Jesus’ perfection expelled any fear that his humiliating CRUCIFIXION was God’s punishment; he persisted expectant only of God’s reward of exaltation through RESURRECTION and beyond.

The reason why, in the 2^nd century Christian author Irenaeus’s ‘recapitulation’ explanation of the Atonement, “not only the death of Christ but also the life/career of Christ has redemptive significance,” is simple.  What the Father overcompensates Christ for, in and by his resurrection and exaltation, is his unsurpassed career of obedient, righteous deeds that was unjustly dishonored and violently cut short by the sins of the Jews and failures of the Romans under the common inspiration of Satan.  Even a generous recompense is only in proportion to its base injury or ‘mass’ of infraction.  Legal damages are calculated proportional to loss.  10 or 100, or even 1000 times 0 = 0.  Justice must have material to work with.  Jesus docked up a life of consistently (not to say exclusively!) worthy behaviors conformable to his Father’s desire, and well-pleasing to Him.  This he sacrificed, likewise at his Father’s wish, to established authorities whose duty was to dispense justice to the poor, distressed, injured, humiliated, and cheated.  But those authorities defaulted on their divine duties of due diligence!  A murder takes on greater ‘volume’ and value and virtue in the scales of justice in proportion to the good that it wrongfully snuffs out.  God paid damages far, far outstripping Messiah’s loss; He would not have been right to repay less.  [4/9/06]

“Fear is not in love, but perfect [telei-] love is casting out fear, for fear has punishment [kolasis]” (1 John 4:18), therefore love must not have punishment!  [4/10/06]  As God’s own Son is our Exemplar, he must have had no fear of punishment by God at the cross.  He well knew this event held no divine penalty whatever, but only amounted to “buffeting [kolaphiz-]” from Satan (2 Cor 12:7-10, Matt. 26:67, Mk. 14:65, 1 Cor. 4:9-21, 1 Pet. 2:20-24)  and “contradiction [antilogia] by sinners” (Heb. 12:3), to be endured as filial “discipline“ (paideia) from a loving Father (Heb. 12:5-9) in order to bring him to perfection (telei-) or maturity of wholesomeness (agi–) and love (agape) (Heb. 2:10-11, 12:10-14, 1 Jn. 5:17-18) through his learning obedience (Heb. 5:7-9, 7:27-28) to God’s desire (Heb. 10:5-14), so that he might receive superabundant graciousness from God (Heb. 2:9, 12:14-15, 18, 1 Pet. 2:19-20, Rom. 5:15-21) because of his humiliation by Satan, his Adversary (1 Pet. 5:5-10, James 4:5-10), and all so that we his friends, too, might be able to share in his wholesomeness, and hence his graciousness (2 Cor. 12:7-10), and likewise learn to effect his desire on earth and give God the divine service He deserves (Rom. 12:1-8).  [8/26/07]

Jesus’ honoring of Levitical Law by his true, spiritual keeping of the Law, paid whatever tribute was necessary to it.  But it must not escape us what this true obedience actually, phenomenally, looked like.  This brand of Law-keeping was repeatedly condemned by the teachers of the Law—the scribes, Pharisees, elders, and chief-priests of the Jews.  Their brand of ‘holiness’ was brittle, fragile, breakable—highly breakable!  In stark contrast, true righteousness is supple, stretchy, conformable to the actualities of daily variation in real circumstances—the spirit of the Law was conformable to reality.  The letter of the Law refuses to adapt to human variations and needs, which it can override, trample, and kill.  Jesus proved this—profoundly demonstrated what such abortive ‘virtual’, literalistic, ‘Law-keeping’ will do to One who is actually a perfect, flawless Law-keeper.  By vindicating true obedience, Jesus outright condemned every such misuse of Moses’ Law.  He came back to life—agelong life!—after wrongful official ‘Law-keeping’ had condemned and executed him!  “A Greater than Moses” has arrived to light up the true way of life for us:  durable, correctly-invested faith that justifies.  [4/10/06]

The greater graciousness since Messiah’s Resurrection enables our greater endurance.

It is precisely because there is more favor from God manifested among God’s people during the era since the Resurrection of Jesus and Pentecost that there is less excuse to seek out loopholes to escape the necessity of enduring hatred, oppression, persecution, adversity, abuse, distress, opposition, exploitation, etc.  It is inexcusably common to hear “grace” used as a justification for escaping a “bad” marriage or to excuse conduct clearly denounced in the apostolic Writings.  But they themselves teach that God’s favor is the more displayed upon those who willingly suffer and endure being harmed and hurt by others (1 Peter).  Jesus, the Messiah, is our exemplar in this.  [1/22/00]

That said, however, God often allows His people to suffer great indignities and evils now… so that He can gloriously reverse them! [4/24/00]  This too is graciousness from God.  In both cases, His timing is to be trusted.

Why would God publish a book like the Old Testament if He didn’t want us, in our own day, to be encouraged enough by its exploits and true adventures to expect Him to do such things for and through us?  Otherwise it’s an irritatingly tantalizing record of “unrepeatable” events!  It’s just a big tease!  That doesn’t make sense at all.

The reason God piled together such an astonishing array of “incredible” events in one big Book—events that were unquestionably special and out-of-the-ordinary even in their own day—is because He was working up to the present age following the coming of Messiah.  This is the age of God’s Spirit, when everyone who trusts Jesus as Messiah and Jehovah-in-the-flesh can get for free, all the time, that very same Spirit of power and favor that only intermittently showed up under the Old Covenant.  It’s all for us! [4/26/00]

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”  “Christ among you, the expectation of glory.”  “Jesus Christ is in you…”  “The Spirit of glory and power, and that of God, rests upon you.”  Every Scripture that encourages us with explanations about God or Messiah or His Spirit inside, within, among, or upon us is intended to confirm that the present operations and empirical fruits of Messiah’s resurrection from the dead are available to every believer at any time in order to minister to other people—both believers and unbelievers—for their healing, salvation, liberation, conciliation, pardon, cleansing, peace, rescue, expulsion of demons, etc.  It is, in other words, a rousing affirmation of the qualification of each one of us to minister the favor and power and glory of God’s present Kingdom to one another and to others whom God is calling to Himself.  [6/3/00]

When followers of Christ suffer abuse from others, there are a couple of plausible options for explaining it.  Either they are “paying for their own sins,” or they are suffering abuse for being upright and just (à la Einstein’s alleged quip: “No good deed will go unpunished”).  In either case they should bear it amenably, in expectancy of God’s pardoning or vindicating (as the case may be) favor, despite attacks from unleashed human indignation (whether unjustified or justified) (Leviticus 26:40-46)  [6/13/00]