Christus Victor vs Penal Substitution

These are two ideas of how Jesus death reconciles us to God.

See Christus Victor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for one exposition of Christus Victor.

Here's an account of penal substitution, from the original "Fundamentals": http://gospelhall.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1548

In general, the early Church saw Jesus death and resurrection as victory over Satan. How it applied to us varied. I think that's the weakest part of many discussions of Christus Victor. One idea is that Satan took someone he wasn't entitled to, and that broke his power. Another saw Jesus' death as ransom.

Starting in the middle ages, ideas of satisfaction became more common. The idea here is that God can't ignore sin, and we're incapable of surviving the punishment. Thus he punished Jesus. There are a couple of variants. In one God can't ignore sin because his honor is at stake. In the usual Protestant version his justice is at stake.

My personal preference is a variant of Christus Victor based on Romans 6. It is that Christ took on our sin and was victorious over it, but we benefit because we are united with Christ in faith. Through the bond of faith he takes our sin and we get his obedience, not just credited to us forensically (though that's how it starts) but transforming us. Calvin uses an explanation like this, though he also speaks of something like satisfaction. One strength of Calvin's treatment is that it sees all of Jesus' life as salvific, not just his death. For Calvin the "whole course of his obedience" throughout his life becomes our, in the sense that we participate in it through faith.

When reading Paul it's difficult to avoid preconceptions. People tend to read language talking about Jesus dying for us, and read into it their particular idea of the atonement. I've had people claim passages as support for either theory when the passage doesn't really mention any theory, just the fact that Jesus died on our behalf. But I think Rom 6 is Paul's clearest explanation.

Jesus' own treatment is more interesting. Jesus' most explicit statement is at the Last Supper, where he says his death is the blood of the new covenant. That's normally seen as the new covenant of Jer 31:31. All the major OT covenants are sealed with sacrifices. These aren't punishment. (Indeed I don't think any OT sacrifices are punishment, but it's particularly obvious for covenant sacrifices.) So Jesus saw his death as establishing the new covenant on which the Kingdom is based. How? In my opinion the primary meaning of OT sacrifices is showing the serious of our commitment, either to repentance (for sin sacrifices) or to the covenant (for covenant sacrifices). To the extent that the new covenant was needed because of sin, Jesus death would have been in effect an act of vicarious repentance (i.e. repentance on our behalf). If I'm right, this connects Jesus' own understanding with Paul's in Rom 6, which can also be looked at as vicarious repentance.

This is all highly controversial. Many interpreters are so clear that sacrifice is punishment and that Paul thinks Jesus was punished for us that they find support for penal substitution everywhere. I think they're reading in ideas to both the OT sacrificial system and NT treatments of Jesus death that aren't in the text.

I also commend to your attention N T Wright's discussion of Christology, JESUS AND THE IDENTITY OF GOD by N. Thomas Wright. It ends with an understanding of the atonement rooted in 1st Cent Judaism.

Why was it necessary for God to use Jesus' death?

That's a couple of questions in one.

* Why not make the world, and us, perfect? I don't know. The usual assumption is that he thought it best for us to develop in a challenging environment. This is closely related to why he doesn't just remove sin using omnipotence. There is a difference between people who have grown up perfect and never been challenged and those who have had to go through trials. For some reason he wanted or needed the latter. (Or you can follow open theism, which assumes that God can only use persuasion, not brute force. But that has to be discussed in unorthodox theology.)

* Why is death needed? Why not just forgive us? That's where different theories lead to different results. In my opinion he could just forgive us, and likely did before Jesus. But that leaves sin in place. I think Rom 6 suggests that the point of Jesus death is to transform us by union with someone whose perfect obedience can regenerate us. While God accepts us as soon as we have faith, the goal of faith is through union with Christ to transform us into the likeness of Jesus.

Duns Scotus believed that God would have given himself to humankind even if "the fall" had never occurred. Karl Rahner's view is that God created humankind in order to give of himself and self-communicate to us in grace.

Rahner believed that it is not as useful today for sin to be a central point in the expression of Christianity. Instead, he believed that a central point of Christianity ought to be grace.

Rahner believed that grace has been available to all people at all times in history. But the highest point of God's self-communication in grace is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The writings of Karl Rahner are famously difficult. There are some good summaries of Rahner's theology on Kindle. Two of them are about 100 pages and are only $0.99. Search word, "Rahner". Karl Rahner is one of the most important and influential Roman Catholic theologians.

simonpeter said:

Shalom,

What's the difference between the two, and why was it necessary for the all-powerful God to follow such a roundabout method of ridding the world of sin?

