One Died For All

[Fervent]

Yet another sidestep. Lovely.

No, it's a direct statement. I addressed your "argument" and stated I'm not answering irrelevant questions.

 

[JAL]

No, it's a direct statement. I addressed your "argument" and stated I'm not answering irrelevant questions.

Perfect example of sidestepping, tantamount to, "I'm already convinced. Don't confuse me with the facts!"

 

[JAL]

Amazing the degree of intellectual dishonesty that, in post 268, referred to me as obtuse. OK let's see how brilliant are your posts.

You continue to conflate merit with effort, but as I said earlier there is nothing inherently meritorious about effort. The link is specious at best. As for your bolding words, there is no contradiction. It is the obedience that is praiseworthy, not the suffering.

Ok let's see how that pans out. Suppose you've got two kids. You give them 2 assignments, one of them effortless (i.e. doesn't require any additional suffering).
- You tell the first son to continue normal breathing/respiration. No effort required there.
- You tell the second son to paint the entire house inside and out (or, if you like, build an ark like Noah did).

Both kids obeyed perfectly. And I take it, to be consistent, that the two children merited equal commendations/accolades in your view? (And in God's eyes). The chief factor in merit is NOT effort/suffering, in your view?

What was that word that you used in reference to me? Oh that's right - obtuse.

 

[JAL]

Newsflash: I assure you that Noah will receive far more commendations/accolades in heaven, for building his ark, than any lazy/slothful Christian.

 

[JAL]

I've decided to purchase a special trophy for one of my sons. Basically it's a sculpting of a pair of lungs. I just want to honor him for his continued commitment to breathing/respiration.

 

[JAL]

And you know what's really sad about Easter Sunday? We spend the whole day honoring Christ for His work on the cross - and we never take the time to pay equal honor to all those believers who faithfully engaged in respiration/breathing while Christ hung on the cross.

 

[JAL]

Huh? Praising someone for being beautiful is not a matter of "politeness or kindness" but a matter of recognizing an inherent quality in them that is worthy. We do the same with many inherent qualities, such as intelligence. We praise beautiful people because we believe that possessing beauty is something that deserves praise...

That is patently false. It's out of kindness, it is not a declaration of merit in the sense of recognizing REAL worthiness (virtue, character). Otherwise, all other things being equal, we'd vote for the beautiful people to receive more commendations/accolades in heaven than people more comely.

If there is any real worthiness here in the physical beauty of a woman, it lies in honoring the Creator for a work of art. He is the one deserving of the praise. She herself is not worthy of the praise. Imagine a pastor who singled out the three most beautiful women in his congregation and, publicly, showered them with special honor, insinuating that the other women in the church were less worthy of honor. Everyone in the congregation, including yourself, would be shocked and outraged at this blatant distortion of Christian values. A protest would ensue forthwith.

I challenged you to at least two hypotheticals:
(1) Give me even one example of a sermon in the last 2,000 years that has championed innate traits, as opposed to effort/self-sacrifice, as the basis of merit before God.
(2) Paint me even one hypothetical scenario where the judgment seat of Christ can be realistically expected to determine a believer's accolades/commendations based on innate traits, as opposed to effort/self-sacrifice.

On top of that:
(3) After adducing the cross as a prime example of merit, I challenged you to supply ANY evidence that the church celebrates Christ equally for those acts of obedience that did NOT involve suffering (e.g. His resting/sleeping, ingestion of meals, and recreation/play as a youth).


In all these challenges, you came up empty. Nada. Zero. Nothing. Zilch! And thus for the PAST 2,000 years, you can find no single exception to my definition of merit. And for eternity to come, you can find no exception to it either. Not one.

Yet you have the audacity to insinuate that my conclusions are "mere assertions". Look, if theology is about apodictically proving a conclusion 100%, it's a useless endeavor. I can't even prove that you exist. Theology is about opting for the most plausible conclusions in light of the available data.

The most you can do is engage in special pleading, predicated on the mere assertion that God is not like us. Did you catch that? It's a mere assertion. There is no hard evidence in Scripture for that philosophical gibberish-claim. You cited one verse to "back it up", which "argument" I rebutted immediately. All this drivel about, "If He's like us, He's not God" is mere assertion (one that leads to contradictions/gibberish and relativism). Andrew Murray said it best when he intimated that the Incarnation didn't endue God with humanity - rather it finally and fully unveiled His humanity for the very first time. In terms of the fundamental nature of His being, He is EXACTLY like us.

