where or when was the avenging of these “innocent” animals to take place? All that ever seemed to result from the whole bloody mess was…forgiveness! In fact, until the Antitype appeared to illuminate these shadowy types, the Truth of the matter remained mostly a mystery.  THERE WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE AN AVENGING OF ALL THESE BLOODY DEATHS, FOR THESE “CAPITAL CRIMES” ALL POINTED AHEAD TO A REAL RESTITUTION BY WAY OF A REAL RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD OF A REAL SINLESS PERSON WHO HAD BORNE REAL INIQUITIES.

And that’s the real solution to the baffling puzzle of the Atonement, because the REAL REWARD that Jesus received from God for all that he wrongfully endured with a graciously willing Spirit was, soteriologically speaking,  ALL INCLUSIVE! [7/11/07]