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]