Christ’s acquiescing in the violent deprivation of his body was the divine prelude that justified its spectacular reversal, entailing God’s propitiousness toward the offenders…and far beyond!

When the Explanation and Son of God assumed a human body of flesh, he did so as a voluntary act of humbling himself into “the likeness of Sin’s flesh” (Romans 8:3) in subordination to his Father’s desired plan.  Furthermore, in thus descending from Heaven, he took possession of a bit of terrestrial turf in a whole new way.  In doing this, nothing was stolen from him, for he laid his original heavenly glory aside without compulsion or constraint.  With the next step of humiliation, however, it was different.  Although he certainly surrendered himself to the Father’s desire yet again, in another gigantic step downward, by surrendering to his envious, embittered enemies, IT WAS THEY WHO TOOK HIS LIFE (SOUL) WRONGFULLY.  THIS WAS OUTRIGHT STEALING FROM HIM WHAT WAS RIGHTFULLY HIS—something quite impossible had he remained in his original heavenly form.  This means that Jesus was covenantally entitled, eligible, and warranted to get his disenfranchised life/soul back again through a just act of divine ransom and redemption.  Acquiescing in this violent deprivation of his body and then committing his spirit to the safekeeping of his Father instead of demanding his messianic rights as the covenantally flawless son of King David, according to his inherited flesh, the Lord Jesus hereby set himself up to receive back from God his body revivified, immortal, glorified, in which to reign over the impending and similarly regenerated creation.

Those two stages ought to be kept distinct in these respects.  The so-called “incarnation” was a necessary but insufficient prelude and substratum of our salvation; the crucifixion-cum-resurrection was the indispensable follow-up that won the prize.  [8/11/10]

“…[F]orgive all by the resurrection.“

Last line of the Orthodox paschal Matins, from the celebration of the “feast of feasts.”  Quoted by Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996) p. 130.  [8/11/10]

For Isaiah 53:4-5 to really work logically, there must be a palpable contrast between the clauses: “We esteemed him smitten, stricken by God and afflicted” YET “he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.” Thus, the second clause is recognized and understood as not a reflex of divine indignation at all, but of divine propitiousness vis a vis human wrongdoing.  [8/12/10]

Penal satisfaction brings out THE KILLER INSTINCT. [8/12/10]

Christ’s wrongful death issued, via God’s righteous resurrection of him, in our rightful life!  That’s because his superabounding award from God was sufficient for the salvation of the whole world without exception or stint.  The formula encompassing the height of his lifelong uprightness and the depth of his wrongful but obediently voluntary humiliation computed out to an incalculable magnitude of graciousness toward the entire world of sinners who wronged him.  [8/13/10]

There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), NOT BECAUSE GOD HAD EXPENDED HIS WRATH ON HIM, BUT PRECISELY BECAUSE HE NEVER DID ANY SUCH THING. NO SUCH ATROCITY WAS ‘NECESSARY’ TO ATONE FOR SIN BUT ONLY GOD’S VERITABLE REVERSAL OF HIS SON’S WRONGFUL DEATH BY GLORIOUS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION ON HIGH, TO STAND ALIVE BEFORE THE FACE OF GOD ON HIS THRONE IN THE CELESTIAL HOLY OF HOLIES!  [8/14/10]

“GOD PURPOSED FOR A PROTECTIVE COVERING” = “[GOD] MADE…A SIN-OFFERING”

2 Corinthians 5:21b (“He makes a sin-offering for our sakes”) and Romans 3:25a (“whom God purposed for a protective cover”) are indeed conceptually parallel, even if not quite equivalent (the first occurred at the altar, the second at the ark of the covenant). Grasping this connection supplies a compensating “redeeming” substitute for the illusory link commonly imagined between 2 Corinthians 5:21b (“He makes…to be sin for us”) and Galatians 3:13b (“becoming a curse”). What’s more, the first of these inter-textual links also reinforces the further valid link between 2 Corinthians 5:21c, “that we may be becoming God’s righteousness in him” and Romans 3:26, “the display of [God’s] righteousness” “for Him to be just and justifying the one who is of the faithfulness of Jesus.” By our immersion into Jesus’ own faithfulness, we become God’s own righteousness through his Resurrection from the dead, for this Event is what justified Jesus to be Master and Messiah, and designated him Son of God. [8/15/07; 11/22/15]