Simon

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Christus Victor tries to take Christ whole life on earth as a struggle against evil/death/satan and so the death on the cross is just a part of the whole battle. It is sometimes suggested Christ had to die so Christ could rise, with the resurrection being the main objective. When asked for the specifics of what happened with the cross the answer sounds like the Ransom Theory of Atonement.

We can all agree that: Christ was victorious, but:

Christus Victor Theory of Atonement needs to address the following:

1. Satan and/or evil are made out to be almost equal to God, so is that true?

2. For God to defeat evil/satan, God has to pay satan off with Christ’s torturous death, so is God needing to pay satan off to defeat him?

3. Why does God “owe” satan, death or evil anything? (Is the grim reaper a real person?)

4. Scripture places man with Christ going to the cross and all this being done for man and not being done for satan, so is the cross done for satan?

5. Who set the price of Christ going to the cross and why did it have to be so high?

6. Does man’s responsibility and/or involvement in all this, start and end with Adam and Eve?

7. Is man just an innocent by-standard to all this?

8. If the victory over satan and/or evil has been completed with the cross why are some humans still seemingly being held “captive” the same as people before the cross or is there a difference?

9. Why is satan still allowed to roam around on earth if the cross marks Christ’s victory?

10. What is keeping God from forgiving these victims that evil is holding (it does not seem to be their fault)?

11. Did God/Christ forgive people before this victory on the cross and if so how?

12. The problem is man sinned (not the fact that the devil is evil), so man need to be justly/fairly disciplined (punished) for his sins hopefully someway where man is not destroyed. God as a wonderful parent would see to the fair discipline of His children, if it is at all possible and then like any good parent God would forgive His children. Atonement seems to replace or be part of this disciplining phase of the restoration process, so how does paying the ransom to satan and/or evil punish man?

How does Christus Victor Theory (CVT) solve man’s problem of needing to be punished (disciplined) for man’s disobedience?


God allowed Christ to be tortured, humiliated and murdered, because it is “just” to pay a ransom to a slimy worthless kidnapper? It is just as “just” not to pay the kidnapper by anyone’s rules if you do not have to.



The most popular explanation of atonement seems to be penal substitution (PS), but there are lots of issues:

PS is not fair or just by human standards even if the innocent is willing, so why would God give us a different standard and say His is perfect?

PS makes God out to have the problem needing something in order to forgive people.

PS has God responsible/cause for the torture, humiliation and murder of Christ.

PS loses all the benefit that comes from disciplining the guilty

The analogy of a ransom is used by Christ, Paul, Peter and the Hebrew writer, so whatever the explanation is it must have a good fit with the analogy of a ransom. PS explains this as: God paying Himself off with the torture, humiliation and murder of Christ in order to forgive man of man’s sins?


If God is Love, how could God have a problem forgiving people? The reason given for “penal substitution” is God cannot forgive us without Jesus being our substitute, but that makes God out to having a problem, lacking in Love someway, and being almost blood thirsty.

The best parent does not “punish” (discipline) their children in order for the parent to have the love to forgive, they punish (discipline with time out or something) their children for the benefit that discipline provides?

PS does not have God the wonderful perfect parent seeing to the fair/just disciplining His Guilty children, so these Children will not receive all the benefits of being lovingly disciplined:

The deterrent disciplining provide to both those that have done the transgression and those that witness the disciplining.

One of the ways scripture tells us: we know we are children of a wonderful parent is by being disciplined by a concerned parent.

The measure of the transgression is done by the degree of the discipline, so not being discipline suggest the transgression is minor.

The Child that both correctly accepts the discipline and accepts the Parents forgiveness will grow from the experience and be able to move on never worrying about his need for punishment (discipline).

Hi Hedrick, this is a variation of my reply to Tercel (he of the book publishing deal!) :

This might help.

We know that blood is important, right? What does blood do?

It carries oxygen
It carries food
It carries away waste
It carries healing platelets
It carries disease fighting white blood cells

You could say blood is a good carrier. How does it do this job? By making room, for the stuff that did the good jobs!

Jesus was a good carrier. He made lots of room: for God.


John 5
19Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

God bore our sins
God won the victory and gained gifts
God paid the penalty for the sins of the world
God met the ransom demand
God removed sin, the obstacle preventing men from becoming His heirs
God gave His Spirit, enabling men to be what He created them to be


Jesus made room: the Bible calls it laying aside His life.

