I think it’s been obvious from the get-go that we are talking about Christian perspectives here. The sacrifice of Jesus to redeem us is a great mystery but not magic. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
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In my experience the difference in perspective between individuals is even greater than the difference in perspective between groups. Tradition encompasses both good and evil and thus tradition is a poor excuse. So I read it for myself. And what I see is that stretching these passages far enough to be about Jesus, leave it wide open for embracing quite a range of meanings – thus my explanation above, where I see it as being about both.
Magic and mystery are pretty much the same thing. Magic is just what you see when you can’t see what is really happening. I am not going to listen to Oz when he says don’t look behind the curtain. If I cannot see behind the curtain it will not be an excuse to repudiate the whole thing, but I will insist there is something behind the curtain even if I cannot see what it is. And if I speculate as to what is there, the point is more that an explanation is possible rather than I really know what the explanation actually is.
Another pretty metaphor. But I don’t believe in any indulgences or “get out of jail free cards” anymore than does George MacDonald. I quote Romans 2:6 which no doubt quotes Psalms 62:12 “God will render to everyman according to his works.” I just don’t think that is what salvation, heaven, and hell are about – not about justice or escaping it. I think it is about whether we go under the surgeon’s knife to remove our self-destructive habits or not. I think Romans 2:6 applies regardless.
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Of course any answer is partial and guesswork, but here are some bits that help me see the sense and goodness of salvation.
We have many problems. We will die. Even before then, we live badly. Others damage us. Our world leaves its mark on us. Most who entertain the possibility of a Creator wish they would step in to make things right. We want a new creation without suffering or evil. But if we know ourselves, we also know that any place entirely without evil is without us.
God will realize that new creation and guard it from every force that would unravel its goodness and reduce it to our present. But the guard doesn’t stay at the gate. The guard becomes us and shows us the way in. As God and human, Jesus shows us God’s face and that God has faced life as a creature among evil. Through stories, acted-out parables and daily life, Jesus teaches what the kingdom of God is and what it takes to live within it. Jesus offers eternal life – the only cost is allowing him to fit us for it.
But as expected, we killed him. As Jesus hung stretched out on a cross, he looked at the people who had done this and said, “Father, forgive them! They don’t know what they’re doing.” This is his solution to our messed-up world and messed-up selves. All is forgiven. Our world is designed so we can’t know perfectly and can’t move beyond what is forgivable. Just trust him to purge us of the cancer that poisons ourselves and our world, and we will join him forever.
Some begin to live out that choice here, but some never get the chance or never see the chance clearly. Regardless, it’s appointed to all of us to die and face judgement – to face the resurrected Jesus. And as we see him as he truly is, we’ll also grasp what’s become of ourselves. All that has been fused into the raw material of our being, whether by our consistent choices or other people’s malice or rotten luck, will be laid bare. Each facet of our person will be judged as growth into the image of our creator or a growth eating us from inside. With finality we will clearly choose whether to align ourselves with life and endure his life-giving surgery, or whether we so identify with our malignancy that to lose it would be to lose ourselves.
For many, our lives may bring us to the point where the choice seems automatic. For others, as Matthew’s gospel suggests, there will be surprises. But as the sheep are separated from the goats, there will not be mistaken identities. God is not blind Isaac who pictures one son in another’s place. No woolly costume will blinker our father into blessing an unworthy kid. The saved will bear the surgeon’s scar that testifies to their allegiance and their hope made good.
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Actually they are not.
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By giving warrant to God existing. All are saved from death, from oblivion and meaninglessness and all will be de/re-constructed, metamorphosed from maggot to butterfly in the transcendent. And that’s just on our infinitesimal world. God has always incarnated, from eternity, of course.
Help me out here. I’m still confused about what some of you understand about what happened on the cross.
