What is Christ’s whole career of indefectible achievement worth IN GOD’S ESTIMATION?

What is it worth for a person to resist every temptation to sin their whole life long, no matter what the severity of the trial?  This is the unprecedented achievement of Jesus of Nazareth.  Some indication of its worth can be observed in the awarded judgment he received in the aftermath when, instead of obtaining the credit he was due for such an accomplishment, he was humiliated and deprived of not only justice in general, but moreover of his very life itself!  For the upshot of that mistreatment was God’s own swift intervention to super-compensate him for all his trouble on account of and on behalf of sinners, since his mission, after all, was to save his people from their sins.  [8/04/10]

Jesus, like Joseph of old, was the son whom the father specially favored, and this predictably brought out the envy of his brothers, who conspired to slay him.  Yet even as Joseph was, as it were, raised up out of the pit of certain death, then exalted above his wicked brothers in order to save them from impending famine and death, so Jesus was in actuality raised up from the dead and exalted above his wicked brothers in order to save them from their sins and give them new life.  [8/04/10]

The degree to which Jesus was exalted after his lifelong, but especially his culminating, abuse-taking is some measure of the value that God imputed to his durable obedience of faith, despite all temptations and unprovoked attacks.  God displayed this visibly to mankind so that we might have expectation amidst our own trials and thus win the prize, too.  However, Jesus uniquely rendered this whole scenario and outcome even possible by his perfectly sinless qualifying run.  We can now happily follow, though imperfectly, in his steps.  [8/05/10]

AN OPEN JOURNAL to NEW CITY FELLOWSHIP, Grand Rapids, MI — Retrospective #1

Sunday, February 8, 2015

On this Sunday morning, Jeff Shamess, Congregational Life Pastor from Harvest Church (OPC) in Wyoming, MI–the mother church of NCF–was the guest preacher.  He taught from the book of Esther, chap. 6, under the title, “The Ordinary Providence of God and Me.” While pondering the little switcheroo between Haman and Mordecai at the climax of the story, I was suddenly struck by some of the premial significance of the episode that had evidently escaped me earlier.

Mordecai’s reward included salvation for his fellow countrymen…an extension of premial justice to many other persons.  Or perhaps this benefit should be viewed as also resulting from Ahasuerus’s favor toward Esther, now extended to her entire people.

In both cases, please observe, the dispensation of salvation on behalf of the whole Jewish population in Persia would still be premial, and not in the least resulting from any penal displacement of punishment onto a substitute (unless you were to construe Haman as such a surrogate!)

Thus even the book of Esther, where God’s name does not appear, is still rich in Messianic significance in terms of the super-compensated reward of premial justice that it reveals.  But whereas in Job, the reward is focused on its benefit to Job, in Esther the reward is contemplated from the aspect of its ultimate benefit to the whole people.  So here is another narrative layer to the theme we saw in the history of Joseph in Egypt, the earlier major power in civilization.  Notice how God is intent in bringing blessing to the nations.

This was not a point of Jeff’s sermon.  But it bears careful consideration in view of its messianic fulfillment in Jesus.

I was able to share these observations with Jeff after the sermon, and also conveyed my basic understanding of the premial approach to the Atonement and how I arrived at it over the years.  Regrettably, I did not have any of my Atonement documents handy to give him before he left.

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #25)

 25.     Didn’t the wrath of God fall on Christ at the Cross?

Never happened.  Scripture is completely silent concerning the notion of the Cross being an event that reveals God’s anger against sin.  Much rather, it exposed the fury of the Adversary—the wrath of the great Dragon, the ancient Serpent, Satan himself—against God’s Son and ironically tricked him into daring to fatally assault God’s Chosen and Anointed One to deprive him of his rightful due as Israel’s true king.  For sure, Jesus tasted the bitter cup of that affliction for our sakes, but his lips never touched the cup of God’s wrath.  God never for one moment harbored anything but fatherly favor and graciousness toward His beloved Son.  To allege otherwise, in any sense, is to impute an ill-befitting taint of schizophrenic disorder or split-personality to the Creator.  He no more felt or expressed acute (much less, chronic!) indignation against Jesus than He did against even his flawed predecessors, Noah or Abraham, Joseph or Job, Moses or David, Jeremiah or Daniel, et al.  In spite of getting grievously abused, Messiah was in the gracious hands of God, start to finish.  Get a grip!  Hold that thought.