Did Jesus save us from God?

Apr 19, 2020
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Jesus Christ addressed your question, but you refuse to accept it.

Jesus was the Word of God, the Logos, the I am of the O.T. and was willing to lay aside His Godliness to live as a man and die blameless, being the sacrifice for your sins.
What more could you want from Him?
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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The inconsistency is our human failings.
God cannot give us a fair and right punishment - then, allow someone else to step in to take our place. He cannot even Himself step in and take our place. He undermines Himself.

If this is what many believe - I think they have made a misunderstanding somewhere. (Which is fine - that's good actually - when you realise you've made a mistake - you can grow and improve).
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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Am I the only one who sees an inconsistency here?
Perhaps I am wrong?

Does everyone else see it too - but they just don't have an answer?
Do you lot not see an inconsistency anywhere?
Does everyone agree that
1) God had for us a fair and right punishment.
2) Jesus stepped into our place to take that punishment.
3) God accepted this. It was right, and, love & mercy was expressed.

??
 
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This is one of the many questions regarding the atonement. The Eastern Church tends to say that Jesus ransomed us from death through His death and resurrection.Gregory of Nazianzus wrote:

Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth inquiring into. To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High Priest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honor of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence.
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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Confused-by-christianity, you refusing to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
I'd like to accept everything from Jesus and God - with an open heart.
That's why I am working so hard to understand the subject.

...does not make it untrue, or null and void.
That's not what I said.

...The problem isn't with God or His plan.
That's not what I said.
I did not say God was wrong.
I did not say God's plan was wrong.

There appears to me a problem with the following;
1) God had for us a fair and right punishment.
2) Jesus stepped into our place to take that punishment.
3) God accepted this. It was right, and, love & mercy was expressed.

...The problem is with you.
That's possible.
In fact - I've been quite forthright about that.

I admit, fully, I do not understand.
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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This is one of the many questions regarding the atonement. The Eastern Church tends to say that Jesus ransomed us from death through His death and resurrection.Gregory of Nazianzus wrote:

Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth inquiring into. To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High Priest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honor of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence.
Thank you for this.

This is the kind of answer that I will have to read over and over again to understand haha
So Jesus "ransomed"........
Jesus paid to death, what death required.
???
Have I understood that correctly?
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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Confused-by-christianity, you refusing to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ does not make it untrue, or null and void. The problem isn't with God or His plan. The problem is with you.
Thank you for the friendly mark.
I interpreted this quoted statement as aggressive.
Imbedded within it was the framing that I was refusing to accept God or Jesus and calling God's truth into question, something to be apathetic about or meaningless.

Was the statement not made out of aggression or frustration?
 
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The statement was made consisting of truth as I perceive it. My apologies if it offended.


Thank you for the friendly mark.
I interpreted this quoted statement as aggressive.
Imbedded within it was the framing that I was refusing to accept God or Jesus and calling God's truth into question, something to be apathetic about or meaningless.

Was the statement not made out of aggression or frustration?
 
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GreekOrthodox

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Thank you for this.

This is the kind of answer that I will have to read over and over again to understand haha
So Jesus "ransomed"........
Jesus paid to death, what death required.
???
Have I understood that correctly?

Yup! The Easter hymn reads "Christ is risen from the dead! By death, He has trampled upon death. And to those in the tombs, He is bestowing life."

The Easter sermon read in every single Orthodox church in the world was written by St. John Chrysostom ends this way:

Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hades, He made Hades captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hades, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.
 
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"Did Jesus save us from God?" seems to be a common question/saying among those who believe in universal salvation.

But Romans 5:9 seems to indicate that's exactly what happened:

"Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him"
I don't know.

This sort of stuff is a mystery to me...
I just read this...
Atonement | religion

It defines "atonement" - basically says it means to be "set at one" (with God).

Then

"Did Jesus save us from God?"
Seems lots of people think different things about what Jesus saving us on the cross means...
The article states the following...
Various theories of the meaning of the Atonement of Christ have arisen:
1) satisfaction for the sins of the world;
2) redemption from the devil or
3) from the wrath of God;
4) a saving example of true, suffering love;
5) the prime illustration of divine mercy;
6) a divine victory over the forces of evil.

(The article didn't number the different theories - I added the numbering).
 
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Saint Steven

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So much focus is on the negatives and not nearly enough on the positives of salvation.
In an earlier topic, the majority of Christian posters said they would not follow Jesus if there was no afterlife. What do you make of that?
 
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In an earlier topic, the majority of Christian posters said they would not follow Jesus if there was no afterlife. What do you make of that?

“If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen, nothing else matters.”

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan
 
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I can understand this explaining a little easier.
I can understand that "deaths" requirement must be met.
I cannot understand that God had a requirement and then Jesus stepped in and took the place of God's wrath. This would mean that God undermines Himself by - sort of finding a loophole (???) - which is impossible. God cannot undermine Godself
 
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In an earlier topic, the majority of Christian posters said they would not follow Jesus if there was no afterlife. What do you make of that?
Thats a weird question man. (I asked myself the same thing - different question, but same idea. I asked myself if I would love God even if I ended up in hell for eternity).

If God and Jesus still existed but I would cease to exist upon my death - would I still love God and Jesus?
I speculate my answer would be "yes"

What do you make of that?
I make of it this:
It's a good question to ask yourself.
If you follow Jesus only for what He will give you, then you have a problem there. The problem you have is that you're not motivated by the intrinsic value of God - but rather by what God will do for you.
Probably, ideally, you would want to love God because God is worthy of your highest possible expression.

There's some holes in my thinking - that a being worthy of your highest possible expression would not by nature allow you to eternally be in hell etc etc...

???
 
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The Liturgist

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“If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen, nothing else matters.”

