Was it Christ’s “earnest and honest REPENTANCE” or his loyal and faithful OBEDIENCE that won the promised blessings of the Covenant for Israel plus all other nations?

If, rather than the throwaway remark Jonathan Edwards [Sr.] did make—“Could God be satisfied by Christ’s earnest and honest REPENTANCE on behalf of humanity, or was his death necessary for satisfaction, forgiveness, and atonement to occur?” (all emphases added)—he had instead quipped something like, “Could God be satisfied by Christ’s loyal and faithful OBEDIENCE such that he was deemed worthy of receiving all the Covenant blessings promised of old, and could thereafter rightfully mediate their redistribution on behalf of humanity, or etc.?” Edwards might have put John McLeod Campbell onto a fruitful path of discovery, or rather rediscovery, of a more authentically apostolic gospel. Instead, not only was Campbell led down a rabbit trail, but his results prompted a further wayward bit of trailblazing by Robert Campbell Moberly at the dawn of the twentieth century. Results, of course, were mixed, as usual. But on the plus side came a fresh plowing of the field conjoining the doctrine of the Atonement with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and none should begrudge Moberly that solid advance. After all, this result was not so ‘far afield’ from the revivalist Jonathan Edwards’ own labors, as it turns out. May we be blessed to see yet more, greater, and even deeper revivals as long-term fruits! (2/17/11; 2/18/24)

The Protestant so-called “doctrine of justification” is only secondary to and derivative from the more fundamental “doctrine of atonement.” i.e., the climactic Messianic event of the Gospel. Once the Atonement is properly understood, the matter of justification follows naturally in due course. By contrast, a “penal substitution” assumption concerning atonement will cause any subsequent treatment of justification to boggle. This is because the Atonement, in actuality, entailed the exclusively premial execution of divine justice, not its penal manifestation in any respect. So the justification of all who trust this Gospel is premised on the positive divine judicial decision of doing justice to the Lord Jesus Christ via resurrection on earth and enthronement in Heaven, along with the subsequent sending of the Holy Spirit to all who believe, in order to perfect/mature their faith by good works in the New Covenant version of justness (apart from the prosthetic of Moses’ Law). [2/21/11; 2/19/24]

Penal satisfaction (in tandem with its fraternal twin, penal substitution) is so deeply entrenched and nearly ineradicable for the simple reason that it “satisfies” the reflex for instant punishment and gratifies the carnal urge for immoderate revenge, all under the hollow pretext of God’s need to punish every sin to the fullest extent of the law, i.e., to get full satisfaction/payment for all his injuries from human beings.

The appalling example this sets for human behavior, which is quite sufficiently punitive without it, should go without saying. But the risky job of actually saying it, in view of the consequent punitive backlash it is likely to provoke among a smugly orthodox officialdom, still remains to be done and its disturbing effects to be exposed. May God grant the grace to declare this singularly disgraceful state of affairs without flinching, regardless of predictable acting out by its defenders. [2/23/11]

The vigorous alleging of a penal atonement serves to justify its defenders to behave in similar manner via mimetic reflex. It has, accordingly, become an historic habit, contrary to the general tenor of the entire New Covenant ethic of Jesus and his apostles. How can this be? How can this continue? [2/24/11]

When we say that a person is “righteous” or “just,” do we first of all or above all or, yes, even at all think of them as “PUNITIVE AGAINST EVILDOERS”? Rather, don’t we first of all think of them as upright, honest, judicious, virtuous, kind, merciful, tolerant, thoughtful, forgiving, generous, true-to-their-word, gently corrective, and so forth? Why, then, when it comes to God’s righteousness, do we get it all backwards and upside down? How have our theologians and preachers so betrayed us…nay, betrayed God and His clear Word? [2/24/11]

WHEN DID JESUS GET “ALL AUTHORITY”?

