I will leave you to your error.
As for me, I will preach the cross of Christ and that through it a man can die to sin and this present age and be born again, recreated in Christ. Freed from the slavery to sin and the devil as Paul preached as Jesus taught him.
For those who like to use the example of a soldier giving his life to give us freedom as an example of what Jesus did, let me ask you. What did the soldier dying actually do. Did his death just show how much he cared? Then that does not bring freedom and though we may have kind feelings for him we still arent free. Now if the soldier died killing our last enemy then he did give us freedom. By his death we are free. Christ destroyed the power of sin and the devil by dying as us. He gave His life which did free us from our enemies. But then He rose from death into eternal life and we now share in that life because we rose with Him because those who believe are IN CHRIST. This is the salvation God partly revealed through the prophets but He now declares that mystery openly and clearly through the apostles, âChrist in you, the hope of glory.â If we are in Christ and Christ is in us then we have Godâs means of salvation working in us. Through the cross and faith in it we have become united to Christ. God is alive and active in those who believe. God is saving those who daily live in union with Christâs spirit. A salvation that is alive and powerful. The same power that was exerted in raising Jesus from death is living in us. Delivering us from the temptations that come at us each day. If we walk in His spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. The Spirit was not given through our obedience but through our trust in Jesus. If a person knows that Jesus rose from death for his sake and pledges their allegiance to Him as their Lord, than that person will be saved, moment by moment. âIf you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess with your mouth that He is Lord, you will be savedâ.
Thatâs your story on the story. Others are available, depending on what we bring to the story.
Was there some place that I suggested we âdeliver ourselvesâ by our obedience to the law?
If you want to presume to correct me, Cody, you might need to understand what Iâve actually written first.
Also - regarding metaphors. It seems you consider them second-rate truth at best (if even âtruthâ at all). All I can say in response is that if metaphors were good enough teaching tools for Christ and Paul, then they are good enough for me. If you want to stand in judgment over those many portions of scripture that make ample use of them to teach very real truth, then you will just have to live with that until your eyes are opened further. Meanwhile, Iâll stick with scriptures on that one.
This past week Iâve been seeing how many more passages and themes pop when Jesus is viewed as the frontrunner rather than our substitute.
One key example came from listening to âTwo Men Named Jesus,â episode 10 of the BibleProject podcast series on Character of God. In it, Tim goes through how Jesus is trying to point Israel to a better way so that Godâs wrath doesnât come upon them in the form of Roman swords. But most reject his message. Finally, Jesus takes it upon himself to be Israel and to bear the consequences, getting crucified by the powers of the land. Tim tries to frame the whole thing as Jesus taking Israelâs place, leading to Jonâs palpable discomfort (which he is too polite to fully voice) because this doesnât deal with how Rome still sacks Jerusalem â the Jewish people still suffer. Jesus didnât bear Godâs wrath so they donât have to.
Just as it doesnât work in the gospels, it doesnât work with Paul. When Paulâs gospel is collapsed to âall have sinned,â âthe wages of sin is death,â but Jesus died in our place, it leads to the same incongruity. We still die. Jesus didnât stop that. And making it spiritual death doesnât solve the problem; that just makes it harder to see how Jesusâ crucifixion relates.
But if Jesus is the frontrunner, not the substitute, these themes start to make sense. Jesus goes first; heâs the leader; he shows the way. More than than, he makes the path walkable, and the Spirit enables us to walk after him. He died to show us the resurrection life that awaits on the other side (among other reasons), not to give us a way to escape our own deaths. Rather than âbelieve me, Iâve got this,â his key message is âfollow me.â Heâs the head of the church, the firstborn of many children â both images that show him to be first, not our replacement.
Anyway, Iâm not quite ready to say there is no way Jesus is our substitute, but all such ways seem to be entirely mysterious and drawn from scriptural asides rather than repeated themes. There are also ways of thickening substitutionary atonement so it incorporates all of this. But it seems odd to still call that more robust understanding âsubstitutionary.â The very term smacks of escapism. Just as premillenial eschatology gives us a way around tribulation and suffering, substitutionary atonement gives us a shortcut through sanctification. If such shortcuts exist, it becomes far harder to explain why there is any point to this life, or any point to the teaching of Jesus and the prophets before him.
Friend,
That flies completely in the face of Hebrews 10. Are you Dispensational? Iâve only seen Dispensational believers hold to this idea.
I think that there is only one salvation. We donât get saved multiple times. Salvation is not given to us now. Salvation is when we hear our names in the book of life and escape the judgement of being destroyed by God.
