The Divine Son never fell out of his Father’s good graces–neither on the Cross, nor in Hades itself!

Romans 3:25-26, in the light of Romans 2:3-5, seems to assume that God’s righteousness includes kindness, patience, forbearance, etc.  It is the unrighteous who are unkind, impatient, intolerant, etc.  Yet a penal satisfaction ideology blithely overrides, even bulldozes, this gentle yet stubborn intercontextual observation.  How did we ever obscure this simple fact regarding common decent behavior?  Do we grade God on a different scale of righteousness than we do humans?  Moreover, is it a less ‘humane’ scale of assessment than we deem proper even for mere mortals?

So even though Romans 1:18-3:20 does focus on God’s wrath/indignation against the stubborn, both on the Day of Judgment as well as before, Paul makes a decisive shift in 3:21 to another kind of righteousness–the kind that does not punish the hard-hearted but rewards the amenably faithful ON THE GROUNDS OF CHRIST JESUS THE UTTERLY FAITHFUL ONE!  This may be why Paul even bothers to bring up the observation about God’s forbearance or longsuffering, BECAUSE IT FURTHER ILLUSTRATES THE NATURE OF REWARDING OR PREMIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS/JUSTICE IN RELATION TO THE FAITHFUL COVENANT PARTNERS WHO HAPPEN TO BE SINNERS IN NEED OF GOD’S PROTECTIVE COVER/SHELTER AROUND THEIR OFFENSES.

For His part, God is faithful and just to “set forth,” provide, and proffer such a wrath-proof protective method on behalf of all who trust Him for it, thereby releasing them from their sins.  This provision in particular entails the wrongful shedding of blood so innocent, flawless, and sinless–i.e., full of faithfulness to God’s will–that God Himself was justified in intervening virtually immediately to avenge (ekdik-) it BY RAISING THAT MURDER VICTIM FROM HIS GRAVE, NOT MERELY ALIVE, BUT IMMORTAL, WITH ROYAL GLORY AND UNIVERSAL PRIESTLY AUTHORITY TO INTERCEDE ON BEHALF OF HUMANKIND CONCERNING THEIR SINS. (A just deed of that superlative quality is a tough act to follow with a needlessly punitive one! [1/13/22])

It was by virtue of this authority, rooted in Christ’s own personal and historically demonstrated faithfulness to the true spirit of the Old Covenant, that he himself constituted a protective shelter concerning the sins of all time, both before his timely appearance in human flesh, but also, and with considerably more understanding and widespread publicity, after his well-attested resurrection from the dead.  This all means that the source of Christ’s power and authority to provide such indemnity lies in a perfect sinlessness that, in line with God’s justice, would not permit his disgraceful demise but insured, instead, a glorious restoration, not to favor–FOR HE NEVER FELL OUT OF GOD’S GOOD GRACES, NOT EVEN WHILE ON THE CROSS OR IN THE UNSEEEN–but rather to AN EXPLOSIVE MAGNIFICATION OF GRACIOUSNESS, ALONG WITH ITS OVERFLOW OF DIVINE SPIRITUAL GIFTS (charismata) IN ORDER TO BLESS THE HUMAN RACE IN ITS GRAVE NEED AND MORTAL PERIL.  This is the capacious legacy of God’s atonement on our behalf.  [9/20/10]

God Was More Concerned for the Salvation of Sinners Than for the Vindication of Penal Justice

The cross of Christ proves and demonstrates why and how God could always have passed over penalties for sins in His forbearance, and do so justly (though in His premial, not penal, justice), even justifying those who live out of Christ’s own faithfulness by faith.  What a hoot!  What a surprise!  What a legacy!  What an incredible boon!  This is “just” too good to be false!  [8/20/10]

God tricked Satan by letting him do what he wanted with His Son, knowing full well his Adversary’s murderous (but supremely foolish) intent.  By this enactment of folly, Satan would inadvertently and indirectly endow his sinless Victim with fresh and superabundant rights and authority and wealth and honor and glory and dominion and thrones and blessing and more!  THIS WAS A COUP WITHOUT COMPARE!  [8/20/10]

What’s interesting and peculiarly satisfying about the patristic illustration of Satan swallowing God’s Son, hook, line, and sinker, is its focus on Christ’s irrepressible vitality, i.e., the power of his ineluctable resurrection.  This emphasis is far superior to, and more authentic than, any vaunted “satisfaction” theory can possibly offer…unless, that is, we’re talking about the satisfaction of PREMIAL JUSTICE, since this is precisely the “spring action” behind the resurrection.  [8/20/10]