God confirmed that Jesus's way was THE Way. By stepping in and healing, delivering, feeding, enlightening: the Bible calls it, well, confirming.

Finally, in the eponymous act of laying down his life, God confirmed that it was Jesus's magnum opus, that he left so much room that he disappeared and God appeared, rising from the tomb!

I would sum up the ministry of Christ as a demonstrator, exponent of God's Way. Some label it as moral exemplar, but modeler would be closer. Modeler of God's Way.

John 12
24"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

simonpeter said:

Nothing has changed since crucifixion/resurrection. Sin is still present, suffering continues, etc. As if there is no diff. Between pre and post resurrection.

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Changes:

Death has no hold over those who die.
Those who died of old are no longer bound in Sheol.
God has revealed himself perfectly.
There is no longer need for new sacrifices.
Men can receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Men can acquire the divine fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit after the manner of Christ, the chief among them being true love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
It is possible to defeat sin; not only is it possible, it has been done by many Christians through Christ.
Suffering can be transformed, and it has been done by many Christians through Christ.
Adverse powers flee.
Etc.

simonpeter said:

Nothing has changed since crucifixion/resurrection. Sin is still present, suffering continues, etc. As if there is no diff. Between pre and post resurrection.

Click to expand...

Yes, something has changed.

Jesus taught that he came to establish the Kingdom of God. What "Gospel" meant for him was the good news that the Kingdom is here. But it's not fully here. That won't happen until the end. What we have now is the seed growing secretly from his parable: his followers, with him as the vine.

With his death two things have changed:

* The Kingdom is now here. Yes, sin and suffering are there, but so is God's presence, through us, reaching out to that sinful and suffering world reconciling them to God.

* God is now with us in our suffering. Yes, it still hurts. But he will bring us through it, as we are not only crucified with him but rise with him.

I don't know why God chose to deal with it this way, and either create a perfect world or get rid of suffering for his people. I can guess, but it's only a guess. But the Biblical picture is consistent that this is the way God works. The most explicit treatment of suffering in the OT is Job. And in the end, the closest thing to an answer Job God was the experience of God's presence.

simonpeter said:

Shalom,

What's the difference between the two, and why was it necessary for the all-powerful God to follow such a roundabout method of ridding the world of sin?

Simon

Click to expand...

The Christus Victor model was the primary understanding of the church fathers from Irenaeus of Lyon until the fall of the Roman Empire, and exerted considerable influence afterward, especially in the Greek and Slavic East. It holds that Christ's ridding the world of sin was accomplished through a military-like defeat the cosmic powers of sin, death, and the devil through his crucifixion and, especially, his resurrection. His resurrection overturned the reign of death, itself the effect of sin, itself a tool of the devil.

The penal substitution model was the primary understanding of the Protestant reformers, itself descended from Anselm of Canterbury's similar but different satisfaction model, and it remains a very popular model in modern Christianity. It holds that human sin deserves punishment, and that Christ became human in order to accept this punishment at the crucifixion on behalf of humanity. The crucifixion having accomplished this, the resurrection vindicated Christ.

In addition to these there is Anselm's important satisfaction model, and many more minor theories.

I think both are right, penal substitution doing a pretty good job of explaining the crucifixion, and Christus Victor making excellent sense of the resurrection. Both can be found in various forms in the New Testament, and are important because they actually deal with the severe gravity of human sin.

steve_bakr said:

Duns Scotus believed that God would have given himself to humankind even if "the fall" had never occurred. Karl Rahner's view is that God created humankind in order to give of himself and self-communicate to us in grace.

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Oh, good. I was hoping you knew this after our discussion on the other thread. And I'm sure you have figured I agree with it.

simonpeter said:

I understand this theoretically, but there seems to be no tangible change, something that one can actually witness or measure. There is still death, sin, sorrow for the multitudes - so all this does not even hint at the kingdom to come. My point is, if there were at least some unique differences between pre and post resurrection era, it would be easy to believe and understand. Otherwise, it is like saying: Christ won over death and sin ... but wait, we still have death and sin.

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I understand the concern. But the Kingdom, in the form of the Church, is tangible. And it should certainly hint of the Kingdom to come, both in itself and in its activities in the world. I understand that the Church is imperfect, but if it doesn't also show Jesus and his Kingdom, we're doing something wrong in the Church.

simonpeter said:

Shalom,

What's the difference between the two, and why was it necessary for the all-powerful God to follow such a roundabout method of ridding the world of sin?

Simon

Click to expand...