It must be understood that Jesus had been given authority at least over all the earth, but probably over all of heaven, too (see Luke 10:17-20), as soon as he conquered Satan in temptation (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13; cf. 1 John 2:12-17, 4:4-6, 5:1-5, John 16:33), for immediately thereafter, he started heralding the Kingdom of the Heavens (Matt. 4:17)/of God (Mark 1:14-15), having returned “in the power of the Spirit“ (Luke 4:14) into Galilee, declaring that Isaiah 61:1-2a had been “fulfilled” (Luke 4:21) and then curing everyone in sight (Matt. 4:23-25)!

So when Jesus declared to his disciples before his ascension, “Given to me was all authority in heaven and on earth“ (Matthew 28:18), this was not (or not entirely) a fruit of his later resurrection, but of his victory in temptation, which commenced his ministry with power from on high as the consequence.  This is why he was authorized to give authority to his disciples, as well (Matt. 10:1, Luke 9:1, Mark 6:7) even before the Resurrection and Pentecost.  But granted, the power was more abundant after his resurrection, for after all, he had become victorious again in his last and much more severe temptation at Gethsemane and the Cross, where he was in such a struggle that he sweat blood, and a messenger from heaven came and strengthened him (Luke 22:43-44, cf., Matt. 16:18), as after his first trial (Matt. 4:11).

This two-phase granting of authority and the power of the Spirit for signs and miracles and cures and healing, etc., may explain why Jesus breathed on his disciples ‘early,’ before his ascension, to get Wholesome Spirit (John 20:22) and be authorized to forgive as well as to hold (i.e., not forgive) anyone’s sins—in effect the “keys of the Kingdom” (Matt. 16:13-20).  [3/21/05]

OVERCOMPENSATION and JOY

God’s justice demands an overcompensation for injury.  In other words, the injurer must pay back the victim of the injury and add a surplus (sometimes several fold) beyond what the theft or injury cost the victim.  The reason?  TO RESTORE JOY to the victim.  This is an essential element of God’s Kingdom (Rom. 14:17).  The one who stole joy is obliged to ‘repay’ it.

And, naturally, as we would expect, this fundamental truth of the universe is best illustrated by the Cross/Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah.  In this case, however, the abusers of Jesus could never have repaid him for their unjust injuries against him.  Rather, God Himself intervened, out of uncreated love, and reacted in graciousness to overcompensate His Son and give him his due! So whereas under the Old Covenant murder was too heinous a crime to be overcompensated by any amount of money or property—an ‘in kind’ payment of the living soul of the murderer was required instead—the New Covenant was inaugurated when God the Father Himself acted miraculously from His celestial throne to overcompensate His grievously abused though completely innocent Son with resurrection from the dead, exaltation to sovereignty over the entire created order, and the indescribable Gift of superabundant favor—the promised Spirit of wholesomeness—to give away gratuitously to all who trust this Proclamation!

It is this divine graciousness (χαρις) that restored fulness of Kingdom joy (χαρα) to the mortal human race, thus inviting their endless, boundless thanksgiving (ευχαριστια) to God!  [6/23/05]

NOT BY INSURRECTION BUT BY RESURRECTION

It is clear from both the teaching and practice of Jesus that he came to liberate humans from the respective bondages of medical, financial, political, military, and religious AUTHORITY by DISPLACEMENT, not REVOLUTION—in other words, not by INSURRECTION but by RESURRECTION!  Thereby he inaugurated a New Creation…a New Humanity that responds to Messiah’s headship and his Spirit’s leadership.  [1/21/06]

If the complete RESURRECTION of the body is ‘in the Atonement,’ then surely the current HEALING of the body must be!  [2/9/06]

BAPTISM facilitates universal participation—BOTH male AND female, BOTH Jew AND non-Jew, BOTH slave AND free—in the New Covenant, by Christ’s CIRCUMCISION at the Cross, which “stripped off” his ENTIRE male, Jewish FLESH

WHO PROPITIATED WHOM?

God Himself “provided” (Gen. 22:13-14; Hebrew:  “saw [to]”) the sacrifice, not us.  So He ‘paid for‘ the sacrifice for our sins, yet not for the sins themselves, of course (for Scripture never teaches that sins are, or can be, ‘paid for’).  He bought and paid for us, not for our miserable sins, for Heaven’s sake!