The apostles did not proclaim a “doctrine of reconciliation” (such as theologians discourse about) but an act of God, namely, at the crucifixion of His precious Son, where God’s conciliating role and deed amounted to not striking out in avenging against those who strung up His Son, but instead allowing them to “win” that round, for the moment, yet only to reverse completely the debacle after a fashionable tardiness, in order to drive home the point:  His greater desire for their salvation than for His veritable rights and honor, or even vindication of His penal justice.  Time enough for that.  But FIRST THINGS FIRST!  [8/20/10]

God proffered His own Son as a protective cover (through the faithfulness in his blood) in order to display the JUSTICE of his previous bypassing of the penalties of sins! (Romans 3:25-26) [8/20/10]

The resolution of the atonement controversy in terms of premial justice rather than penal justice leaves us with the excruciating embarassment that the historic adversaries of “penal satisfaction/substitution” were at least very often right in what they denied (i.e., the key elements of penal substitution ideology) even when inadequate in what they proposed as replacements, whereas the historic advocates of penal substitution/ satisfaction were wrong both in what they affirmed and what they denied (since their opponents explored many quite valid, if partial, elements, images, models, illustrations, and theories that got slighted by the heavy-handed, indeed, punitive treatment from penal substitution champions).  [8/2010]

Douglas Campbell’s invention of “the Teacher” as Paul’s interlocutor in his Roman epistle is radically misconceived.

Douglas A. Campbell* argues for a Pauline gospel that makes God’s love, grace, and beneficence primary and basic to His  being.  I have little objection to such an emphasis except that his route thereto wrongly muffles God’s wrath/ anger/ indignation toward sin and its evil fruits.  Consequently, along the way, Campbell discounts the raw force of many a Scripture that exhibits His unvarnished ire.  Had he perceived “the righteousness of God” as always  resurrectionary in relation to His Son, and had he therefore been able to incorporate key passages such as Romans 3:25-26 into Paul’s authentic gospel rather than conceding them to “the Teacher” he alleges Paul to be contending with, he might have perceived how to retain the basic thrust of God’s love and benevolence without jettisoning His veritable indignation against subbornness and hardheartedness.  As it stands, Campbell’s obliviousness to the meaning of sacrificial blood as “resurrection from the dead” by the power of the Holy Spirit has sabotaged the main strength of his theological advance toward full recovery of the Pauline teaching about justification and atonement.

Moreover, had he seen this, Campbell could have distinguished more carefully between the “Christ event(s)” of crucifixion and resurrection as regards which of those in particular actually “reveals,” “manifests,” and “displays” the righteousness of God proper.  Yet, against his own best interests, and contrarty to the integral coherence of the Gospel, he left the door open for some sort of “righteousness of God” attaching to the crucifixion (and not even simply to Christ’s personal faithfulness and obedience in submitting to the gross indignity of that paramount exhibit of human sinfulness, which, though plausible and inoffensive on its surface, still happens to be askew from Paul’s consistent, driving intention in all his discourse regarding God’s own justice relative to human justification).  By a process of elimination, such an attachment necessarily reduces down to a penal “righteousness,” and accordingly marches Campbell right back into the jaws of the conundrum that compels him to spin out a theory of “the Teacher,” along with his fateful “baby-plus-bathwater-throw-away program” when confronted with certain challenging scriptures.  [5/13/10; 5/14/21; 5/17/21]

*Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2009).

To allege ANY KIND OF JUSTICE from the Father AT THE CROSS results in blasphemous role confusion, which may be forgiven, however…

To maintain, as some thoughtful theologians of the atonement do, that “the righteousness of God” refers to both the resurrection and the cross of Christ is actually to undermine the integrity of the Gospel story.  Each epicenter has its own indispensable role to play in magnifying the character of God–Father and Son–and any double vision in this respect results in ROLE CONFUSION, and not only between Father and Son, but, what is much worse, BETWEEN THE FATHER AND SATAN!  This is huge!  To allege that any “righteousness,” i.e., justice, of God was manifested at the cross, even in tandem with an affirmation that it was revealed in the resurrection “too“, is TO SMUGGLE IN PENAL SATISFACTION, at the very high cost of polluting the purity of the Gospel message.

Among these otherwise worthy theologians are Clark Pinnock, Kevin Vanhoozer, Douglas A. Campbell, and Darren W. Snyder Belousek.

Atypically, because Campbell, for instance, is uncomfortable with the orthodox Protestant “Justification Theory” in its view of the cross, yet cannot come up with an alternative interpretation of Romans 3:25-26, he relegates what he supposes is its “vicarious-atoning-sacrifice” essence to “the Teacher” that the apostle Paul is allegedly opposing as a foil.  Campbell herewith GIVES AWAY the baby with the bathwater.  He simply does not see Paul’s authentic resurrectionary justice in the passage, so is alienated from one of the most powerful passages that elucidates it.  If he only considered (much less, conceded) that the blood of Christ denotes the cleansing power of his resurrection from the dead, he would have been able to renegotiate this entire giveaway program of his.  [5/12/10]  As it is, his painfully elaborate exegetical exhibit is woefully off balance and out of kilter.  It wobbles ominously and may sadly be destined to bring many of his solid gains into undeserved neglect.  If so, this could, tragically, be monumental labor lost.  [5/13/10]

No humans suffered divine condemnation in the making of this salvation.

