Finally, this is so this is session 7.
Anyone who was asking questions like from week 1 and I said, you
have to wait till you know, session 7 before we, before we
actually get there, well, we're here.
So Hooray. And it's a, it's a short chapter
in the book because I think for me, I think this is one of the
easiest lectures to follow personally, especially if you've
kind of gone through the the 1st 6.
But I think it's the it's, it's more accessible.
It's not got philosophical terms like matter narrative or, you
know, post enlightenment thinking or any of that kind of
none of that's in there. It's quite straightforward.
We're talking about what, what is the cross and why did, why
did Jesus come? So I thought actually it didn't,
it didn't need an awful lot of kind of additional, you know,
hand holding in terms of the in terms of the the manual.
So the question, well, the the learning outcomes and I'm going
to turn it over to you guys to discuss for a bit while I go and
eat some sorbet. Understand the purpose of the
cross. I probably would reword that now
actually understand the purpose of the cross, maybe begin to
understand. Do we understand?
Understanding is an overrated word, but it's a good learning
outcome word from Bloom's taxonomy for worldview education
theorists out there. Sorry.
Second one up. Yeah, yes, yeah.
Level level 2 Blooms. Yeah.
Grasp how the gospel defines our problem in relation to darkness.
Do you like that one? And three, This one you will not
read in Blooms. Dismantle.
Dismantle the false doctrine of penal substitution reatonement.
And that's deliberately strong. That's it's a strong statement
because I don't think there's any quarter to be given to the
the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, that
there may be many angles on the atonement and there are many
angles on the atonement, but that is not one of them.
And that's I think something that comes across really
strongly in this lecture and probably is a good starting
point for our discussion, which is why we've got here reflection
and exercise. Read John one or well, don't do
that right now, but or and then the essay God in the hands of
angry sinners in the course materials, which you don't have
because we're doing this off piste, but that is available.
You can get that one from Baxter's website and download it
if you want to read it. It's a riff off of Jonathan
Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which is hailed as
the most famous sermon in American history and perhaps go
some way to explain why the American psyche is so
dysfunctional. And I'm serious and the and, and
I mean on the UK side as well. Sorry, yeah, recorded.
No, I'll be on the record for saying that.
I've I've stood, I've stood up in America and said this.
I don't mind. They agree because, you know, I
think people know there's, there's a there's a deep
dysfunction there. And I think it comes from if
your if your headline, if your headline sort of figurehead of,
you know, religious ideology is someone like Jonathan Edwards
writing a book like that or a sermon like that.
It's not a book then. Yeah, no, no wonder you've got
problems. But it does go for us in the UK
as well. I think it's the whole Western
thing has got the same issue. And that particular sin is in
the hands of an angry God. I think is a great summary of
the problem, the diagnosis of the of the problem.
But if you want to read that one, you can find it on the on
Baxter's website. But consider the following
statement. Any teaching which requires the
breaking or the dissolution of the Trinity should be considered
false. Any teaching that requires the
breaking or dissolution of the Trinity should be considered
false. So up until now, really, I've
been trying to lay the foundation and make the case
that the historic witness of the church has centred around the
revelation of God in Christ, the revelation of God as Trinity.
And so any doctrines that we want to articulate need to be
expressions of the revelation of God.
And if there are expressions of the revelation of God yet they
involve breaking or dissolution or fracturing or anything like
that within the Trinity, then they ought to be immediately
rejected as false. So this is a good acid test for
what is Christian and what is not Christian.
To the point about what is Christian, it's easier to say
what's not Christian than what is Christian.
I think any anything that is breaking the Trinity apart is
false. So consider that.
And with regard to the question of what is the cross for, how
has it that often been violated, given everything we've been
looking at, you know, over the last six months, all the
different conversations, issues around the Scripture theology,
how have you heard angles or articulations about the cross
that actually do not fit in with that revelation where there
where there's a cutting across? And my example that I will give
you is it takes me back to being an undergraduate at university.
In the one time I went to the University Christian Union to
hear there was an, you know, a gospel, the mission, you know,
UCCF mission. And the preacher articulated a
message about Jesus dying on the cross.
And he considered it to be a complete gospel message.
But there was not even a mention of the resurrection.
He considered it. He considered the bare minimum,
you know, I've got this time to articulate something.
What can it be? And he painted a picture of
Jesus dying for our sins on the cross, but there was not even a
mention. My Bible says Paul says if
Christ is not risen from the dead, your faith is in vain.
So I don't know how you can preach a gospel that doesn't
involve the resurrection. But he he did and nobody seemed
to notice that this was a problem.
And that was the last time I went to a UCCF meeting.
Well, until years later when I got blacklisted, but that's
another story. So discuss anyway with reference
to the the lecture. Maybe you want to go off piece
to yourself, things that spoke to you out of the lecture, maybe
things that were making sense and not making sense where, you
know, take 15 minutes and then let's come back and just hear
what everyone has to say. We'll see where we end up.
Is that cool? Everyone's chatting away.
I don't. I kind of don't want to stop it,
but I also want to bring everyone together to distil out
what's happening in the room. We had a great, I was really
enjoying on the table with the guys in the corner.
