God's mercy and justice

[Guest]

Derek and Steve7150,

John 1:29
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

A central theme to the New Testament is that Christ died to take away the sin of the world. But the question we must ask is why did it have to be this way? Why was it necessary for Christ to die? This is directly on topic for this thread. Some believe that it was necessary that Christ die in order to satisfy God’s justice. In the first post I attempted to show that God’s justice is not about appeasement but about establishing righteousness in place of human injustice. Are we to believe that our God is not mature enough to forgive without a blood sacrifice? Christ’s death was not about appeasing and angry God. If it were we would need to rewrite John 3:16 something like this….

“For God was so angry and vengeful at the sinfulness of mankind that He murdered His only son so that He could appease Himself.”

It makes it sound ridiculous, doesn’t it? No, Christ’s death was not about appeasement but about love. It served to show in the most dramatic fashion that sin can have dire and devastating consequences.

If you sin, there are consequences. Sin can lead to bitterness, jealousy, contention, strife, injury, broken marriages and even the death of a loved one. Christ came to “take away” our sin, to remove sin from our lives, to eliminate it. To the woman caught in adultery Jesus said, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). This is what “salvation” is all about. It is not about securing a position in the after-life; rather, it is about saving us from the consequences of sin through the elimination of the sin. The term “to perish” describes someone who is mired in the consequences of his own sinfulness.

So how does Christ “take away” our sin? Firstly, through forgiveness. But this forgiveness is not for God’s appeasement; forgiveness is for our benefit so that we no longer carry the guilt which impedes us from being effective servants and fully realizing God’s love. Secondly, Christ takes away our sin by helping us “sin no more.” This takes us back to following Jesus as “The Way.” Through dying to self and being born anew we begin the journey of elimination of the sin in our lives. Christ has sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts as our guide and helper in this endeavor.

The ultimate goal of this process is to establish Godly justice in the place of human injustice and make the Kingdom of God a reality in our world; growing like a grain of mustard seed into a great and mighty tree (Luke 13:19).

Todd

[Guest]

todd wrote:

It makes it sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?

as does about 90% of the Bible, upon first glance.

TK

[Guest]

“For God was so angry and vengeful at the sinfulness of mankind that He murdered His only son so that He could appease Himself.”

It makes it sound ridiculous, doesn’t it? No, Christ’s death was not about appeasement but about love. It served to show in the most dramatic fashion that sin can have dire and devastating consequences.


It's not about anger or vengefulness but it is about love yet the question is really regarding the biblical definition of love.
"Justice mercy and faithfulness" Matt 23.23
And apparently symbolism is very important to God for reasons that i think are not really explained , and blood is symbolic of life.

[Guest]

Hi, Derek,

At the risk of impertinence, I'll venture a few responses to your recent postings.

Your idea seems to deny the substitutionary aspect of the Lord's death. You are almost making His death merely an example for us to follow, rather than something that happened objectivly, in which we place our faith to secure salvation. I have understood your view of "salvation" to be quite different than the historical view, so I guess you are just being consistent.

For what it is worth, the church never historically declared an "orthodox" explanation of how Jesus accomplishes salvation (in contrast to its taking a stand on the Trinity and the nature of Christ). There have been multiple understandings over time, and although substitutionary atonement is popular in many circles today, it cannot claim to be the Christian doctrine in this department.

How does this view comport with the idea that Jesus "gave Himself a ransom" (1 Tim 2:6)...?

I Timothy 2:6 reads "the one giving himself a ransom for all, the witness in its own times." The "ransom" language here may be understood in parallel with the "witness"; such parallelism, of course, is a very Hebraic mode of communication. As such, the personal cost of Jesus' witness was a ransom (poetically) that freed people from the captivity of their blindness and insensitivity.

(But then again, if we should take this "ransom" language more literally, then to whom should we see this ransom being paid?)

So also may your citations from Hebrews 9:12 and I Thessalonians 1:10 be understood: by his costly witness, Jesus prompts repentance in people's hearts, which accomplishes their redemption from their captivity and their deliverance from the wrath that will come upon the unrepentant.

And your citation from Galatians 3:13 may be understood in the same vein. When this speaks of Jesus being made a curse in hanging on a tree, this is not reminiscent of any sacrificial motif in the Torah, but rather of the bronze serpent being pilloried in Numbers 21:8f. (cf. John 3:14); the raising of the image on the pole was an iconic curse upon the power of the poisonous snake. When the people witnessed it, they were healed; in parallel, when people look upon Christ's costly witness, they can be healed of the poison that putrefies their hearts.

This leads us to ask, what exactly is being pilloried on the cross? Some will say that Jesus became human sin, and that in such a way sin was pilloried. This dovetails into your citation from II Corinthians 5:21, "that God 'made him to be sin for us'."

Such poses a remarkable argument on your part, inasmuch as you quote Ezekiel 18:4 ("God has revealed that the 'soul that sins, it shall die'") and without blinking assert the very antithesis of that verse - i.e., that in fact it is not the sinning soul that will die, but some innocent party! Astounding! While you yourself say that "Unless He has somehow changed His mind, (which I am not aware of), He has not changed the decree from Ezekiel above...."

