User:MeldrumPeek39

Resurrection

What was Our god doing about the cross?. It produces a search for understanding of one of the crucial events of history, perhaps the crucial event. The entire New Testament focuses on the death, burial, and resurrection, events leading up to and flowing from it, its theological significance and ethical implications. We will focus on the deep significance with the atonement, as explained from three perspectives: the dynamic, subjective, and objective views.

Dynamic view The dynamic view sees Christ's death and resurrection as the climax of a cosmic conflict with Satan and also the demonic forces of evil. Christ came since the Second Adam (Romans 5:18-19), winning the contest that Adam failed. He also came since the new Israel, faithfully keeping submitting to God rather than to Satan as the first Israel tried (Matthew 2:15; 4:4; etc.). Soon after His baptism, the Spirit "drove" (Greek: ekballei) Him to the wilderness so that He might confront Satan (Mark 1:12). His victory there was clearly only one of what must have been many battles, for Luke records that Satan left Him until "an opportune time" (Luke 4:13).

During His ministry Jesus offered His power to cast out demons as a demonstration that He was stronger than Satan. Although He described Satan like a "strong man," He claimed the opportunity to "bind" the strong man and despoil his possessions (i.e., those who were demon-possessed). His ability to cast out demons "by the finger of God" He presented as evidence of the arrival of God's kingdom on the planet (Luke 12:20-22). Jesus got His disciples mixed up in warfare; their successful preaching, healing, and exorcism mission He afterward described as the fall of Satan from heaven (Luke 10:18).

Satan was behind the betrayal of Jesus by Judas (John 13:2, 27), his abandonment from the other apostles (Luke 22:31-32), as well as his trial and murder (John 8:40-41, 44). Jesus recognized Satan as His principal enemy, as well as before His death, He am confident of victory that He spoke of it as a fait accompli (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 32). The moment before His death Christ Himself uttered the triumphant words, "It is finished" (John 19:30; compare Luke 12:50). The glorious resurrection is proof that His death would be a victory and not a defeat (Revelation 3:21).

In his confrontation with false teaching at Colossae, Paul is definitely the cross and resurrection as a overcome spiritual enemies. The Colossians were at risk of being deceived by a syncretistic mixture of Judaistic legalism, Hellenistic philosophy, and Eastern mysticism. Apparently the heretical teachers were not advocating a rejection of Jesus, nevertheless they denied Him the primacy and only intermediary beings. "Go beyond Jesus to greater realities," they may have taught. Paul replies that there's nothing beyond Jesus Christ, in whom God's fullness dwells. He it's Who "disarmed the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Colossians 2:15).

Not only did Christ conquer Satan, demons, principalities, and powers. Younger crowd conquered death (Acts 2:24; Revelation 5:5-6). Paul uses militaristic terms to discuss the resurrection, e.g., "destroyed" and "victory" (1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 54-56).

Because Christ has triumphed as our representative, we share in His triumph (hence the super-conquerors of Romans 8:37). In Ephesians 4:8 Paul applies Psalm 68:19 to Christ's triumph, picturing Christ like a conquering general returning to Rome for a victory parade: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in the train and gave gifts to men." The ensuing passage explains that the gifts He gave are the offices for building up the church. The captives are bypassed, but Colossians 2:15 seems an appropriate commentary.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, Paul says that "God... always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and thru us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him." In this case the apostles (see 1 Corinthians 4:9), and perhaps all Christians, are probably among those following along behind--themselves conquered, yet joyously sharing in the victory celebration. Our struggle against Satan and demonic forces continues (Ephesians 6:12). Because He is victorious, we also can be victorious (Revelation 3:21; 1 John 2:14-15; 4:4; 5:4-5).

Subjective view It is true that we are the subjects of His daring rescue (Colossians 1:13-14), but we participate. This is the subjective nature with the atonement: it transforms us. If we are united with Christ through faith-repentance-baptism, God's Spirit begins the whole process of transforming us from one amount of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit, Himself the guarantee that this beginning will reach its intended end (Ephesians 1:13-14), starts to produce His fruit inside our hearts (Galatians 5:22-23) as we cooperate by "walking within the Spirit" and being "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:4, 14; Galatians 5:16). The metamorphosis isn't automatic; it takes constant mental concentration even as count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11). In addition, it requires continual moral striving, as we refuse to let sin dominate us, yielding the members of our bodies to righteousness instead of to sin (Romans 6:12-13).