Anyone. I mean just throw it down like
what's everyone been discussing? What are the points that have
been coming out? What are the issues?
What's everyone been wrestling with?
Anyone want to say anything? That's not me.
I can always preach, but I don't think that wasn't.
Yeah, join it. Go on.
I think one of the things that we are wrestling with a little
bit was that the whole thing in the Old Testament, a lot about
the sacrificing things was for atonement.
And then if that isn't what Jesus was doing, then does that
doesn't quite add up together? Does that make sense?
So the the question I'll ask is what is atonement?
Yeah, you don't need to answer the.
No, I wish I didn't have the microphone.
Yeah. That's fine, I'll tell you.
Did you have your hand there? No.
I can say something. Well, it's what do you want to
say something you don't have the same.
So my understanding is it means at one with.
So is that the I mean, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks.
I guess we so we're part of part of the issues.
I think what why why do we wait till session 7 for this?
Because the the questions that here like would be the same
questions people ask very early on, right.
And they get frustrated with me when I say, Please wait a few
weeks because we're doing all of this groundwork to try and get
underneath the surface of things that we, we think we're dealing
with the foundational questions when actually we're not.
We don't realise that there's a much several layers deeper than
that. There are other foundations that
we've not even been aware of. So we use a word like atonement.
Well, what does atonement mean? Or we use what we're talking
about the word saved. What does saved mean?
So what we throw around all the time, but what does it actually
mean? What are you being saved from?
Because if we've not defined that, then there's a huge
assumption about what the whole landscape is, what's going on
here and what we're what we can be when we just jump into the
Bible. We're coming into the Bible with
all of our 2000 years of Christendom and whatever
experience we've had baggage that we've inherited and we just
read that, not necessarily even conscious that what we're
reading is through multiple different lenses that are
filtering what we're seeing and colouring it in a certain
direction. So the question of, well,
obviously atonement is this or sin is this, but what is it
though? I think it's interesting.
I still to this day when I've asked the question, can anybody
give me the the verse that defines sin in the New
Testament? I've never had anyone able to
give it to me. It's just conspicuous.
Anyone maybe break the trend and I'm thinking from Paul's
writings, he gives a very specific clear definition of the
word sin. Anyone.
No, no, I mean, that's etymologically we could talk
about he says all have sinned and fallen short.
But there's, there's one part where he defines sin and we, and
I think we can look at it the the hamartia falling short, what
that means again, studying the word.
But there's, there's a point in the New Testament and I think
it's the no, no, no, not at all. No, no, no, death, death is the
the consequence of sin. But he says everything.
No, no, he's definitely, I'm thinking, I'm thinking of a
Bible verse in it. Everything that is not of faith,
everything that is not of faith is sin, which is a very, very
strange statement. It's weird.
What the heck does that mean? Everything that is not faith,
just like we repeat, repeat so much, but what does it actually
mean when it's saying everything that is not of faith?
Yeah. Everything that is not of faith
is sin, he says, which is a definition, a working
definition, Sarah. Yes.
I think it is interesting. This is a it's a very relational
term, right? Everything that's not of faith
is very, very relational. Faith is a relational word.
It's trust. So, you know, let's just put
that in the pipe and smoke it for a little bit.
So we're used to thinking of saying in very, you know, well,
we're used to thinking of it in legalistic terms is the truth.
So we're thinking, well, this is the this is the rule.
So OK, I stole an apple from the the market.
Nobody saw that. In fact, the guy who was selling
the apple, he was had too many apples anyway, and, you know,
always ends up with some that he wastes at the end.
I stole it. I was hungry.
I ate it. I'm fine.
I'm happy. What's the problem?
There's It was a victimless crime, right?
And what do I need saving from? Well, yeah, so.
Right. So we get it.
We get into it now. So the, the issue then is we're
used to a scheme that is like, well, yeah, I get that that's
wrong. The problem is because it's
wrong and I violated this command, I'm going to get in
trouble for it. In which case the thing I need
to be saved from is the trouble, right?
I need to be saved from the fact that I'm going to get punished
by the judge. Actually, nobody else has got.
There's not not actually a problem otherwise, because if
the judge didn't have a problem, nobody will have a problem.
The guy who had the apple didn't have a problem.
I didn't have a problem, nobody had a problem.
But oh, it's the wrong thing and the judge is going to get me.
Now I feel bad about it. And so in that sense, what do we
need to be saved from? We need to be saved from the
punishment of the judge, hence the penal bit in penal
substitution. The real problem is the
punishment. Now if the judge didn't have a
problem with us, then we'll be like, oh, well, there's no issue
then, is there? So there's a big issue, but the
question comes down to, but what is it we're being saved from?
And then we could get into what Sarah's talking about.
Well, OK, so you, you took the apple.
We can understand and rationalise why somebody might
do that. And you think, well, if
somebody's hungry and they need an apple and it's the only way
you can do it, nobody's blaming them, right?
You're not, nobody's thinking that that's a bad person for
doing that. But what's coming out of that
person? There's a there's a belief right
underneath that. The belief is I will not have
enough. I'm on my own.
I have to take matters into my own hands.
