Agreed. I am not stating that it is the doctrine, and have made clear that I thinnk that the idea Todd is expressing is part of the atonement.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.
I understand this verse in light of Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."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?)
I see the ransom as another way of saying "payment", which very much fits the Chrisitian idea of atonement. Christ gave his life to purchase our redemption. As to who this ransom is paid; the Father.
Although I agree with your assesment of Numbers 21/John 3, I don't think that that is what Paul is speaking of in Galations.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
Paul, (quoting the OT), says: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." and then goes on to show how Christ frees us from that curse in the above mentioned verse by "becoming a curse for us". Christ takes upon Himself the curse that rightfully belongs to us. However you look at it, it's substitutionary.
But this fits perfectly with the understanding that Christ put Himself in our (the soul that sins) place. The Father treated Christ as if He had sinned, because Christ gave Himself for that reason. That is why it pleased God to bruise Him, because He layed on Him "the iniquities of us all". In this way, there is a sense, in which God looked upon Christ as if He had sinned, imputing to Him our tresspasses, while (if we place our faith in Chirst) He imputes the righteousness of Christ to 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...."
Again, although I don't agree with your interpretation of any of those scriptures, I see the truth in this statement. Of course I don't see this as the main objective of the cross, but rather an aspect of it.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.
I would interpret this in the same way as I explained above, about God imputing the righteousness of Christ to us, etc.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?
Being in Christ, of which repentance is a necessary part by definition, resolves these issues, yes.Repentance resolves these issues. When a person repents, the former sinner no longer exists, but rather a new creature (cf. II Corinthians 5:17).
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new
Propitiation (what Christ was/made):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?
1. The act of appeasing wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the act of making propitious.
God bless,
.
. Did not your messiah say that all things are possible with God? And do you not believe that those who participate in the world to come will actually be righteous, and not just legally regarded as righteous? So then the unrighteousness of human beings is not an insurmountable obstacle.