I won't touch on the exact differences between the models, but I'll say that my own view of the atonement is much more organic than exact logic, and so I tend to lean toward Christus Victor, which I've read to be described as a kind of drama or story aimed at revealing or expressing who God is so that we may know Him.

My view might be a little different though and is partly based on the promise of the New Covenant found in Jer 31 (the heart being a primary component). In numerous places of the Old Testament we're also told of the importance of having a "circumcised" heart, circumcision being a fairly bloody symbol of an effective change in the heart. Putting the two together there implies that a heart is changed through a painful procedure of sorts, perhaps through a brokenness brought about by empathy for the suffering of another.

That's where the crucifixion comes into play. With the understanding that the Son was faultless, yet willingly marched to His death for the salvation of the world, one can understand with the heart to affect that circumcision within him, though beyond that there is much more that happens, supernaturally and inexplicably as one is reconciled to God. In other words, the Gospel message itself affects the atonement or reconciliation between an individual hearer and God.

That covers the individual, but as far as the world goes, well that's a bit more complicated. God is perfectly just (fair) and He never changes, such that the measure we use is measured back to us, for good or for bad. However, if violent and malicious people are doing what they normally do to one another, then God in His fairness would let them all destroy one another unless something changed. So what did change with the crucifixion? I believe that with the coming of Christ, it was the revelation given to man from God that was changed, such that with its proliferation the called and chosen, being reconciled to God and His nature, are justified with His nature such that any violence done to them could be measured back in such a way as to affect a positive change in the world little by little over the course of two millennia. So if that is true, then Christ effectively changed the course of the world, having won the victory before it arrived.

That's definitely debatable, as some would argue that the world is just getting worse, but I'd disagree. Though we've seen violence and mayhem leading up to massive world wars (which we were told must come), in many countries we are now freely able to walk through the streets proclaiming our faith without being executed, so something has definitely changed, and for the better, at least in my opinion.

hedrick said:

My personal preference is a variant of Christus Victor based on Romans 6. It is that Christ took on our sin and was victorious over it, but we benefit because we are united with Christ in faith. Through the bond of faith he takes our sin and we get his obedience, not just credited to us forensically (though that's how it starts) but transforming us. Calvin uses an explanation like this, though he also speaks of something like satisfaction. One strength of Calvin's treatment is that it sees all of Jesus' life as salvific, not just his death. For Calvin the "whole course of his obedience" throughout his life becomes our, in the sense that we participate in it through faith.

Click to expand...

Yes, my understanding is most clearly expressed in Romans 6 as well.
Rom 6:3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
We are united in Christ sharing in his death where our sins and our old self is crucified and put to death and we are raised to new life in him. From what I have come across, that was Athanasius' view too.

A good way to see what Scripture is dealing with is to analyze what happened with the Fall.

God caused humanity to be thrown into slavery by causing it to sin, shown in a parallel narrative of Israel becoming enslaved by Egypt (the World) caused by the dream given by God to Joseph.

God's rescue involves throwing light on what Man's need is, something that remaining in the Garden would not have allowed, that need being full union with God, becoming His heirs, needing a heightening of the bad outcome of separation , by placing in an aggravated situation of separation from God.

The transfer from God's partial protection to oppression by the World evoked a different response in Cain to that of Abel, in Caleb to the rest of the Israelites. Revelation is not just progressive, but nuanced . Some results of separation from God , such as oppression and exploitation are obvious, but captivity leading to slavery is different from defeat leading to execution. Slaves are cared for. Slavery is not always by external entities. The enemy is within.

Exodus 16:3
The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

Slavery to Egypt/Self

Pros
Better Guarantee of food
Better Guarantee of protection from Canaanites

Cons
Heavy yoke

God

Pros
Light yoke
Possibly of gaining Eternal life (a mode of living) through drinking from a Rock

Cons
Uncertain food
Uncertain protection from Canaanites
Possibility of incurring God's displeasure leading to NOT gaining Eternal life

(Blessed are the meek, they come to their senses a lot quicker!)

What Christ's work (starting from when his time had come to begin his ministry) accomplished :

The Way involves picking up one's cross daily and following God. Priestly ministry begins at 29 years, but Mary's faith causes Christ's work to kick off prematurely :

John 2:3
When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

Changing water into wine is picking up your cross?

Remember, in a parallel, Moses stepped into Pharaoh's court intending to liberate God's people from the oppression of Egypt.

