Diserner
Well-known member
Two strong emphases in Scripture related to the product of what Jesus accomplished on the Cross speak to our current debate.
One is our union with Christ. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him." We are said to be the Body of Christ and joined with him in baptism such that we can count ourselves as having been crucified with him on the Cross, and resurrected with him in new life. Now some are saying that if Christ associates himself with sinfulness in any way experientially he is somehow becoming less glorious and pure in his nature. Do they have such a high regard for themselves that they think they are pure enough that their union with Christ does not bring their own shortcomings and impurities into that union? Certainly we don't think we are bringing an equal purity into union with Christ—Christ is the one who is said to be the remedy for our shortcoming, and how can he redeem or remedy our problem without in some way being intimately associated with it? As if our "union" keeps us essentially compartmentalized away from Christ's being? It is interesting in the OT that the leper touching something made it unclean—yet in the NT, Jesus touching the leper made him clean. So strong is the union Paul says we were crucified with him!
And this is the second neglected aspect, our own death on the Cross. Here is how the sin nature is said to be dealt with at the Cross by a process of judging it and cutting it off. Our old man, our body of sin, the old Adam, our sinful nature is said to be crucified, judged, buried and rendered ineffective or inoperative (Romans 6, etc.). This ties right in the with the depiction of the snake on the pole, and some other metaphors like Haman hanging himself on his own gallows—that Satan was somehow tricked and trapped by this Work of the Cross, because it stripped him of his rights and power, as when David slew Goliath and all the Philistines ran. The authority and rights of Satan must therefore logically come from unjudged sin. Satan's power is a manifestation of the judgment of God that someone is turned over to Satan and his power to work evil. It is not a ransom that God pays Satan back, as if Satan were the one wronged or in ultimate control, but a ransom where God pays the judgments that allow and open the door to Satan as a part of the penalty and punishment of sin. Satan's power is a judgment on sin.
So if a pure and holy and innocent Christ "bore" our sins—we ask what does this mean. We could speculate imputation alone, that is, a pure person is punished with the punishment a sinful person deserves. And in fact I think this a better and adequate model of the atonement than rejecting the penal aspects, because it as least admits the severity of sin and the necessity of the holy law of God to be honored. But I think in digging deeper, especially studying out the above two points—the union we have with Christ and the judgment and cutting off of our old sin nature—we might well see Christ bore sin in a more direct way of association. The reason this would not impugn Christ's nature or character, was by virtue of the fact it was temporary and momentary, and once judged the sin has been eliminated. Death itself is associated with sin, and if Christ were to be never even associated in any way with sin, he simply could not even die—he would have eternal life on the Cross, nothing could kill or slay him, because only by sin comes death. He would live forever just hanging there sinless, or bounce right off that Cross immortal, and this in fact what some thought was about to happen when they thought he called for Elijah. But no, Christ died and said "I was dead." People who never partake of sin, never die, and Christ tasted death for every man. But when Christ rises from the dead he leaves all association with sin behind because it has been fully judged and destroyed.
"He who knew no sin became sin." Many try to salvage this with "sin offering," but in the OT, the sin offering was treated as if it were sin itself—hands were laid to transfer guilt, and it was killed and burned up! The symbol stands for the reality. Now it does seem strange to me that two people so different as R. C. Sproul a Calvinist and Todd White from Word of Faith, complete opposites in theology, would both agree that Christ somehow experienced and partook of the evils of sin on the Cross during those temporary moments of judging the sin of the whole world. This is a matter of record easily proven. But in the end I have to consider their reasoning very strong and solid on this one point. It ends up being a very self-righteous thing to deny Christ's generosity in paying for our sins, it is not somehow impiety and irreverence to accept Christ's ability to bear our sins in actuality—it is merely the humility and condescension of God to do this for us, and something only he could possibly do. I'm sensitive to the objections this is "blasphemous," although I find it misguided, and I honestly don't think R. C. Sproul or Todd White in any way wanted to be blasphemous, this is just their understanding of the atonement. And I don't think it logically follows that it's blasphemous, since this is the choice and decision of God himself as Judge who sets his own rules and fulfills his own judgments. As if it were any less blasphemous for the purity of Christ to live inside someone as vile as me!