Thus God Himself gave the propitiation concerning our sins:  Israel had been taught and commanded to sacrifice in various ways to God, but when the full time came—the time, that is, when all those old shadows would be dispelled by the Light radiating from the Open Tomb from behind the Cross that cast its long shadow across the irregular landscape of antiquity, and though obscure in contours to earth-bound mortals, yet was distinctly visible to the eyes of Heaven—I repeat, when that time came, God sent His very own Son, begotten before all ages of time, before They together had planned the creation of all else.  The Son, according to plan, was both given by the Father and voluntarily, obediently gave himself to be the coverage, shielding, or protective shelter concerned with our sins as well as those of the entire world (1 John 2:2).  What a Savior!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujoshua!  Praise Jesus!  [3/17/04]

STRIPPING OFF THE FLESH = CLEANSING BY THE SPIRIT

The New Testament teaching and depiction of immersion suggests that the cleansing of the heart, the spirit, and the inward human entails the stripping off of the entire flesh or outward human (Col. 2:14-15a; 2 Cor. 5:16-18).  This was what circumcision pre-figured by the partiality of its symbolism.  But what it only pre-figured, Jesus literally fulfilled by his crucifixion—the off-stripping of his entire body of flesh in death, and his descent, in spirit and soul, into the Unseen, there to herald and proclaim to the dead, preceding his resurrection from that abode, dressed in an immortal body or outward person that perfectly befitted his wholesomeness of Spirit.

Water immersion allows all who believe to participate in Christ’s circumcision at the Cross (Col. 2:11-15), which was the ultimate cleansing off of human flesh—Adam’s mortal flesh or “body of death” (Rom 7:24), banned from regenerative fruit for his eating forbidden fruit.  Thus the flesh was not merely “washed off” with water; the mortal flesh itself was ‘washed off of’ the freshly-regenerated (Tit. 3:5) spirit—the body of death cleaned right off of its now-immortalized soul!  When a person emerges from the water of immersion they are picturing the dressing (“in-slipping”—endu-) of their freshly sanctified spirit with a suitably congruent wholesome body, fit for agelong life in the regenerated New Earth (Matt. 19:28).  The cleaning must be more thorough than often supposed.  This body of Adamic origin is much too decayed to survive by any measure short of a full replacement when Christ returns.  [3/23/04]

WHERE GRACIOUSNESS REIGNS, GRACIOUSNESS TRAINS

How is it possible so to misunderstand the graciousness of God as to deny that this age of its superabundant dispensing is attended by a law that expects graciousness from us?  Dispensationalism, however, has historically been well known for this distinctive and perfidious denial.  This denial, in practice, leads to the tragic stunting of spiritual growth to maturity in the image of God displayed in His own Son—graciousness and truth personified.  For the Law of Messiah—the Law of Liberty {James 2:12-13) that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount—is seemingly as far beyond the Law of Moses as graciousness itself is beyond indignation.  It appears to require graciousness from us even where the Law at times invoked wrath (Rom. 4:15). The new requirement is clearly a much heavier burden to our decaying flesh than Moses’ requirement.  However, the New Covenant, by which “He has made the former  old“—and in starkest contrast to the former, which is “getting old” and is “decrepit” and “near disappearance“ (Heb. 8:13)—supplies a new power for obedience as well as a new example of suffering abuse in the interests of obedience, rewarded with a new and “better” (Heb. 7:29) and “living“ (1 Peter 1:3) expectation of resurrection from the dead!  As a result, Messiah’s yoke is “kindly” and his load “light” (Matt. 11:30).