You do realize that the moment a person places their trust in Jesus, it is they who were executed and died and when He rose up from death it was them rising to life with Him. This is an actual reality that happens to the spirit of a person. This is not a gradual experience but something that happens in an instant. The old man is executed and a new man is born, a new creation comes into existence.
I like how you phrased that. Not merely following the law, but not excused from it either for the higher standard.
Has anyone here studied the covenants, offerings and tithes of the OT? There were different offerings and gifts made at the altar, but there was one sin never covered by any of them. Intentional sin. I’ll stop there unless anyone has a question or statement.
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That is a story you made up. It doesn’t happen in any reality. Which is fine. We invent limited liability companies and all sorts of fictions. That doesn’t make them absolute. What happened on the cross is that God partook of death. That, if anything, is the first major Christian reality after the Incarnation. It is a gesture of much import, but it’s useless without the Resurrection, the beginning of the fulness of Jesus’ continued saving faithfulness.
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I’m curious as to where you got that idea. Intentional sins include a whole lot of very serious sins - pretty much all the ten commandments and many besides. If their sacrifices weren’t thought to cover those, then that would be a very serious shortfall indeed. In Job there is some mention of Job making some additional sacrifices just in case there were unintentional or unknown sins to be covered, but one gets the idea he was just trying to be thorough - and not at all that those were the only sins that could be addressed by sacrifice.
Of course all of that above is from the old sacrificial perspective that Christians have now (or should have) left behind. Even in the old testament we here the significant prophetic rumblings that ‘sacrifice’ is not what really pleases God - but obedience instead. So if that’s what you are referring to … that we now go on intentionally sinning, thinking that we can just "make a sacrifice here or there - go to church - ask for forgiveness, even though we have no intention of changing our ways; if all that is what you mean by “sacrifice not covering intentional sin now” - then yeah. I would answer that for the Christian - it is love that covers a multitude of sins - not sacrifice.
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It might be (or seem) very sudden for some. It might be very gradual - the work of an entire lifetime for others. Whenever anybody tries to claim there is only one way God ever does things, that’s often a red flag. If one is obliged to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, one doesn’t get the idea that it was some easy once-and-done moment of their life.
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Num. 5:5–8 seems to deal with intentional sins, though it is a surprising development and not one found in the book of Leviticus. The process includes both restitution and a sacrifice of purgation/atonement:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelites: When a man or a woman wrongs another [or, “when they do any sin committed by humans”], breaking faith with the Lord, that person incurs guilt and shall confess the sin that has been committed. The person shall make full restitution for the wrong, adding one-fifth to it, and giving it to the one who was wronged. If the injured party has no next-of-kin to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for wrong shall go to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for the guilty party.
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That seems rather dogmatic. Certainly it does not need to be an instant that the person is necessarily conscious of. I cannot point to a date and time when I became a Christian, making a ‘decision’. Maybe the instant was ‘before’ the existence of time, when my name was written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.
Yes, I tend to shy away from formulaic interpretations. You have to do it this way and this way only, otherwise you aren’t saved.
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True. There were some trespass offerings, for repayment of something done to a neighbor or other person, but not for sins against God. And remember that Jesus didn’t set the bar lower. He raised it.
Many Christian denominations teach that grace was only available after Jesus came. Grace has always been here. Twice in Genesis 3 it is shown. First in v.15 where God gives the hope of a savior, and then in v.21 where he physically clothes Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness.
While it is true that there is no place to make offerings today, it is not true that they have been done away with. God’s original plan is still to have his temple be a house of prayer for all people. Sacrifices and all. Christians should start learning the difference between sin and uncleanness, because there will be a test later.