"And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with His friend".

"Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up 10and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky."

"And a man wrestled with him until daybreak...I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Did I forget to mention Gen 18 where the Lord came over to Abraham's house for supper? And proceeded to munch on a loaf of bread and a beef steak fired up for Him by Abraham?


Any philosophical gibberish-claim that radically polarizes God and man originates in Greek philosophy, not in Scripture. And precisely because it is gibberish, it should be dismissed without the formality of an apology.

In addition to Greek philosophy, perhaps another possible contributor to a gibberish-God is a warped sense of value. If you start with the (untenable) assumption that God prides Himself in what He IS, rather than what He DOES (i.e. his effort/self-sacrifice), then you will NEED to argue that He must be different than us, as to ascribe to Him some measure of worthiness.

 

[JAL]

@Fervent

Another comment on relativism. Love is what it is. Justice is what it is. Honesty is what is it is. God isn't the "ground" of these virtue-definitions. Even if no God existed (and certainly in my metaphysics such a possible world could have existed)- honesty would still be, well, honesty.

Christ is God. If Christ had, by free will, opted to be a child-molester, we wouldn't rightly celebrate this behavior, claiming that, "It is righteous because He is God."

Unless you're in the habit of celebrating child-molestation and other types of evil, you can't cogently claim that ONE definition of virtue/merit applies to us, and ANOTHER to God.

Clearly, merit/virtue isn't about WHO is the one doing it. It is about WHAT is being done, i.e, is it a selfish act of self-gratification such as child-molestation? Or is it a self-sacrificial act of suffering/effort leveraged to reduce suffering? Clearly the latter. And the greater - and longer in duration - is the suffering/effort, the greater is the merit.

Since merit/virtue is about WHAT is being done, not specifically about WHO is the agent, all your special pleading fails. All your efforts to cite God as a plausible exception to the rule amount to an exercise in futility.

 

[Clare73]

Baloney. You don't believe that we have real libertarian freedom. As a Calvinist, you don't believe that we can act contrary to any of the following:
(1) God's plans
(2) God's expectations
(3) God's intentions
(4) God's foreordained design and predetermined outcome.
(5) God's foreknowledge.

That's one extreme - the puppet on a string. On the other extreme is myself who believes that, in many of our decisions, we are not completely bound by ANY of those factors. I believe in real freedom.

Interrupting again. . .Biblical free will.

Scripture does not present a philosophical free will of man; the self-power (freedom) to do the
good; i.e., obey God in all things at all times (Mk 12:29-31), as do the angels in heaven.
It presents a philosophical free agency--the freedom to act voluntarily according to his disposition, to do what he wishes or desires without external coercion or restraint. This is the Biblical meaning of "free will."

And herein lies the hitch--man's disposition, which was corrupted by Adam's disobedience, and made him a slave to sin (Jn 8:34; Ro 3:19; Gal 3:22). Slaves are not free, only those whom the Son makes free are free (Jn 8:36; cf Jn 8:32; Ro 6:18, 22, 8:12; Gal 5:1).

Now unregenerate man's disposition is toward evil; i.e., self-interest in preference to God
(Mk 12:29-30; Ro 1:21, 3:10-12, 23). So the difference between free will and free agency is not just semantics, it's the difference between being able to obey God (as was Adam at creation) and not being able to obey God (unregenerate Adam after his fall). The regenerate man can obey God, not because of self-power (free will), but because of the power of the Holy Spirit who transforms his disposition.

Carry on. . .
.

 

[Clare73]

I understood what you were getting at, and as the verse reads all died. The all in 14 refers to all. All died, no exceptions. 15, on the other hand, limits the group to "those who should live," which is not all. Ultimately, though, this requires a much deeper study on what the Biblical understanding of atonement is, beginning with an Old Testament perspective since when it is explained in the NT it's through Old Testament sacrifices. From my study, the

idea that Christ "paid the sin" is a misunderstanding of what was accomplished on the mercy seat as the primary imagery is a cleansing from the corruption of sin not a repayment, so the question of whether the "payment" is only for the Elect or humanity at large is inappropriate.

The death of the animal was the penalty/payment for the sin (Ro 6:23), and its shed blood cleansed the Tabernacle exposed to the sin of the people.
.