The heavier and more spiritual Law of Messiah is most certainly an indispensable part of the new order of graciousness inaugurated by Jesus; indeed, it dares to demand that we become as gracious as Jesus, who went the full length of graciousness by sacrificing himself under the assault of misdeeds.  No greater love has any person than to give their soul (that is, ‘earthly existence’) for their friends  (John 15:13).  [4/8/04]

The Law of Moses demanded righteousness…to a point; the royal Law of Messiah requires graciousness…to a fault.  [4/13/04]

That said, the Lord’s Prayer does not authorize us to pardon sins-in-general that others may commit, but precisely to forgive “our debtors” of their debts against us and pardon “those who trespass against us” of those specific trespasses.  Clearly, then, blanket, wholesale pardons were not what our Master expected of us, much less the clerical usurping of such an imaginary right.  This strongly suggests that the admonition to “get sins confessed to one another” (James 5:16a) likewise does not refer to a broadside confessional, but to our own specific sins against those particular persons.  This is still no small duty, yet is happily attended by graciousness from God and hence power from Above.  Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.  [4/23/04]

How MURDERING Jesus BACKFIRED to the BENEFIT of All Humankind

God was never our enemy, rather, by our own sins against Him, we became His enemies.  This means that we humans never needed to propitiate Him, contrary to the dark imaginations and superstitions of the pagan nations, but rather He took divine measures to propitiate us!  This is why the language of the New Testament is uniformly unilateral in its tendency on this matter.  The Father dispatched His only-born Son as a propitiation concerned with (in other words, a shelter, shielding or protection around) the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2), including the sins of those who trust Him, but not theirs alone.

We cannot be shielded from God’s anger against hardened sinfulness, for it cannot, in principle, be appeased; but He can put a protective covering around our sins so that we are saved from His anger against them.  And, He Himself supplies this sheltering via the blood of His unjustly executed Son, whose innocence and sinlessness cried out to God for His just avenging from his lethal enemies.

God, as we know, heard from heaven and raised their blameless Victim from among the dead with great proof, then exalted him on high to the throne of the universe at His own right hand, giving him superabundant overcompensation for his obedience in subjecting himself to suffering abuse from his enemies (though he was never their enemy, but, quite the contrary, went around forgiving sins without compensation and healing sinners from the dread consequences of their misdeeds in conscience and body).

Thus, wherever God sees this innocent blood sprinkled on guilty hearts by faith, He answers by sending down a measure of the rightful award for Jesus’ obedience and wrongful treatment:  the gift of the Wholesome Spirit which, by its vivifying power, actually reverses the degenerative direction of our spirits and testifies to us that we are now immortal newborns in His agelong Kingdom!

The Lord’s Supper is the beautiful sign that we are now actual participants in God’s own nature via the Spirit He has given us.  By this we feed on His agelong life and nourish our souls repeatedly until the resurrection of our bodies.  [2/5/04]

“No good deed will go unpunished,” because there is a Devil, yet no undeserved punishment will go unrequited, because there is a God.  [2/8/04]

THE COVENANTAL STRUCTURE OF GOD’S KINGDOM

The covenantal structure of the Kingdom of God was announced in the prophecy of the New Covenant in Jer. 31:31-34, quoted in Heb. 8 and 10, whereby He would impart His “law to their comprehension” and write it “on their hearts” and, moreover, “be protective to their injustices” and “under no circumstances be reminded of their sins and their lawlessnesses.”  These two facets, then, God’s law etched on our hearts and our sins forgotten from God’s heart, constitute the key epicenters of God’s new rule over his people.  These are signified by communion and immersion, respectively.  In both of these, the outpouring of the promised present of God’s Wholesome Spirit plays a decisive new role distinct from that in the Old Covenant (at least in sheer volume and variety of manifestations, not to mention frequency!).  On account of Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Father, He won the prize promised by the Father under the Old Covenant, which none other had ever come near qualifying for.  It is this that ushered in the New Covenant with gratuitous and superabundant blessings and overwhelming graciousness and consequent gifts or donations or favors of Wholesome Spirit.  All in Messiah!  All of this is the gratuity of the Father’s own righteousness or justice by raising the Son from among the dead!  It is the rightful claim or recompense of the wrongful injuries suffered by Jesus!  God pulled off an incredible coup against Satan’s kingdom of darkness!  God raised up Jesus “because of our justifying,” or on account of our rectifying, as the fruit of Messiah’s obedience even to such a humiliating and undeserved death on a cross.