I do agree that faith is what places us into the blood of Christ , grafting us into the tree of life. Forgiveness of sins does not mean salvation. The crippled man who was forgiven by Jesus did not mean he was saved and became a Christian. Faith is also often wrongly used interchangeably with believing. Belief alone means nothing, even the devil believes and trembles. Faith is belief and works intertwined.
Itâs also not a immediate magical complete change. A lost person is taught the gospel. As they seek God, and God is seeking them and searching their hearts, he softens the hearts and once they are saved have the Holy Spirit to help convict them of sin. What I think scripture shows is that those thst pursues truth and righteousness will continually crucify their flesh. They will practice goodness and turn them into habits , fruit of the spirit , and become better humans. But even the best human is still going to miss the standard of perfection and that is Gods standard. God is not ok with any sin. We does demand us to be perfect. Since we canât, snd he realized that, he sent Christ to save us.
There is no third temple mentioned in the Bible. There was the first temple that was destroyed. Then a second temple was built and Jesus pointed out to the second temple and said â when these are destroyed youâll know the time is hereâ and so on and within that generation the temple was destroyed by Nero.
I imagine the following conversation.
Alfred: Isnât that a marvelous old house. It is a piece of history. Too bad it is falling down.
Benjamin: Yeah we are going save that house.
Benjamin then proceeds to poor gasoline around the building and set fire to it.
Alfred: I thought you said you were going to save the house.
Benjamin: We are. The plans are drawn for a new house with all the modern conveniences, new architecture and materials.
Alfred watches the flames reach higher and higher.
Alfred: You mean nothing will remain the same?
Benjamin: Nope. It is a recreation to a new and better house in every way.
Is this Cody_Gâs notion of salvation?
It is not salvation unless something remains the same. But if something remains the same then it is not exactly a new creation. But these are reconciled if this is metaphor, i.e. ways in which it is a new creation and ways in which it is not.
And the apostles didnât do this? They continued to follow the law as Jesus did his whole life. One of the false accusations against Paul was that he defamed the temple by bringing in gentiles and teaching against the law. He did neither. The funny thing about English is that it is so generic in some things. Love for one. Law for another. There were and still are, multiple layers of law, commands and traditions. In the NT, they are generically know as law, whether it deals with commands concerning God and your fellow man, cleanliness laws, temple laws, Rabbinic laws and laws commanded by the governing authorities.
Ok. Show me the hand washing before eating verses in Leviticus. Or Deuteronomy. Or anywhere. You wonât find them because that was a Pharisaic tradition. Hand washing as cleanness before God is another matter.
Also legalist. Do you know that term isnât in the bible? No one who knows about God should ever think in terms of the law as bad. Remember the words, âa lamp to my feet and light unto my pathâ? The closest it comes is Judaizers, and if you know the scriptures and anything about Judaism, you would know the difference. It does mention the lawless ones, though. And they are leading the way for THE lawless one who is coming to power, and who is already here.
As for Paul, he was the PhD of the biblical writers who had a time dumbing down his letters for the masses. Peter and the others knew this. If you donât start where he did, his letters lead you down rabbit holes that they donât support.
2 Peter 3:16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
God is and has always been dogmatic. âI am Yahweh. My glory I will not give to another.â He is the creator, redeemer and the only salvation there is, through his son.
The same with Jesus. If Jesus claimed what the bible says he did then he was not a prophet or a good man. He was a liar, a lunatic or he was God, and the only hope for salvation.
Not quite. I had to look that one up. Does Godâs plan change? No. What changes over time? We do. God deals with us where we are, because we canât go to him first. Does the law save? No. It never did. What does the law do? It shows us where we are in contrast to God. Nowhere.
How many people ignore traffic laws? Most of us, if not all, at some points in time. Does that make traffic laws bad? Or is it still wrong to break them?
How much of the prophets have you read? I would suggest thoroughly reading Isaiah and Jeremiah first, though all of them regarding the end times are coming quickly. The fishers of men are almost done and then the hunters, whoever they are, will be sent out.
Of course they did. They were Christâs ambassadors, after all.
Paul never calls the law âbadâ. Just ineffective by itself to bring about salvation. There is much to agree on in your post here. So Iâm not convinced you and I are disagreeing here as much as you may be thinking. Though I wouldnât refer to Paulâs writings as âdumbed downâ for ignorant masses. I mean ⌠yeah - far be it from me to deny that God accommodates to us all in whatever ways we need. Sure. There is that. But to refer to the good Apostleâs epistles as âdumbed downâ sounds suspiciously like a prelude to the dismissal of wide swaths of it that you donât like.
