What happened on the cross?

I came across this blog a day or so ago, and while only part 1, seems to relate to the subject at hand regarding Christ’s work on the cross. It is interesting how the penal substitution concept that seems to dominate these days is perhaps not the one historically most common, but it does seem to fit with our current culture of black and white, punishment and justice.
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-disenchantment-of-salvation-part-1.htmlI

I hit the link but it said the page was not available.

I’m not sure what the different concepts of penal substitution are, but this is what being united to Christ in His death and resurrection has accomplished.

I have quoted scriptures and suggested that you do a study about the concepts of being in Christ, in union with Him, and what that means. God didn’t just substitute Jesus for us, we were united, bound, bonded to Him in all He went through. It wasn’t the innocent just paying a price to set us free, it was Him becoming one with us. “The Word became flesh”, He was the Son of Man, He was us. The moment I placed my trust in Him I was united to Him, Christ in me. So who died on the cross that day? I did. I was the sinner paying for my crimes because I was united to the Son of Man. I died that day through the Word becoming flesh, He was mankind dying on the cross. I went through judgement and it was I who was raised up from death, and it was I who was united with Christ when He, Col 2:15 “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” I was in Christ when He did this by my faith in Him. Yes, I will be dogmatic about this till my dying day, for this is the salvation that the Father provided in Christ. This is the salvation that the Father definitely wants us to know and understand.

Jesus became mankind for the purpose of carrying mankind through judgement on sin, death to sin, striping off the powers that we were slaves to and raising us up and recreating us in the righteousness of God. New Creations in Christ, Born of God by His will. All the glory goes to the Father for it was all His doing and totally undeserved by us. It was the grace of God that saved me. Jesus became sin so we could be the righteousness of God in Him. I will only glory in the cross of Christ, for through it I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.

All who truly believe this will be saved from their slavery to sin, the devil and God’s condemning judgement.

From what Jesus and the Father did, the righteousness of the Father within me, rises up and saves me from temptation. It is Christ in me that produces the works of righteousness, not by my strength or my power, but by the Spirit of the Lord within me, through my faith in what God did in Christ.

Rom 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. The Gospel is not just a message, it is what Jesus did on the cross. Those who believe in the work of the Father in Christ on the cross will be saved. “The righteous will live by faith.” My faith in that work of grace on the cross is what brings me forgiveness and freedom from my slavery to sin and the devil. “For freedom sake, Christ set me free.”

Vinnie, Christ didn’t strip himself of divinity, otherwise he is no longer God. He chose not to use his divine attributes, but remained God at all times.

The better question is who died on the Cross - Jesus the human or Jesus God?

The answer is obviouis.

Your understanding is incorrect, God’s is correct. Praise God.
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.

He became mankind. He became you, to carry you through death, judgement of sin, and to raise you up a new Creation in Him, Born Again by the Spirit, made in the righteousness of God. Those who believe, as Jesus said, “the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” A believers spirit is Born Again.

It was the Fathers will to execute Jesus for the sins of the world.
Isa 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
Isa 53:10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

What you see is the Word of God and the Good News about what Jesus did on His cross. It is you that turn them into metaphors.

You need to become a fan of the literal truth set out in the words of the prophets, what the Word of God in the flesh said and what the apostles declared that Jesus revealed to them. You need to set aside all your own thoughts and wisdom and receive God’s wisdom. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

1 Cor 1:20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

Try this link to his home page. It is the second article.

I read the one short artical, I thought there were more articals, did I miss them?
If I understood it correctly it sounded like the early belivers thought along the lines of my previous post to you. Does that sound correct?

Yes but only humans would equate divinity with power, and only human theologians would seek to confine God to their definitions. The omnipotence of God must include power over Himself to be whatever HE chooses and not as theologians decide to define Him. Why would any loss of this or that power make God cease to be God any more than lacking the power to walk means a man ceases to be a man. And how is any choice of God different than a law of nature.

Philippians 2:5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Neither. It is only the physical body which dies.

It is only putting your faith in them rather than God which makes them a bad thing.

Read the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. It teaches that taking what God gives you and returning it without any investment of thought, so fearful of God that you will not even use the intellect He gave you to explore its meaning, is not something Jesus saw any reason to praise or applaud. If we follow the example of Jesus and Paul, what they did was to use scripture only as a platform form which to leap outward in faith for understanding all the world and the human condition. But in the end, we are simply to hand all of that back to God, putting our faith in Him rather than what we may think we have found.

I put my faith in Jesus and in HIS knowing and in HIS understanding!

WHAT! Only YOU?

God doesn’t want me to have my knowledge and understanding?
God doesn’t want scientists to have their knowledge and understanding?

All I can say is that whatever knowledge and understanding I have, or you have, or scientists have… these are very very very small things, insignificant, compared to the knowledge and understanding of God.