I have to control, I have to manipulate, I have to do
whatever in order to cover my own bases, take care of my
needs, whatever it is. And now what we have is the
construction of a false self that is built on a lie.
The lie that it depends on me. This is the same lie as the lie
of separation. God is not with me.
If God was with me, I wouldn't need to steal the apple.
And I know there's complexities here, right when we're talking
about real life, but we take it back to Jesus did.
He pushed it right back to the fundamentals.
He said anyone who hates his brother is guilty of murder.
Foolishly explained in many evangelical contexts as well,
hatred is as bad as murder. No it's not.
Freaking idiot. Like taking a gun and blowing up
civilians in the in the centre of town is not the same as
hating somebody. He's a materially light years
apart from one another. That Jesus is not an idiot.
He's not saying that God looks at you being angry and flipping
someone off because they cut you up on the road and you like
taking a machine gun and shooting up a school and saying,
well, these are basically all sinners alike.
No, it's not all sin is not alike.
That's ridiculous. Like whoever said that's an
idiot. Jesus never said it.
In fact, he even talked about when Judas betrays me, he says
the one who betrays me as guilty of a greater sin.
So even Jesus says not all sin is alike.
But but why anybody would even think that?
It's kind of moronic. That's not what he's saying.
He's trying to push you down into understand you.
You're judging by external outcomes.
I'm trying to point you to what's the issue within the
heart that is The Fountainhead of the the outcomes.
And the issue that lies at the heart is the lie.
I'm on my own, right? So there's the shame piece.
Why am I on my own? Well, because I'm not worthy.
There's the fear piece. If I don't take control, I'm
going to get bad outcomes. And then if I do the wrong
thing, I'm afraid that I'm going to get punished for it, which is
fear has to do with punishment right One John.
So we have all of the language around sin and around atonement
all funnels us down to questions of the nature of our being and
our relationship in God right. It's it's fundamentally
relational all the way through. Even when Jesus says do unto
others as you would have them do unto you or love your neighbour
as you love yourself. You think about that.
How can you actually obey that command Will in all he he's
moving the centre of gravity from out here is an external
code that tells you do this and don't do that.
He moves that right into the the locus of the conversation is the
human heart where he says do unto others as you would have
them do unto you, which means you have to you have to be able
to know how you'd want them to treat you.
And then you'd need to be able to extend outwards and empathise
with them in order to see them as yourself.
How can you do that? Well, we love because he first
loved us, that there's a rehabilitating effect of knowing
and experiencing the love of God that transforms us from the
inside out in a way that external regulations have no
power or ability to do anything. So back to the question of
atonement. Hebrews says it was impossible
for the blood of bulls and goats offered year after year to
cleanse the conscience of the worshipper.
Interesting is it's not saying it's it was impossible for the
blood to make atonement with God since it was impossible for it
to cleanse the conscience of the worshipper, showing that the
problem is not on God's side, right?
The problem is on internally we, we're the sacrifices are for us,
right? Sacrifice is not for God.
In fact, God even says sacrifice and burnt offering I have not
desired. That's a strange thing for you
to say God, didn't you author this whole sacrificial system?
Yet you say now I don't, I don't want this.
And then you said, but a, but a body you have prepared for me is
in prophesying the incarnation here, here comes Christ into the
equation. So we're we're wrestling some of
these things. We're wrestling with, we're
wrestling with them because the Bible is a story of wrestling
with these things. I mean, the New Testament is
written by the apostles wrestling with how on earth do
we process this stuff with the scriptural tradition that we've
inherited? How do we figure that out?
Now? How do we, how do we go back and
read the, the, the first part of the book now that we've seen the
surprise ending that changes the story as we go through.
And that's what John's doing in John one in the beginning.
So Genesis one in the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth. OK, we see an action.
God created John One in the beginning was the word and the
word was face to face with God. That's different.
That's a different perspective. If we think about the curtain
we've got, Genesis 1 is telling us what's happening on one side
of the curtain, but John 1 is telling us what's happening on
the other side of the curtain. What's happening within the mind
of God, What's happening within this invisible place that we
cannot penetrate, We can't deduce, we can't infer, And as
Jesus says in in John's Gospel, no one knows the Father except
the Son. This is inaccessible to us by
any natural mechanism or means. To reach our way back into God
is completely impossible. We cannot do that.
The natural mind cannot grasp the things of the Spirit.
But he says, and those to whom the Son wills to reveal him.
And later on, yeah. I think that that question about
the sacrificial system. So I haven't read the book but I
heard this guy on a podcast last year someone wrote Lamb of the
free recovering the varied sacrificial understandings of
Jesus death. It's 2024 by Andrew Remington
Relaria. He basically says that this I I
think the argument is this idea that the Old Testament
sacrificial system is set up something, then expecting a New
Testament sacrifice isn't actually really what's going on
in the text. This was then famously endorsed
by John Mark Comer, who said final biblical as a final
biblical and exegetal refutation of penal substitution
reatonement. So what I would do if you want,
if you're really interested in how what the sacrificial system
is doing or not doing to set us up for the New Testament, either
try and find a podcast by him. So his name is Andrew Remington
Rolera. He's like a conservative
theologian or fight or read the book Lamb of the free recovering
the varied sacrificial understandings of Jesus death.