It's a battle we fight, yet Paul assures us, "[S]in will have no dominion over you" (Romans 6:14). The struggle leads to holiness and the end is eternal life (Romans 6:22). When Christ returns, on the eschaton, the Spirit will have performed His work in us: "[W]e shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).

Though this can be work that changes us from inside and in which we ourselves participate, the loan still belongs to God, because it is His work being done in us and thru us. He is the one that brings it to completion tomorrow (Philippians 1:6). Meanwhile, we image Christ nowadays. He was our representative in the cosmic conflict; we are His representatives within the existential struggle against the world, the flesh, as well as the Devil.

Objective view Yet Christ's death is more than what he did for (hyper) us (see Mark 14:24; Luke 22:19-20) and what he does in (en) us (see Colossians 1:27). It also involves what He did as opposed to (anti) us (see Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45)---the objective view of the atonement. In fact, many think that the substitutionary nature of the atonement is the central aspect of all.

Several types of the substitutionary atonement result from Genesis. The word used in 1 John 3:12 to describe Cain's murder of his brother will be the word for "slaughter" (Greek: esphaxen), as with the offering of a sacrifice. It's led some to view the earth's first murder, recorded in Genesis 4:8, as the offering of a substitute sacrifice. In essence, Cain may have said, "So, You didn't like my vegetables as an offering? Let's see how You similar to this! (slash)." The murder certainly involved the shedding of his brother's blood, for this cried out from the ground against the perpetrator (Genesis 4:10).

If the angel stops Abraham from stabbing Isaac to death, Abraham finds a ram caught in the nearby thicket that he can offer in place of (Septuagint: anti) his son (Genesis 22:12-13). The passage assumes that some sacrifice should be offered, and the one is replaced from the other.

abductions - More than a hundred years later, when Joseph's testing of his brothers created a crisis situation involving the enforced servitude of Benjamin, Judah stepped forward and freely offered himself instead for his brother (Genesis 44:18-34, especially not the Septuagint's utilization of anti in v. 33). In this instance also, some substitute must be provided. There was no possibility of mere escape from the demands from the master.

Yet all three of these are one-for-one substitutions, just like the "eye-for-eye" provisions of the Law. Christ's sacrifice (one for a lot of) is more like the sin offering in behalf of all people or the sacrifice with the goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4:13-21; 16:15-19). He could be the "atoning sacrifice for our sins, and never only for ours, but also for the sins with the whole world" (1 John 2:2). He is the "Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

One for that world? How can that be just? Its justice depends on the identity of the Sacrifice. A single human deserves infinite punishment because of sins. Adding the punishment of another human adds no more than was there already (for infinity plus infinity equals infinity). This is also true for "the sins of the [whole] world." The slaughter from the Infinite One for these sins beings one infinity into experience of the other--just payment.

Our sins brought us beneath the curse of the law, but Christ became a curse for us by hanging on the tree (Galatians 3:10-14). Because of Christ's death, God was able to effect what Luther called a "happy exchange": we had been the subjects of God's just condemnation, the objects of His righteous wrath, but the sinless Christ became "sin" for us, to ensure that we might become God's righteousness by Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God established Him since the propitiation, the appeasement, so that the all-consuming fire of His wrath may be diverted to Him rather than destroying the rest of us humans (Romans 3:25). As Isaiah said, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity folks all" (Isaiah 53:6).

Must we choose? resurrection - Dynamic, subjective, and objective--must we select from them? No! By its very nature the atonement is higher than any one metaphor or perspective can contain. We must always be answering, "Yes, and much more besides." Like astronomers surveying the universe, the harder we study it, the greater vast it becomes. Our wherewithal to fully comprehend its dimensions will not nullify what we can understand, nor can it rob us of the amazement we sense at what we know was accomplished.