At any rate, one can clarify the sides of the debate and further strengthen their own reasons for believing what they do. In my simplistic and child-like way I often visualize the atonement as all my black and dark and bad things going into Christ on the Cross—and all Christ's pure and white and good things coming back to me through the resurrection. This why we died with Christ, were buried with Christ, were crucified with Christ, were resurrected with Christ. And I think it's really the most straightforward way to understand the verse:
for him who did not know sin, in our behalf He did make sin,
that we may become the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. 5:21 YLT)
One is our union with Christ. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him." We are said to be the Body of Christ and joined with him in baptism such that we can count ourselves as having been crucified with him on the Cross, and resurrected with him in new life. Now some are saying that if Christ associates himself with sinfulness in any way experientially he is somehow becoming less glorious and pure in his nature. Do they have such a high regard for themselves that they think they are pure enough that their union with Christ does not bring their own shortcomings and impurities into that union? Certainly we don't think we are bringing an equal purity into union with Christ—Christ is the one who is said to be the remedy for our shortcoming, and how can he redeem or remedy our problem without in some way being intimately associated with it? As if our "union" keeps us essentially compartmentalized away from Christ's being? It is interesting in the OT that the leper touching something made it unclean—yet in the NT, Jesus touching the leper made him clean. So strong is the union Paul says we were crucified with him!
And this is the second neglected aspect, our own death on the Cross. Here is how the sin nature is said to be dealt with at the Cross by a process of judging it and cutting it off. Our old man, our body of sin, the old Adam, our sinful nature is said to be crucified, judged, buried and rendered ineffective or inoperative (Romans 6, etc.). This ties right in the with the depiction of the snake on the pole, and some other metaphors like Haman hanging himself on his own gallows—that Satan was somehow tricked and trapped by this Work of the Cross, because it stripped him of his rights and power, as when David slew Goliath and all the Philistines ran. The authority and rights of Satan must therefore logically come from unjudged sin. Satan's power is a manifestation of the judgment of God that someone is turned over to Satan and his power to work evil. It is not a ransom that God pays Satan back, as if Satan were the one wronged or in ultimate control, but a ransom where God pays the judgments that allow and open the door to Satan as a part of the penalty and punishment of sin. Satan's power is a judgment on sin.
So if a pure and holy and innocent Christ "bore" our sins—we ask what does this mean. We could speculate imputation alone, that is, a pure person is punished with the punishment a sinful person deserves. And in fact I think this a better and adequate model of the atonement than rejecting the penal aspects, because it as least admits the severity of sin and the necessity of the holy law of God to be honored. But I think in digging deeper, especially studying out the above two points—the union we have with Christ and the judgment and cutting off of our old sin nature—we might well see Christ bore sin in a more direct way of association. The reason this would not impugn Christ's nature or character, was by virtue of the fact it was temporary and momentary, and once judged the sin has been eliminated. Death itself is associated with sin, and if Christ were to be never even associated in any way with sin, he simply could not even die—he would have eternal life on the Cross, nothing could kill or slay him, because only by sin comes death. He would live forever just hanging there sinless, or bounce right off that Cross immortal, and this in fact what some thought was about to happen when they thought he called for Elijah. But no, Christ died and said "I was dead." People who never partake of sin, never die, and Christ tasted death for every man. But when Christ rises from the dead he leaves all association with sin behind because it has been fully judged and destroyed.
"He who knew no sin became sin." Many try to salvage this with "sin offering," but in the OT, the sin offering was treated as if it were sin itself—hands were laid to transfer guilt, and it was killed and burned up! The symbol stands for the reality. Now it does seem strange to me that two people so different as R. C. Sproul a Calvinist and Todd White from Word of Faith, complete opposites in theology, would both agree that Christ somehow experienced and partook of the evils of sin on the Cross during those temporary moments of judging the sin of the whole world. This is a matter of record easily proven. But in the end I have to consider their reasoning very strong and solid on this one point. It ends up being a very self-righteous thing to deny Christ's generosity in paying for our sins, it is not somehow impiety and irreverence to accept Christ's ability to bear our sins in actuality—it is merely the humility and condescension of God to do this for us, and something only he could possibly do. I'm sensitive to the objections this is "blasphemous," although I find it misguided, and I honestly don't think R. C. Sproul or Todd White in any way wanted to be blasphemous, this is just their understanding of the atonement. And I don't think it logically follows that it's blasphemous, since this is the choice and decision of God himself as Judge who sets his own rules and fulfills his own judgments. As if it were any less blasphemous for the purity of Christ to live inside someone as vile as me!
At any rate, one can clarify the sides of the debate and further strengthen their own reasons for believing what they do. In my simplistic and child-like way I often visualize the atonement as all my black and dark and bad things going into Christ on the Cross—and all Christ's pure and white and good things coming back to me through the resurrection. This why we died with Christ, were buried with Christ, were crucified with Christ, were resurrected with Christ. And I think it's really the most straightforward way to understand the verse:
for him who did not know sin, in our behalf He did make sin,
that we may become the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. 5:21 YLT)
