“All He can” meaning every last thing so long as it’s going to end in the salvation of the lost sinner. Which would mean if God required to gift a man 1000 years of torment, after which he would believe in Christ for the salvation of his soul, God would pursue that. Right?
No.
A person would immediately stop the torture of “hell” if all they had to do was “believe” in Christ.
Man’s earthly objective can only be fulfilled during man’s lifetime on earth.
God is doing and allowing all He can to help
willing individuals to fulfill their earthly objective, but there are just somethings God cannot do. God cannot make clones of Christ since Christ is not a made being and has always existed.
The big thing for humans is the fact: God cannot
make you choose of your own free will given likely other options to humbly accept His charity (Love/forgiveness/mercy/grace) as pure undeserved charity, since it has to be your autonomous free will choice and not His choice, He made for you. Once a person leaves earth there are no likely other alternatives a person would choose, so the choice is not available.
Reconciling “the world” to Himself, “not counting people’s sins against them.” Like how Jesus insists He’s made “all things” new. Unless you read “the world” and “all things” to mean something other than the world.
Again, God is doing everything He can, including God is forgiving everyone’s sins, but that does not mean forgiveness takes place for everyone, because true forgiveness is a transaction requiring the person being forgiven to humbly accept the forgiveness as pure undeserved charity to complete the transaction.
Sure.
I’m not the best speed reader, but like in the case of replying to people in my old topics, I’ll get there.
Satan!
Christos Victor model! Sorry, I’m reacting as I read.
I’d do that more often but most people don’t respond well to the loose posting style.
I’m not so sure God could safely remove people from Satan
while preserving their freedom of wills in tact. If people were
willingly enslaved to the devil and his wicked system of things, as the Bible teaches we were slaves to sinful passions, then there’s no saving that person if not for their own desire to first be saved. There’s only freedom for a slave when he first wishes to be freed, the Jesus victory is part of that desire coming to life in us.
Although on the Victor model God gives Satan the shiny coin of Jesus, only for the wicked kingdom of things to realise they couldn’t hold or enslave Christ the King so simply as they enslave or murdered the other prophets.
Like tying string onto a coin and offering it to someone, only to sneak it back.
Yoink!
I’m slightly disappointed you never shared your own verdict on which atonement model you subscribe to. Maybe you’re not convinced by any of the ideas.
It is good you realize The Christus Victor theory of atonement has the ransom payment being made to Satan.
Satan being the Kidnapper seems to be the earliest model of atonement coming over a century after the last letter in our Bible. At that time taking people in a battle for a later ransom payment was standard practice (there were no banks and people did not have cash or gold around). These same early writers felt there was a battle going on in heaven while they were living (yes God would eventually be the victor), so satan taking captives seemed reasonable. Today, few believe in the ragging heavenly battle and see satan as being way below God and even angels in power. Satan is very limited by God but does fulfill a purpose here on earth to help willing individuals in fulfilling their objective.
The idea of the ransom being paid to satan, elevated satan to be almost equality with God and makes satan deserving of a ransom’s payment. God has the power and knowledge to take anything away from the lowly satan, so it would be wrong to pay an undeserving enemy of God anything.
Yes, we choose to be slaves of satan by sinning, but that does not mean satan “paid” for us or deserves to have us.
The other reason people choose “satan” is because they realize that has to be a kidnapper and satan is certainly a criminal, undeserving being and they like blaming someone for the fate of man.
You said: “I’m slightly disappointed you never shared your own verdict on which atonement model you subscribe to.” I have read and studied the 5 popular theories, plus seven others, and all of them do a very poor job, so I developed my own from scripture, so it takes a book to explain to those with preconceived ideas.
Do you having a problem seeing the kidnapper being sinful man? He is certainly undeserving, but God out of a huge Love for man and willing to do anything possible to help willing humans, might even go as far as to pay wicked sinful man a huge ransom payment to free His child? This would explain how the Christ can be the ransom payment for every human and yet atonement does not happen for all people because not every sinner accepts the ransom payment. It also puts the blame back on man and not God’s problem or satan’s problem.
There is also the, “Christ Crucified” sermons in scripture like Peter’s in Acts 2, which do not put the blame for Christ’s crucifixion on satan or God, but the audience.
To start our reading and I expect comments and questions:
Atonement is one of those religious concepts which is best understood through experiencing it, then trying to explain it. Unfortunately, the new Christian is filled with ideas about atonement prior to experiencing it, so they are brain washed into trying to feel something that does not happen and quenching what should happen.
One of the advantages the Jews before Christ’s sacrifice had with atonement was personally going through the atonement process for very minor sins (unintentional sins). Lev. 5 explains why, sinners goes through in the atonement process and might be a good place to start, since Lev. 4-5 is where atonement begins. There is also the advantage of the Lev. 5 atonement being for the individuals personal and actual sins.
We might be able to take the atonement process for very minor sins and extrapolate up to what it could be like for rebellious disobedience directly towards God requiring death for the sinner with no atonement possible under the Old Law.
It would be best to imagen yourself as a first century (BC) Jewish man who just accidently touched a dead unclean animal. If you are real poor you are going to have to work an extra job help someone else for money to buy a sack of flour. If you live in the city and have money you are going to have to go out and buy a lamb and some grain to feed it. You are not a shepherd, so you will have to drag or carry a balling, thirsty and hungry lamb to the altar. You get up early to hike into Jerusalem wait in line for hours to hand the flour or lamb to the priest and watch them go through their part of the atonement process which if all is done right will result in God forgiving you and you feeling forgiven.
There is more to what and why this happens which we can find in Lev. 5:
5…they must confess in what way they have sinned. (which we need to do in the atonement process)
6 As a penalty for the sin they have committed… Here the reason for atonement is given “as a penalty” (punishment but better translated disciplining).
If the sacrifice was made as a “payment” for a sin: these sins are all the same and God considers all people the same, so the sacrifice would need to be the same (a lamb for all or doves for all or flour for all) but they are not the same. The different values of the sacrifices, is an attempt to equalize the hardship/penalty (disciplining) on the sinners and does not suggest a payment being made to God especially a payment to forgive a sin. God does not need a bag of flour to forgive sins.
The intention of the sinner going through all this, would be, all the benefits that come from being Lovingly disciplined.
Can you list all the benefits to loving disciplining?
Mmhmm, which is why I asked question two. “Does anything about the lake of fire preclude freedom?” People can have choices even in circumstances where they’re in dire straits.
We could panic, curse, regret, torment ourselves or even believe and repent. Unless you believe there’s something about hell that’ll preclude the human ability to repent or regret or believe in the Lord Jesus.
Question one was fairly uncontroversial, and if you feel like having a pop @ either of those questions I’ll be happy to read your thoughts.
Once a person repeatedly refuses to the point of never accepting God’s charity as charity (which only God might know when that occurred), that person no longer needs free will and
free will can be taken from them. There is also no need for free will in hell leading to eventual annihilation, but they could still have it. Free will is needed for Godly type Love but those in hell are never going to obtain Godly type Love.