Closed-system, zero-sum mundane economics and commercial finance cannot comprehend either the ex nihilo wealth-creation that exclusively accounts for the vast super-compensation rendered to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Creator for bearing outrageous injustices, nor can it fathom the gratuitous giveaway program of welfare to unworthy sinners that came in its wake. PENAL SATISFACTION is thus perpetually at cross-purposes with PREMIAL RESTITUTION.

Perhaps the central ‘gratifying’ or ‘satisfying’ feature of penal substitution is the sense that a certain ‘number’ or ‘quantity’ of sins can be ‘completely paid for,’ thus supplying a kind of ‘closure’ to the system, also psychologically. Everything seems ‘symmetrical’ and ‘clinched.’ But this is illusory. In fact, it creates a false security that, in practice, actually compromises a dynamic, vital, covenantal relationship with the living God. The ethical results of such an impersonal—even mechanical or automatic—schema are often appallingly dis–grace-ful. False security can breed conceit and arrogance, clannishness and sectarianism.

The inner certainty and spiritual assurance we crave as fragile mortals are founded on the solid proof of God’s graciousness in spite of any ‘amount’ of sin. That proof has been granted in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from a crucifixion by vicious sinners who were thereby spared immediate, well-deserved termination.

However, when the authentic original interpretation of the ‘Crossurrection‘ composite of integrally linked events comes to be denatured into a penal event followed by a mere resurrection rubber-stamp, then the full impact of those tandem Messianic events is debased and disempowered from delivering its intended full redemptive payload and veers off its divine trajectory. But properly understood and proclaimed, the ‘Crossurrection‘ trumps any other conceivable method or means of providing confident assurance of God’s gracious acceptance, and all without breeding unbefitting presumptuousness. This is because God deliberately made sure there were plenty of qualified, diverse, and independent eyewitnesses to both of its key historic components as well as to Jesus’ career of powerful miraculous deeds, peerless ethical instruction, and prophetic fulfillments in startling sync with literally scores of ancient prophecies recorded in Israel’s ancient Scriptures.

For the same reason, any talk of ‘merits‘ here is unbiblical—a vain attempt to ‘compute’ a conjectured economic exchange rate between sins and pardons. All such recourses are carnal calculations with deceptive utility and positive harm. Such fundamental departures from native biblical vocabulary and conceptuality are shoals easily avoidable by prioritizing concordant analysis of recurrent biblical patterns of usage, whether of words, numbers, names, metaphors, themes, or even whole narrative episodes. [2/6/11; 10/11/23]

In addition to the eyewitness testimony of the disciples of Jesus to his career, crucifixion, and resurrected existence, the miracle-working testimony of the Holy Spirit ever since Pentecost may be added to those weighty considerations that establish God’s extraordinary graciousness and forgiveness, and which far surpass the deceptive grounds of ‘penal substitution,’ i.e., a conjectured ‘penal satisfaction of God’s penal justice‘ by Christ, which is but quicksand.

Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism (at least in the form of its influential but idiosyncratic articulation by Hugo Grotius), and Amyraldianism, each in varying degree, suffer under the imaginary burden of establishing a surer ‘economic’ basis for God’s amazing grace than the unalterable written witness of the New Testament conjoined with the continuous experiential witness of the Holy Spirit. [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

By the Cross, Satan imagined that he had successfully stamped out his rival for rule of planet earth along with his miraculous restorative powers. But it so happens that these creation-restoring powers of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to Jesus as Messiah were his right, due to his lifelong maturing obedience to God his Father. Therefore, when Jesus was deprived of his life, including those powers that were his property and rightful possession, Satan committed a criminal act deserving, by the rules of divine justice, DUE COMPENSATION, which, in this unexpectedly exceptional case, just so happened to be ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING! And it is this unparalleled supercompensation that Christ personally bequeaths to us as a pure gift—immersion in the Holy Spirit of unquenchable life. Without Christ’s brutal experience of abuse unto death, this compensation would never even have existed for us, because never called into existence by the exigencies of reparative justice to him. Praise God from Whom such Blessings flow!

This peculiar feature of divine justice—supercompensation—may also account for the necessity (in view of God’s intended outcome of salvation for ALL who trust Him) of His Son’s even suffering a curse of the Law of Moses (which God Himself had stipulated, of course) as well as temporary abandonment at the cross. For THESE EVILS (although by no means to be construed as ‘divine punishments’ administered substitutionarily on behalf of sin/sinners who all ‘deserved’ them), WOULD LIKEWISE NEED TO BE JUSTLY SUPERCOMPENSATED BY GOD. And such compensation would constitute proof that those particular abuses were not ‘signs of God’s wrath’ but definitive precursors, even beneficent enhancements, of His impending justly due GRACIOUSNESS, indeed, His very SPIRIT OF GRACIOUSNESS! [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

Generally speaking, an “atoning” deed is whatever may be deemed necessary to bring peace in a particular circumstance of hostility or grievance. It ‘makes everything alright,’ relatively speaking. It induces conciliation and friendly relations between contending parties by joint agreement. However, the Atonement that God pre-planned far surpassed the limitations and relativity of the countless cultural conventions for achieving nominal interpersonal amity post-conflict. For God’s own method, at last, satisfactorily tackled “the Last Enemy,” Death itself, which hovers menacingly behind every terrestrial animosity and injury. (See, for example, Don Richardson’s noteworthy account in his famous book, Peace Child.) [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