In Messiah Jesus, the old humanity got destroyed, along with its mortality, corruption, and sin, and a brand new humanity was born above, with citizenship in the New Jerusalem on Mount Zion above!  And now, by the “good seed” of God’s Proclamation of His Kingdom, He begets us into that new or “second Adam” by immersion when we repent and trust the Message.

By this immersion into Messiah’s body of new humanity all our past sins, transgressions, offenses, and injustices are washed off, forgiven, not accounted against us, covered over, not remembered, cleansed away, erased!  And all this is done by the vivifying power of the Wholesome Spirit, the very same power that raised Jesus from among the dead, and which now empowers us to start obeying the directives of Messiah, the Master (and, in truth, Jehovah-savior:  Jesus) “from the heart,” that constitutes the second aspect of God’s Kingdom of Heaven over the earth during this otherwise wicked age.

This second facet, signified by communion, is the ingestion into our hearts and minds of the declarations, explanations, directives or teaching of Jesus as found recorded by his learners and commissioners in the Gospels.  This is the “law of Messiah,” the true “law of liberty” that sets us free as we continue to “eat and drink” his “flesh and blood,” which are “Spirit and life.”

The exalted Messiah is now the “Tree of Life” from whose fruit, the Wholesome Spirit, we partake regularly at the Master’s Dinner.  There we feed on the milk and meat of his Explanation and grow thereby into wholesomeness and maturity, i.e., into the image, character, and nature of God the Father as we view these in His only-born Son and, in turn, mirror them by emulation within our respective environs.

The operations of God’s Wholesome Spirit, the very substance and essence of God’s Kingdom newly covenanted in Jesus, the Messiah, can therefore be summarized as washing and nourishing.  These both are accomplished or ‘applied’ as we trust God’s Explanation that He spoke finally and with unequalled authority throughout the career of Jesus, His only-born Son, in the flesh.  Thus God’s revealed Declaration and His commissioned Spirit or Motivation work together to testify by explanation and action to His Reign over the earth during this age (in part), as well as to the nature of its ultimate contents when this age is consummated and we can finally inherit our allotments in it without sin, death, or enemies to oppress us:  the New Heavens and New Earth in undimmed glory.  [2/18/04]

How do we know that GOD IS NOT EVIL OR ESSENTIALLY WRATHFUL?

How do we know for a certainty that God is not ultimately evil?

Answer:  The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, God’s own Son.  The very allowing—in fact appointing!—of the Cross, Christ’s participating in suffering abuse, like us, in connection with the complete reversal and superabundant overcompensation of that unequalled evil via resurrection from among the dead, all prove irrefutably that God is ultimately, in the final analysis…in the Last Judgment, just and good.  And He’s on our side!  [3/9/03; 7/27/07]

What’s more, we also know the ultimate love and goodness of God by the Spirit that He has put in our hearts when we believe.  (Romans 5:5)  [3/9/03]

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us:

1. God’s precepts to keep, directing us to maturity
2. God’s promises that raise hope, motivating us to endure
3. God’s power through His Holy Spirit, helping us obey
4. God’s pardon for our misdeeds, cleansing our conscience

What more do we need to inspire us to advance toward genuine human maturation as worthy citizens of His Kingdom?  [3/18/03; 9/16/25]

There wasn’t enough blood in all the cattle and sheep and doves of ancient Israel to cleanse, in addition to the priests, Levites, and sanctuary with all its furnishings and utensils, also the other eleven tribes plus all their houses, buildings, possessions, storehouses, livestock, orchards, vineyards, etc., etc., much less to do that gigantic task every day.  Such culture-wide wholesomeness is only possible in wake of the New Covenant with the overwhelming outpouring of the Spirit of wholesomeness resulting from Messiah’s sacrifice and outpouring of his own blood for cleansing and life-giving.

The shadowy images of the Old Covenant were but hints of what is now made possible by the indwelling power from on high.  The very inner character and contents of Deity is now on the loose in the earth so that “Wholesome to Jehovah” may be inscribed on every cowbell and ratchet wrench!  [4/6/03]

When Christians confess that “God is one,” we mean the Father and the Son are one in the Holy Spirit.  This construction is discernible even in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one Deity—the Son begotten from the Father, after their kind, before the ages were even blueprinted.  So, as we might suspect, They are identical in nature and contents—graciousness and truth.