Jesus was ‘raised from the dead through the proof [doxa] of the Father” (Romans 6:4) to be Lord of all! This was none other than the Father’s RIGHTEOUSNESS / JUSTICE now, finally, once-and-for-all DISPLAYED (Romans 3:25-26) before the eyes of veracious witnesses and thence to the whole world! It is the “glory” (that is, the proof) of God to DO JUSTICE to the needy and oppressed and righteous when they call upon His glorious name/reputation. [4/05/09]

God’s personal unveiling at the Messianic climax was replete and multifaceted. His graciousness, to be sure, was revealed to all who trusted him, especially at the coming of the promised Wholesome Spirit at Pentecost. But even toward “the irreverent,” bitter “enemies,” and hardened “sinners” who could have expected only wrath and condemnation, the “Crossurrection” manifested only God’s longsuffering, patience, toleration, kindness, and mercy! NO HUMAN BEINGS SUFFERED THE LEAST DIVINE CONDEMNATION BY ANY FACET OF THIS SUBLIME SERIES OF DIVINE UNVEILINGS OF HIS DEEPEST, TRUEST CHARACTER. The cup of Israel’s sin was not yet full. The nets of God’s Royal Proclamation were first to gather a vast haul of humans into the ship of grace. Only after this catch was brought in safely did God make known a further revelation of His wrath or indignation—this time to those who dared refuse the revelation of His supreme offer of forgiveness that the heretofore unavenged crucifixion of His beloved Son actually signified. Who could possibly rebuff such an endearing display of God’s love to the Jewish nation except those who “love darkness rather than light because their deeds are vicious” (John 3:19)? They were accordingly “treasuring up indignation against the day of indignation” (Romans 2:5, 9, 16) that the apostles had regularly been threatening in their epistles, in line with the Lord’s Olivet discourse.

All nations should take warning at the mutually corroborating effect of God’s words and historic deeds. These, in tandem, are intended to bring all nations to their knees in repentance and worship, not to mention the enjoyment of the benefits of salvation! [4/06/09; 12/22/16]

CROSS MONGERING

Cross mongering, such as Leon Morris, J. I. Packer, John Stott, Alister McGrath, and many others indulge in, has the calculated effect of throwing a shadow over, indeed, even eclipsing, the Resurrection! This sadly misguided theological strategy has been undermining the most distinctive element of the apostolic gospel for much of the 20^th century. Alas, it did not stop there. This new century must yet somehow see a thoroughgoing restoration of the authentic resurrectionary Proclamation of Jesus and his genuine spokesmen! [4/08/09]

If our being born mortal and bound to sin was not our fault but Adam’s, then the solution to this “body of death” likewise ought to be fittingly gratuitous. And so it is! God Himself provided the way back to life, and it is free for the taking! It is taken by faith instead of any “dead works,” since faith alone accords with the graciousness of the Gift. Perfect. Yet still many people resist the inviting message of God’s free salvation. This is the calculated possibility of creating beings in His own image, with self-authorizing (autexousios) capabilities, and God would have it no other way! [4/09/09]

Who really killed Jesus?

Without the faithfulness of Messiah Jesus playing his covenantal part, the righteousness of God in His own covenantal role could never have been sufficiently manifested (Romans 3:21-2), displayed (Romans 3:25-26), or revealed (Galatians 3:23-24, Romans 1:17). Messiah’s faithfulness, even to a despised, shameful death of the cross, paved the way for God’s historic intervention to show off His own righteousness by raising His mutilated Son up from the grave, out of humiliation, and on to glorious splendor! [8/14/07]

The Old Covenant at Mt. Sinai was a covenant of law…of letter. It was suitable and fitting for children who had not yet matured under the guidance of God’s Wholesome Spirit, but were still being tutored under their ABCs, their weak and poor elementary school primers, and still needed threats and switchings in order to get their assignments done. But then along comes the New Covenant, full of Wholesome Spirit to counsel, teach, testify, expose, guide, and inform (John 14:16-17, 26, 15:26, 16:7-15). In this new manner God historically fulfills His promise,

Imparting My law into their comprehension,

On their hearts, also, shall I be inscribing them,

And I shall be to them for a God,

And they shall be to me for a people,

And by no means should each be teaching his fellow citizen,

And each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord!’