 

[Clare73]

R.C. Sproul is correct on this point - the Problem of Evil is insoluble, and all traditional "solutions" are superficial.

Paul seems to solve it in Ro 9:23, a foil. . .for God's goodness.

 

[Fervent]

The death of the animal was the penalty/payment for the sin (Ro 6:23), and its shed blood cleansed the Tabernacle exposed to the sin of the people.
.

There is no indication that the death of the animal is the penalty/payment of sin, merely an expedient manner of getting the blood which was the effective agent. Each sacrifice Jesus is explicitly linked with serves a distinct purpose, with passover being the representative/substitutionary sacrifice and that is apotropaic rather than atoning. The atoning value of the sin and atonement sacrifices came via the cleansing power of the blood, the sacrificial animal was not corrupted by the sin as it was Azazel's goat in the atonement that sin was placed upon and the sin offering remained clean for the priests to eat. The only sacrifice that served as a representative of wrath upon sin is burnt and that was destroyed utterly, with the smoke being the piece of atonement to God.

 

[Fervent]

Interrupting again. . .Biblical free will.

Scripture does not present a philosophical free will of man; the self-power (freedom) to do the
good; i.e., obey God in all things at all times (Mk 12:29-31), as do the angels in heaven.
It presents a philosophical free agency--the freedom to act voluntarily according to his disposition, to do what he wishes or desires without external coercion or restraint. This is the Biblical meaning of "free will."

And herein lies the hitch--man's disposition, which was corrupted by Adam's disobedience, and made him a slave to sin (Jn 8:34; Ro 3:19; Gal 3:22). Slaves are not free, only those whom the Son makes free are free (Jn 8:36; cf Jn 8:32; Ro 6:18, 22, 8:12; Gal 5:1).

Now unregenerate man's disposition is toward evil; i.e., self-interest in preference to God
(Mk 12:29-30; Ro 1:21, 3:10-12, 23). So the difference between free will and free agency is not just semantics, it's the difference between being able to obey God (as was Adam at creation) and not being able to obey God (unregenerate Adam after his fall). The regenerate man can obey God, not because of self-power (free will), but because of the power of the Holy Spirit who transforms his disposition.

Carry on. . .
.

Mostly cogent, but I will point out the "slave" statement doesn't necessarily pan out, especially as we are to now present ourselves as "slaves" to righteousness. Disposed towards evil is certainly true, but making a leap to unable to resist evil is unwarranted. Jesus was made like unto us in every way(Hebrews 2:17), if we have an inborn nature that is unable to obey God that statement cannot be true. What Jesus did not assume was not healed.

 

[Clare73]

There is no indication that the death of the animal is the penalty/payment of sin,

See Lev 5:6-7, 14, 6:6 (NIV)

merely an expedient manner of getting the blood which was the effective agent.

Is the same true of Jesus' death and agony on the cross, of which it is a type?

Each sacrifice Jesus is explicitly linked with serves a distinct purpose, with passover being the representative/substitutionary sacrifice and that is apotropaic rather than atoning.

Not offered by the High Priest?

The atoning value of the sin and atonement sacrifices came via the cleansing power of the blood, the sacrificial animal was not corrupted by the sin

The Israelite laid his hand on the animal, identifying the animal with him and transferring his sin to it, to make atonement for him as a sin-bearing sacrifice (Lev 1:4, 4:4).
On the Day of Atonement, the sin of the priest and his household were laid on the bull, and the sins of the people were laid on the scapegoat (Lev 16:6, 21) transferring their sin to the bull for atonement and to the goat for removal from the Tabernacle to the wilderness. The bull and goat were sin-bearing sacrifices.

as it was Azazel's goat in the atonement that sin was placed upon and the sin offering remained clean for the priests to eat. The only sacrifice that served as a representative of wrath upon sin is burnt and that was destroyed utterly, with the smoke being the piece of atonement to God.

 

[Clare73]

Mostly cogent, but I will point out the "slave" statement doesn't necessarily pan out,

Jesus said it, which we learn, from Paul's revelation received in the third heaven, refers to the unregenerate.

especially as we are to now present ourselves as "slaves" to righteousness.

Because the Son has made us free (Jn 8:36) to do so.

Disposed towards evil is certainly true, but making a leap to unable to resist evil is unwarranted.