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan

Dr. Jaroslav, a great Orthodox thinker, is echoing 1 Corinthians 15:14 , lest anyone claim this assertion is unscriptural.

Speaking of great Orthodox thinkers, I cited several of them in my recent blog post which outlines the Soteriology of the Early Church, which is preserved in the Orthodox Church and also found a follower in John Wesley, but I feel, and I would be interested to know the opinion of @Methodized on this, that this Wesleyan-Orthodox-Patristic model has been historically under-emphasized by the Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church (I don’t know enough about the Evangelical United Brethren, or the differences in faith between those who remained independent of the UMC and still exist as a denomination vs. those who joined the UMC vs. the Methodist Episcopal Church, which my paternal grandmother was a member of, and which I loved attending in my youth, by which time it had become the UMC but was still using the beautiful 1964 Book of Worship).
 
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"Did Jesus save us from God?" seems to be a common question/saying among those who believe in universal salvation.

But Romans 5:9 seems to indicate that's exactly what happened:

"Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him"

I am going to answer your question with a resounding “No” because Jesus Christ is God, and why would God need to save us from God?

Now it is true that, unless we accept the nominally Nicene-compatible* heresy of Monothelitism, which I don’t, and of which I am further pleased that it definitely ended when the Maronites entered into communion with the Roman Catholic Church during the Crusade, and if as is very possibly the case the Maronites were not actually Monothelite, much earlier, and has not to my knowledge been revived on a large scale, God the Son has both a human and a divine will according to Christian Orthodoxy as defined by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which to my knowledge is one of the least controversial of the Seven Ecumenical Councils** agreed upon by the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman and Eastern Catholics and Moravians, Lutherans, and most Anglicans, and indeed all non-iconoclastic*** non-Calvinist**** Protestants, it was also the position of the Sixth Ecumenical Council that the human and divine wills were in alignment, with the former obedient to the latter.

Rather, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian churches have preserved a Patristic understanding of the Wrath of God as being the experience of God’s omnipresent light in the eschaton and indeed in the present, even to some extent in this life, if one does not love God, or is opposed to Him, in which case it would be a torture.

Because God is love, indeed the perfection of love, and God is unchanging and eternal, we can assert using apophatic theology, which is the only really valid method, owing to the inscrutable nature of the Divine Essence, that God does not get angry. So, it is opposition to the uncreated energies of God that causes one to experience what is figuratively called His Wrath, which is a choice. So, for example, if we take an Antiochene Historical-Literalist approach to the Book of Exodus, or indeed read the following as an Alexandrian Christological prophetic parable, or both, we could say that the Wrath of God was the experience of God’s love for the Israelites as experienced by Pharoah, who was in opposition to that love as he chased with genocidal intent the Israelites across the exposed sea bed of the Red Sea, whose waters had parted by divine intercession at the behest of Moses. Now, once the Israelites had emerged onto the shore, God, in His love for them, allowed the waters of the Red Sea to return to their normal condition, unseparated by the supernatural forces of the Holy Spirit, and in the process Pharoah and his army were drowned, lest they had followed the Israelites into Sinai and killed them there. God did not hate the Pharoah, God was not angry with the Pharoah; the love of God for Israel rather was opposed by Pharoah, exposing him to wrath.

As much as I loathe using modern science as a source of analogies to explain theological concepts, God’s love can be likened to created light, photons, as it were; when light approaches us, the Doppler effect causes it to appear more blue in color, this being called blueshift, and as it moves away from us, it appears to be more red in color, this being called redshift. God is similar, in that when we receive His Divine Love Eucharistically, which is to say, with thanksgiving, we experience Love in its fullness, whereas if we stand in bold opposition to it we experience what is figuratively called “the wrath of God”, for God is a consuming fire, which can either energize us noetically if we embrace Him through love, or which can burn us perpetually as if we were in a lake of fire if we reject His embrace and oppose His Love through Hate.

And if we, in a lukewarm manner, try to step out of His way so as to not get burned, we do not fully benefit from His love but wind up causing ourselves to be somewhat burned anyway, and indeed, in this life, I would argue our experience of God if we live in a worldly manner alternates between fleeting moments of grace and agony, owing to our inability to stop sinning, but because of God’s infinite mercy, through faith in Christ, when we repose we can receive His love in its fullness, and indeed the more we permit our faith in Christ to be a living faith, and seek through prayer theosis, or entire sanctification, as Wesley called it, the more direct our experience of His love will be in this world, and the more certain our salvation in the next, provided we do not fall into the snares set by the devil and return by temptation to worldliness, like a dog to its vomit, something I myself must confess to doing all too often, or worse, through pride become entrapped in spiritual delusion, something Russian monastics call prelest.

* I would argue that Monothelitism is actually not Nicene-compatible, because it is contrary to the doctrine of His full humanity.
** The Oriental Orthodox reject Chalcedon for various reasons, and consequently the remaining councils, however, their doctrines are in direct alignment with the doctrine of the fifth, sixth and seventh councils. Although they might explain the doctrine proclaimed at the sixth as Christ having a theandric will from a human and divine will, in which the divine and human wills are united in the incarnation without change, confusion, separation or division, which is precisely how they explain the union of his two natures in the incarnation.
*** Iconoclasts will without fail reject the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which declared that the Church has never had idols, that iconoclasm is heresy, and that icons and the saints are worthy of veneration, but not worship, which some extreme anti-iconoclasts engaged in, for example, by chipping paint off of an icon and putting it in the Chalice during the Eucharistic Liturgy, and this was condemned as also being heresy, as it is actual idolatry.
**** Calvinists, being mongergists, along with Universalists and Pelagians, will reject the Fifth Ecumenical Council, where Monergism and Universalism were declared heretical.
 
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