And he essentially kind of he's trying to say what what the
sacrificial system is doing and what it's not doing and what
we've can think it's doing. If that is a very niche.
That was just a specific question I think you guys had.
I just wanted to answer. Here's another question, maybe
slightly easier than my other one.
Anyone. I'm thinking of a specific
verse. What does the Bible say the law
is for? Sorry more than that close, but
even more to increase sin, Paul said the law was added so that
sin would increase. I mean just plug that back into
the equation for a moment. What, like the, the purpose of
the law was to increase sin. And yes, Peter's right.
He also says through the law, I become conscious of sin.
So there's a revelatory part of that as well.
But the the intention when he when he is the intention
statement, the law was added so that sin would increase.
So I would, yeah, Yeah. I mean, I, I see it.
I see it as a it's an expression of in the, the genesis count,
right? The tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. What is the knowledge of good
and evil tree? It it makes a promise to you.
The promise is here's the tree. It will teach you good and it
will teach you evil. Well, what are you supposed to
do with it then? Well, now that you've learned
the one and the other, choose the good, reject the bad.
How do I do that? Exercise your willpower to do
it. Now you are informed, you're
accountable. Choose the good, reject the
badge. Deuteronomy 2829.
Here are two mountains, blessings and curses.
Choose you know, A or B. Which one ABC Which one will it
be right? Take your pick, but it's on you,
right? Choose the good, you'll get
blessed. Choose the badge, you'll get
punished. Carrot and stick.
That's the expression of the law.
So then you have throughout the story of the, the Jewish
scriptures, you have a, a progressively narrowing window
where, OK, we've got Abraham out of all the families of the
earth. And then we've got Jacob instead
of Esau. And then we, we start narrowing
down to the, the 12 tribes. And then of the 12 tribes, it's
Judah out of the 12. And then it's one family out of
Judah, David's line. And then David himself is the
one who says there's no one righteous, not even 1.
So David's, David's own expression of this is what we're
we're progressively narrowing. If there's an in and an out,
we're narrowing to the point where, well, actually
everybody's out. Paul goes on to say God has
bound all men over to disobedience in order to have
mercy on them all. So the law has added that sin
would increase actually with what's the point that he's
expressing within that is he's painting everyone into the same
corner of disobedience in order that mercy is functional.
This is the cross, if we can recognise that.
So Jesus, sheep and the goats. Favourite favourite parable that
people like to throw at me whenever I kind of start this
one. What's going on in the sheep and
the goats? They say, well, when did we when
did we see you and we didn't give you a cup of water.
They said, well, as much as you did to the least of these, you
did to me. Why?
Because Christ has so fully identified himself with everyone
and everything. As you treat that person, so you
treat Christ. If we can recognise the
implication of the parable, we recognise that every act of
mistreatment is complicit in the crucifixion of Christ on the
cross. So we say all of our sin is
brought to the Ground Zero of the cross.
Yeah, it absolutely is. Because every act of human
suffering, every act of human evil is connected to what
happened at the cross. And it's, it's suffering and
evil, right? So Christ Co suffers with
everyone who has ever suffered, with everything they have ever
suffered in that moment of the cross.
He is, he is demonstrating his irreversible connection with
whatever it is that you have suffered.
There on the cross is Christ in the gas Chamber of Auschwitz.
There on the cross is Christ in the cobalt mines of Congo,
right? He, he is there fully there, not
there in an abstract way, not not there.
And I'm, I'm aloof and I can kind of empathise from a
distance. This is him in his physical body
accepting the the suffering that is Co suffering with everyone
who has ever suffered anything big, small or otherwise.
He bore his sins in our body on the tree.
It's that connectivity, past, past, present, future to
everything and everyone. Also, he's there similarly and
equally assigned a grave with the wicked in his death, right?
So he is also simultaneously inextricably linked to everyone
who is committing and perpetrating the acts of
suffering because they're actually the same people, right?
The cycle, the cycle of abuse that passes down from one
generation to another. Well, OK, the, the, the, you
know, the, the, the, the abused 5 year old becomes the abusing
15 year old, right? So he's united himself with All
in all of, in the Ground Zero of all of these acts of suffering
and inflicting of suffering and on, on others.
So at that point we see all brought to the Ground Zero of
the cross, because here is the Son of God who has united
himself with all, and he takes that moment to address the issue
of our shame. Father forgive them, for they
don't know what they do. Which if we understand from a
Trinitarian perspective, if Jesus is saying Father forgive
them, what is the Father saying? The same thing, right?
The Son can only do what he sees the Father doing.
When Jesus praise Father forgive them, he is not taking a break
from being the Son of God. This is why union is essential.
If we if we see separation here, then what we see is the Son
making a petition to the Father. Well, does the Father hear the
petition or not? But we don't know because we
don't know the Father. We still the Father is still
inscrutable to us. Yet before Jesus goes to the
cross, he says to Philip, if you've seen me, you have seen
the father. Why does he say that just before
he goes right, you're going to see something that you cannot
understand. This is coming your way in a
couple of verses time, Philip and all the other disciples,
you're going to see the Son of man lifted up, lifted up his
language for coronation, right? You're going to see him lifted
up in his coronation, but it's not going to be what you expect.