Yes - but not in a way that would have made law-abiding Pharisees happy. He raised the bar (infinitely higher, some might say) in that he fulfilled the whole purpose of the law by revealing the Spirit behind it, and wanting us to share in that Spirit. So while the details of the old law might demand certain cleanliness standards of us, for example, Jesus instead reveals that love of God and neighbor is what should really always be in play. So it would seem that for Jesus, washing one’s hands before they would eat takes a back seat to considerations of how I treat my neighbor. If we know that it is unloving to my neighbor to not wash my hands, then I will wash them (not because of the letter of any law, but because I love my neighbor.) And being stuck up about who I eat with (over say, cleanliness issues that I suddenly use as a pretext for not sharing a meal with my neighbor) is to put the letter over the spirit. Jesus will have none of this. Paul won’t either. The letter kills and the spirit gives life. So if you are thinking that Jesus’ higher standard means we must become hyper-attentive to all those legalisms (a burden that the Pharisees themselves were unable to bear), then no - I don’t think scriptures support you in that.
Agreed. Jesus revealed more to us of what God has always been. I think that way too.
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Do you not understand that the initial work of God in delivering mankind from their slavery to sin is done through the cross of Jesus? No amount of obeying God’s law could change the nature of man; God did something that did change a person’s nature, Jesus death and resurrection. This is God’s work; it’s His grace affecting those who place their trust in Jesus. Jesus spoke of it and the Spirit through the apostles explained it. The cross of Christ is our salvation. The death and resurrection does bring an instant change and then the power and righteousness that abides in us continues to save us daily if we walk in step with the Spirit.
Jesus said, John 3:5 "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again . I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Jesus said the spirit must be born again .
Paul said, 2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation ; the old has gone, the new has come! Gal 6:14 “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation .” Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus ” Rom 6:6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
We couldn’t deliver ourselves from slavery to sin and the devil by obedience. So God sent His son to be a man, to become sin, to die as a sinner, then Jesus went to the place of death and by God’s power Jesus was raised up from death. Not just the grave, but death, the nature of death, our nature. He didn’t do this for Himself, He did it for us and as us. This is how God changes the nature of a person. They die with Christ, they go through death with Christ and they are raised up a new creation, something that hadn’t existed before. This is being born again, this is becoming a new creation, a child of God, created in Christ, we are the body of Christ, our old self was crucified with Christ , we were circumcised from the flesh (Col 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.) Through His cross He put off our old sinful nature, Christ circumcised our dead spirits from the flesh.
I have used Paul’s words multiple times to explain what happened on the cross. Through His death we die to sin, the devil and this present world. We are raised up a new creation, born of God. This is what God’s grace did for us. From this rebirth, recreation, we now have righteousness abiding in our spirits, we are united to the spirit of Christ. Now from this new beginning we are empowered to overcome sin daily. It is God in us, Christ in us, compelling and empowering us to live free from sin. We have been set free from our slavery to sin, circumcised from the flesh, so as free men we follow our new nature, we follow the Spirit of God and He saves us daily. He saved us through the cross to save us each day from sins temptation to bring us into the final salvation. It is God living in us through Christ that saves us from sin. We work with Him by following the Spirit; those who are lead by the Spirit are children of God. Those who are in Christ have been freed from sin, so let us live in that freedom that God accomplished for us through the cross of Christ. This is why Paul will only boast in the cross of Christ, for through it the world was crucified to him and him to the world. Crucified, executed, Paul died to the world through the cross. The cross is what saves us and continue to saves us, and because of it, we will be saved if we continue in faith in Jesus.
Through the death and resurrection we are born again, in a moment of time, and from that new birth we grow in the knowledge of Jesus, and God causes us to mature into the very image of Jesus. Growth in Christ takes time but the new birth, becoming a new creation happens the moment a person places their trust in Jesus. It is being born again by the Fathers will, becoming a new creation that brings us into the salvation that the Father worked for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
That is why I will glory in the cross of Christ, for through it I have been set free from my old masters of sin and the devil. The cross of Christ is the way of salvation. Not a formula but the very work of God.
So, if this isn’t the way, what way are you being saved from sin?
The point is that salvation from sin is a work of God. Only He knows how.
