The Lord Jesus suffered OUR PLIGHT, but NOT ‘IN OUR PLACE’ or ‘AS A SINNER.’

Jesus, the Messiah, God’s only-born Son, never “took our place as sinner.”*  Emphatically not!   He came to suffer abuse unjustly, which, all will agree, was NOT OUR PREDICAMENT AT ALL!  It was precisely THIS UTTERLY UNIQUE PREDICAMENT OF HIS THAT INVITED HIS FATHER’S DIVINE JUDICIAL INTERVENTION TO DO HIM A STUPENDOUS ACT OF JUSTICE THAT WE SINNERS COULD NEVER DESERVE, AND THEN TO GIVE AWAY THE STAGGERING PROCEEDS TO ANY WHO WILL BELIEVE!  This all means that he suffered our PLIGHT, but not in our PLACE “as sinner.”  This latter notion derives largely from a mistranslation and misinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21 as teaching that Jesus became “sin,” whereas appropriate sacrificial parallels from Leviticus would indicate that he was made a “sin-offering” (identical with the word translated “sin” in both Hebrew and LXX Greek texts).  Case dismissed.

To be sure, the plight he entered was to suffer the abuses a sinner might deserve. However, it is precisely because he suffered them as perfectly innocent, not as sinful in any sense whatsoever, that God could do him the overwhelming justice that saves us! (This most strenuous declaration, I must emphatically interject, is in radically antithetical contradiction of Martin Luther’s imaginative but utterly abysmal caricature of the Biblical facts in his comments at Galatians 3:13, with echoes elsewhere, in his famous and immensely influential A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians [2/10/22])

*Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), pp. 172-73.  [9/12/10]

No matter how much of a “representative” Jesus may be alleged to have been on behalf of his people Israel as their authentically anointed High Priest, nevertheless, they officially rejected him as such so that when Israel’s God, Yahweh, Himself reinstated him on the third day after his execution, it was as HIGH PRIEST OVER ALL NATIONS!  Thus, in part, was he justly repaid for his submissive suffering of Israel’s abuse; thus God magnified his high priestly office beyond the boundaries of a single sinful nation in order to serve the needs of all sinners regardless of nationality.  [9/13/10]

In baptism (immersion), the resurrected Lord Jesus, the Messiah, IS SHARING WITH BELIEVERS THE SPOILS HE WON IN HIS CONTEST AGAINST SATAN! As our champion, he showers on his friends and compatriots what he received from God in exchange for his flawless engagement with the dark powers of the Adversary, namely, extraordinary graciousness, power, and glory, not to add, immortality! Therefore, to get baptized is to become a beneficiary of the most momentous military victory of all ages!  Plus, it’s all free to us for the taking, by simple trust. This is the Good News of God about the Messiah of Israel now become the Lord of all nations. [9/13/10]

The blood of Jesus that drenched his cross (staur-) rejuvenated that wood (xul-) into a Tree (xul-) of Life, producing the fruits of the Spirit that Jesus promised those who remain in him as branches in the True Vine (to playfully mix metaphors…but only a smidgen!).  The superabundance of Holy Spirit that came from on high at that most memorable Pentecost and ever after was the fruit of Christ’s undeserved crucifixion via God’s just recompense to him, revealing the cosmic generosity of “the promise of the Father” by its fulfillment at such a well-attested historic moment, for the sake of all those who would later come under the hearing of the Proclamation of God’s wondrous Kingdom.  [9/13/10]