And in that day you will know that I am in you, you are in me
and I am in the father. In that day you will know I am
not. I will be.
So he tells them. You pay attention when you see
this. This is this is what you're
going to be bearing witness to as Philips asking the question.
Show us the father and it will be enough.
So the penal substitution thing puts the Father on one side, us
on the other and the son in the middle, kind of like playing
both sides. So when we when we hear father
forgive them for they don't know what they do.
We don't even know if that prayer has been answered.
We think it's a petition. It's not.
It is a declaration. This is the pronounce, the
pronouncement of absolution. It is the benediction on the
human race. This is saying what exactly what
the angels declare in the incarnation, peace on earth and
goodwill to all men. That's the angels declaration, a
moment of rejoicing when the Son of God is born in the in the
stable, right, Because that's what the incarnation means, that
the incarnation is the final word to answer the question of
is man separated from God? Well, I, well, I thought no one
may see my face and live. What about that?
Why is Philip asking the question?
Well, because they've got the tradition.
God says to Moses, no one may see my face and live.
Well, Moses does see the face of God there, doesn't he?
On the mount of Transfiguration. He's transfigured and stands
there with Jesus face to face. So Jesus saying to Philip, if
you've seen me, you have seen the Father.
But I thought no one may see my face and live.
Apparently not, because now I'm seeing your face and I'm living.
So when the Son of Man is lifted up, I'll he says I will draw all
to myself. So in that, that moment of
glorification in John the cross is the moment of glorification,
the moment of coronation. He doesn't have, John doesn't
have a future coronation of Jesus in the Gospel.
He has. This is the moment even to the
point where when Jesus goes to the cross, he says now is the
judgement of the world. Now the Prince of this earth
stands condemned and I, when I'm lifted up, will draw all to
myself. So he doesn't, John does not
have a future judgement in the Gospel if it's not there.
It all happens. It's realised in that, that
moment in the cross. And that's deliberate.
You know, John doesn't have Jesus going away and coming back
like you get at the end of Luke, he goes up and says he's going
to come back again, not there in John's gospel.
Why? Because he's like, I'm zoning
in. You need to see what is taking
place here on the cross. This is the moment of Ground
Zero. Everything is being brought back
to here. Not only that this in in it all
being brought to that moment, we also see the origin of all
creation is there too, because he's the lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, the foundation of the world, meaning
before there's any Adam, before there's any fall that the the
revelation there is saying in the life that is shared in the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit out of which they create the world.
What is it that they create the world out of?
Well, John, John tells us that God is love.
The essential nature of God is love.
So therefore what they create the world out of his love.
What does that love look like? It looks like Christ on the
cross. That's the origin of creation.
That's The Fountainhead of creation.
It's why the New Testament picks up all this language of this is
the birth of the new creation. And it's interesting because you
get that that Psalm today, you're my son today I've
begotten you is applied twice in the New Testament.
Once is in the incarnation, but the second time is in the
resurrection and it's applied it's applied both both times.
So you and my son today have begotten you.
Well, when when was the Son begotten from the Father?
Well, the creed tells us he was never there was never a time
when he wasn't begotten of the Father.
He's the eternal Son. He doesn't become the Son and
the Father does not become the father.
He's always been the Father. The Son has always been the son.
Again, why we keep banging on about the Trinity.
If we, if we see all of this tracks back to if we are
prepared to pay attention to what the New Testament authors
and what the early church theologians and Mystics are
trying to tell us is the main event here.
We will realise why they keep going on and on about the
Trinity. Because they understand that all
these other ideas that we have about the nature of sin and
judgement and human life and all of these things, they all track
back to who is God? Because who is God is going to
tell us everything about the true nature of reality.
What kind of God creates the world?
Who God is going to tell us what we expect to see the handiwork
of the of the Creator. The nature of the Creator is
seen in the Creator's handiwork, the the image of God, right?
So, but, but that is a testimony over and against all sorts of
things that we see that tell us a different story.
That's John 1, the darkness. He calls it the darkness.
He says we have a world system which does not tell us the truth
about who God is and what are places in the world.
In fact, the system of law makes a lot of sense to that world
system. And we understand that, right?
We understand. How do you run a society without
laws? It's very easy for us to track
into in a in a human sense. Well, yeah, obviously you need
rules, otherwise what's going to happen?
Except Jesus repeatedly blows a cannonball through this stuff,
like with the when the disciples try to stop the children coming
to him. Why are the disciples trying to
stop the children? Because the children could be
ceremonially unclean. They could have inadvertently
violated the law, but they're not old enough to know.
So we have to contain them somehow out of the risk that
they might bring ceremonial, ceremonial uncleanliness to the
holy teacher. Maybe a dog licks them,
something like that, and they come close.
But not only does Jesus say let them come to me, he says, but
you have to become like them if you even want to see the
Kingdom. And who is the Kingdom is
Christ, right? The Kingdom is sitting in front
of them. They can't recognise him.
