“Yet Jehovah desires to crush him, and He causes him to be wounded.” Isaiah 53:10
But why? Was it to bring God’s punishment, condemnation, and wrath upon him “to pay for sins”? Nothing of the sort! The true answer will be identical to the one given in reply to why God desired to bring afflictions on Joseph, Job, Jeremiah and even Isaiah himself, not to mention the apostles, martyrs, indeed all those whom He desires to be His beloved children!
God tests His children to prove what they’re made of, to try them as gold is tried, to purify them and strengthen their faith, to cause them to draw nearer to Him, to burn off any dross and confirm their commitment to His expressed truth, to show the world what solid righteousness looks like, and, ultimately, to prepare worthy vessels to rule Kingdom-come in His new creation. “Through many afflictions must we be entering into the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). “[I]f so be that we are suffering abuse together, that we should be glorified together also. For I am reckoning that the sufferings of abuse of the current era do not deserve the glory about to be revealed for us” (Romans 8:17-18). “[A]nd we may be boasting in expectation of the glory of God. Yet not only so, but we may be boasting also in afflictions, having perceived that affliction is producing endurance, yet endurance qualification, yet qualification expectation. Now expectation is not making ashamed, seeing that the love of God has gotten poured out in our hearts through the Wholesome Spirit which is being given to us” (Romans 5:2-5). [6/24/08] “All joy deem it, my brethren, whenever you should be falling into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith is producing endurance. Now let endurance have its perfect work that you may be perfect and unimpaired, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). [9/16/08]
Even as the apostles were the official witnesses to what they saw (Acts 10:40-41), namely, the Messiah’s resurrected life, so the Wholesome Spirit is the divine witness to what God, “the Knower of hearts” (Acts 15:8), alone can see, namely, faith. Faith’s saving operation in human beings is God’s witness to what Jesus, the risen Master, accomplished by his whole life, death, and resurrection. [6/24/08]
Justification did not come “by grace,” à la Puritan and Reformed theology; much rather, graciousness, of the extravagant dimensions measured by authentic apostolic doctrine, came by justification. We can see this only when we grasp that God’s righteousness, that justifies, is restorative, rescuing, delivering, ransoming, remunerative…TOWARD THE FAITHFUL, OBEDIENT COVENANT KEEPER WHO HAS BEEN VICTIMIZED. Puritan and Reformed doctrine, however, knows nothing of such a “righteousness of God,” although it is displayed throughout the Psalms and Prophets, and in fact REQUIRED BY LAW (Torah)! Indeed, Martin Luther caught a stunning glimpse of this restorative justice, and it set his feet a’ dancin’! BUT LUTHER NEVER FIGURED OUT EXACTLY HOW IT WORKED. Instead, he spun out a complicated mechanism (with indispensable assistance from his scholarly associate, Philipp Melanchthon) worthy of the pre-Copernicans, whereby PENAL JUSTICE somehow did service via epicyclic “imputations” and “substitutions” for real saving justice. But this counterfeit had evil ethical fruits mixed with the good. [6/25/08] One might have expected that the later so-called “covenant theology” of the Calvinistic wing of the Reformation could get this right at least, but it did not. In fact, Calvinism sewed it up tighter even than Lutheranism. [9/16/08]
The Premial Atonement 