To be sure I quite agree that Christ is an important part of that work (His life, His teaching, His crucifixion, and His resurrection), opening a way for a beneficial relationship with God. Before that, without that, I think interactions with God tended to do more harm than good. That I believe is the nature of the separation between man and God.
But I think it is a mistake to limit God to this, and I think it is an obvious error to think that believing in certain things about Jesus gives one an entitlement to salvation or indulgences for sin. For that reason I cannot fully endorse talk about role of Jesus which sound like this or can be interpreted in such a way.
This is clearly a metaphor. Which is to say that there are ways in which this fits the reality and ways in which it does not. To be sure much is changed, but there is also much that remains the same. Failing to acknowledge this can cause a Christian to fall in many ways. There are numerous practical factors in bringing about change in ones life which your dogmatic approach is failing to understand as well. And all I see in the dogma you keep repeat promising to do is a lot of unhelpful judgements. It is not just magic and we frankly need every bit of help we can get, so you have to be careful you are not making yourself an obstacle to others.
You can stop bringing up entitlement to salvation or indulgences, I have never ever stated that. I have said that the cross gives us power over sin, POWER OVER SIN. The favor and power of God working in us sets us free from our bondage to sin so that we can live a life of righteousness. I was not entitled to have Jesus do what He did through His death and resurrection, it was God’s unmerited favor that caused Jesus to become sin so that I would become the righteousness of God in Christ. The cross is all of God’s work, not mine.
But the point of Paul’s message of the cross of Christ is to inform us of how God worked our salvation and how it continues to work in us day by day. Jesus revealed it to Paul and Paul preached the cross. It would be best if you didn’t ignore it but sought a little harder to see it as Paul was taught it by Jesus.
Clearly a metaphor? Only for someone who does not understand the power of God that was exerted in the death and resurrection of Jesus in our place, for our sakes. You are in error and you nullify the preaching of the cross of Christ by your error. Paul was persecuted for his preaching of the cross. Through the cross of Christ we have died to this world and sin. You keep it as a metaphor if you want, but then the true work of the cross of Christ that happens in the spirit of a man who believes, does not belong to those who believe it is only a metaphor. The New Covenant that is in the blood of Christ happened at the cross. Is the New Covenant and the blood of Christ just metaphors?
Tell me, how does a man become born again by the will of the Father? Or is that just pretend too?
Who thinks that being born again, becoming a new creation are just metaphores? Compared to who knows that it is an actual work of God to the spirit of man?
Are you claiming to be without sin?
Nor are you entitled to salvation because of what you believe.
I disagree. Paul explains some of the value of what Christ did. But I deny that it is a complete explanation of either salvation or what Christ did. I like the teachings of Paul. I think they are terrific. But I think to make too much of them and take them literally to an extraordinary degree distorts the truth.
Yes clearly. Because it is demonstrable how much has remained exactly the same.
Incorrect. It is only not metaphor to someone who either doesn’t understand what a metaphor is or who insists on blindly ignoring all the facts.
According to Jesus, by your own judgement you are judged: You are in error and you nullify the preaching of the cross of Christ by your error.
Now as for me… I wouldn’t bet my salvation on the accuracy of some bit dogma you like… sounds like resting your salvation on shifting sand to me.
So… you equate “metaphor” with “pretend.” But that is not what the word means.
That is a false dichotomy. Just because something is a metaphor does mean it isn’t about an actual work of God on the spirit of man.
Now what I think is… that you are hiding your own theology (like it being our soul or spirit which is recreated) in this and not stating it clearly because you KNOW the Bible doesn’t say any such thing. Even so, that would still make the words of the Bible a metaphor because again there are both ways in which it fits (i.e. spiritually) and ways in which it doesn’t fit (i.e. physically). But I don’t even agree with this theology of yours anyway. It is still a metaphor regardless (that is unavoidable), AND I don’t agree with the way you are interpreting that metaphor either.