For all shall be acquainted with me, from their little to their great,

And of their sins and their lawlessnesses should I under no circumstances

still be reminded. [Hebrews 8:10-12; Jeremiah 31:33b-34]

Yet now, knowing God, yet rather being known by God, how are you turning back again to the weak and poor elementary school [escorts, guard[ian]s, and administrators—“not really school so much; it’s the Principal of the thing!”] under which you desire to slave again anew? [Galatians 4:8-9; cf. 3:22-4:7]

Away with those old first-grade rules! Let’s set sail under the fresh gusts of Wholesome Spirit being perpetually wafted from the favorable Heavens, soak up the “be-attitudes” of Jesus and learn from his own gracious explanations and example of actions recorded by eye-and-ear-witnesses in the four Gospels. For we are no free to love—this is the new law of liberty whose compulsion stems from within, where the Kingdom of God now originates, by God’s Spirit, and corroborates the voice of the likewise anointed Jesus. This New Covenant is not composed of laws but of pneumatic disposition that picks up the strands of valid impulse refracted by the Old Covenant and recharges them to undertake ‘freely designed projects’ (à la Herman Dooyeweerd) untrammeled by elementary prohibitions intended for the safety of those who don’t yet know God on their own. [8/14/07]

“THOU SHALT BRUISE HIS HEAL”

To the question, “Who really killed Jesus?” Scripture gives the definitive answer in prophetic, poetic concentration at the very outset, for all to see and ponder. Genesis 3:15 declares, “And enmity am I setting between you [the Serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall hurt your head and you shall hurt his heel.” Jesus had an Achilles heel (of sorts)—he was mortal, the first time around! But not to worry; his sinlessness guaranteed that his mortal wound would not be a terminal condition! Quite the contrary, not only did it ensure him a resurrectionary sequel to a mortal existence, but it likewise insured and indemnified for life agelong all who wished to participate in that same destiny by faith. It’s simply a matter of policy! GOD’S INSURANCE PLAN HAD THE WHOLE FAMILY OF ADAM COVERED. GOD HIMSELF TOOK OUT THE POLICY BEFORE CONTINGENCIES EVEN EXISTED. GOD THE FATHER AND THE SON MADE A COVENANT BEFORE THE EONS THEMSELVES WERE CONTRACTED FOR. THEY BOTH WOULD SHARE THE COSTS TO PROTECT THEIR FUTURE ASTRONOMICAL INVESTMENT. A PRUDENT MOVE. THEY’RE HAPPY THEY DID. IT WAS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY AFTER ALL. [8/14/07]

ROMANS 3:25-26…AGAIN!

God’s ancient display of His rectitude, namely, His forbearance in passing over the Israelites’ penalties for their sins (αμαρτημα) throughout the Old Covenant era, is matched and overmatched by His now not only being right, but in addition actually rectifying all who are of the faithfulness of Jesus, throughout the current era. This God can do because the rectification called for in order to “give Jesus his just due” (δικαιωμα) was so overwhelming in view of the injury done him, that from his great love, he gives away the contents of his award to all sinners who enter by baptism the faithfulness of Jesus via their own exertion of a like faith.

Thus God’s ancient forbearance was a foretaste and parallel expression of His later full unveiling of restorative rectitude for Messiah’s sake in his historic resurrection, DUE TO HIS AGELONG COVENANTAL FAITHFULNESS THAT SPANS BOTH ERAS. THIS IS THE REASON WHY PAUL BRINGS UP THESE MATTERS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE “MERCY SEAT” (ιλαστηριον), SINCE THIS WAS THE OLD COVENANT LOCUS OF INDEMNIFICATION WHEREBY SINNERS WERE HELD HARMLESS FOR THEIR ACTUAL HARMS, AND JESUS BECOMES THEIR INSURANCE AGENT AND SURETY. The fact that he only showed up rather late in history to perform the necessary rites of indemnification is of no consequence. Their out-of-pocket cost for this policy was simply faith, since the graciousness (including forgiveness of harms) provided in the policy originated in the goodness and love and rectitude of God, and so was literally priceless! Yet the exceedingly greater outflow of blessing in the current era in comparison with the former is a consequence of the fulfillment of Scripture promises that steadily accumulated in the ancient era in order to raise expectations. This was surely a test of faith for them—the Israelites—but the consummation would entail incorporation of peoples from all nations into the policy. This present fulfillment is fodder for yet later and greater fulfillments until the final Consummation and restoration of all that the ancient prophets foresaw and foretold. [8/09/07]

Jesus never “made satisfaction” for sins. We know this because the Scriptures never teach that he did. And we know they don’t teach it because the Holy Spirit refused to employ any such terminology (although it would have been very simple to do so!). And if the Bible refuses to teach it, we ought to refuse to believe it. Bottom line: SOLA SCRIPTURA! [8/09/07]