Christ’s resurrectionmust have come as a SHOCK to everyone who was faced with the living Savior, even though Jesus in virtually every recorded instance tried to break the (Good!) News gently: incognito in the Emmaus road episode (Luke 24:13-35), “Rejoice!” (Matthew 28:9), “Fear not!” (Matthew 28:10), “Peace to you!” (Luke 24:36, John 20:19, 26), and with Mary Magdalene at the tomb (John 20:11-18). We can now hardly imaging the shuddering effect such an encounter must have had on his first observers. A shock of this nature, instead of inducing a mental disorder or physical disease (as well it might under different circumstances) brought “pangs” of exuberant joy and continual praise! A healing shock wave ensued! [9/19/08]
The worthiness of the Lamb cannot be divvied up and parceled out as “merits” to those in need. That’s not how it works. Messiah’s worthiness in the eyes of God (and now in our grateful estimation too, calling forth exuberant praise!) was the grounds for his judicial award from God. That award—Messiah Jesus’ inheritance from God as reward for covenantal obedience to His directives and voice—THAT’S WHAT IS DISTRIBUTED TO ALL WHO QUALIFY (i.e., by steadfast faith). This being the case, a theology of merits is unnecessary…which may explain why Scripture never spins one out. The “merit” or worthiness of Jesus’ faithfulness is FOR HIM ALONE, AND TO HIS RENOWN! Yet we are GRACIOUSLY OFFERED THE BENEFITS OF HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IF WE ENDURE IN FAITHFUL OBEDIENCE, COMMENCING WITH THE GIFT OF HOLY SPIRIT, THE DOWN PAYMENT OF OUR ENJOYMENT OF THE FUTURE INHERITANCE! [9/19/08]
“Yet Jesus lifts up his eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You hear me. Now I was aware that You are hearing me always, but because of the throng standing about I said it, that they should be believing that You commission me’.” (John 11:41-42) During Jesus’ “sojourn” on the cross, he was always only an instant—a split second—away from rescue from on high. Yet he never lifted a finger from the cross to request Heaven’s “Special Forces” to extricate him from his fatal predicament. [9/19/08]
This means he was in a constant and continual mode of FORGIVENESS throughout his ordeal. Nor would he allow his Father to avenge him; concerning his Roman executioners he pled: “Father, forgive them for they are not aware what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And what exactly were they really doing? Not merely slaying an innocent man, but shamefully, painfully killing THE SON OF THE OWNER OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF, ITS RIGHTFUL HEIR AND MASTER!
This is what makes the cross of Jesus Christ the locus of God’s GRACIOUSNESS the NONPAREIL of FORGIVENESS, the PROOF POSITIVE OF HIS LOVE! And the Resurrection is the DEMONSTRATION OF THE FATHER’S COMPLETE AGREEMENT WITH HIS SON’S LACK OF WRATH AGAINST HIS FOES. This is where “the RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD” got spotlighted with definitive and benignly shocking force for all the world to know…if they would believe His chosen witnesses. However, He did provide plenty of room for them to be shouted down by those who love darkness due to their habitual vicious deeds. Such persons, in God’s wisdom, deserve not to give credence to the authoritative testimony and to perish in their stubbornness instead. God will not drag the wicked into His splendid Kingdom, but allows them to twist the evidence for their own sordid ends…and, sadly, lose out completely for it. [9/20/08]
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 whatTHEY are doing” (Luke 23:34). Indeed! “Surely OUR illnesses has he borne, and OUR pains—he was burdened with them. Yet WE ACCOUNT HIMtouched, 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]
The death of Messiah on the Cross for sins became effective for mankind when God reciprocated that sacrifice with His Own OVERWHELMING REIMBURSEMENT for the cosmic injustice of it. In particular, the outpouring of the Wholesome Spirit of God richly on all who believed, at Pentecost, was the ‘firstfruits’ of the vast harvest to follow as a result of the staggering wisdom and productivity of God’s plan of rescue. This outpouring of the Spirit of agelong life in answer to Messiah’s vicious execution was only the earnest, pledge, or down payment in kind, of the just award (dikaioma) of Messiah’s suffering of abuse. The fruit made it all worth while, in effect, even justified the abuse, from the long view. “He shall see his seed; he shall prosper his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand; he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of himself shall My righteous Servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death and was numbered with the transgressors, yet he [instead of avenging himself] bore the sins of many and [even!] made intercession for the transgressors [pleading, ‘Father forgive them for they’re not aware that they’re doing!‘]” Luke 23:34, Isaiah 53:10-12. [5/23/06]
To concoct the notion that the wrath of God was revealed from Heaven at the Cross of the Messiah because Romans 1:18, et seq., follows Romans 1:16-17 is to commit the fallacy of guilt by association…a fallacy at least partly responsible for Messiah’s crucifixion in the first place!
