AN ODD WAY OF MAKING PEACE

When God, the “Knower of hearts” (Acts 15:8), sees the “the blood of His Own” (Acts 20:28) sprinkled on our hearts by faith, He “avenges” it in a similarly overcompensating manner that He did when it “cried out” to Him in sinless innocence from the cross of Jesus, for in his death he himself was savagely silenced. In the case of the Messiah, he was overcompensated with immortality, exaltation, and enthronement…for starters! In our case, we are overcompensated for our faith—perfectly empty of labor or toil, for which otherwise we might indeed reasonably expect at least some meager compensation via divine indebtedness—by an overwhelming flood of pure divine graciousness—unearned, undeserved, absolutely unimagined! And all for Messiah’s sake and to his glorious credit!

Here we can behold how much more than being “just forgiven” (as the bumper sticker has it) came bounding our way when God peered into our hearts and saw humble faith. FOR WHEN GOD SEES TRUST, HE DECLARES, “JUST!” and responds with the judicial awarding of the Holy Spirit of resurrection power and agelong life, “poured out on us richly through Jesus Messiah, our Savior” (Titus 3:6), yet even so, but a mere earnest of our future full inheritance together with Messiah and our fellow believers.

It is right for God to do this for us because His only-born Son suffered abuse beyond measure, therefore he must legally get reparations—including Wholesome Spirit—without measure (John 3:33). ‘Even-steven’ doesn’t cut it in God’s courtroom. Furthermore, he gets to give away his wealth if he wants to! It’s his. Therefore his own loving heart is visible in how he bestows his beneficence to us—his enemies, on account of vicious deeds and hateful thoughts…and unworthy theologies!

“Yet he who is stubborn as to the Son shall not be seeing life, but the indignation of God is remaining on him” (John 3:36b). Ouch! That abiding anger of God is not some residue of a merely partial unloading of it on the Cross, for Scripture gives no evidence of anger from Heaven against Messiah Jesus at any point in his career, not even excepting his cross! Rather, mediate revelations of God’s anger are displayed on an “as needed” basis throughout the uneven drama of disrupted human history. (A decisively paradigmatic instance took place in 70 A.D. to close out God’s long patience with the physical seed of Israel who had despised and viciously chased and oppressed any who showed receptivity to God’s utterly unprecedented graciousness and, in their bitterly intolerant racism, had forbidden even its communication to other nations and peoples.) But its final terrifying unveiling awaits the Lake of Fire for all who have never repented and entered God’s favor.

Clearly then, it is the repudiation of the Father’s and the Son’s steady, undeviating graciousness, offered in the Proclamation of the Kingdom, that accounts for any advent of Their indignation/anger/wrath upon sinful human beings (for They are and ever have been absolutely and indivisibly ONE in this trait). [4/19/06]

How had God conciliated us to Himself through Christ unless by extending us graciousness (), including the gracious gift () and gratuity () of Wholesome Spirit when, in His response to the offenses of the world, culminating in the crime of crucifying His own Son, the rightful King of Israel, instead of avenging the Cross by destroying his murderers on the spot, He in fact stupendously reversed the fatal crime itself by an unheard of act of justice to Jesus that transcends by far every created means of possible accomplishment, and thus also every sober expectation or speculation!

That kind of totally awesome justice, by way of avenging, heralded a reprieve of destruction for all Messiah’s enemies while simultaneously announcing in unmistakable terms the tandem fact that this resurrected Man must then undeniably be who he said he was…and then some! That could only mean that he had EVERY LEGITIMATE RIGHT TO WIPE THEM OUT, YET DID NOT! THIS FURTHER IMPLIES THAT HE WAS LEAVING THEM FREE IN THE MEANTIME TO BOW IN SUBMISSION TO HIS VINDICATED CLAIMS, OR WAIT UNTIL HIS DREADFUL COUNTER-SENTENCE AGAINST REBELS WOULD BE HISTORICALLY EXECUTED AS PROMISED. THEIR MOVE.

WHAT AN UNHEARD-OF WAY TO TREAT MORTAL ENEMIES! YET THAT WAS GOD’S WAY OF PEACEMAKING. HE ACTUALLY LET THEM MURDER HIS OWN SON, THEIR KING, AND ‘GET AWAY WITH IT’! BUT ONLY THAT ONCE! FOR ONCE WAS ALL IT TOOK TO PROVE ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT JESUS WAS TRULY A MERCIFUL SAVIOR. Further rejection of His terms of peace and surrender could be met with terrifying consequences. It was this frightful possibility that the “Abomination of Desolation” in 70 A.D. was intended to etch indelibly on the slate of human history and racial memory thenceforth. [4/19/06]

The Antitype Exceeds the Type: The Fulfillment Surpasses the Prophecy

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 may know 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]