If God could not experience and feel genuine suffering from evils occurring in His creation, then how would it be possible for us to become like Him, knowing and emulating His just behavior in response to evils?

Is it just possible that our experience of suffering evils is somehow intended to help us understand how God suffers from evils? Can He experience suffering? Did He experience suffering from evils only in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t it a part of becoming like God in character that we learn to experience and feel about evils the same way God experiences and feels about them? Doesn’t this require God to experience or know evils somehow the way we human beings do? And doesn’t the Lord Jesus simply reflect and reveal his Father’s own feelings and attitudes toward evils? How could we mature into the image and likeness of God Himself if He can’t feel evils and then respond in a normative manner that we could emulate? [3/8/12]

So-called “penal substitution: is impossible no matter how we construe the meaning of “penal” or of “substitution.” If by “penal” we refer to an attitude of God, then it is impossible because no such attitude could be expressed by a just God against a sinless man, nor is any postulated in Scripture by a fair reading. Nor could such a penal expression toward a sinless person serve as a “substitute” for others so as to prevent penalties from falling either on recalcitrant evildoers to avert their ultimate destruction or on erring believers to correct their misbehavior before it becomes habitual and destroys their faith.

On the other hand, “penal” could hardly refer to the attitude of those who inflicted wounds and abuse on the Lord, because that suffering assuredly does not substitute for ours. In fact, he informs us that no servant is greater than his lord, so we should expect similar ill-treatment from the world. [3/8/12]

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead justified him from any sin that had been ascribed to him by his wicked accusers and false witnesses (Rom. 6:7, cf. 2 Cor. 5:16, 1 Tim. 3:16, Rom. 4:23-5:2, 18, 21; 8:1-4, 10-11.) [3/10/12]

The power of Christ’s resurrection rectifies sins by reversing their evil effects, even as it reversed, yes, even more than reversed, Christ’s death—the effect of his cross. This is how Christ’s work deals with and in fact expunges sin, i.e., via the vivifying, death-and-evil-reversing power of the Holy Spirit, poured out of heaven superabundantly on believing sinners as a fruit of Christ’s unjust abuse-taking getting reversed by God’s premial justice to him, then overflowing graciously to us from there! Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift! [3/28/12]

Penal Substitution defenders must minimize and downgrade the fierceness of Christ’s contest against Satan at the cross. That is the only way they can “glorify” their pet hobby horse—Christ’s “suffering God’s wrath”! This means that the REAL BATTLE AGAINST SATAN GETS POOH-POOHED, DIS-HONORED, AND MARGINALIZED TO MAKE ROOM FOR A MYTH OF DEFAMING MAGNITUDE! From such slander how does God save His honor? With penal substitutionary theologians for friends, why would God need enemies! For if the Son suffered the Father’s wrath, then the Father suffers the penal substitutionary advocate’s slander, misrepresentations, in a word, DISHONOR. And this, in turn, means that God suffers the repulsion, repudiation, rejection, withdrawal, and recoiling of sinners in need of His redemptive love and authentic, premial justice! God gets wretchedly disgraced! Is that not, then, a “doctrine of demons” that dares to defame God by turning the cross into a demonstration of divine wrath and away from a divining of demonic rage! [3/21/12]

How ironic it is that the ‘evangelical’ Protestant theory of Christ’s “penal substitution should be met by the Islamic conjecture about Jesus’ “penal substitution by a luckless lookalike! The simplest way to subvert such a “poetic” twist of penal justice is to reassert premial justice at Christ’s resurrection, which entails the gracious inclusion of all who believe it! [3/31/12]

Not a theologia crucis but a theologia resurrectionis is what we need, indeed, that is exactly what Paul’s Epistle to the Romans actually teaches, or rather harps on over and over again! [3/31/12]

Spot-checking Some Distinctives of the Premial View

PISTIS (ΠΙΣΤΙΣ) should usually be rendered “faithfulness” when attributed to Jesus Christ.