If they could recognise him, they wouldn't have stopped the
children coming, right? And when Jesus says to the
disciples you have to become like them, he's not telling them
to become something that they're not.
He's telling them to become something that they were because
they were children once. So he's saying return same
language used in the prodigal son when it says he came to
himself and said I'm better off in my father's house as a
servant. So again, back to the question
of sin. If we say sin is falling short
of the glory of God, we've often read that is sin is falling
short of the standard of God, but that's not what it says.
It says glory not standard. Standard is a legal term.
Glory is something else altogether.
The glory of God is his very nature.
So, and what the Genesis account tells us is that humanity is the
very nature of God, the very image of God.
So sin therefore is to be out of sync or alignment with our true
nature, which is grounded in who God is.
What we get in the church is we get a confusion about this when
we get into this issue of the doctrine of original sin.
It's a Western doctrine, not an Eastern 1 And over time it
builds up this idea of we are, we are in intrinsically
shameful, corrupt, unworthy and deficient.
And that problem needs to be resolved in order for us to
return to God. But actually it's not God you
need to return to. You need to return to yourself,
in fact, because you have now you have been misled as to your
true identity. And now that true identity can
only be discovered in the light of the face of Christ.
When we see him, we become like him.
The Scripture says in seeing him, we become like him is what
Peter experienced. You're the Christ, the Son of
the living God, and Jesus responds to him immediately.
Simon, son of Jonah, you are actually Peter.
My father has revealed this to you and your father.
So Peter's true identity appears in the very moment that he
glimpses something by revelation in the face of Christ.
So here we have at the at the cross.
We were talking about the veil being torn.
The veil is torn at the cross because at that moment you
cannot be more exposed than the Son of God hanging naked on the
tree and not only that, having been so brutalised that even his
innards is showing, right. You can't be more physically
exposed than crisis on the cross.
This is this is God making known in the ultimate way the complete
and Full disclosure. This is who I am fully
revelatory. It's not even just revelatory in
an example sense. This is what love looks like.
It's saying this is who I am. And in that day you'll realise I
am in you and you are in me and I am in the Father, that if we,
if we catch that revelation or if it catches us, we've seen,
oh, this is, this is the nature of the Father, Son and Spirit.
Therefore, the way the world is, the way the world presents
itself to us is not the way that it truly is.
We need to wake up because it's like we've been engaging it in a
sleepwalk, in a coma, you know, seeing half, you know, like the
man who's half healed, right. I see people, they're like trees
walking around. There's a there's still this
kind of half dysfunction. You know, Hebrews talks about it
like types and shadows. So we get little glimpses and
approximations. But then we take those glimpses
and approximations and we begin to build religious constructs,
tell a load of stories about that, then build a temple and
say, and here's where God lives. Jesus says, I will you destroy
this temple? I will raise it again.
But it's not the temple that you think God does not build, does
not live in a temple built by human hands.
So all, all of this is there in the undercurrents of the the
question of what's going on at the cross.
What we do not see anywhere is God is over here, you are over
there and here is the bridge to get back to him.
It's just not there anywhere. And we really should expect it
to be if that's the if that's the equation that's being laid
before us. So I think on the on the flip
side, the issue with the penal substitution, it says our
problem is a judicial problem. We're guilty before a judge.
Whether or not we really should be guilty, we don't know.
I mean, didn't really seem like such a big problem to me.
But stealing that apple, but I'm guilty before a judge and
apparently if I've stolen that apple, I'm as bad as Hitler.
So OK, everyone, everyone's then in the in the same boat.
Also, if you think about it, if, if we can see, as we should see
correctly from the scripture, that there is no declaration of
separation, nor can there be a declaration of separation that
the the between the son and the father on the cross.
If the Son does not suffer separation from the Father on
the cross, then there was never a thread of separation for us
either because the cross has to in under that scheme, has to
atone for the thing that we're in threat of suffering.
So Jesus takes our punishment so we don't get punishment.
So if our punishment is a slap on the wrist, Jesus has to have
a slap on the wrist. If our punishment is go to your
room, Jesus has to go to your room.
If your punishment is separation from God, Jesus has to be
separated from God. If he's not separated from God,
that's not the threat. It just the the rug goes
completely out from underneath. This sin is in the hands of the
angry God schema, right? It dissolves.
There's no longer any grounds for us to talk in those terms.
And when we first confront that, it might be a bit like, well,
gosh, hang on a minute. That's that's really unravelling
the the real core of my sort of theological basis.
Like, yeah, absolutely. Welcome to the Western world.
The foundations of the Western mind have been built on a
separation mentality. Why we keep saying separation
mentality? What do you mean separation
mentality? This is what we're talking
about, the idea that our problem is to be punished by separation
from God for doing the wrong things.
Antichrist here. Oh, yeah, We were talking about
the other day. Yeah.
Yeah.
So the the the question for the recording, can we separate
ourselves from God by an act of our will?
Is it coercive for God to not allow that?
And we mentioned Wes Huff. OK, so great, great question.
So I think it's interesting. You've got the the it's Luke, is
it Luke 15? Am I getting that right?
The prodigal son, There's three, there are three parables, right?