When the Son subsequently was born as a human being—Jesus of Nazareth—he always submitted to his Father’s desire as that became known to him.  Accordingly, he learned obedience through the discipline and even abuse he suffered on earth.  Remaining yet sinless, he could qualify to die for our sins because he was eligible to be raised from the dead even if slain, with all the overcompensating gift of the Holy Spirit as promised.  This he gives away in abundance to any and every sinner who trusts him, thus providing lasting life and pardon to all who desire to receive him.  [5/16/03; 9/16/25]

Is it possible, when we forgive people of their offenses against us while they remain unrepentant of those offenses, that God will then take up our cause and do the avenging Himself, in His own time and as He sees fit?  His explicit desire is that everyone should come to repentance concerning their sins and start loving innocently, without offense, in purity of motive and response.  People who remain stubborn even after being forgiven by many faithfully obedient forgiving Christians, must necessarily evoke God’s eventual indignation for continuing to cause harm to others and refusing to change their minds and habits.  [7/2/03]

God did not mind in the least that His dear people asked of Him signs and miracles.  It’s only when He gave them a whole history of them and still they would not trust Him that He ran out of patience.  It was only when He finally sent them His own beloved Son, the one begotten from His own bosom, yet, regardless, they continued demanding signs, having already murdered him and wiped their mouths from blood, but clamored for still more proof, that God finally said enough is enough.  Very well then, you may go to hell since you resolutely insist.

Scan forward to 70 A.D. and desolating abominations.  After 40 years of divine mercy following their crucifixion of their own Messiah, whose resurrection constituted the greatest sign and wonder ever bestowed on mankind—and on Jews in particular!—that still calloused, stubborn, hardhearted, stiff-necked generation was wiped out in such a show of internecine murder, torture, and even cannibalism as the nation had never before witnessed, nor ever since.

God is generous and kind to give sufficient extraordinary proof in every generation of history, but He wants to see some fruit from it, not petulant whining for more and more, because that’s simply bald disbelief masquerading as a sincere prayer request. [9/18/03]

The BLOOD of Christ does not ‘pay off our debts’ but cleans off our sins and makes A PROTECTIVE COVERING around them.

In order to be saved, we must be released/pardoned/forgiven/let go of or cleansed of our sins, for sins have not been and never can be “paid for”; they are forever and irrevocably under the indignation/anger, and condemnation of God and will drag anyone and everyone down to destruction who remains in them.

Happily, however, the innocent blood of Jesus is available for free, gratuitously, without cost to us, precisely for the erasure and cleansing of our sins and debts, thus making peace…if only we “drink” his blood (John 6:47-66), taking his payment into our selves—our heart or core of existence—by faith, thereby invoking God’s Wholesome Spirit to enter and bring divine, uncreated life (John 7:37-39), the very antidote of the death which “passed through upon all human beings“ from Adam (Rom. 5:12).  This remedy is kindly available from God for all sinners without distinction or exception, but it is inoperative apart from trust.  Our proclaimed pardon by God remains unactualized and ineffective for us unless and until we start to believe this Message, this vivifying Explanation.

The Explanation of God’s Kingdom itself (i.e., the Proclamation of the Resurrection-avenged Crucifixion of Jesus) possesses—has been invested with!—the power of God for our salvation, for part and parcel of that Message is the proof and testimony associated inextricably with it in the story of God’s action as Savior in Jesus, His Only-born, chosen Messiah, and exalted Master of the universe.

We human beings are not consistently capable of freely, wholeheartedly, graciously forgiving our debtors unless and until we ourselves recognize, understand, and believe, and thus render operative and actual our own pardon from God.  Only then are we capable of sustained forgiveness of others, because only then does God bestow the power of His own Spirit—the Divine nature and wholesome contents of favor and truth—into our hearts.  This pledge, guarantee, and downpayment of our full future inheritance within God’s Kingdom gives us an expectancy of such a magnitude of wealth and blessings in Christ that our present losses—and in this connection, also those things we pardon, forgive, release, relinquish, or let go to others of what they owe us on account of their injuries and sins against us—shrink to near insignificance by comparison.

