How does God save mankind

Cool… listening to Rev Cheng on that link btw…

I call them metaphors and I would describe them a little differently

  1. Payment metaphor (ransom or restitution)
  2. Inheritance “image” metaphor (2nd Adam refuses to compromise with sin)
  3. Medical metaphor (sin dies on the cross as a kind of surgery)
  4. Battle metaphor (victory of Christ over sin and death)
  5. Judicial metaphor (penal substitution, satisfaction, scapegoat)

As metaphors they have limitations… that is ways in which they work and ways in which they fail.

The metaphors work because…

  1. We see God’s love in His willingness to pay any price for our liberation from sin.
  2. We experience rebirth with a new source of life.
  3. Sin is indeed like a degenerative illness.
  4. We see in Jesus the hope fulfilled and demonstrated for us.
  5. We often do not change until the innocent suffer because of what we do.

The metaphors fail because…

  1. Who pays and who is paid? You cannot pre-pay like indulgences for sin.
  2. It is not genetic, but something we have a role in choosing to be a part of it.
  3. Sin continues to plague Christians, and is something we do, not something which happens to us.
  4. We are not Jesus, and the real enemy is ourselves and our own bad habits.
  5. The innocent paying for the crimes of the guilty is an insane kind of justice.
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Thanks for watching, btw.

I will respond to some of the posts later. Covid has my brain fuzzy at the moment.

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I hope you get well soon.

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Insane maybe, but that’s the way it works. Both the OT and the NT attest to that.

Where does it work in such a way?

Criminals operate that way. They set up a patsy or pay someone to take the blame for their crime. But that is a perversion of justice – a system of justice doesn’t accept this or operate in such a way. That would be a system of injustice. Are you suggesting that the Bible promotes a perversion of justice. I do not. Instead I say it is a metaphor not a prescription for any system of justice anywhere. As a metaphor it works. The innocent pay for the crimes committed by the guilty just as soldiers pay for our freedom with their lives. But it is a metaphor only. Christians know this instinctively because they do not set up their justice system in such a way.

Where in the OT and NT does it promote such a perversion of justice?

All are dead in their trespasses and sins. Since all mankind are slaves to, under the power of and subjects of sin and the devil, they are unable to save themselves from them by their own strength. We need salvation, we need a savior to come and deliver us, to set us free, to give us life in the here and now.

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; Then I said, 'Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, O God.” The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

The Word became one of us, so He could deliver us from our enemies. From the beginning of Jesus offering Himself up in our place through to His ascension He was doing it for or as us, as mankind. The moment a person places their trust and allegiance in Jesus, The Son of Man, they are the ones being beaten, mocked, condemned, executed, judged by God, overcome by death in the place of the dead, then, raised up from death, overcoming and set free from death and sin, raised up to become a new creation, born of God, created in the righteousness of God the Father and ascended and seated in Heavenly places in Christ. That person who trusts in Jesus becomes one spirit with Jesus. What Jesus did was for our salvation from our enemies and for the Father’s glory. The Father showed this unfathomable grace toward us because of His mercy, not because of any good deeds we had done. For freedom sake, Christ set us free.

So what a believer has gone through with Christ has set him free from sin and the devil. They are no longer his lord. He is dead to sin, circumcised from the flesh; he is truly a free man, FREED FROM SIN . So from this position of freedom, power, liberty, we are to live our lives. No longer following the lusts of the flesh for we are dead to them. It is obvious that we are still tempted but now being new creations and one spirit with Christ we are in no way whatsoever obligated to follow the flesh. We have died to sin through our death in Christ, and by our overcoming death in our union with the Son of Man we have absolute power over sin by our trust in Jesus. Sin cannot force us to obey it. We are dead to it. When tempted, “ All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

That is why I will glory in the cross of Christ, for by it I have been saved from the power of my enemies. I have been crucified to the world and the world to me. By the blood of a man, the Second Adam, my sins were paid for. The penalty I deserved I received in Christ. In Christ I was judged, condemned, sentenced, went into my judgment but then through the Second Adam I overcame death. God has saved me, is saving me and will save me. And now I am empowered to live my life in faithful obedience looking for the Lord’s return, which will bring the fullness of my salvation, the changing of this mortal body into immortality.

The old man was death but he is now dead and a new man has risen with the righteousness of God and united in the life Christ. These are absolute truths, facts, not some metaphor. Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. Consider the cross; meditate on what happened through the whole process, dwell upon it and the God of all power and grace will reveal to you the power that was exerted to free you from sin and the devil’s mastery. You will understand God’s wisdom in the cross and the unmerited favor shown toward all but only becoming effectual in those who place their trust in Jesus.