And you, you have the, the prodigal son, you have the lost
coin and the lost sheep. And they're all telling the same
story from different angles, right?
So the prodigal son, what's interesting is that parable of
all of them does end with somebody who is on the outside
and it's the elder son who's who's outside the party, right?
There's a consistent metaphor of Jesus's inside the party,
outside the party, but the eldest son is not separated from
God, because where's the Father? He's with the eldest son outside
the party. What's the father doing, trying
to persuade him to come in? Will the older son come in?
Up to you to finish the story, because it's supposed to be
about you, right? Well, are you going to come in
or not? He, he, he leaves.
He leaves you. Jesus leaves you to write the
ending. Where do you want to be in this
picture? You know this is supposed to
create an immediate reaction. It's not supposed to be like an
abstract thing. It's supposed to bring you to
Ground Zero at that moment. I'm talking about you.
Where are you in the read yourself in the story.
You know the other two parables, though.
You have the lost sheep. The lost sheep has fallen down
the mountainside. It has no way to get itself
back, has no will. It's a sheep.
You know what's it supposed to do?
The shepherd goes down and picks it up and takes it with him.
Does the sheep have a choice in what's happening here?
I mean, this doesn't doesn't really say like free choice
factors very highly in that particular parable.
Equally with the lost coin, the coin is lost.
But where is the coin lost? It's lost in the house, not out
of the house. And as my friend Francois
Detroit puts it, the the the lost coin never lost its value.
It still has the same value. And you get back to this
question of Jesus and Caesar, whose inscription is on the
coin. The point is it's Caesar's
inscription on the coin, but whose inscription is on Caesar?
God, because Caesar's in God's image.
So render to Caesar what Caesar's but render to God what
is God's in other, in other words, there is no God but God,
Caesar. You need to return even in even
in that you have this the, the issue of whose, whose hallmark
is carried on the coin. So in those parables, we don't
have a picture of separation either.
Even in Revelation. I mean, let's go, let's go
straight to the heavy guns. You don't have anybody separated
from God in Revelation. You have the the beast and the
false prophet in the lake of fire that says explicitly in the
presence of the Lamb and his holy angels.
And you have the people who are the resistors saying, let the
rocks fall on us and hide us from his presence.
Implication being, you can't hide, right?
So actually what you have in this picture are people who are
trying to achieve separation and they cannot.
Why can't you achieve separation in him?
We live and move and have our being.
It's the nature of reality. How can you be separated from
reality? It's nonsensical.
Jesus is Mr Reality, He is the divine word by which God upholds
the existence of all things. So the revelation of that we get
of God in Christ is not one that says here's a law you can be in
or out. Here's a mechanism to, you know,
Orient yourself. It's one that says it's no
longer I who live, but Christ living in me.
So I haven't got I haven't got any any.
There's no self power here at all.
And that's not something that I initiated by believing correctly
or praying correctly or doing correctly.
That's something that was always true and I never knew it.
All the while the very Higgs field, if you like, if it's an
appropriate metaphor that is the fabric of physical reality has a
has a personal name and it's Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
How do you get away from that? So yes, we affirm this love is
not coercive and that relationship is relationship is
only relationship when it's uncoerced.
But because we if we understand the when we talk about this
issue of glory, you know, the Bible talks about the sun
glorifying God. How does the sun glorify God?
Well, it glorifies God by being a son, right?
It's created to be a son and that's what it's supposed to be.
And by being what it is created to be, it glorifies God.
Well, in the same way that how do we as human beings glorify
God? Well, by being human, which
means that our, our original design, going back to this issue
of Jesus saying, let the children come to me because you
have to become like them, is to say that any will that is
resisting God is not a will that is free because it is a will
that is acting not in accordance with its true nature or its true
origin. So we can say, well, I'm free to
reject God. Well, that's not freedom though.
That's called enslavement to sin.
It's not freedom. There's a, there's a kind of
mythological idea that we have a, an, an, a disconnected will
that is transcendent and is able to act fully autonomously in
this situation and rationally choose God or not.
Bible doesn't say that. It says no one can come to the
Father unless the Son, and no one can come to the Son unless
the Father draws him. And no one knows the Father
except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals him.
Break your way into that loop. Can't get to the Father without
going through the Son, Can't get to the Son without going through
the Father. How am I supposed to break into
that? How am I supposed to choose
that? But you can't, right?
It's supposed. It's supposed to crash you into
the wall. It's supposed to be with the law
has so increased sin that you no longer under the delusion that
you're able to break your way back into this thing.
And now through the law, I die to the law.
Ah, OK, I realise that's the end.
Finished. Christ is the last Adam, not the
second Adam. That's the end of Adam.
Now he's the second creation. He's the new man.
OK, had her hand up first. I'll try the concept of justice.
I mean, I like to, to discuss. I think for me, I think in, in
injustice means there are things going on right now that should
not be going on. Justice means those things being
put right. What does it look like for them
to be put right? I mean, it depends right, on a
lot of a lot of things, a lot of situations.
So to me, the issue of justice and injustice is all the things
that are wrong getting put right.