Jesus came into the world to free his sheep from slavery to its system. This he will do by proclaiming his appointment by God. Confirmed by signs and wonders. Failure to perform these will mean loss of credibility, maybe stoning for blasphemy, leading to death. Success is God raising him up from that death.

I repeat, every successful miracle was a proto Resurrection. Initiated by a proto Crucifixion. The result is a shifting of loyalty: from the world to God.

Matthew 9
8 When the crowds saw this, they were awestruck and gave glory to God who had given such authority to men.

Of course, no crucifixion is complete without nail marks :

2 Corinthians 4
12 ‎So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you

GALATIANS 6
17 From henceforth let no man trouble me: for‎ I bear in my body the marks of our Lord Jesus.

So the Cross results in bringing God's people out of slavery to the World.

But the eponymous work at Calvary did more. God's people were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not out of God's people! One factor that still prevented them from being entering God's rest was the damage they had caused.

Crimes are punished by sentencing. Sometimes the sentencing includes compensation to the injured party. However compensation is not always sufficient. The Cross compensated sufficiently.

Now ALL obstacles to entering God's rest are removed.

Galatians 3
26For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

From this we see that Jesus death on the Cross and his Resurrection

Removed the debt that the sins of humanity incurred, that required a ransom to be paid for freeing mankind.

Removed the ignorance about Gods instructions on how to be freed from the World/sin, by authenticating Christ's lesson of dying to self, in order to live, by raising him from death.


Ignorance can lead to one misunderstanding what the very nature of slavery is. Revelation sets you free.

NB

1 This is a bare framework. Every point has deeper meaning, some are even polyvalent. Like the results of the main issue itself, the atonement

2 keep in mind the intentionality of the events of Creation. Jewish commentaries are pretty good in outlining God's purpose in Creation, although they may disagree in what Christians believe are His Ways of bringing His will to fruition!

Assyrian said:

Yes, my understanding is most clearly expressed in Romans 6 as well.
Rom 6:3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
We are united in Christ sharing in his death where our sins and our old self is crucified and put to death and we are raised to new life in him. From what I have come across, that was Athanasius' view too.

Click to expand...

Wordkeeper said:

A good way to see what Scripture is dealing with is to analyze what happened with the Fall.

God caused humanity to be thrown into slavery by causing it to sin, shown in a parallel narrative of Israel becoming enslaved by Egypt (the World) caused by the dream given by God to Joseph.

God's rescue involves throwing light on what Man's need is, something that remaining in the Garden would not have allowed, that need being full union with God, becoming His heirs, needing a heightening of the bad outcome of separation , by placing in an aggravated situation of separation from God.

The transfer from God's partial protection to oppression by the World evoked a different response in Cain to that of Abel, in Caleb to the rest of the Israelites. Revelation is not just progressive, but nuanced . Some results of separation from God , such as oppression and exploitation are obvious, but captivity leading to slavery is different from defeat leading to execution. Slaves are cared for. Slavery is not always by external entities. The enemy is within.

Exodus 16:3
The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

Slavery to Egypt/Self

Pros
Better Guarantee of food
Better Guarantee of protection from Canaanites

Cons
Heavy yoke

God

Pros
Light yoke
Possibly of gaining Eternal life (a mode of living) through drinking from a Rock

Cons
Uncertain food
Uncertain protection from Canaanites
Possibility of incurring God's displeasure leading to NOT gaining Eternal life

(Blessed are the meek, they come to their senses a lot quicker!)

What Christ's work (starting from when his time had come to begin his ministry) accomplished :

The Way involves picking up one's cross daily and following God. Priestly ministry begins at 29 years, but Mary's faith causes Christ's work to kick off prematurely :

John 2:3
When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

Changing water into wine is picking up your cross?

Remember, in a parallel, Moses stepped into Pharaoh's court intending to liberate God's people from the oppression of Egypt.

Jesus came into the world to free his sheep from slavery to its system. This he will do by proclaiming his appointment by God. Confirmed by signs and wonders. Failure to perform these will mean loss of credibility, maybe stoning for blasphemy, leading to death. Success is God raising him up from that death.

I repeat, every successful miracle was a proto Resurrection. Initiated by a proto Crucifixion. The result is a shifting of loyalty: from the world to God.

Matthew 9
8 When the crowds saw this, they were awestruck and gave glory to God who had given such authority to men.

Of course, no crucifixion is complete without nail marks :

2 Corinthians 4
12 ‎So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you

GALATIANS 6
17 From henceforth let no man trouble me: for‎ I bear in my body the marks of our Lord Jesus.

So the Cross results in bringing God's people out of slavery to the World.