This is why the Holy Spirit is such an indispensable consoler or counselor for us.  It reminds us of all that the Father has given the Son—as that boon is coming also through him to us who stay in the Son by trust.

However, where room is made for chronic unforgiveness, space is prepared for evil spirits to take up residence; in other words, place is given to the Adversary (διαβολ-, Eph. 4:26-27, cf. Rom. 12:19-21).  So when God’s favor/grace is withheld or not extended to fellow humans when they sin, injure, and incur debt or obligation too burdensome to repay, then the seedbed is laid for fury, rage, and wrath to build up.  Legions of demons commence their march toward sites of gathering wrath to stir up a havoc-wreaking vortex.  They can smell the battle from afar as tempers heat and flare up.  Demons appear to be messengers (“angels”) of wrath/anger/indignation in God’s terrestrial economy.  [4/11/02]

Be it noted that the “blood of Jesus Christ,” as the instrument or means of our forgiveness, is no less a metaphor or figure or symbol per se than is the fruit of the vine. Both the blood of the vein and the blood of the vine are stand ins for life; they equally represent the Spirit of life from God in repayment (in fact in superabundant overpayment) to Messiah Jesus as his just award for laying down his earthly bodily existence for our sakes.

Therefore it should pose no more of a stumbling block to Christians that communion wine/juice does not actually become blood than it should have to Jews when Jesus declared they must drink his blood to have life in themselves.  For vein blood and vine blood have, in themselves, an identical ontic status:  fleshly, earthly (as to source/origin), whereas both, as signs or symbols, represent the promised Gift of the New Covenant:  the literal vivifying Spirit of sonship from heaven!

No single earthly fluid, whether wine, water, oil, or blood itself, could fully represent every property, power, and function of the Wholesome Spirit, the core essence of God’s Kingdom, the ‘fullness‘ of love, graciousness, truth, joy, refreshment, cleanness, nourishment, energy, power, light, strength, life, consciousness, heat, cure, healing, relief, lubrication, payment, etc.

The above fluids are all alike shadows of the real—the singular Spirit of life, alone.  The shadows have not entirely outlived their usefulness, of course.  The water of baptism/ immersion, the wine-and-bread of communion/ participation in the Lord’s Supper, and the olive oil of healing/ anointing are still retained under the New Covenant in Messiah’s divinely-avenged blood.  [4/11/02]

The Vibrant Harmonics of God’s Kingdom Breakthrough, by the Blood of the New Covenant

The covenantal patterns injected into our lives by the structure of promise and fulfillment pervading Scripture resound with cosmic harmonics that set our hearts resonating with expectations beyond hopes and expectancy beyond expectations!  There are hidden levels of anticipation that transcend the abrupt endings of our minor tragedies, that beckon us beyond and beyond…  [1/12/01]

Jesus is the image of God to perfection.  Yet that image is barely perceptible  in a still shot.  God’s essential features are not visible in a still life, but only in live action.  It is the moving picture of Jesus doing high-powered acts of divine restoration, as we read in the Gospels, that most truly depicts God’s image on earth.  No deaf, dumb, and blind icon is worthy of the least consideration.  Christian iconography is an oxymoron.  That’s like saying, “Sure I’m a Christian; don’t you see my idol collection?”  God forbids it because they one and all, fat or flat, misrepresent Him to an appalling degree.  The image of God must convey action, like a movie or video does.  [2/08/01]

We have no mandate from Heaven to herald some “simple Gospel.”  As likely as not, such an abbreviated version is “a different proclamation, which is not another“!  Paul was mandated by God to be “perfecting” his career “and the service which I got from the Master Jesus to certify the Proclamation of the favor of God” (Acts 20:24), which amounted to “heralding the Kingdom” (20:25).  He felt the full weight of this burden:  “Wherefore I am attesting to you in this very day that I am clear from the blood of all, for under no circumstances do I shrink from informing you of the entire plan of God“ (20:26-7).  Only such a full “Explanation of His favor” is “able to build and give the legacy of an allotment among all who have gotten wholesome” (20:32).  Anything less may well be simpleminded instead of simple.  [2/08/01]

The Old Testament, though full of “shadows” and hints of the truth as it is in Jesus, contains, nonetheless, authoritative shadows–the ones God Himself chose for the purpose of anticipating the fulness to come.  [2/14/01]

GOD PAID US JESUS!

