To be in Messiah is to be safe from God’s wrath, not because he appeased, pacified, assuaged, or propitiated God’s righteous indignation, but precisely because HE HAD NEVER SUFFERED UNDER IT FOR EVEN A NANOSECOND! IT IS HIS UTTERLY WRATH-FREE EXISTENCE THAT BECOMES OUR RIGHTFUL MILIEU! [11/10/07]
By glorifying Jesus so greatly for the humiliation he went through, God ENLARGED and EXPANDED the PROTECTIVE SHELTER (hilasterion), i.e., Jesus the Messiah and Master himself, with ALL AUTHORITY so that his PRIESTLY ENTREATY would COVER and AVAIL FOR ALL! [11/10/07]
An ardent Calvinistic Presbyterian contending that Jehovah’s love for people was demonstrated by His wrath against His own “beloved” Son as an innocent substitute, may strike a faintly comic note to some minds, as of a practicing jihadist holding forth that his religious preference for rather savage holy wars reflects his deity’s being “merciful, loving, and gracious.” Uh huh. [11/10/07; 4/02/16]
It is one thing to say, “’Not one is just’—not even one” (Romans 3:10), but it’s quite another to declare, “All our righteousness [is] as a filthy [literally: “sequestered” from use as, e.g., a sanitary napkin] rag” (Isaiah 64:6, LXX & Vulgate), God is pleased with our righteousness (such as it is) when we actually are just. But when it is merely superficial and hypocritical (“as an ornamented garment” Isaiah 64:6, Masoretic Hebrew text, i.e., external, stitched on, just for show). Then it earns only His repudiation and disgust.
The burden of Paul’s thought was not that everyone’s righteousness was phony so much as that everyone had gone wrong and so were not just in sufficient degree to deserve a verdict of justification. And above all, he wanted to indict Jews too, and not exclusively Gentiles, as “defendant[s]” to God (Romans 3:19). [11/10/07
The Premial Atonement 