Rather, Jesus becomes iconic of human sin, not as a perpetrator of it, but as a victim of it. The harm he suffers illuminates the natural fruit of human sinfulness: death and devastation. And when that power of death is pilloried on the cross, the curse of harm itself falls under a curse - in poetic imagery, that is. What was meant by the sinful to trumpet the power of violence becomes inverted through poetic categorization to become a shaming of violence.

Now we may turn to your citation from II Corinthians 5:21, which could be rendered "For he made the one not knowing sin [to be] sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness by him." Once again, we must note the Hebraic parallelism in this verse: Jesus becoming sin paired with Christians becoming divine righteousness. But how can this be so? How can Christians be an attribute of God?

Let us suggest the same maneuver as we have discussed with the citation from Galatians: Jesus is iconic of human sin, not as a perpetrator, but as one under the devastating hand of sin; Christians are iconic of God's righteousness, not because they are God, but because they are under the righteous hand of God's restoration. Here it becomes important to reclaim the proper vision of righteousness: not as mere vengeance, but as a bringing about of what is right.

I don't think that God, for His part, is our enemy, but we (before we are saved) are most definitly His enemies (Rom. 5:10), hostile toward Him (Col 1:21), our sins are in need of propitiation (Heb. 2:17), to placate His wrath (1 Thes. 1:10).

Repentance resolves these issues. When a person repents, the former sinner no longer exists, but rather a new creature (cf. II Corinthians 5:17).

Practically the whole book of Hebrews teaches that Jesus was an offering for our sins. ... On a side note, I have been wondering what your take on the Old Testament is. How do you reconcile God's dealings with sin in the Old Testament, say, in Numbers 31, with your particular view of God?

Here we divert into a discussion of God's diverse instrumentality for reconciliation. Of course, not all sacrifices for sin are blood sacrifices (Leviticus 5:11). But the animal sacrifices of the Torah can be seen as serving a viscerally didactic function, to impress mortality upon the sinning individual, and to create a mental link between sin and death. This simple lesson - that sin yields death - is a basic investment into the redemption of human beings from their insensitivity.

All of the scriptures that I quoted, and the bulk of the verses about the atonement, teach that, as you said, "God must appease Himself in order to allow anyone into heaven"....

Pardon me if I have missed this along the way: where is there a text that explicitly speaks of God appeasing himself? Seems a bit masturbatory, doesn't it?


Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

Rather, Jesus becomes iconic of human sin, not as a perpetrator of it, but as a victim of it. The harm he suffers illuminates the natural fruit of human sinfulness: death and devastation.

But the animal sacrifices of the Torah can be seen as serving a viscerally didactic function, to impress mortality upon the sinning individual, and to create a mental link between sin and death. This simple lesson - that sin yields death - is a basic investment into the redemption of human beings from their insensitivity.

Emmet,

Well said! These points state very well some of the things I was trying to communicate in my last post. Sin has devastating consequences. The animal sacrifices of the Old Testament and the crucifixion of Christ serve as sober reminders of that fact. God wants us to be freed from the consequences of sin by purging the sin from our lives.

I will say though, that there is one aspect of appeasement which is valid. The word appease has the following meaning:

"to bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment;"

Inasmuch as sin is removed from our lives, peace reigns - peace in our hearts, peace with our fellow man, and peace with God.

Todd

[Guest]

To whom should we see the ransom paid? I think John Mark Hicks sums it up well:

God satisfied himself in Jesus Christ. We do not satisfy God. We do not live up to his holiness and emulate his character. We are unworthy servants even if we are obedient. We cannot deal with our sin or make up for our mistakes. We cannot pay the ransom for our own iniquities. Only God could pay it.

To whom or what did God pay it? Some believe that he paid it to Satan as if God owed Satan something. Some believe that he paid it to some principle to which he was obligated as if there is a principle of justice that stands above God to which he must submit. God does not satisfy a law higher than himself. God is not subservient to some higher principle. On the contrary, God's character is the highest principle in the universe. He owes nothing to no one (Job 41:11; Romans 11: 35).

Instead, God acts consistently with his own character. God does not deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13). God must act in character and with integrity. This is the ground of God's own faithfulness. He must be faithful to himself. He could not do otherwise and remain who he is. So God determined to redeem sinful humanity but he decided to do so in a way consistent with his character. Therefore, out of his mercy and because of his great love, God determined he would justify the ungodly, but in a just way. Because he loved his creation and yearned for their fellowship, he determined to satisfy himself in the light of his own holiness.

The cross is the moment of God's self-satisfaction. God purposed to set forth Jesus Christ as the means of averting his just wrath. The first chapters of Romans are replete with references to God's wrath and just condemnation (1:18, 32; 2:2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 25; 3:8-10, 19-20, 23). God's solution is to demonstrate his righteousness by a propitiation so that he could remain righteous and at the same time declare believers righteous. The clear implication of Romans 3:25-26 is that God could not have been just in declaring the ungodly righteous if Jesus had not been offered as a propitiation. God's own self-satisfaction was necessary if God was to remain both just and justifier. God's work in Christ is a divine self-propitiation whereby the triune community absorbs the eschatological wrath due us. Because of this self-propitiation God may now justify the ungodly (Roman 4:5).

