When Jesus died on the cross...

[bling]

So God can forgive anyone even the Canaanites without first paying for their sins and remain good? Didn't God kill them because he is good and they were bad?

The problem is not with God's ability to forgive , but with our ability or the Canaanites to humbly accept God's charity in the form of forgiveness. God's Love/charity is good. Good and bad people die, death is to help those still able to accept God's help to accept His help.

 

[Dave L]

The problem is not with God's ability to forgive , but with our ability or the Canaanites to humbly accept God's charity in the form of forgiveness. God's Love/charity is good. Good and bad people die, death is to help those still able to accept God's help to accept His help.

When did the Canaanites have access to God?

 

[bling]

The epistles of Paul are inspired Holy Scriptures.

OK Right agree

 

[bling]

When did the Canaanites have access to God?

Abraham was in the Land for a while and Melchizedek

 

[bling]

Christ is the First Born from the dead. If you take that title from His victorious Resurrection over death and back up to John 3 on the New Birth, you will see how we obtain eternal life from the Finshed Work of Christ on the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

Christ died and we will to, unless Christ comes again.

 

[bling]

Thank you for admitting why you had to craft your own gospel as the one revealed is not sensible to post modern materialistic thought.

There's no problem with what God has revealed clearly. Satisfaction and substitution is what Jesus and His Apostles taught. They also taught this would be a stumbling block. Which is all too clear now.

Was Christ's crucifixion required to give a death blow to the hearts of those 3000 on Pentecost Acts 2:37?
Was Christ crucifixion required for people to be crucified with Christ?

 

[Dave L]

Abraham was in the Land for a while and Melchizedek

Do you have any scripture saying they knew the way but resisted?

 

[bling]

When did the Canaanites have access to God?

The Bible is not the story of the Canaanites, so we do not know what all they went through, but God is not hidden.

 

[Dave L]

The Bible is not the story of the Canaanites, so we do not know what all they went through, but God is not hidden.

But, Jesus said all whom the Father gave to him would come to him. And Jesus is YHWH.

 

[bling]

But, Jesus said all whom the Father gave to him would come to him. And Jesus is YHWH.

Did God give to Christ those that came to Him or did God make an arbitrary selection?

 

[Dave L]

Did God give to Christ those that came to Him or did God make an arbitrary selection?

If it wasn't purely arbitrary, then we had value in God's sight. And grace isn't grace and we share in God's glory.

 

[bling]

If it wasn't purely arbitrary, then we had value in God's sight. And grace isn't grace and we share in God's glory.

What "value" or glory does the poor beggar bring to his humble acceptance of pure charity?

 

[Dave L]

What "value" or glory does the poor beggar bring to his humble acceptance of pure charity?

In real life, the poor beggar is dead. And God's grace raises him from the dead. And clothes him in Christ's (God's) righteousness and grants all that it merits forever.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)

Your point is? That quote does not refute my point.

 

[redleghunter]

I've found it interesting the way Romans 5:9 has often been translated. If you look at most English translations (the KJV is one of the few exceptions actually) you'll see something similar to the ESV which has "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." That is, you'll see "the wrath of God" or "God's wrath" or something similar. What I find interesting is that this simply isn't found in the Greek. Maybe there are variant Greek texts I haven't seen, but the vast majority of the Greek texts I've seen simply don't say this, they read:

πολλῷ οὖν μᾶλλον δικαιωθέντες νῦν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ σωθησόμεθα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς. (Nestle Greek New Testament 1904)

Mankind's wrath...that's perfect for even a post modern society. Reading Chrysostom it seems in this verse God is saving us from ourselves so to speak

But the reason most translations have 'of God' in italics is for the reason you state. But the translators were not applying chicanery to slip in a pet theology. I think you know these commissions have multiple denominations and also scholars from EO and RC traditions.

I believe the wrath "of God" was added because in Romans chapter 1 Paul established his argument of our condemnation before a Holy God based on His Wrath.