What in fact is happening in this carefully wrought association of words is a clear CONTRAST between the righteousness of God revealed in the Proclamation (whose exposition picks up again only at Romans 3:21) and the indignation of God revealed from Heaven throughout earth’s sordid history. That anger of God in history is uniformly destructive, but the righteousness of God in the Proclamation, by contrast, is God’s power for SALVATION! [5/23/06]
It’s clear from what happened after the Cross that God refused payment for sin from His Son, but instead (i.e., “in its place”!) payed back His Son for all his losses (which were staggering) and his appalling anguish, SUPEREXCESSIVELY. God is no cheap skate, scrooge, much less a Shylock! At the Resurrection we behold only the very beginning of the fruits of his Son’s suffering of abuse. Our entire salvation—the New Heavens and New Earth, our new vivified bodies, the works!—are encompassed in his reward! Now THAT’S JUSTICE FOR YOU! [5/24/06]
The New Covenant Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, as the fulfillment of Old Covenant prophecies, in reality filled to overflowing the mere letter of those prophecies. That is, the actual fulfilment in Jesus, the Christ or Messiah, had more glory than hinted at in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves! This is one reason why the New Testament use of the Old Testament often looks so strange to us. A Jew of Jesus’ day, reading the Hebrew Scriptures, was not thereby prepared to see, hear, or understand Jesus. In fact, their antiquated, labored interpretations actually blinded them to the Truth when he appeared! They only expected mere literality (this method was at the heart of Zionistic Judaism and has been adopted with no better, but only bitter, results by its Christian counterpart and clone, Dispensationalism). What Jesus proclaimed was superabounding spirituality—the very power of the age to come! Jesus was actually equipped with life superabundant and free for all who trust him as God’s appointed and anointed Son, the inheritor of the universe (not merely a plot of ground in the Near East)! Jesus exploded the eentsy weentsy, teeny weeny notions of the scribes and Pharisees and their pitiful expectations. They hated him for puncturing their parochial hopes, popping their bubbles of bigotry, and skewering their self-important aspirations. The antitype exceeds the type by far, through God’s power! [9/10/97]
Every miracle, every divine healing, is a proof of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every sign, every wonder, is an ally of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom. Every such act of God in current history is a testimony that the resurrected Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living and true God. “Is healing in the Atonement?” No, if we must answer such a question; much rather, “atonement” is in the healing!Since, “that you mayknow that the Son of Mankind has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Rise! Take up your bed and walk!'” (Mt. 9:6, Mk. 2:10, Lk. 5:24) The association is unmistakable; healing and pardon are two fruits of the very same powerful operation, the first visible (thus its probative function to certify the other), the second invisible (hence, otherwise doubtful to sinful mortals, thus requiring an external sign). The supreme sign of the Resurrection of Christ is thus refracted in every other exertion of divine power on behalf of redemption, however nuanced.
The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, God’s only-born Son, in combination with the Resurrection that immediately followed, constitute proof that God is the kind of person Who is both able and desirous of absorbing the cost of personal injury against Himself without demanding repayment or satisfaction of any kind. Such stupendous grace/favor toward us obligates us, much rather, to ebullient gratitude toward Him and repentance for our injuries (for injuries they remain!). There is no greater demonstration imaginable of the true contents of the loving heart of the invisible God—namely, favor—than to send His only-born offspring in visible flesh and blood, to surrender himself to the viciousness of sinful humans and their corrupt justice, and then to radically and totally and overwhelmingly reverse their fatal judgment by the counter-verdict and rightful award of agelong life via Resurrection from among the dead and exaltation to His own right hand! For by so doing God, in effect, remitted the avenging due his murderers (for so they were, and not mere executioners), proclaiming, instead His favor to all who merely repent of their sins (that Big One included!) and trust Jesus as the Messiah/Christ.
