It is ‘crucial’ to recognize, admit, even assert and herald, that nothing saving happened on that misnamed ‘Good’ Friday nearly two millennia ago. Because if we do try to shoehorn a bit of resurrectionary salvation into the tragic and profane and cowardly and damnable miscarriage that was Messiah’s crucifixion, we steal from the magnitude and muffle the glory of God’s ‘incredible’ rescue operation on the third day, right on schedule according to ancient plan! For then Cross and Resurrection get all smooshed together and their very different glories and distinct roles get confused. God even gets blamed for brutalizing His own Son! Blasphemy! And the Devil gets off scot-free! That ain’t right. Then what do we have left but “another gospel,” an “indistinct sound,” a parody, a ‘substitutionary’ gospel that amounts to a cheap substitute for the authentic trumpet sound of Messiah’s victory and divine justification by triumphant resurrection from the grave and explosive escape from the Unseen!
Get this right and everything else fits into place elegantly…locks into place seamlessly. This is the keystone of the sweeping arch of God’s integral Explanation of our planetary salvation. [4/10/06]
Only the resurrectionary Explanation of the cross of Christ provides the radically coherent and internally cohesive criterion for a proper blend of every factual feature from the three currently most dominant views of the Atonement. Christ’s resurrection harmonizes everything worth keeping. Only with this crystal clear lens can the whole Truth come into focus distinctly, without distortion. This Explanation is the heavenly model, the celestial paradigm, that reconfigures every fuzzy factor, remixes all allusive approximations emergent throughout the history of this ‘puzzle’ into a unitary and deeply satisfying assemblage. [4/10/06]
Why did God choose the ‘stupidity’ (moria—1 Cor. 1:17-2:16) of faith (1:21) as the means of appropriating the ‘stupidity’ of heralding His crazy salvation-in-response-to-crucifixion? Answer: Because it is a common denominator and attribute of all human beings without exception—anyone can exercise it, provided the sufficient proof that it requires for adequate grounding. Faith is not a function of skill, acquisition, education, aptitude, training, gender, authority, status, fame, virtue, property, age, social class, nationality, strength, beauty, eloquence, intelligence, wealth, health, or stealth. Faith is a universal, in-created, natural function or faculty—the necessary precursor to the proper exercise of willpower. It is an assumption of things expected, a conviction of things not yet observed (Heb. 11:1-3), yet properly and rationally based on the memory of past observations and experiences, going forward. It is hence part of our reflecting God’s own image and likeness—indispensable for exerting wisely and benignly our God-given sovereignty, authority, and control over creation. God was “matching spiritual [effect—faith in those who have ears to hear] to spiritual [cause—the ‘stupidity’ of heralding the resurrectionary rationale for Christ’s cross]” (1 Cor. 2:13). [4/10/06; 10/24/25]
So why is the Devil so furious against Christians? Maybe because Christ made him look like such an incompetent fool in front of the whole universe, especially to the Christian public, who are commissioned to proclaim that embarrassing fact far and wide? He took the bait like a dull-witted carp. He abused the defenseless Son of his own Creator, probably expecting God to slaughter the Jewish and Roman tools of his own crafty scheming—small price to pay for getting to snuff his only Competitor. But he slightly underestimated that Personage. And for that malign miscalculation he will pay with agelong torment in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:10). Oops. [4/10/06]
Yet when, under Satan’s prodding, the Jewish nation sacrificed their own Messiah (human sacrifice [John 11:50]—an utter abhorrence before the face of God), he bounced back, the Lord of all nations! Israel thereby lost their king and hence their own sovereignty, such as it was. However, he thereby gained a universal empire! Thus can human folly, even one so abominable as human sacrifice, be outmaneuvered by a God of infinitely resourceful restorative justice. [4/11/06]
2 Cor. 5:21 has never ceased puzzling theologians of “the Atonement.” Perhaps this is largely to be accounted for by the simple observation that none of the prevalent ‘theories of the Atonement‘ (as this genre of speculation is somewhat pretentiously labeled) view Messiah’s cruel execution sufficiently or basically or centrally as an out-and-out SIN. To be sure, the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament, from the late 3rd century B.C., commonly abbreviated LXX, the Roman numeral for “70,” which refers to the approximate number of scholars [actually 72] who translated it, according to tradition) provides us with strong presumptive evidence that hamartia in 2 Cor. 5:21 denotes a sin-offering since it is thus translated in multiplied scores of places throughout the Old Testament (exactly reflecting the usage of the underlying Hebrew term, chatta’ah), especially in Leviticus. Why would Paul not have intended such a common interpretation of the word in such a context? He certainly knew and often used the LXX.
Even so, the use of hamartia for sin-offering when, like its Hebrew equivalent, it also signifies simply a sin, is far too suggestive to pass over lightly. For it makes perfect sense that the ancient, divinely enjoined sin-offerings pointed forward to THE SIN OF SINS—the slaying of a human being who was their actual, God-appointed and approvingly anointed king! But the translation of 2 Cor. 5:21 as “sin-offering” properly encompasses this other prophetic intimation, whereas “he became sin for us” does not quite compute unless and until processed in the above manner first. Only then does all become clear. Jesus’ becoming a sin-offering on our behalf was the fulfillment of the prophetic foreboding of the terrible COLLECTIVE SIN of Israel in murdering the SINLESS Lamb of God.
Yet this off-stripping of the flesh of this voluntary self-sacrifice called forth the New Creation of his body, immortal and glorified by the recreative power of justice divine. God has chosen immersion, when submitted to by faith, as His preferential means for our entering into this royal legacy of Jesus, the Messiah. [4/11/06]
The Premial Atonement 