GOD HIMSELF paid the superhuman cost of our salvation

Who “paid the price” for our salvation?  God Himself paid it, that’s Who!  “He spared not His own Son” (Romans 8:32).  But also Jesus paid the price “in collusion” with his Father, by offering up himself in death (wrongful as it was) to the Father.  Yet none of this was “payment for sin(s),” but much rather THE COST THEY JOINTLY PAID FOR OUR LIFE!  That’s what it took to procure agelong life for sinners like us and thus overturn the curse of sin, which had decreed death.  Pretty clever.  [7/30/10]

There was no conceivable cost that could be paid by human beings to bring Jesus back to life after his decisive crucifixion; God Himself alone could repay such a loss, and hence HIS JUSTICE personally intervened spectacularly with extraordinary GRACIOUSNESS to Jesus, super-compensating him for his pains faithfully suffered in perfect obedience and identical God-like GRACIOUSNESS.  [7/30/10]

The atonement is neither an expression nor a function of the wrath of God in any respect.  To the diametric contrary, it is a stupendous unveiling of the GRACIOUSNESS of God on display before human eyes, thanks entirely to the JUST DESERTS of Jesus Christ and his faithful obedience that cried out for a proper reward after his being ground down and abased so egregiously.  [7/30/10]

The grim elaboration of God’s wrath found in Romans chapter one, verse eighteen through chapter three, verse twenty, makes but one slim reference to Jesus Christ, and that in connection with Paul’s Proclamation that through him “God will be judging the hidden things of mankind” (Romans 2:16).  And for good reason.  It simply doesn’t pertain. It’s not apropos.  Jesus never experienced that wrath in any degree whatever or for any reason imaginable.  He is a WRATH-FREE SAVIOR!  Paul only starts to bring him into his discourse after the pivotal turn at chapter three, verse twenty-one, for at that precise point he is ready to start expounding “A JUSTICE OF GOD“  that had been held in virtual abeyance pending a suitably worthy object and occasion of historic magnitude.  The wicked murder of his own Son facilitated that objective to perfection, and nothing under the sun could stay its cosmically beneficent fulfilment.  [7/30/10]

We must distinguish what was achieved by the cross of Christ and what happened “on” the cross.  God accomplished human salvation by or through the instrumentality of this dread means of shameful, public, official, agonizing, and decisive death.  But only so that He could be magnified in its stunning overthrow!  This instrument of torture was fiendishly designed to magnify a humiliating death in order to cast fear into the enemies of Rome.  God’s stunning reversal of that cross by raising this victim from its intended effects mocked death and dispelled its frightful ultimacy.  [7/31/10]

God “Sovereignly Elects” Human Faith as the Means for Our Receiving Shares of Christ’s Award for His Obedience

God regards our own human trust in Jesus, His Son and Israel’s Messiah as well as our Lord, to be righteousness not on account of ‘Christ’s own righteousness being imputed to us’, but solely on account of His “sovereign” and gracious choice of trust as the means of our receiving Christ’s just award for his own faithfulness and obedience, namely, the Holy Spirit of life and immortality that brought our Lord Jesus Christ back from the dead.  You want something good and “sovereign”?  Well, here it is.  [10/3/09]

“[God] spared not His own Son…” (Romans 8:32) from what?  From His own wrath?  That hardly seems plausible.  Rather, from the assaults of Satan and sinners, resulting in abuse and death…from which only God could save him!  [10/12/09]

Orthodox Evangelical theologians are CAMEL SWALLOWERS!  It’s a special gift, a talent.  And it is learned.  [10/23/09]

PENAL AVENGING vs. PREMIAL AVENGING (Psalm 94:1-2, 14-15)

Avenging (ekdik-), per se,  is indifferent with respect to polarity–whether penal (punitive) or premial (rewarding).  However, in English, it is uniformly biased in the penal direction.  This is perhaps largely due to the disposition of our entire Western criminal justice establishment, where “the state” intervenes between the offender and victim and disregards the premial justice due to the victim, but instead speaks of the offender’s “debt to society” and other such abstractions.  The right to an overcompensating reward is simply overlooked in criminal cases.  And the common abuses of civil reparations give the very idea a bad name.  [10/24/09]

Amending the so-called “doctrine of Atonement,” whatever the adjustment may entail, is no small feat, because it requires an adjustment of the “operating system.”  Any tweaking at the OS level can be a complicated and arduous procedure.  For any alleged improvement to be properly installed and fully integrated, the whole theological system needs to be shut down and every component examined for compatibility.  Few theologians are inclined to subject “every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) as if they might possibly have been deceived along the way (which, to be sure, does seem rather inconceivable).  The heavy weight of tradition militates against any “new, improved” understandings at this very basic level of operating assumptions.  Change agents beware.  [10/25/09]