This understanding of the atonement has been criticized as unintelligible to the modern mind. It appears to value human sacrifice and thus sounds rather mythological and hideous. But the principle of inner moral conflict whereby one sacrifices himself in self-giving love rather than compromising his own principles is still valued. We see it in parents who are torn apart with conflicting emotions when their children go astray. They long to forgive, but not in such a way that condones or encourages the wrongdoing. True forgiveness is costly. It cost God something. God decided to deal with sin by taking it up into his own life where he destroyed its power. God offers himself as a substitute in order that his holiness might meet his love for the sake of his people. The triune community sacrificed its own unbroken bliss so that others might join their communion. I am not sure we can say much more.

[Guest]

Hello, Homer,

Thank you for your citation from Hicks.

God's solution is to demonstrate his righteousness by a propitiation so that he could remain righteous and at the same time declare believers righteous. The clear implication of Romans 3:25-26 is that God could not have been just in declaring the ungodly righteous if Jesus had not been offered as a propitiation.

And here Hicks articulates a demonstration of righteousness that is demonstrably unrighteous. The ungodly are unrighteous, and no manner of legal fiction will alter that fact, but Hicks does not blush to make God a liar. It's like Abraham Lincoln said: How many legs does a dog have, if you call its tail a leg? The answer is four. It doesn't matter what you call it: a tail is not a leg.

The problem with the world is not that God needs to get over human sinfulness - it's that humans need to get over their sinfulness, through repentance and becoming new creatures.

But the principle of inner moral conflict whereby one sacrifices himself in self-giving love rather than compromising his own principles is still valued. We see it in parents who are torn apart with conflicting emotions when their children go astray. They long to forgive, but not in such a way that condones or encourages the wrongdoing.

[and also]

God's work in Christ is a divine self-propitiation whereby the triune community absorbs the eschatological wrath due us. Because of this self-propitiation God may now justify the ungodly (Roman 4:5).

So this correlates to a parent telling a kid, "If you hit your sister, I'm going to spank you." And then, after the kid has smacked little Susie, the parent spanks himself and says, "What a good boy you are." It's sure a good thing that parent didn't compromise his principles.

The main issue here is that there is a profound misunderstanding of punishment & consequence, and of the wrath of God. God is wrathful toward present sin, but past sin no longer exists, and it does not need to be expiated; repentance has removed the wrath. Punishment & consequence, then, are multivarious. When they are directed toward present sin, they may be wrathful; when they are a repercussion of past sin, they are not wrathful, but merely disciplinary.

Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

greg koukl addresses this here:

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7059


TK

[Guest]

Todd,

A central theme to the New Testament is that Christ died to take away the sin of the world. But the question we must ask is why did it have to be this way? Why was it necessary for Christ to die?

For our justification (Rom. 5:18), to bring us to God (1Pet. 3:18), so that God's wrath would "passover" us (1 Thess. 1:10), to purify unto Himself a people (Titus 2:14), but the most prevalent reason is our sin. "He bore the iniquity of us all".

Are we to believe that our God is not mature enough to forgive without a blood sacrifice?

Todd, it has nothing to do with "immaturity", (which is frankly a silly thing to even say), it has to do with God's holiness, and His justice. According to the bible, "without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Heb. 9:22)." That is why Christ was "offered once, to bear the sins of many (Heb. 9:28)"

Rev 5:9 also comes to mind: "And they *sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation."

So how does Christ “take away” our sin? Firstly, through forgiveness. But this forgiveness is not for God’s appeasement; forgiveness is for our benefit so that we no longer carry the guilt which impedes us from being effective servants and fully realizing God’s love. Secondly, Christ takes away our sin by helping us “sin no more.” This takes us back to following Jesus as “The Way.” Through dying to self and being born anew we begin the journey of elimination of the sin in our lives. Christ has sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts as our guide and helper in this endeavor.

Isa 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Isa 53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

He took our sin by taking it on Himself.

[Guest]

God's solution is to demonstrate his righteousness by a propitiation so that he could remain righteous and at the same time declare believers righteous. The clear implication of Romans 3:25-26 is that God could not have been just in declaring the ungodly righteous if Jesus had not been offered as a propitiation.


And here Hicks articulates a demonstration of righteousness that is demonstrably unrighteous. The ungodly are unrighteous, and no manner of legal fiction will alter that fact, but Hicks does not blush to make God a liar. It's like Abraham Lincoln said: How many legs does a dog have, if you call its tail a leg? The answer is four. It doesn't matter what you call it: a tail is not a leg.



Emmet, I think your missing the point or just don't like the point. The point is to look at justification from God's point of view not man's point of view. Clearly man can never be righteous only less unrighteous yet never have clean hands and a pure heart as Psalms says is necessary to reach God.
The only difference between Jesus's sacrifice verses the sacrifices made through the Tabernacle are the permanence through Jesus verses the temporal covering through the Tabernacle, but the principal was the same which was that man needed an outside intervention to be put in right standing in the sight of God. God changes not.