An INCARNATION without a MULTIPLICATION is a LONE CARNATION

Those who hold that the incarnation of God’s Son is the most central event for our salvation can well appeal to chapter six of John’s Gospel. But however we may rightly press the necessity of God’s Explanation further becoming a visible Image by assuming genuine human flesh, yet if he had not made it distributable by sacrificing it to an unjust death on our behalf, it could not have risen from its cursed earth transformed, immortal, and possessed of super-excessive life for giving away graciously to all who would trust him. An incarnation without a method of MULTIPLICATION is but a lone carnation—a cut flower that “remains alone” and soon withers. But if its seed falls into the earth and dies, it springs up in MULTIPLICITY, by the overcompensating justice of God, to see another day, an agelong one. [9/28/06]

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #33)

33.     What did the blood of the sacrifices signify, and how did it atone for sin?

The blood of flawless sacrificed animals (living souls) prophetically represented the sinless soul of the Lamb of God, slain and risen from the dead by the covenant-fulfilling righteousness of God, through the power of the regenerating Spirit that gives everlasting life and hence can heal, make wholesome, and cleanse from sin as well.  That’s why the Levitical priesthood had so many ritual uses for sacrificial blood—to dedicate places, consecrate objects, sanctify people, heal lepers, cleanse from sin, etc.  But these uses were all based on the truly innocent blood (that is, sinless life, soul, or existence) of Jesus, which, when it was brutally shed, called forth God’s overcompensating justice to award him damages of cosmic magnitude, of which the Wholesome Spirit of life is pre-eminent.  When Christ’s blood is said to be sprinkled on our heart because we trust his Proclamation, it provokes God’s just restitution to send us the same Spirit of power that raised him from the dead, along with special signs following as visible phenomena attesting outwardly the new creation God has inwardly initiated in the core of our personality.  God graciously gives these extraordinary manifestations as official testimonies to endorse His message of inner release from the addictive grip of sin.  Jesus bore with aggravated sins, and by those lashes others get healed by virtue of the generous compensation that God’s justice dictates.  In brief:  sacrificial blood always depicts resurrection life, along with its extraordinary saving powers; it is the Old Testament symbol of resurrection from the dead!  Get it?

Signs & Wonders: Proofs of Our Proclamation concerning God’s Coming Kingdom

Before the disruption of the world by sin, the Father had chosen His Son as the inheritor of the universe.  God’s Explanation of this agelong favor upon His Son and, through him, upon anyone else who simply trusts, is the Divinely chosen means to call people back to Himself.  However, human minds have become so blinded by sin (their own and others’ done against them) and lust and corruption that God appointed the demonstrative power of signs and miracles of His Wholesome Spirit to accompany the Proclamation of His Kingdom inheritance.  The Spirit is, in fact, the very pledge and solid foretaste of that future inheritance.  These signs, miracles, and powers, by causing amazement, astonishment, and awe, draw jaded human attention back to the light and glory (“proof”) of the Truth, triggering repentance.

The historic Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ and Son of God, is the supreme proof of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom, of which the powerful personal experience of immersion in Wholesome Spirit is intended to be the continuing, tangible, visible seal on earth.  Christ’s Resurrection is the supreme historic unveiling of God’s overcompensating justice.  The agelong life that was thereby bestowed on him was the rightful award of his unjust suffering of abuse.  This justification of Jesus via Resurrection, bestowing upon him transcendent, superabundant favor after favor, ipso facto justified God Himself–theologians call such a justification a “theodicy”–in His judgments toward humanity, and also thereby justifies the sinner who believes the Announcement of Christ’s Resurrection.  In fact, God regards such trust as justice, not because of any medieval dogma about a “transfer of merits” or “imputation of sins,” but because human trust accords with Divine favor and is generated by the inherent persuasive power of the true narrative about God’s miraculous endorsement and certification of Jesus to be Messiah and rightful Covenant heir.  [4/17/97

Consider carefully the ways in which Jesus before his baptism was like Adam before his sinning.  Jesus had to learn obedience from that which he suffered throughout his life.  Where Adam at length failed, Jesus continuously succeeded, being anointed as the Messiah at his baptism by John.  He was tried thereafter and triumphed yet again, proceeding on to his appointed ministry with great power and spirit of wholesomeness.  Yet again he was tested, this time supremely, in the Garden of Gethsemane, even up to the very moment of death…but won the victory of faith that secured even our salvation, much less his own–for, yes, Jesus was himself “saved” from death and the unseen–by God’s raising him to agelong life.  [4/22/97]

Jesus says, in effect, “Let’s make a deal.  I’ll die for your sake; you live for my sake.  I’ll give up my kingship over the nation of Israel now so that all nations can then enter my Father’s universal Kingdom without impediment.  Deal?”  [5/15/97]  This, however, cannot be construed as a so-called “substitutionary” exchange since Jesus did not die under a Divine penalty, or as some sort of even exchange of just so much pain for just so much gain, but entirely in the favor of God, thereby winning an incomparable reward instead.  This fact takes all the wind out of the word “substitute,” so we may then fall back on the sound key terms the Wholesome Spirit has selected in Wholesome Scripture for our authentic sanctification (being ourselves rendered wholesome).  [7/07/07]