I see the words you find there, but Jesus explains that people use the literal word in order to hide from the truth to be found in the meaning of those words. Matthew 13

If anyone rejects what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus they are out side of the body of Christ and have no part in the New Covenant in His blood and have no share in His kingdom.

I will glory only in the cross of Christ.

However, rejecting necromancy, rejecting blood magic, rejecting human sacrifice, rejecting made up human dogma and rejecting twisted descriptions of what God did is quite another thing.

I will glory in God alone.

Christ had none of the non-moral attributes of divinity. He wasn’t the collapsar of the Second Person of the Trinity in to a spermatozoan analogue, once for all infinite worlds of eternity. As on all worlds from eternity, that Person intersected with a person at the level of nature. Choice of how to be doesn’t come in to it. A person is limited to what a person can bear. A person cannot bear omniscience and omnipotence. That which even the rationally constrained versions God has. What came back from oblivion on the cross?

Please explain this scripture.
[Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

I think Paul means for us to identify with Christ - and to identify with the powerless in society; following Christ’s lead in doing that. “What you do to the least of these, you’re doing that to me.” So when one member - even the “least” of all our members suffers, we suffer with it/them. When somebody suffers even to the point of death, we die with them. Christ shows us this way. And when we die with him, we are also then raised with him. Death has been revealed now to be a doorway to new life. A doorway that our physical selves are obliged to pass through - just as Christ did. We can begin passing through it already even before our own physical death, dying to ourselves that Christ may call us to new life in him. Then Paul can say that even now, in the flesh, he is living by faith in the Son of God.

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The incarnation is a paradox to me and personally I also have some Adoptionist leanings because of it. But anyways, I was only using what I thought was scriptural language. It is said that Jesus emptied himself to become like us. It doesn’t say Jesus decided not to use his magic or divine abilitites. The concept of fully Good and fully man cannot be ostensively defined in my opinion. So a lot of arguing about what could or couldn’t be is all speculation about a divine ineffable mystery.

What do you mean by choosing not to use? Was Jesus aware of his omnipotence and omniscience during his ministry? This is an important issue to me because answering yes would be troubling to me because it belittle his suffering. There was never any real danger to him and that makes it much easier to live like he did and say the things he did. Jesus Praying: “Dear God, its me God.” Seems odd. A fully divine being on the Cross and in Galilee undermines the incarnation for me. I don’t know how, but Jesus was the representation of God on earth, God in the flesh. Truly human. Like us in every way. That is the essential doctrine of the incarnation. Not God just dressing up like and pretending to be a human. I don’t pretend to understand how it happened and if I did it would probably be adoptionist Christology as that heresy makes the most sense!

Do you think the spirit of a person who places their faith in Jesus literally dies in Christ and is literally raised up a new creation, now, in the present?

I think a person’s “flesh” does die so that their spirit may live. Let me hasten to add though, that I don’t simply mean only the physical body when I say “flesh”, though the physical body is certainly the temple in which it exists. I’m convinced now that where the translators used our English word “flesh”, Paul was actually speaking more of something like we might today call “Ego” - that is my pride, the thing I guard and defend and think of as my identity whose reputation I manage and cultivate. That part of me must literally die so that the new life of Christ may be formed in me and produce its fruit. And then my true identity is found - the identity that will never die even as my physical body wastes away.

That’s how I think about it now, though I try not to be dogmatic about it. There is a lot in there that neither you nor I nor anybody understands. So I try not to lean on intellectual “understanding” beyond what Christ teaches me. It is trust in (which results in obedience to) Christ that counts here.

I do think this all begins to happen, or is initiated when a person first comes to faith in Christ. But I believe it is an ongoing death and rebirth. [Actually God is always working on us from the moment we’re born - we just finally become aware of it or publically admit it when we finally confess, allowing new chapters of Christ’s story to unfold.] We don’t become perfect the moment we accept Christ. That intial dying of our flesh is more the beginning of our journey rather than its end. And such a journey is a lifelong one. And when I die, I’m nearly certain there will still be vast (and even forgotten - or unavailable to me) areas of my life that will simply need to be subsumed to God’s mercy. Because even now, after decades of discipleship and attempted discipleship, I still have sins that come to the surface, and freshly generated sins too. I do not anticipate that in this life I will ever be able to rightfully leave my place at the back of the temple with the publican who must open his prayers with “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” On many occasions I have attempted to join the respected, pious, and religiously knowledgeable leader up front, thanking God that he is not like that wretched publican way back there. But God pretty quickly makes clear to me each time that I’ve left his graces when I enter into those pretensions. Speaking of freshly generated sins, I can’t even write these words without my own ego swelling with pride over how humble I am (almost as humble as Moses was! :sunglasses:). Who will rescue me from this body of ongoing death? There is only one who is equal to that job. He knows what is in the heart of any man including myself, and so my hope is his mercy that is greater than my sin all of it. My real life is in his Life.

