Christ our sacrifice, not our substitute
Dec 20, 2013 12:39:17 GMT
Post by Colossians on Dec 20, 2013 12:39:17 GMT
This material is for the teaching of the Body of Christ, however the author reserves copyright over it.
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CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE, NOT OUR SUBSTITUTE
With regard to acceptability and law
An atheist was once heard to remark concerning the idea that Christ was the substitute for our sin: “seems pretty [vulgarity] arbitrary if you ask me”.
Vulgarity aside, he was correct: such idea is in fact quite misrepresentative of the constitution of the atonement, which is why it is notably absent in the evangelical addresses in the book of Acts. Yes there are declarations of the forgiveness of sin1 as a result of belief in the Lord Jesus, but no declarations that Jesus actually died for anyone's sin (i.e. in the sense of a forensic substitute).
1 But see our work: “On the separation of persons”.
And although Caiaphas, the high priest at the time of Christ, prophesied that one man would have to die for the people (John 11:50), such did not entail that such death would be substitutionary in nature: we assume it was because we are prone to think superficially, but there is nothing in the declaration itself which forces such a conclusion.
Commensurately, we find in the law the following:
“every man shall be put to death for his own sin” Deut 24:16,
which accords with modern secular law: you won’t find the courts ever agreeing to the payment by one man for another man’s felony: no matter how noble the bench might consider such an offering to be, there were nevertheless no forensic connectivity between the would-be substitute and the original offender: the latter must himself pay for his crime simply because it was he who committed it.
The idea of a forensic substitute is therefore invalid with regard to:
1. Common perception
2. Jewish law
3. Modern law
Moreover, the idea that God’s wrath will be satisfied by proactively punishing someone, renders God childish at best, and at worst an angry little man lacking in self-control.
The idea is in fact pagan, and can be found in history amongst primitive tribes who sacrificed to the gods.
The wrong foundational paradigm
That which underpins the error we are discussing, is the idea that Christ died for everyone. For it is in fact rather the case that Christ died only for His wife.
For just as a human father gives away his daughter to a suitable suitor, so too our Father.
Thus:
“thine they were, and thou gavest them [to] me” John 17:6
: she who was given to Christ was the Father's at the outset: Christ would marry a specific 'woman': He would marry her who was betrothed to Him, and no-one else; and He was therefore only qualified to give His life for her who was betrothed to Him, and no-one else.
And so staying within the correct (marital) paradigm, in the law it is written, and concerning a wife’s self-initiated oaths to God:
“But if [the husband] shall any ways make [his wife's oaths to God] void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity” Num 30:15,
where we point out that such action on the part of the husband constituted the type for God’s nailing of the law to the Cross of Christ, which law we had sought after and received unto condemnation in Eden, the law written on the heart of every human being and by which as a matter of conscience we are drawn to attempt to please God by our own efforts (See Rom 2:14,15).
Further - and what is pivotal to this discussion - the oaths of the wife toward God and the vetoing thereof by her husband, were a private matter: the ‘iniquity’ which would manifest as the wife’s resultant freedom to be the person she was – the beautiful inconsistencies and ‘inadequacies’ which come with being female - would be born by her husband privately: the general congregation of Israel would never become privy to the matter.
And so confirming with the NT:
“Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them” Col 3:19
: the husband’s death-to-self were to consist in the absorbing within himself of the difficulties of his wife, the chief point again being that the matter were not forensically delimited, but institutionally: the ‘iniquity’ and the bearing thereof were a matter intrinsic to marriage, and not a matter for law.
Moving our focus then from the type to the substance, we find further in the NT:
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” Eph 5:25
: just as the husband’s love is not here intended to relate his becoming a penal substitute for his wife, so too the love of Christ does not here relate His dying as a penal substitute for His wife: the role of the husband in both cases is rather to relate a love for his wife that is so great that she is never made aware of her shortcomings.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us” Ps 13:12.
“the blood of Christ [shall] purge your conscience from dead works” Heb 9:14.
The substance of the atonement
The ‘gap’ between God and His betrothed was infinite with regard to righteousness, and was related by way of the implication in the transmitting of the law to us: the law was indeed “not made for a righteous man” (1 Ti 1:9).
Chiefly, the gap consisted of the fact that we did not love God.
And yet we are told by the prophet that “the government [(responsibility for our spiritual well-being)] shall be upon His shoulder”, not ours, which accords with the paradigm we have been explicating: it was husbands rather than wives who were specifically commanded to “love” their spouses.
The substance of the atonement then is this:
Just as the husband of Numbers 30 made void the oaths his wife had made to God, so too Christ took away the law from over His wife, in so doing robbing Satan of any and all possible means by which he might accuse her.
“for where no law is, there is no transgression” Rom 4:15.
“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” Rom 4:8.
That is, God in Christ emptied Himself of the difference between His betrothed and Himself. And because such difference was not merely notional, but actual, it would of necessity be manifested in a very tangible sacrifice.
For “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Finale
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” Col 2:14.
By this “contrary to us”, it is related that the law – that with which we, in similar vein to the woman of Numbers 30, had afflicted ourselves in the hope that we might quench the condemnation in our hearts – was in fact contrary to who we were.