When God, the Father, gave us His uniquely-begotted Son, He paid us agelong life in exchange for death.  He ‘cut a deal (/covenant!)‘ with sinners to pay them agelong life if they would trust Him and become His possession—His inheritance on earth.  What a sweet deal!  By eating the Lord’s Supper we are accepting God’s payment into our dying bodies.  We are chewing on uncreated celestial nutriment and quaffing divine liquid nourishment.  That is, God’s own Wholesome Spirit—His divine nature, the contents of Deity—is entering our human natures to resuscitate, rejuvenate, regenerate, and renew our existences.  God is pleased to accept our sacrifices of love to one another—our mercy, generosity, pardoning, kindnesses, covering each other’s sins, etc., etc.—-by reviving us again and again to overcome the death gnawing at our flesh.

God had to sacrifice His Son for us in order to solve the sin problem, because our sin is the natural result of lacking life (being early on cut off from the Tree of Life for distrusting God’s Declaration).  By sacrificing the absolutely just and innocent Jesus to the vicious, unjust, public execution at the hands of Satan and his pawns, God was fully justified in raising him from among the dead, exalting him to the throne of the created universe, and overcompensating him with a measureless surplus of Wholesome Spirit, in turn, to give away for free to all who believe this proclamation and trust Jesus as Master and Messiah.  This staggering downpour of God’s nature upon human nature effected the requisite cleansing of our sins by nullifying its very root cause—our deficiency of God’s glory due to diminishing life.  Our vitality being sapped steadily, we reached out in lust/craving/covetousness to grasp and clutch some vestige of glory from this dying and doomed order of things.  We thereby violated the integrity of created structures, invaded what was not ours, trammeled what remained of God’s glory, and corrupted the whole world with disgusting defilements.  So wretched degradation and death became our legacy.

Yet God in brilliant wisdom reverses the downward plunge by entering this miasma in the person of His only-begotten Son.  In this way God loves the population of the corrupted civilization we built, that He pays Jesus to us so that whoever trusts him need not get destroyed but be able to possess the undying life that comes with him!  Then that life, welling up inside of us, engenders a willingness, in turn, to sacrifice for the sake of other dying fellow creatures, trusting and expecting repayment  from God rather than from wretchedly deficient creatures.  Thus God’s Life re-enters the realm of death, disease, slavery, abuse, and sorrow to proliferate through regenerated humanity.  This is God’s Kingdom of uprightness, peace, and joy in the Wholesome Spirit.  [3/05/01]

The Holy Spirit is the ‘business end’ of God!  That’s where His firepower is.  [3/31/01]

The power of the New Covenant is greater than the Old because now it is not defiling to touch lepers—there can be healing!  Things have changed.  The rules have changed.  The power has been augmented!  [4/4/01]

By the blood of Jesus, the Master, the Messiah, the uniquely born Son of the one and only, living and true God, Creator of all; by the blood poured out in an unjust, violent, prolonged, and public execution from a perfectly innocent Victim; by the blood avenged three days later through God’s resurrecting the just Victim from among the dead and forty days thereafter exalting him to the throne of the created universe; by such blood, accepted into our own bodies by faith, in the mundane form of grape juice during the Lord’s Supper, we have:

“Atonement“/Protective Covering/Indemnification

Salvation

Justification and Uprightness

Sanctification

Liberation

Liberty

Peace

Forgiveness/Pardon

Cleansing from sin

Erasure of sins

Conciliation with God

Nearness to God

Rescue

Agelong life

[4/04/01]