The new man, new creation, the new spirit that is born again by the Father’s will is what rises up within us to work salvation in our souls. Those who are united with Christ now have His spirit, causing us both to desire and do His will. This salvation that we have been brought into is one which works from the inside out. It started with a new righteous spirit that as we walk in step with, rises up and causes us to overcome the works of the flesh. As we renew our minds with the words of Jesus and the Spirit through the apostles we gain the wisdom and power of God to rule over the flesh, we become the masters of it.

No human could have ever imagined that God would have done this for us, it never entered into our minds. The cross of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to all that believe. The cross of Christ is the wisdom of God to those who believe but to those who are perishing it is foolishness. In the cross of Christ, I will glory, boast, exalt and rejoice in it, I will cling too, trust in, lean on and walk in its power and freedom. For through it I have died to sin and this present age and been raised up a new creation, created in the righteousness of God my Father.

This is salvation. This is freedom. This is the grace of God working in those who believe.

JESUS IS MY LORD! I AM FREED FROM SIN!

For those of you who may wonder about an innocent person paying the penalty for our sins, this is what happened through the cross.
2 Cor 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus was made sin. He was executed as a sinner. He became a curse. He came as one under the Law, became sin and was judged and condemned by the Law.
God had prepared Christ, the Second Adam, a body for this very reason, to free us from the power of sin.

If these are all metaphors, than you have no salvation, you are still a slave of sin and the devil and you are not free and are still under the wrath of God. You are without hope in this life of the one to come.

Lot’s of places. Start with Isaiah 53.

The suffering servant passages you mean… written to explain the suffering of Israelites in the Babylonian captivity. Regardless, it does not say that the innocent can or do pay for the crimes of the guilty in a system of justice. This is just like when we say that soldiers have payed the price for our freedom. They died and suffered yes but there is no system which grants freedom in exchange for human lives. So it is a total metaphor to say they paid for our freedom. It would be closer to the truth that the soldier paid for the decisions of those in power and for whatever benefit those politicians got out it, while our freedom is more a result of those defending our liberties in the courts here at home.

It is rather indirect convoluted logic to claim our freedom comes from soldiers giving their lives in battle. To be sure it means something to say they paid the price for our liberty, but taking it literally is rather bizarre. Likewise we have no reason to take these passages of poetry in Isaiah literally, and even less reason to think any of this is speaking of a system of justice where the innocent can pay for the crimes of the guilty.

Nonsense. This is like saying if soldiers giving their lives for our freedom is a metaphor then we have no freedom. Saying something is a metaphor is not saying that it isn’t true. It means there are ways this is an accurate description of reality and ways in which it is not. It is not accurate description of any kind of system of justice. It is not any kind of justice which requires an innocent to be tormented and killed. It is only our perversion that we will not change until the worst happens.

Christ became sin so that we would be the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus became sin. Jesus became sin.

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The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Christians have usually understood Isaiah 53 to refer to Christ. As did the apostles. And the fathers.
Part 1 of the libretto for Handel’s Messiah is taken almost exclusively from messianic prophesies of the OT.

I could say lots more but I suppose it will not be well-received.

Christ bore our sin. I know - you can point me to the end of 2 Corinthians 5 where Paul uses those very words (or your English translation of them). But against your understanding of that I set the entirety of all the rest of the scriptural narrative. Even in Isaiah 53 the narrative of calling things what they are not cannot survive. While the language there settles into the accustomed attribution to God of everything that happens (including evil), we still find verses (like verse 8)…“By a perversion of justice he was taken away”. I believe in a just God … who is always and will eternally remain just. I believe in a loving God … who will eternally remain loving. God never ceases to be perfect. We are called to that same perfection - not to some gross distortion of it for which our own consciences would smite us were we to act such things out. Whatever Paul meant by that verse “God made him sin who knew no sin…” it wasn’t - it cannot be that God calls something what it is not - that he punishes righteousness and looks favorably on wickedness or pretends to see righteousness where there is none. To borrow the great Mandy Patinkin’s words: “I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.”

But I don’t pretend that I speak all this best. For your reference, if you would truly learn more of Christ and his ways, I recommend you read George Macdonald’s sermon: “Righteousness”. His words are so steeped in scriptures (all of them) and the Spirit, that he will raise your gaze past man’s questionable traditions, legal fictions, and doctrinal edifices till you stare truth in the face and are forced to either flee or wrestle with it.

