Apologetic_Warrior
Pilgrim
- Oct 21, 2003
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Ok, I see where you are coming from.
No I do not support any doctrine that says "God wanted to crush Him". It was the humans that wanted to crush Him, because they could not endure the wrath of God that was coming upon them for their sin. It was their sin that crushed Jesus (John 19:11). But it pleased God to crush Him .. why?
Isaiah 53:10-11
He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. The Righteous One, My Servant will make many righteous and He will bear their iniquities.
It is the children of wrath who do not know love, that come up with the idea that God had to "get even" with us for our sin (Romans 6:23), saying that God cannot forgive unless there is death .. (Mark 12:27) .. and they twist scriptures all out of context so that the real knowledge of who God is, is obscured and lost (Jeremiah 23:27).
If you look at 1 Corinthians 13:5, it says "Love does not keep account of wrongs" - and when you look at the expression "logizomai" - it means to "reckon, count credits, consider". It means that love does not count the wrongs we do and use them as some sort of currency .. as that doctrine is suggesting "wages of sin is death". They simply are reading it wrong and misrepresenting God altogether.
"The one who does not know love does not know God, for God is love".
But if anyone understands justice and love, godly justice that is of a holy nature, then we do not insist on "payback" for wrongs - it is only the sin of wrath that demands such a thing. It is a heart that cannot forgive unless they have inflicted suffering on the one who has caused them to suffer.
It is satisfactory for justice that wrongness has ceased, wrongs have been made right and that the sinner has learned to do good, because that is all that justice desires: the maintenance of right.
When a person, for instance was driving at speed exceeding the lawful limit and has caused an accident - if they have already become so remorseful that they have resolved to never do speeding again, then justice has already been perfectly effective. They ought to repair any damages they have caused, if it is possible. But the heart of the children of wrath demands that the speeding driver be fined or imprisoned so that there is some tangible punishment to satisfy their anger, not that it actually adds any value, but their wrathful heart will not be satisfied until some suffering is imposed upon the one who caused them to suffer.
That simply is not what love does, it isn't God's demand. It is the demand of the one who is the child of wrath, as Ephesians 2 mentions .. and who is that? .. it is those who are slaves of the "prince of the power of the air". The same spirit that operates in the "sons of disobedience" - those who do not obey The Word of Truth (hence: the heresies of 2 Peter 2:1 are "destructive" because they block the believers from the truth).
So, the doctrine:
Who is the one who still wants to punish us for our former sins when we have repented of them, that we are no longer doing those sins we once did? .. it is the mind of the fallen that thinks that way.
It is the doctrine of the fallen that makes God out to be the one who is holding our past against us, because they are blinded from seeing that we are sanctified in the moment (they themselves are slaves to their sin - they are the fallen ones), and they hold their judgement against us for the sin that they know they have seen us do, because they are unable to be satisfied unless they see a measure of wrath poured upon us for the suffering our disobedience has caused them.
Now, it isn't the flesh and blood that I am talking about, but what Ephesians 6 and 1 John 2:1 describes: that our adversary is one who holds God's law against us in the heavenly realms, and who, knowing God's Torah of righteousness, does not refrain from bringing charges against us for our wrongfulness.
It uses our conscience and our memory of our errors in light of conviction, to condemn us for the person we once were, and while we are unable to qualify for acquittal, it keeps us in bondage to our guilt (consider Romans 5:14 - why did the covenant of Moses break the power of death? .. then consider Hebrews 10:4 - why was it ultimately ineffective?).
Can you see how doctrine is built over time in order to break the hold that sin has over us, by equipping our faith with a confidence to stand firm in the power of The Holy Spirit by wearing the armour of God?
.. then why are we all still fighting and trying to dominate each other if Jesus' work has been victorious? .. it is because God is not the only one who is doing the work of growing The Kingdom (John 10:10, 1 John 4:1, 2 Peter 2:1-2, Matthew 13:27).
I have to explain a bit more about why the blood of Christ was needed to pay a price for the ransom.
The mind of the fallen is taken captive by their sin (Romans 6:16, Romans 7:14), and therefore prevented from coming to the light for fear that their deeds be exposed (John 3:19-21).
They aren't born as a captive, because they are babies and they are always obeying righteous instruction (as long as it seems right to them). There comes an age when they do sin, but rather than repenting, they conceal their sin with deceit or excuses .. whether it be shame where they cannot confess for fear of insufficient love, or an addiction to the sin that they cannot bear to give it up.. somehow they have been trapped in a way of thinking that they are not being truthful according to the light. They are spiritually dead and they need to be born again, because it is no longer the light of Christ that lives in them - The Spirit of Truth. They do not have fellowship with us because they are walking in the darkness, concealing their heart (1 John 1:7).
Again, I stress that children are not like that until they are taught to be fearful of authority. They are naturally obedient and honest, circumcised in the heart, and it is only when they are afraid of owning up to the truth because they might get a beating or made fun of, or some other kind of wrathful punishment, that is when they begin to walk in the darkness.
So because they are held captive in their fear, just as Adam and Eve were, afraid to own their sin and they are hiding from God. They have the mind of the children of wrath from Ephesians 2 - where they do not know genuine love. Their response is to blame the woman, blame the serpent, blame their friends.. but they just cannot trust God and say "Lord, I'm sorry, I ate the fruit! .. what shall I do?".
Jesus laid down His life to show that God does really want us to trust Him, to "turn to Him and be healed". That is how His blood serves as the ransom payment - where the devil has got a hold of us because of our fear of coming to the light, Jesus has destroyed the devil's hold over us by paying the penalty that the devil had demanded (ie: "in the day you eat of it, a dying you will die", "the wages of sin is death", "there can be no atonement without blood") so that we can turn to Him and be healed.
But if the truth is to be known, it isn't that God truly does need blood in order to do forgiveness - rather, it is our trusting in Him that enables us to be released from the condemnation .. and in order for that, we need to know that God is satisfied with our contrition so that we do not need to fear being consumed by His wrath.
That is how the rituals of sacrifice came to have an effect of justifying us in God's sight - we understand that God has received our contrition because we have demonstrated true remorse.
The devil's business is death (John 8:44) but God's business is life and in order for God to break up the works of the devil, He had to show forth His love perfectly to the end. That is how Jesus' blood pays the ransom, by the covenant we enter, whereby the life we live, we live no longer for ourselves but for Him .. and the substitution is bilateral - that Jesus gave up His body before He had completed all Messianic works, so that we would become individual parts of His body and He would continue His works through us.
(though, there has been a lot of distraction from that emphasis through the false doctrines since, so that Christians are now fighting each other rather than healing each other, and the church really isn't doing the works that Jesus wants it to be doing - Ephesians 5:29, James 4:1).
Though I have strong disagreements, thank you for sharing your opinions. Honestly it would take quite some time to respond in full. I would probably go into details about blood sacrifice in the Old Testament, details concerning Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, and perhaps respond to the religious dualism, palagianism, and a low view of the sovereignty of God I perceive in your response.
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