Romans 1:18 - For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness

Therefore I think it fits here in chapter 5.
And I think it is not out of the question to consider John the Baptist confirming it is the wrath of God that abides in us.


John 3:36 - He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him

When looking at how the ancients saw this passage, I found St. John Chrysostom commenting on this passage writing thus

I agree Chrysostom may have not used God's wrath specifically, but he did use substitution language.

Chrysostom, Homily on Galatians 3:3 (ACD, vol. 3, p. 108)

The people were liable to punishment since they had not fulfilled the whole Law. Christ satisfied a different curse, the one that says, “Cursed is everyone that is hanged on a tree.” Both the one who is hanged and the one who transgresses the Law are accursed. Christ, who was going to lift that curse, could not properly be made liable to it, yet he had to receive a curse. He received the curse instead of being liable to it, and through this he lifted the curse. Just as, when someone is condemned to death, another innocent person who chooses to die for him releases him from that punishment, so Christ also did.

In reality, the people were subject to another curse, which says, Cursed is every one that continues not in the things that are written in the book of the Law. Deuteronomy 27:26 To this curse, I say, people were subject, for no man had continued in, or was a keeper of, the whole Law; but Christ exchanged this curse for the other, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree. As then both he who hanged on a tree, and he who transgresses the Law, is cursed, and as it was necessary for him who is about to relieve from a curse himself to be free from it, but to receive another instead of it, therefore Christ took upon Him such another, and thereby relieved us from the curse. It was like an innocent man's undertaking to die for another sentenced to death, and so rescuing him from punishment. For Christ took upon Him not the curse of transgression, but the other curse, in order to remove that of others. For, He had done no violence neither was any deceit in His mouth. Isaiah 53:9;1 Peter 2:22 And as by dying He rescued from death those who were dying, so by taking upon Himself the curse, He delivered them from it.​

CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 3 on Galatians (Chrysostom)
CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 3 on Galatians (Chrysostom)

There are others to include Athanasius, Hilary and Cyril of Jerusalem using substitution language. And of course Augustine makes his view quite clear:

Augustine

“This, the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo death—that is, the penalty of sin—without sin, for us. As He alone became the Son of man, in order that we might become through Him sons of God, so He alone, on our behalf, undertook punishment without ill deservings, that we through Him might obtain grace without good deservings. Because as to us nothing good was due so to Him nothing bad was due. Therefore, commending His love to them to whom He was about to give undeserved life, He was willing to suffer for them an undeserved death.” (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book 4, chap. 7)​

CHURCH FATHERS: Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book IV (Augustine)

I know it is not your point but I've seen a few threads where posters claim substitution was a Reformation doctrine. Seems there was some early support for it, outside of the Holy Scriptures that is .

 

[redleghunter]

Was Christ's crucifixion required to give a death blow to the hearts of those 3000 on Pentecost Acts 2:37?

Yes ! That's what Peter preached the death and resurrection of Christ.

Was Christ crucifixion required for people to be crucified with Christ?

Yes, yes without His death and resurrection we cannot die to sin and be raised with Him.

 

[redleghunter]

Did God give to Christ those that came to Him or did God make an arbitrary selection?

The Father called them.

"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.(John 6:44)

 

[Invalidusername]

Revelations 14

9 Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

There is a wrath coming.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Mankind's wrath...that's perfect for even a post modern society. Reading Chrysostom it seems in this verse God is saving us from ourselves so to speak

But the reason most translations have 'of God' in italics is for the reason you state. But the translators were not applying chicanery to slip in a pet theology. I think you know these commissions have multiple denominations and also scholars from EO and RC traditions.

I believe the wrath "of God" was added because in Romans chapter 1 Paul established his argument of our condemnation before a Holy God based on His Wrath.


Romans 1:18 - For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness

Therefore I think it fits here in chapter 5.
And I think it is not out of the question to consider John the Baptist confirming it is the wrath of God that abides in us.


John 3:36 - He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him



I agree Chrysostom may have not used God's wrath specifically, but he did use substitution language.