Lewisâ famous false trichotomy. Try myth.
As long as the man made dogma exists in a person, the one that states that those who believe in Jesus were not united to Christ in His death on the cross, judgment and resurrection, they resist the salvation of God. Our union with Christ through the whole process of His cross and resurrection is the power of God for our salvation. As the scripture states,
2 Cor 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. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.
The new creation that comes into being in Christ is what counts. For through the cross I have been crucified to the world and the world to me. That is God working salvation for me through the death and resurrection of Christ and my union with Him in that.
Actually, that is the reverse of what I meant and what Peter stated. Paul spoke as someone taught to be a top Pharisee, lawyer and leader. He spoke the nomenclature of the Rabbis and lawyers. Itâs like trying to explain any highly technical field to non-technical people. Paul could do it, but his writings were still very much based on higher level Torah understanding. You have to begin with the same presuppositions as Paul, beginning with the Torah as the foundation for everything.
At what point in a believers life do they become as Jesus said, born again, born of the spirit by the Fatherâs will
And what does it mean to be born again?
Excellent example of following the way Jesus did things, where He shows that this is a metaphor to be understood according to the ways in which it does match reality and the ways in which it does not.
John 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodeâ˛mus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, âRabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.â 3 Jesus answered him, âTruly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.â 4 Nicodeâ˛mus said to him, âHow can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his motherâs womb and be born?â 5 Jesus answered, âTruly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, âYou must be born anew.â 8 The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.â 9 Nicodeâ˛mus said to him, âHow can this be?â 10 Jesus answered him, âAre you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.â
So entering into his motherâs womb a second time? Jesus says no, that is taking the metaphor too literally.
For what the metaphor does mean, Jesus contrasts being born of the Spirit with being born of the flesh. He compares this with the contrast between heavenly things and earthly things. The implication is quite clear. When Jesus speaks of eternal life, He is not speaking of the deathless life of a vampire or zombies rising from the grave â or things which can be explained in everyday terms of physical life. He is talking about something spiritual (as God is spirit), other-worldly, and non-physical (in the sense not being of the laws of nature and the physical universe). Paul does the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15.
So this goes hand in hand with the story in Genesis where God says to Adam and Eve that on the day they eat of the fruit they will surely die and the serpent says they will not die. So on the day Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, did they die? Was God a liar and the serpent speaking the truth? They died in the same way that we are reborn⌠their spirits died and our spirit which was dead is brought back to life by being reconnected to the source of life which is God and given a new inheritance from God through the 2nd Adam to replace the contaminated inheritance coming to us through the 1st Adam.
When does this happen to a believer? And is it an actual rebirth of our spirit, recreated by the Father. A spirit that is different than the one we had before?
God requires us to make a choice, to give our consent for Him to work on our spirit.
The phrase âactual rebirth of our spiritâ is not in the Bible and I do not know what that means. I will stick with the ACTUAL words of Jesus quoted above.
Let us look up the definition of this word ârecreate.â
From Merriam Webster
Definition of recreate
transitive verb
: to give new life or freshness to : REFRESH
supporters of preservation hope to recreate the architectural splendor that the old movie theater had when it first openedâŚ
it became late enough to suggest tea. We had got through one brew, and the three great minds were recreating themselves with cake, when there came another knock at the doorâŚ
Yeah that definition with examples certainly works for me.
According to the definition above, it would be the same spirit which is renewed and given new life â a spirit which is both the same and different at the same time, as it must be for the word salvation to apply. If God is simply destroying the old and starting over again then that would not be salvation and would not even be the meaning of recreation according to the dictionary.
The idea that our spirit died on the cross is not in the Bible. The teaching of Jesus and Paul is that our spirit is already dead because of our sins and it is the disease (our sins) which died on the cross to bring the spirit back to life. It is a rebirth and resurrection not God creating our spirit again from scratch. It is also clear from both the Bible and Christian life that it is not so simple. Over and over again in the Bible, such as Hebrews 12:4 and Revelation 1-3, sin is not something which simply disappears but requires an ongoing battle.
This is etrenal life. To know the one true God and Jesus Christ. To be joined in one spirit to Jesus, to have died with Him and been raised to life again is salvation. By our faith in the salvation that Jesus worked for us we can be saved from sins temptations now and from the righteous future wrath of God. Do you have such a saving faith?
âLet your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.â -Colossians 4:6
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