If Christ did not become sin, then you will not become the righteousness of God in Him and yet are still in your sins.

Do you have a scripture reference for that last quote of yours?

[And it would actually not matter even if you did … If God sees righteousness as wickedness and wickedness as righteousness, then “salvation” or whatever was left, then, of such an empty concept would all be a moot point for every last one of us.]

I am not here to dispute with you, Cody. And if you see things differently than I do, God will eventually make clear to you and to me, what either of us still needs to know differently. You cling to faith in Christ, as so you should … May we all. I just want readers to know that there is a variety of views on atonement available and that not all are necessarily equal - in fact maybe (probably) they aren’t all even true. But that would not mean we are lost. Christ did the work he needed to do; and we are likewise called to follow him in the works prepared for us. Getting doctrinal ducks all in a nice row might be one of those things that never happens for us this side of the grave. But we can’t go wrong sitting at the feet of Christ and learning.

I hope and pray your Covid recovery is progressing well.

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The cross is the judgment and execution of sin and the resurrection is a new creation rising up out of sin, death and judgment. Without the Son of Man carrying us through judgment and execution with Him, we would have to go through it on our own and if we go through it on our own, we have no hope and forever are lost.
Thank you for the concern over the Covid.

We do have to go through it … but never on our own. Jesus didn’t bear a cross so that we don’t have to. He carried one as an example that we too, may be granted the courage and the opportunity to pick up our cross and carry it - dying with him, even. We are perfected in suffering as Jesus was. Servants are never greater than their master. If he had to be perfected in suffering, then so will we.

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And Jews have understood it to refer to Israel. Which just goes to show that a text can mean different things to different people. The Jewish understanding explains why it was written. So are the Christians just being opportunistic? I think there is a connection which justifies the Christian interpretation. The suffering of the innocent can bring about change, largely by showing us the depths to which human being can sink in their sin – showing us where and to what our bad habits lead. Thus we can find greater meaning in the death of the innocent or the death of soldiers on the battlefield whereby the world becomes a better place as we learn from the terrible events which lie behind us. In this way, the crucifixion of Christ as the worst thing human beings have done, can also be a means for God to change the world.

So no, I do not believe in a magical power of blood sacrifices let alone human sacrifices or even a divine-human sacrifice. I don’t believe God even needs such a special song and dance in order to forgive. If that were all there is to this, then I would not be a Christian and would go with the atheists in seeing it as nothing but an evil superstition which the world would be better without.

I am a Christian because I do see truth in all that the Bible says about Jesus saving us on the cross, and I don’t have to go quite so far as Jordan Peterson does, where it is all just the psychological symbolism or archetypes. I simply observe that it often takes some terrible things to get people to change. And so I can see the truth in the metaphor of the innocent paying for the crimes of the guilty. Not because God has a perverted notion justice but because our self destructive habits have perverted us.

Wow… he speaks of this in even stronger terms than I do, calling it “this most contemptible of false doctrines” and other things even worse. I certainly do not say such a thing. As he observed, perfectly good Christians can think in such a way. My guess is that logic is not such an ingrained habit with all people – and what works for them in living their life is what takes precedence. For me the point is that a way is open to understanding and accepting Christ even for the scientist who must adhere to the dictates of rational thinking – it is certainly not to insist that others must understand these things the same as I do.

Like myself George MacDonald finds truth in the Christian teaching but while I deny the treatment of this as some kind of magic and support the meaningful metaphor, George repudiates the notion of this being a legal fiction to instead say that it is more a use of imagination to see us as we could be and will be when God completes His work of transforming us. (how is that for a quick summary?)

I can’t presume too much to speak for Macdonald - but such as I think I understand him, he certainly does see salvation as ongoing work.

I almost hesitate to send this your way, Mitchell, as you hardly need any more provocation to “speak blunt truth” to people than you already have. But you really should read this one of Macdonald’s: “Justice” It won’t be for everyone (as Macdonald himself states). If you thought he was being blunt in the one you just read … wade through this one. It’s long, but I recommend going through it in its entirety. He doesn’t mince words about what has happened with atonement theories.

[Oh - and as an aide in reading Macdonald’s long and sometimes complicated trains of thought, it helps to know up front that he has a very (I think it would be called ‘dialectical’) style of presentation. He follows what he considers “wrong trains of thought” through all their logical extensions, stating their premises as if he is himself promoting them. This can startle readers until they realize what he is doing. He doesn’t actually think that … but is thinking other people’s thoughts after them, and then critiquing the same.]

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