Not unable to resist, rather disposed to not resist, due to the unregenerate nature,
a disposition Jesus did not share (Jn 5:19, 30).

was made like unto us in every way(Hebrews 2:17),

He didn't have Adam as his father as we do, he wasn't made a sinner through Adam's disobedience as we were (Ro 5:17-18), he didn't have a sinful nature as we do (Eph 2:3).

if we have an inborn nature that is unable to obey God, that statement cannot be true. What Jesus did not assume was not healed.

Yes. . .that, like us, Adam was his father is untrue.

 

[JAL]

So you guffaw as you ignore the two-nature claim I made. I sense rather a large proportion of intellectual dishonesty. Good day, sir. Sorry I tried again to reason with you.

The idea that God added a created human soul - the notion that He selected one of us - to the Trinity is a central tenet of the Hypostatic Union but has no clear support in Scripture.

Let's briefly consider yet another reason why this claim is humanly incomprehensible. The whole point of the Incarnation is to endue the enthroned Son with human experience:
(1) Human ignorance.
(2) Human weakness/fatigue
(3) Human temptibility (viz. the temptation in the wilderness)

Did the enthroned Son mutate Himself accordingly? No, says the Hypostatic Union, because He is, and remains, immutable. Rather, He selected one of us - to do His dirty work on the cross? If the Son Himself didn't CHANGE, then He Himself (arguably) never tasted of 1,2,3. Thus there is no way for the human mind to apprehend this event as a legitimate Incarnation, it is a theory that we cannot possibly comprehend.

As it has no clear scriptural support, the ONLY reason to accept it is a predilection for immutability. But I myself have no such predilection because there is no merit (praiseworthiness) in immutable holiness. Rather there is merit in holiness acquired via free will and much effort/self-sacrifice.

 

[JAL]

Now we're back in the realm of opinion, since you seem to be placing "effort" as the chief virtue. But I see nothing inherently valuable or virtuos to effort...

Certainly God considers His own efforts worthy of mention. Just want to make sure that fact isn't lost upon you.


Imagine a leader who, seeking diligence from his subordinates - seeking real excruciating labor - commands them "Follow my example of labor." How are we to regard such words?
(1) If he never actually labored long hours and painfully, those words make him a liar and a hypocrite.
(2) An especially OUTSTANDING leader, as opposed to a hypocrite, is one who exerted FAR more diligence than his subordinates.

What happens when GOD HIMSELF utters those words? When He adduces HIS example of labor as the standard for us all to aspire to? Are we to infer option 1? Or option 2? Naturally 2 of course. The theological significance of the following passage, therefore, cannot possibly be overstated:

"Six days you shall labor and do all your work...For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day." (Ex 20).

Going with option 2, we can surmise that God, being an EXPONENTIALLY OUTSTANDING leader, has set forth an EXPONENTIALLY OUTSTANDING example of excruciating labor. Bear in mind he's asking these Israelites to labor six days a week until retirement - could easily be 50 years. Therefore HIS example of labor is, inferrably, multitudinous orders of magnitude beyond 50 years - start thinking in the way of millions, nay, billions of years.

That's why I tell YEC-ists - the notion that God created the world in 7-24 hours periods is sheer poppycock. Logical impossibility. After all, whence the Light? There was no sun in place until the 4th day! 2Cor 4:4-6 seems to hint it was the Light of Christ's face (in segue from the discussion of Light in 2Cor 3). In Gen 1, Moses defined a day as a period of darkness followed by a period of Light - he never said 24 hours.

Thus in my understanding, Christ shined His Light out into the galaxy 7 times, and quenched it six times, over the 4 billion years time that He labored to design the earth, as to create six Galactic Nights and 7 Galactic Days/Daylights in all. He did this to layout a six-day work-week as a basic model for us to follow.

(Aside from these 7 Galactic Days, the divine Light presumably provided local, standard 24-hour days/nights to the earth until the sun was set in place on the 4th Galactic Day).

But I digress. Here's the crucial point. As for the original two options above, an infinitely powerful God is stuck at option 1. Logically speaking, He cannot set an example of real effort/labor/suffering, for the reason noted at post 139. Thus we may reasonably conclude that God is finite.