Chrysostom, Homily on Galatians 3:3 (ACD, vol. 3, p. 108)

The people were liable to punishment since they had not fulfilled the whole Law. Christ satisfied a different curse, the one that says, “Cursed is everyone that is hanged on a tree.” Both the one who is hanged and the one who transgresses the Law are accursed. Christ, who was going to lift that curse, could not properly be made liable to it, yet he had to receive a curse. He received the curse instead of being liable to it, and through this he lifted the curse. Just as, when someone is condemned to death, another innocent person who chooses to die for him releases him from that punishment, so Christ also did.

In reality, the people were subject to another curse, which says, Cursed is every one that continues not in the things that are written in the book of the Law. Deuteronomy 27:26 To this curse, I say, people were subject, for no man had continued in, or was a keeper of, the whole Law; but Christ exchanged this curse for the other, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree. As then both he who hanged on a tree, and he who transgresses the Law, is cursed, and as it was necessary for him who is about to relieve from a curse himself to be free from it, but to receive another instead of it, therefore Christ took upon Him such another, and thereby relieved us from the curse. It was like an innocent man's undertaking to die for another sentenced to death, and so rescuing him from punishment. For Christ took upon Him not the curse of transgression, but the other curse, in order to remove that of others. For, He had done no violence neither was any deceit in His mouth. Isaiah 53:9;1 Peter 2:22 And as by dying He rescued from death those who were dying, so by taking upon Himself the curse, He delivered them from it.​

CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 3 on Galatians (Chrysostom)
CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 3 on Galatians (Chrysostom)

There are others to include Athanasius, Hilary and Cyril of Jerusalem using substitution language. And of course Augustine makes his view quite clear:

Augustine

“This, the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo death—that is, the penalty of sin—without sin, for us. As He alone became the Son of man, in order that we might become through Him sons of God, so He alone, on our behalf, undertook punishment without ill deservings, that we through Him might obtain grace without good deservings. Because as to us nothing good was due so to Him nothing bad was due. Therefore, commending His love to them to whom He was about to give undeserved life, He was willing to suffer for them an undeserved death.” (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book 4, chap. 7)​

CHURCH FATHERS: Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book IV (Augustine)

I know it is not your point but I've seen a few threads where posters claim substitution was a Reformation doctrine. Seems there was some early support for it, outside of the Holy Scriptures that is .

I think there are several ideas that are necessary to address and talk about distinctly: substitution, penalty, and wrath.

Those who critique Penal Substitution Theory do not necessarily reject that Christ's atoning work was substitutional, i.e. vicarious; nor that in dying Christ bore the weight of our curse, i.e. death, which is of course "the wages of sin". Instead the criticism lay in describing Christ's atoning work in such a way as it pits God against man, and indeed, seems to at times pit the Father against the Son.

Many years ago when I was still involved in the Pentecostal church of my upbringing, around 16 or 17 years old, I attended a weekly Bible study, it was a mixed group mostly of adults but also a few kids my age as well. In one such meeting one of the adults described Christ's advocacy for us as His actively holding His Father's rage back. Describing the Father as angry, relentlessly desiring to destroy us, smite us, condemn us--and it is only Jesus standing in the way of God accomplishing this against us.

Such a description, of course, is obviously on the more extreme end; and yet it's not too far afield to what is frequently taught in many circles. That ultimately what Christ saves us from is, in fact, His own Father; that the most important thing we need to be saved from isn't sin, death, hell, the devil, etc--but God.

When Penal Substitution presents the idea that God is out to get us, and that's why we need Jesus, to come between us and God in order to protect us from God, in order to save us from His beloved Father--something's gone seriously wrong. We've got the Gospel horribly, deeply, tragically wrong.