For it is only by being free to be imperfect, that the woman is made perfect.
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” Gal 5:1.
Amen.
___________________________________________
CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE, NOT OUR SUBSTITUTE
With regard to acceptability and law
An atheist was once heard to remark concerning the idea that Christ was the substitute for our sin: “seems pretty [vulgarity] arbitrary if you ask me”.
Vulgarity aside, he was correct: such idea is in fact quite misrepresentative of the constitution of the atonement, which is why it is notably absent in the evangelical addresses in the book of Acts. Yes there are declarations of the forgiveness of sin1 as a result of belief in the Lord Jesus, but no declarations that Jesus actually died for anyone's sin (i.e. in the sense of a forensic substitute).
1 But see our work: “On the separation of persons”.
And although Caiaphas, the high priest at the time of Christ, prophesied that one man would have to die for the people (John 11:50), such did not entail that such death would be substitutionary in nature: we assume it was because we are prone to think superficially, but there is nothing in the declaration itself which forces such a conclusion.
Commensurately, we find in the law the following:
“every man shall be put to death for his own sin” Deut 24:16,
which accords with modern secular law: you won’t find the courts ever agreeing to the payment by one man for another man’s felony: no matter how noble the bench might consider such an offering to be, there were nevertheless no forensic connectivity between the would-be substitute and the original offender: the latter must himself pay for his crime simply because it was he who committed it.
The idea of a forensic substitute is therefore invalid with regard to:
1. Common perception
2. Jewish law
3. Modern law
Moreover, the idea that God’s wrath will be satisfied by proactively punishing someone, renders God childish at best, and at worst an angry little man lacking in self-control.
The idea is in fact pagan, and can be found in history amongst primitive tribes who sacrificed to the gods.
The wrong foundational paradigm
That which underpins the error we are discussing, is the idea that Christ died for everyone. For it is in fact rather the case that Christ died only for His wife.
For just as a human father gives away his daughter to a suitable suitor, so too our Father.
Thus:
“thine they were, and thou gavest them [to] me” John 17:6
: she who was given to Christ was the Father's at the outset: Christ would marry a specific 'woman': He would marry her who was betrothed to Him, and no-one else; and He was therefore only qualified to give His life for her who was betrothed to Him, and no-one else.
And so staying within the correct (marital) paradigm, in the law it is written, and concerning a wife’s self-initiated oaths to God:
“But if [the husband] shall any ways make [his wife's oaths to God] void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity” Num 30:15,
where we point out that such action on the part of the husband constituted the type for God’s nailing of the law to the Cross of Christ, which law we had sought after and received unto condemnation in Eden, the law written on the heart of every human being and by which as a matter of conscience we are drawn to attempt to please God by our own efforts (See Rom 2:14,15).
Further - and what is pivotal to this discussion - the oaths of the wife toward God and the vetoing thereof by her husband, were a private matter: the ‘iniquity’ which would manifest as the wife’s resultant freedom to be the person she was – the beautiful inconsistencies and ‘inadequacies’ which come with being female - would be born by her husband privately: the general congregation of Israel would never become privy to the matter.
And so confirming with the NT:
“Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them” Col 3:19
: the husband’s death-to-self were to consist in the absorbing within himself of the difficulties of his wife, the chief point again being that the matter were not forensically delimited, but institutionally: the ‘iniquity’ and the bearing thereof were a matter intrinsic to marriage, and not a matter for law.
Moving our focus then from the type to the substance, we find further in the NT:
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” Eph 5:25
: just as the husband’s love is not here intended to relate his becoming a penal substitute for his wife, so too the love of Christ does not here relate His dying as a penal substitute for His wife: the role of the husband in both cases is rather to relate a love for his wife that is so great that she is never made aware of her shortcomings.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us” Ps 13:12.
“the blood of Christ [shall] purge your conscience from dead works” Heb 9:14.
The substance of the atonement
The ‘gap’ between God and His betrothed was infinite with regard to righteousness, and was related by way of the implication in the transmitting of the law to us: the law was indeed “not made for a righteous man” (1 Ti 1:9).
Chiefly, the gap consisted of the fact that we did not love God.
And yet we are told by the prophet that “the government [(responsibility for our spiritual well-being)] shall be upon His shoulder”, not ours, which accords with the paradigm we have been explicating: it was husbands rather than wives who were specifically commanded to “love” their spouses.
The substance of the atonement then is this:
Just as the husband of Numbers 30 made void the oaths his wife had made to God, so too Christ took away the law from over His wife, in so doing robbing Satan of any and all possible means by which he might accuse her.
“for where no law is, there is no transgression” Rom 4:15.
“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” Rom 4:8.
That is, God in Christ emptied Himself of the difference between His betrothed and Himself. And because such difference was not merely notional, but actual, it would of necessity be manifested in a very tangible sacrifice.
For “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Finale
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” Col 2:14.
By this “contrary to us”, it is related that the law – that with which we, in similar vein to the woman of Numbers 30, had afflicted ourselves in the hope that we might quench the condemnation in our hearts – was in fact contrary to who we were.
For it is only by being free to be imperfect, that the woman is made perfect.
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” Gal 5:1.
Amen.