Another huge reply ... Maybe I shoul get a smaller pen ... sorry ... but the topic is kind of important to me.
...
You must address the problem of responsibility. If God "allows" the Devil to enter, then He must at some point take responsibility for allowing the Devil to enter.
If God allows Satan to enter He does not need to take responsibility for Satan entering. God is plainly teaching that IF we do not follow the good, the bad will bite us.
A choice is ours.
The fact that Satan exists (who himself chose to follow his own ways) is really none of our business that we should accuse God that evil exists.
Job tried doing that and God said -
JOB 38:2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
JOB 38:3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
JOB 38:4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
... and then God listed the step by step creation process
And Job replied few chapters later ...
JOB 42:3 You asked, `Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
JOB 42:4 "You said, `Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.'
JOB 42:5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
JOB 42:6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes."
We do not have enough information to understand why God allowed evil.
We are told bits and pieces of it in the Bible, like ... by getting burned we learn not to touch a hot stove.
(When I was little I inserted knitting needles (made of metal) into an electrical socket and was thrown back few feet
, I learned).
God allows evil because
we asked God to taste evil.
We ate the "apple" from the Tree of Knowledge
Between Good and Evil.
And now, in this life, we are learning this difference between Good and Evil by actually living it out in our lives.
We learn the difference by doing it.
WE are the ones who set the stage.
WE are the ones who asked God for evil.
WE are the ones who wanted to learn the difference.
And now we are asking WHY God allows evil.
We even go so far as saying why God causes evil ... without even understanding that we cannot see the entire chess set.
Only God can take something as repulsive and corrupt and distasteful and dangerous as evil and manipulate it in such a way that Good will prevail.
Why? Because God is Good and the Good is stronger than Evil.
I am not accusing you nor anyone else of asking such a question.
Would I accuse Job?
Again, you must ask how did Christ become sin? What is the mechanism?
This is a legit question.
I also think about how things work and what the mechanism is.
The only mechanism I can think of without contradicting the rest of the Bible is that the sin of the world was transferred onto Christ (without making Him a sinner) ... like a dirty shirt, even rags ...
(In nature Christ never stopped being God (Holy).)
THEN, because Christ Himself was sinless (while wearing these rags) He was taken up. (Phil 1:9 and on)
I think you are using this example to escape guilt. The goat still feels guilt for the excommunication. Christ felt guilt as the sacrifice, sin causes guilt.
But that is the point - the goat (scapegoat) did not reserve that sin and does not feel it's guilt.
Sin causes guilt if you did it. Christ did no such thing.
Can you find Scripture saying Christ felt guilty?
On the contrary, Holy Spirit convicted US of guilt in regard to sin ...
JN 16:8 When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin ...
We sinned.
Christ paid the penalty for our sin by His sinless body.
We have the guilt.
If we put our faith in Him, the guilt is taken away.
This is interesting, except that you are jumping between two time frames to do it. By your account, either God has said something and the devil "always wants to jump in" or God says something and the devil "decides to want to jump in", except that these are not exclusive possibilities: for an event to take place many things must be said. Now, I'm not saying that God was all over the place saying what He could, but by the same token, you cannot possibly tell me that it all happened without Him saying anything - that defies the Creation account of God speaking it into existence, devil and all.
The "default" is this - unless God intervenes, Satan runs whatever he wants in this world - politics, economy, nations.
Satan's activities are limited however to God's framework, which are set in place by God's general intervention and in many cases by His own hand.
Psalm 23 kind of outlines it.
The enemies are watching from the sidelines and in a way waiting for a stray sheep to stray from following Jesus.
Now, is there a communication between God and Satan?
In my opinion, from what I read, direct communication stopped about 2000 years ago.
Satan was fired from God's Court and was given this Earth as his habitat, since WE chose Satan as someone we would rather follow - the knitting needles in a socket example.
As I said complete is a translational error, the definition you gave in a later post clearly says that the word also means "finish" which is a completely different concept. I don't want to split hairs but there is a vast difference between finishing something that has been started and completing something that has been undertaken, something that has been undertaken can have multiple facets and is usually a large undertaking, the cross was by no means a large undertaking, it took a day. How else do you think it is that Christ says "those who come after Me will do greater than Me"?
You said this in the OP ---
The perfect man, has many things in his heart to do and does not do all of them. So when Jesus becomes sin, he is effectively choosing to do all those works (of the cross) that are in his heart, at once. This leads Him to fail as a man, since he cannot endure every work at once, since some conflict with others - this is what leads to the rupturing of his heart, which is frail with the human condition. The fact that he does not complete any of those works is what makes Him, Sin. Only the Holy Spirit can now complete those works.
In John 17:4 Christ clearly stated that he completed the entire assignment (given to Him) and is ready to come home. Whether that assignment is finished or completed it does not really matter in this context.
Christ was a Missionary Who planted the seeds.
Holy Spirit will make the seed grow.
Christ NEVER did anything that was outside of His assignment.
He came for the House of Israel - not the Gentiles. Gentiles are addressed by Holy Spirit.
The 11 would spread the Gospel and then even the Gentiles (me) would have the greatest mystery of ages - Christ in us.
COL 1:26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Christ could not have had His heart ruptured because he wanted to complete other things and the heart gave out.
His heart gave out for medical reasons - he was whipped and beaten down into a bloody pulp and then hung on the cross.
He came to do the will of the Father - not His own.
And the will of the Father was accomplished in John 17:4.
Furthermore you say I am saying "the Devil possessed Christ" but I am saying "the Devil tried to possess Christ" as indeed he "tries to possess all of us" and I outlined why it failed, the same way it fails with any child that does not know what it is doing when it begins to sin. The child cannot undertake all the sin that is on its heart and so becomes sin without becoming a sinner, only when it returns to sin does it become a sinner, for some this is harder than others.
OK.
But this analogy cannot be applied to Christ because He had No sin
in His heart.
In him mean
inside of him. Cannot be his heart.
1JN 3:5 ... And in him is no sin.
I think the problem is that you are wrestling with this idea that God takes responsibility for sin. This is called abating punishment. In no way does it mean that God lavishes the sin He takes responsibility for. In no way does it mean God looks forward to the time when we will sin, so that he can prove himself. It simply means that God understands we are too weak to take responsibility ourselves, the record is lost and death threatens to take over - by taking responsibility God shows that He is humble and willing to bear the burden of overcoming the Sin, for us. This is what we come to accept at the cross, because for the first time we see that it is possible to become Sin without becoming the Sinner: hope. And why is it hope, because for the first time we realize that we are able to ask God to take responsibility and that He desires to do it.
Some rebel, some do not.
Much you have said here is wonderful.
But I really do not agree that we can ask God to take responsibility for sin.
If God takes responsibility for sin it is not us who are responsible - we are just victims stuck with sin's negative side effects of this world - a double whammy.
We are not responsible for sin, God is and since we are stuck in this wretched world we are also paying for the deeds of the one responsible, who is God.
And now God, because He loves us takes the responsibility of this train wreck.
How can this makes sense?
Thanks,
Ed