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No. It is a metaphor. That means there are ways in which it describes what happens and ways in which it does not. The physical body clearly doesn’t die or even change in any way at all. The metaphor is speaking of changes to the mind and spirit. Clearly there is a reorganization of the mind around a different set of principles, as well as an alteration of the spirit according to a different set of choices – and that part of the subjective experience of that reorganization process can by described as death. But this reorganization does not happen instantly and can even take quite a long time for some people. But those changes would not even be possible if the mind or spirit were to literally die. Besides, the whole process is about bringing the mind and spirit back to life from the death brought to it by sin. We are simply realizing and accepting that they are dead and in need of a resurrection and so we are ready to bury that which is dead in order to for them to be reborn. Furthermore for many people this is something which can happen more than once when their understanding of themselves, Jesus, and Christianity changes.

Boy, it would be nice if that were true, but I see very little evidence of this. It looks far far far more likely that only very small portions of the ego dies in such experiences, however traumatic it may be for the person experiencing it. And this is something which I definitely see happening more than once in people.

Yes. Indeed. I do try for honesty and nailing things down to specifics but keep my faith in God alone and not in my own intellectual understanding. But I think obedience is only easiest part of what God requires of us. He really needs us to engage our own mind and creativity in the new paradigm of our mind and spirit reborn.

Wrapping my head around the hypostatic union in Jesus affirmed in the Athanasian Creed is a challenge that I have been and continue to be engaged in now.

The Reformed Baptist (i.e. Calvinist) apologist, James White, affirms the union frequently and adamantly. E.g. James White and Was Jesus God

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Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you. Has not it been made clear that Jesus, the Son of Man, the Second Adam, mankind’s representative, was crucified and rose from the dead to bring a new birth, to make a New Creation. Becoming a New Creation is not some gradual process, it is done the moment a person places their faith in Christ.
Cor 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." In Christ equals…“HE IS A NEW CREATION, THE OLD IS GONE, THE NEW HAS COME.”
When a person by trust in Jesus is united with Him in His death and resurrection, he dies to sin, the devil and this present age (the world), we become a New Creation at that moment, our spirits are born of God. The old has gone, the new has come and all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ. 2 Cor 5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ”

The spirit of man is born again the moment they believe in Jesus. The body is dead still because the Law of Sin still abides in it, though through our union in Christ our spirits have been circumcised from it. The mind needs to be renewed by the Word of God so it can be purified by the Word and by following the reborn spirit that is made in the righteousness of God. All this is from God. This is the grace of God, the means by which He saves us from the power of sin and the devil. Not by our hard labor in obeying commands but a free gift from the Father. Recreated in Christ, one spirit with Christ, His body. In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and believers have been given fullness in Christ. **
** 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. 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. (I’M ALIVE.)
I was literally dead in my sins but God made me alive with Christ. Born Again, New Creation, the old has gone, the new (New Creation) has come. Now I have been reconciled to God through Christ. Not a gradual process, an instant act of the Father in Christ. I was literally raised up with Christ when He was. I was united to Him in His resurrection. And by this grace shown to me by the Father, I now can walk in the power of His Spirit, freed from my old masters of sin and the devil. That is the work of the Father in Christ and I had nothing to do with it, but it became effective in me the moment I believed.

You lost me at reformed :wink:

I agree with some of what White says. Yes, the idea that there is a clear chronological progression from Mark to John with increasing Christology is incorrect. But the idea that they teach the same Christology is not demonstrable and incorrect in my opinion. I see biblical exegesis filtered by creedal Christianity and harmonization. Though doesn’t White simply teach what the majority of the Church has for the last 1700 years or so? Why not just read Aquinas or Augustine on the issue?

The entire church being adamant about something doesn’t explain the paradox, let alone the views of a single apologist. If we accept the hypostatic union, I don’t think we will come close to explaining or rationalizing it. It’s a divine ineffable mystery. I’m not sure whether I do or not. Two natures in one can easily move from paradox to nonsense and contradiction.

Vinnie

I agree, whole-heartedly, … anymore than Einstein’s theory of special relativity “explains the Twin Paradox” or “The Paradox of the Light Sphere”.

Aye, … it sure buggers the hell out of me.

And that’s why I maintain that it should not be a doctrinal test for genuine faith. You see, I’m convinced that a genuine, bona fide fully-human male human being has four kinds of DNA: autosomal DNA (atDNA) inherited from a male and female biological parent, X-DNA inherited from a female biological parent, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) inherited only from a female biological parent, and Y-DNA inherited only from a male biological parent. And someday, a theologian may to want to come up with an explanation that doesn’t sound like nonsense that violates the law of non-contradiction.

If it was ever a foundational issue, why wouldn’t Mark and Paul have mentioned it?

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