Thus we can visibly behold what otherwise, even using the “best” of Old Testament shadows and types, we can yet barely visualize—indeed, that which was routinely misunderstood and unrecognizably twisted. The only “satisfaction” God desires is the satisfaction of seeing His highest creature turn away from destructive sins and start growing into the image and likeness of Himself as seen clearly in His Son Jesus. So by instructing His faithful Son to sacrifice himself, including his royal rights as the authentic King of the Jews, God was preparing to exhibit openly and unmistakably on the public stage of eye-witnessed history, what had always been and would always be unalterably true: Jehovah God does not demand or require or desire payment or recompense or compensation or sacrifice to Himself by anyone in the universe (neither sinners nor His Son) for sin. Much rather, He forgives or pardons sins gratuitously, for free, and “demands” or “requires” that we do likewise, on penalty of our own sins remaining ominously unforgiven by Him!
This is the most startling, life-transforming truth of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom, and we all have far to go to absorb its full force. It should “extort” from us superabundant and never-ending praise and thanks. Not for a moment should such a staggering revelation of God’s self-sacrificing character, conduct, and disposition motivate us to dishonor or trample His explicit desire for our obedience. Our obligations toward Him are nothing less than that we behave ourselves toward one another as He has behaved toward us, i.e., that we become like Him, as exhibited in the conduct of Jesus Christ His uniquely-begotten Son, for this is our very destiny if we seriously believe his words: all who trust Christ are destined by Old Testament Scripture to become sons of God, morphing into His likeness and image. Good gracious!
The Mosaic law was but a shadow of this desire for us. Jesus was the Light that cast Moses and his Torah in the shadows forever. Jesus was greater than Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon combined! The Old Covenant has all but evaporated for those who are in Christ. The grace that Christ received from his Father for obeying Him even to the death of a cross burst into history for our human appropriation and enjoyment at Pentecost, if we do not resist it as the Jews did in Jesus’ day. For our resistance to the Wholesome Spirit of God’s favor will win for us later generations the same just deserts (dikaioma) that God poured out on the stubborn generation of vicious Jews who perished under His wrath when the “abomination of desolation”—the Roman legions of Titus—surrounded and besieged Jerusalem, the “Holy City,” and vaunted temple in 70 A.D., exactly 40 years to the week, one generation, after they viciously dispatched their Messiah. The judgment of “Gehenna,” the Valley of Hinnom where Titus cast the bodies of the dead during Jerusalem’s self-destruction and subsequent cleanup, is the repulsive foretaste of what awaits all who, like those perfidious Jews, remain stubborn to the Son (see Psalm 2), refusing to repent of their sins and acknowledge their rightful Master and royal superior. Thus those who harden themselves to the outpouring of God’s favor are only setting themselves up for the outpouring of His indignation. Our choice is between a baptism of Spirit or of fire. For God delays His anger, not desiring any to get destroyed, yet prolongs His kindness so that many may repent and be saved. He appeals to us, “Now is the day of salvation, repent and trust Me!”
Thus it is clear that no “payment of sin” is even conceivable in Biblical terms! God Himself “pays for sin” (an expression never actually used by Scripture) if in any sense, by absorbing the “cost” into Himself and countering with a gigantic donation back! Furthermore, God proclaims such a great salvation even to His bitter enemies so that even they may get conciliated to Himself! He chose Saul of Tarsus as the great exemplar of such receipt of favor. No wonder that Saul—now Paul—agonized over his remaining stubborn co-Christ-persecutors and fellow-Messiah-murderers. For he now knew that even they could be saved if they would! Jesus himself prayed outright for the forgiveness of his Roman executioners while he was still on the cross, while they were still enemies: “Father forgive them, for they are not aware what they are doing!” (Luke 23:34) How much more had he longed to gather Jerusalem under his wings of protection, but they would not consent (Matt. 23:37-38; Luke 13:34).
God has lavished demonstration upon display, exhibit upon example, proof upon parable, that nothing from His side prevents or ever has prevented or ever will prevent or ever can prevent the superabundant expression of His favor to any and every sinner who only believes His explanations and acts accordingly in consequence, confessing before humans the favor and truth of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. [9/27/97]
The Premial Atonement 