But the eponymous work at Calvary did more. God's people were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not out of God's people! One factor that still prevented them from being entering God's rest was the damage they had caused.

Crimes are punished by sentencing. Sometimes the sentencing includes compensation to the injured party. However compensation is not always sufficient. The Cross compensated sufficiently.

Now ALL obstacles to entering God's rest are removed.

Galatians 3
26For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

From this we see that Jesus death on the Cross and his Resurrection

Removed the debt that the sins of humanity incurred, that required a ransom to be paid for freeing mankind.

Removed the ignorance about Gods instructions on how to be freed from the World/sin, by authenticating Christ's lesson of dying to self, in order to live, by raising him from death.


Ignorance can lead to one misunderstanding what the very nature of slavery is. Revelation sets you free.

NB

1 This is a bare framework. Every point has deeper meaning, some are even polyvalent. Like the results of the main issue itself, the atonement

2 keep in mind the intentionality of the events of Creation. Jewish commentaries are pretty good in outlining God's purpose in Creation, although they may disagree in what Christians believe are His Ways of bringing His will to fruition!

Click to expand...

You were doing ok until you got to the idea of compensation. Pharaoh wasn't compensated for the loss of his slaves, was he? In the parable of the unforgiving servant Matt 18, was the king compensated for the money owed, or did he just cancell the debt?

Assyrian said:

You were doing ok until you got to the idea of compensation. Pharaoh wasn't compensated for the loss of his slaves, was he? In the parable of the unforgiving servant Matt 18, was the king compensated for the money owed, or did he just cancell the debt?

Click to expand...

Umm, sin is a crime against the law?

Sin was eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.
Sin was Cain oppressing Abel.

Ransom is owed to the Law (Law is often personified, it is a guardian, it kills).

Pharoah is not Satan or his representative: he is a man who rejects the imprint of the image of God and joins forces with the oppressor, the world system, the selfish survival of the fittest club.

Satan is God's functionary. He is called the adversary in Talmud, he works for God to create situations to falsify God's claim. Claims that pass falsification are golden.

Matthew 18 contains three passages that deal with relationships within the group labelled " The People of God", to address the problem of ranking of the three main subgroups, the priests, the justified (ritually clean, Torah observant) and the back sliders, the "sinners", Jewish taxcollectors and prostitutes. It addressed the rejection of the "sinners" by Israel. Jesus said only the sick needed a doctor. Play on words. Israel had herself failed to fulfill her mission, leading to exile, excommunication...

Her sin was against Covenant. The ransom was paid to Covenant. That's how a new covenant could be formed. After completing the old contract, settling the penalty clauses.

IOW, the King took on the penalty. The least the unmerciful steward could do was to forgive the sinners. Don't forget, the parable of the Prodigal isn't a morality tale. It dealt with Jesus justifying his reaching out to tax collectors and prostitutes, lost sheep. They were those who found the Temple irrelevant and unable to deal with spiritual issues. They remembered how Torah was their Father's house, and Jesus was more representative of that House.

Wordkeeper said:

Pharoah is not Satan or his representative: he is a man who rejects the imprint of the image of God and joins forces with the oppressor, the world system, the selfish survival of the fittest club.

Click to expand...

Please upgrade your Bible software search system. There seems to be an error in your data upload:

Ezekiel 29:3
Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.

Revelation 12:9
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

and yes, Pharaoh of the Old Testament was an external showing of a Greater principal.

The real pharaoh who releases us by Gods Command is Satan:

Acts 26:18
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Pharaoh of the flesh was merely an external pawn that God used to show these matters.

It's much more interesting than what appears on the surface.

s

squint said:

Please upgrade your Bible software search system. There seems to be an error in your data upload.

Pharaoh of the flesh was merely an external pawn that God used to show these matters.

It's much more interesting than what appears on the surface.

s

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Israel escapes from Egypt, bright eyed and bushy tailed, swearing eternal loyalty to God. Few days later, they are "murmuring", probably worse. What caused the change? The testing, deprivation from water and food. Who carried out the testing? Not Pharaoh, but Satan. God has great hopes from Israel. Satan's job is to ask the hard questions :

Job 1
9 Satan replied, “Would Job worship you if he got nothing out of it?

Israel fails. Christ is victorious:

Matthew 4
4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Satan's work filters out the shallow. Pharaoh has no assignment from God except to be a foil for God's manifestation of His power.


Pharoah is a representation of men's collaboration with the world system, even it's victim. He is not a functionary of God.