HAMARTIA (ΆΜΑΡΤΙΑ) can denote “sin-offering” in key New Testament passages reflecting the ritual sacrificial language of Leviticus (LXX).

HAIMA (ΆΙΜΑ)—blood (of sacrificial rituals) represents the diverse powers of resurrected life.

Romans 5:8-10 equates “blood” with “life,” when the syntactical structure is accurately aligned, not with “death.”

DIKAIOMA (ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑ) in Romans 5:16,18 & 8:3 signifies a “just award” (judicially granted Christ by God, namely, the Holy Spirit of life via resurrection), and not either a “righteous act/deed” (done by Christ, i.e., “suffering the cross”) (5:16,18) or “righteousness” (in the sense of inner moral virtue) (8:3), as traditionally translated.

“The righteousness (dikaiosune) of God” in the New Testament is almost entirely premial (never exclusively penal!) and was supremely exemplified by God’s historic act of raising Jesus from the dead.

The cross was a place of diabolical rage and fury plus human condemnation, but decidedly not a locus of divine wrath or condemnation in any sense whatsoever.

The victory of the cross was that Jesus remained sinless even in the face of the most extreme and unjust suffering of abuse, rather than either justifying himself or using his rightful messianic prerogatives to avenge himself, or even simply reviling his tormenters. He waited for God’s justice/justification. Therefore, he won the just award of immortal life, and some!

God’s justice toward His Son was exclusively rewarding (premial), not at all penal.

God’s justice toward His Son was ultracompensatory.

Jesus’ ransom was a heroic exchange and not at all a penal substitution (so there was no economic equivalence or parity at play).

Jesus was not “forsaken” in the Unseen (ΆΙΔΗΣ, hades), Acts 2:25-28, Psalm 16:8-11 LXX, and only briefly “forsaken” (Psalm 22:1) on the cross to permit the strategic death of his body and compassionate cessation of his suffering abuse (which, after all, was never intended as any sort of exchange currency whose gross amount must weigh in on the extent of mercy or grace or atonement or salvation or anything else in God’s possession for that matter, neo-liberal, zero-sum economics to the contrary notwithstanding).

God’s wrath/indignation fell not upon His Messiah at the cross, but upon all Jerusalem before that generation passed away (70 A.D.), on account of what they perpetrated by the cross as well as toward earlier prophets.

To “bear” sins is to “absorb” whatever harm and loss they cause, instead of retaliating (i.e., avenging oneself). Therefore, it denotes forgiving or pardoning others of their sins against us, not some phantom notion of “getting imputed with sins” and “rendered guilty” ourselves, much less “deserving punishment accordingly.”

We should leave avenging of ourselves to God, not because avenging is wrong per se for human beings (after all, that’s what “the higher authorities” have been officially appointed by God to do, Rom. 13:1-7), but because only God can do so with truly satisfying justice, sans overreactions or lurking self-interests and hidden agendas. Even a veteran human judge may on occasion need to recuse herself from a case in which some personal involvement may appear to compromise disinterested judgment. Not so with God.

Adam’s sin was not “imputed” (ΛΟΓΙΖ-, counted, accounted) to his descendants (rendering them guilty for it, too).

Our sins are not “imputed” to Christ (rendering him guilty before God and worthy of wrath).

Christ’s righteousness is not “imputed” to us who believe (and allegedly rendering us righteous before God).

The Holy Spirit in superabundance was part of Christ’s just award from God for his enduring obedience to his Father’s precepts even through a treacherous, prolonged public execution.

The Holy Spirit in abundance overflows to believing sinners and actually effects the internal cleansing from our sins.

The Explanation of the Proclamation is the power of salvation and alone possessses the ability to generate faith because it provides the abundant eye-witness testimony required to validate it.

The function of believing is an ineradicable capacity of divinely-crafted human nature, which God fashioned to be dependent on evidence and proof for its proper foundation and direction.