“YET JEHOVAH, IN HIM, INTERCEDES BECAUSE OF ALL OUR DEPRAVITY”

Under very great duress—“Hard pressed is he and being humbled”—Jesus, the Son and Servant of Jehovah, by the Spirit of Jehovah—“Jehovah in him”—intercedes for transgressors, whose burdensome, sinful attacks and verbal assaults he was even then bearing in his pierced, lacerated, and pummeled flesh (Isaiah 53:5-7, 12)—“Father forgive them [the Roman soldiers in particular!], for they are not aware what THEY are doing” (Luke 23:34). Indeed! “Surely OUR illnesses has he borne, and OUR pains—he was burdened with them. Yet WE ACCOUNT HIM touched, smitten by God and humbled. Yet he was wounded from OUR transgressions and crushed from OUR depravities. The discipline for OUR welfare was on him, and by his welts there is healing for US” (Isaiah 53:4-5). For “God was in Messiah, conciliating the world to Himself, NOT ACCOUNTING THEIR offenses to them” (2 Corinthians 5:19)—yet certainly not accounting them to Christ either!—“just as God also, in Messiah, gets YOU treated graciously” (Ephesians 4:32). After all, it was “through the agelong Spirit” that “the Messiah…offers himself flawless to God” (Hebrews 9:14), for “the Messiah also loves YOU, and surrenders himself for US, an approach present and a sacrifice to God, for a fragrant odor” (Ephesians 5:2). “Now, similarly, the Spirit also is aiding OUR weakness/infirmity, for…the Spirit itself is interceding for US with inarticulate groanings. Now He Who is searching the hearts is aware what is the disposition of the Spirit, for in accord with God is it interceding for the saints” (Romans 8:26-27). [8/15/07]

The wrath of God works A.D. exactly as it did B.C. The Cross made no difference whatever in that regard. The unrepentant, stubborn, stiff-necked, hardhearted, and callused still treasure up wrath for the Day of Judgment. And God still unveils wrath from Heaven on them in historic episodes anticipating the Last Day. So what gives? What gives is God’s extraordinary graciousness to all sinners who change their minds about God and start trusting the Proclamation He has commissioned concerning His Son, the Master, Jesus, the Messiah, who fully and convincingly unveiled from Heaven God’s willingness to forgive sins, EVEN ONE SO GRIEVOUS, AGGRAVATED, HEINOUS, AND UNDESERVED, NOT TO ADD, UNGRATEFUL, AS CRUCIFYING HIS COMMISSIONED SON! FOR THIS CRIMINAL ACT OF CAPITAL DEGREE PROVOKED GOD’S RESTORATIVE JUSTICE THAT STUPENDOUSLY OVERCOMPENSATED THE SAVIOR FOR PERISHING AT THE HANDS OF SINNERS WHO THEMSELVES THEREBY DESERVED ONLY THE MOST SEVERE WRATH!

HOWEVER, ALTHOUGH GOD’S WRATH HAD NOT CHANGED ONE IOTA, HIS GRACIOUSNESS HAD BEEN MAGNIFIED TO AN ASTRONOMICAL POWER BY VIRTUE OF THAT HISTORIC DISPLAY OF HIS INCOMPARABLE RIGHTEOUSNESS / JUSTICE. Now He has invited all peoples to drop their weapons, surrender instantly, and join His salvation army of likewise self-sacrificing, non-retaliatory, living martyrs, willing to wait for their reward and in the meantime herald the gripping News of how God Himself provided a cleansing of any sin whatever by means of the very blood that wrath-deserving sinners themselves shed, in order to avert that selfsame wrath. SUCH A SOLUTION TRANSCENDS OUR FONDEST IMAGINING! This redemptive truth ushers irony into a new dimension. [[8/16/07]