And it's a big reason why I don't think Penal Substitution is a very helpful way of talking about the Atonement. Not because I deny that Christ voluntarily gives Himself freely to bear the weight of human death, and does such on our behalf--because He does. And not because in so doing we recognize that the curse of sin that weighs down upon us is death, and so Christ gives Himself freely to death for our sake--because He does. But that when the language we use to talk about what our Lord has done for us is, ultimately, to say that God is out to get us, that God needs to hurt something, someone, and so Jesus becomes His own Father's cosmic punching bag (because God is just so angry that He has to hurt someone) we've painted the portrait not of God's immense love poured out forth through the Incarnate Jesus who gives Himself freely to us in grace to rescue us from sin, death, hell, and the devil; we have instead painted a portrait of an archfiend called "God", who is an abusive father who is out to terrorize us.

A number of years ago I remember coming across a poster, this was on another discussion forum I used to frequent, whose argument was that the only reason God will no longer torture and destroy us is because His hand is tied by contractual obligation. Jesus effectively means a contract in which God cannot do anything to me--even though He wants to--because the blood of His Son acts as a seal on said contract. These are the sorts of ideas we need to absolutely denounce and do away with--a toxic theology rooted in an inherently Pagan and Gnostic view of God. Pagan in the sense of a petty and capricious divine tyrant, and Gnostic in the sense of a cosmic and tyrannical demiurge which the Gnostics conflated with the God of Israel in their heretical systems.

The Source and Cause of our salvation is the God who loves even the most wretched and ignoble of us sinners. So much so that He pours Himself out, in such love, out of the infinite riches of His compassion, in the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because that is Who God is, the One who gives Himself.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

As for wrath: From a Lutheran perspective to speak of the wrath of God is fundamentally to speak of the dichotomy between Law and Gospel. The wrath of God is, fundamentally, to behold the dark storm cloud, to behold God behind the veil of the Law. Because the Law says "Do this" and it is never done, the Law ends up condemning us in our sin. And so to try and behold God through the lens of the Law is to see God from the vantage point of a condemned sinner--and so we see God veiled behind the Law, a dark storm cloud as Luther calls it. This is what the Israelites beheld on the mountain, fire, smoke, and a dreadful terrifying voice which they hid themselves from, calling out for Moses to intercede with God on their behalf. The natural man sees in the Law his own condemnation, and hides from God, is terrified of God. And so, without a doubt, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice. For man sees the commandment and does not do it. He knows what he ought do and what he ought not do--but "the good that I wish to do I do not do, and the evil that I do not wish to do I do" and so beneath the scales of the Law he is crushed, and can see himself as nothing more than a wretch, indeed, "What a wretched man I am!"

Which is why we will never see God rightly apart from Jesus Christ, for to see God in faith, says Luther, "is to look upon His friendly, fatherly heart". To behold God in faith is to behold God in Christ, in the suffering and death of the only-begotten Son. For there is no way to know God except Christ, "For no one has seen God at any time, except God the only-begotten Son, He has made Him known", this Jesus who is "the visible image of the invisible God" and the "express image of His Hypostasis" who has said, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father" and "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by Me". Jesus uniquely shows us the Father, because Jesus uniquely knows Him as the Father. And so in Jesus we have received adoption and sonship as heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus, having the Spirit in us by which we can cry out, "Abba! Father!".

To speak of God's wrath is not about speaking of God as out to get us, it is about an honesty about who we are as sinners standing before the full righteousness of God in the nakedness of our sin.

Because the Gospel tells us something deeply important, God isn't out to get us. In spite of all appearances based on the harshness and dread truth of the Law pressing against our necks, the God of Heaven and Earth loves us, and so loved us that He sent His only-begotten Son so that no one should perish, and all have eternal life--for that is the will of God. The Son did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world; the condemnation is that Light has come and men preferred darkness, to hide in the darkness, because their deeds were evil. The condemnation is out of our own sin, our own destructiveness. Bearing in ourselves the very hell we deserve. To quote C.S. Lewis, "It's not a question of God 'sending' us to hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be hell unless it is nipped in the bud." (God in the Dock, The Trouble With X)

-CryptoLutheran