All who are “in Christ” by faith and baptism are “dead TO” sins, offenses, lusts, and foreskin/’uncircumcision’ (Eph. 2:1, 5, Col. 2:13, properly translated, cf. Romans 6:1-14); no scripture speaks of anyone being “dead IN” sin, etc.

When Adam sinned, death “passed through to all mankind, whereupon [ΕΦΩ, literally “on/upon which”] all sinned” (Rom. 5:12), i.e., precisely the inverse causality from the Vulgate’s (Jerome’s) culpable mistranslation, “because” (which in Greek would require ΔΙΑ, with the accusative case), and Augustine’s notorious further exploitation of it. “Original sin” is therefore a serious misnomer and can only lead to spurious inferences and doctrinal confusion.

The resurrection of Jesus was the supreme historic event where God was justified and Jesus was justified. On the strength of that event, all who trust God are likewise justified and, accordingly, receive the Spirit of Life.

Jesus was not saved at the cross but, much rather, destroyed there, in sight of throngs of eyewitnesses (or haven’t you read the Bible?). He was saved by his resurrection, and that salvation by God precipitated the salvation of all others who trust him as Savior.

Human sovereignty and authority, also over our own bodily and psychical faculties, have not been revoked; they account for what is commonly, popularly, but erroneously categorized under the rubric of ‘freewill.’

God’s graciousness was not ‘bought‘ by Christ’s sufferings of abuse, therefore it is not limited, calculated, metered, or dispensed commensurate with them.

Sins have not been “paid for“; they neither need to, ought to, nor can be. Sacrifices were never intended for “payment“; much rather, they prophetically pre-figured the voluntary self-sacrifice of the blameless Son and Heir of God, the King of Israel, in order to win a just repayment from God in return for that incomparable injustice so as to ransom sinful humanity from death and its sting alike.

Adam’s posterity ‘pay for’ (if you insist…but see Romans 6:7 and enveloping context) their own sins simply by dying. However, to gain newness of life we need to identify with Christ’s wrongful death and rightful resurrection by means of faith and baptism.

God only warned Adam of death if he should ever eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but not of ‘spiritual death,’ much less ‘eternal death‘ (Genesis 2:16-17). Christ’s own death (not some postulated ‘eternal‘ or ‘spiritual‘ vagary) was a quite sufficient injustice inflicted upon this sinlessly innocent man so that God was stirred to render him the supercompensating justice of resurrection from the dead plus royal exaltation to David’s promised throne over the earth. Oh, and did I mention the inexpressible boon of the Holy Spirit, for good measure?

“The righteousness of God” and “the faithfulness of Christ Jesus” are complementary covenantal components as employed by Paul’s arguments in Romans, Galatians, and Philippians.

2 Corinthians 5:21 makes reference to Christ being made a “sin [offering],” not a “sin” per se! Such normative usage is marbled throughout Leviticus. The clincher? The very function of that ritual “sin” was precisely to constitute the offerer ritually “righteous” again. Christ Jesus ushered in the prophesied real McCoy once for all on Golgotha; that real “righteousness,” in turn, was dispensed abroad at the following Pentecost, i.e., God’s promised Holy Spirit in colossal outpour (2 Corinthians 3:2-9)—God’s very own personal righteousness to all who dare to believe His shockingly gracious News!

Romans 8:3 also makes reference to God sending His own Son an “[offering] concerning sin.” This was God’s quintessential conciliatory, propitiatory, peacemaking gesture vis a vis a long-alienated, still-desperate humanity starving, thirsting, gasping for life.

The evengelical concept of the Levitical blood sacrifices regards them as prophetic figures of the most extreme sin[-offering] of treasonously crucifying their designated Savior. Their aggregate fulfillment and radical supercession by way of the Savior’s resurrection forever nullified and dismantled the Levitical ritual system going forward.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans nowhere develops a “theology of the cross” in even the slightest degree; quite the contrary, a “theology of the resurrection” is his obsessive focus. [5/2,4-6/11; 5/1-2/24]