 

[Fervent]

Wanna' tell that to Jesus? (Jn 8:34)

Because the Son has made us free (Jn 8:36)
You'll have to take that up with Jesus, who was referring to the unregenerate.
He didn't have Adam as his father as we do, he wasn't made a sinner through Adam's disobedience as we were (Ro 5:17-18), he didn't have a sinful nature as we do (Eph 2:3).

Yes. . .that, like us, Adam was his father is untrue.

Jesus no where says "I'm making an anthropologic statement about the unregenerate." He is speaking to specific people, and does not say that it is a condition from birth. You say that Jesus wasn't from Adam, so if Jesus didn't have this sin nature you claim humans have His death does nothing about it? We are not healed of the sin nature, and Jesus was not fully human since He had a completely different nature from us?

 

[Fervent]

See Lev 5:6-7, 14, 6:6 (NIV)

Is the same true of Jesus' death and agony on the cross, of which it is a type?

Not offered by the High Priest?

The Israelite laid his hand on the animal, identifying the animal with him and transferring his sin to it, to make atonement for him as a sin-bearing sacrifice (Lev 1:4, 4:4).
On the Day of Atonement, the sin of the priest and his household were laid on the bull, and the sins of the people were laid on the scapegoat (Lev 16:6, 21) transferring their sin to the bull for atonement and to the goat for removal from the Tabernacle to the wilderness. The bull and goat were sin-bearing sacrifices.

You're misunderstanding the statement of compensation because you don't understand the theology of Leviticus. The principal concern throughout the sacrifices is cleanliness, in that sin makes one unclean. If the animal itself took on the corruption of sin, the priests wouldn't be able to eat it because that would make them unclean for eating an unclean animal. The animal remains clean, though, and the compensation is made in it's blood(Lev 17:11). Jesus' suffering on the cross is a matter of obedience, the extent and degree of the suffering themselves are not what saves but the blood is so in a sense I suppose it would be. The priestly sacrifices don't have the imagery of identification, instead being about ownership. Passover is representational in that the head of each family identifies them and their family with a lamb by marking the doorposts and lentils with its blood and through the blood God's wrath passes over them. God's wrath is not satisfied in the sacrifice, it is instead averted. You're reading later ideas into the text rather than looking at what the text says, nothing in the laying of hands on the animal implies a transfer of sins it is a means of marking ownership. As I said before, the animals remained clean to eat which demonstrates that they did not become corrupted by having the sin placed on them. The only animal that expressly has sins placed upon it is the goat to Azazel(scapegoat), and that goat was not sacrificed but sent into the wilderness(which is why it's known as the scapegoat, or escape goat).

 

[Clare73]

Jesus no where says "I'm making an anthropologic statement about the unregenerate." He is speaking to specific people, and does not say that it is a condition from birth. You say that Jesus wasn't from Adam, so

if Jesus didn't have this sin nature you claim humans have, His death does nothing about it? We are not healed of the sin nature, and Jesus was not fully human since He had a completely different nature from us?

"The result of one trespass was condemnation for all men." (Ro 5:18)
"No one can see the kingdom of God until he is born again." (Jn 3:3)
"we were by nature (Ps 51:5) objects of wrath. (Eph 2:3)
Whatever it is, it is our nature, we are born with it--it is a condition from birth.

It is not Jesus' death that deals with that fallen nature, it is the rebirth of our spirit into eternal life; i.e., God's life being imparted into our spirit, giving us a new nature to enable us to deal with, subdue our continuing fallen nature, not to totally eliminate it. We won't enjoy its elimination until the resurrection.

You do realize that assigning any kind of sin to Jesus himself in any way is historical Christian heresy, right?

Jesus, the second Adam, was born without a fallen nature as was the first Adam.
The first Adam acquired his fallen nature in his disobedience (the fall).
Jesus never disobeyed, and never acquired a fallen nature.

Being tempted is not sinful. It is yielding to the temptation that is sinful.
Jesus was tempted--by Satan, to disobey the Father (Mt 4:1-11), and constantly tempted to retreat from the cross, demonstrated from examples reported in Mt 16:21-23; Lk 22:40-44, and v. 28--where "trials" in the Greek also means "temptations."

And being human like us, he did not conquer temptation without a struggle (Lk 22:40, see 11:4).
And being divine, it was his nature to do his Father's will (Jn 5:19), not a fallen nature which prefers oneself over God (Jn 5:30).