My best definition for it in terms of ABS, the issue of
absolution is an important one. How are we absolved from the
weight of the consequences of our actions?
Well, the cross addresses that, right?
It's that, well, I'm, it's no longer I who live for Christ,
who lives in me. It's why I don't like worthiness
language. I have to say this is a little
bit of a bugbear of mine. We're so unworthy.
Well, who decides who's worthy? Well, God decides who's worthy.
How does he decide who's worthy? Well, by his actions, he decided
like what to be worthy means to be worth something, right?
So if he if he chooses to become, to take on flesh and be
Incarnate and share in our humanity, is that not a
declaration that he says, well, yeah, I consider that worth it.
Otherwise we're in a situation where we're saying, well, God,
you're kind of wrong about that, aren't you?
We get that you're being nice to us, but we're still unworthy.
And as a as an aside, I think that's what the whole business
about head coverings is in Corinthians, by the way, there's
a as a rabbit trail on that one. So I think do not call anything
unclean that God has declared clean.
So do not call anything unworthy that God has declared unworthy.
And that starts with ourselves. When the apostle Peter first
meets Jesus, he says, go away from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man.
Well, he doesn't say that six months later when he's arguing
about who's going to be the greatest in the Kingdom of
heaven. So hanging out with Jesus for a
couple of months has radically altered his perception of
himself. And he seems to be shedding
quite rapidly a lot of things that we just take for granted as
well as that's just take. That's just a given, isn't it?
But the question of, well, what, what does, what does justice
mean then? Well, is justice not?
I see there are things that are wrong and I am compelled to act
to put them right. Is justice not?
I'm so aware that when I disregarded that person, I
actually disregarded the Christ who holds me together.
How what a low vision I've had of human beings and what kind of
catastrophic effects has it had on my relationships, on the
planet, on society and on myself?
It's is that, is that not something that summons us to
live according to the reality of who Christ says we are and who
he is? Is that not the new creation?
Is that not to put on Christ? To me, this is this is all about
acting as the Scripture says, as you look forward to the day of
the Lord and hasten its arrival. And there's my eschatology.
Jesus is coming back. He's going to put all, all
wrongs right. I don't really know how that's
going to happen, but I do know we get to participate in that
right now in acting to put all wrongs right.
One of the problems with the evangelical message is it
doesn't really provide any, any mechanism for restitution
because it's so burnt by the Catholic penance mentality that
you need to, you need to make reparations, you know, through
what whatever it's so burnt by that it doesn't see that
Zacchaeus gives back fourfold what he embezzled.
And then Jesus said salvation has come to this house,
Wholeness has come to this house, that the image of God has
been restored in this place because Zacchaeus is now so
seen. Hang on a minute.
How could I, I, I, I could do with a hard heart.
I could mistreat people, you know, steamroll over them and,
and sleep perfectly well at night.
Now I've seen Jesus, I can't do that anymore.
It's impossible for me to do that.
That's called the fear of the Lord.
The fear of the Lord is what you feel when you hold a newborn
child in your arms. I'm on full alert that I do not
drop this kid on his head, Right?
That's called the fear of the Lord, not the fear of the Lord.
I'm afraid that if I do this wrong thing, I'm going to get
punished by God. John tells us to throw that out.
So that kind of fear is to do with punishment.
And the one who fears is not made perfect in love.
God is love. Perfect love casts out all fear.
So our conceptualizations of justice need to be much holier.
They are far too base, far too secular, far too involved with
our arbitrary notions of fairness, economics, legalities,
all of those things that characterise this world system
that will pass away. We need to be liberated from the
that debased way of thinking and understand God's kind of justice
is nothing short of the rest than the restoration of all
things into the headship of Christ.
The recapitulation of all things into the headship of Christ,
which Ephesians says is the administration we've been given
to participate in as the church. Restoration of all things,
putting all things that are wrong, putting them right.
Put it. Put it simply.
That's my riff on the concept of justice.
I'm sure there's hundreds of other things to say, but Alice.
And then we'll finish if you wanted to.
Yeah, this. Is in Ephesians and I'm not I'm
genuinely not proof texting because that's irritating I but
I'm genuinely asking how this fits in So in Ephesians one and
two in him we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of
God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and
understanding. He made known to us the mystery
of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed
in Christ to be put into effect when the times reached their
fulfilment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on
earth under Christ. In Him we were also chosen,
having been predestined according to the plan of Him who
works out everything in conformity with the purpose of
His will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope
in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the
message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you
believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy
Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance
until the redemption of those who are in God's possession to
the praise of his glory. And then the other one.
And then in in chapter 2, it talks about, you know, we were,
we're in darkness, now we're in light.
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by
birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the
circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands.
Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ,
excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the
covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in
the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who
are once far away have been brought near by the blood of
Christ, for he himself is our peace, who has made the two
groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility. And so I think, I think it's
probably obvious what I'm asking, but it feels like in
that first section that there is a distinction between people who
have been marked by the Holy Spirit depositing deposit as a
deposit, what is to come. And there's a moment of
inclusion through faith. And then also the the Gentiles,
it seemed like they were excluded and separated.
And now through the the death and resurrection of Jesus are
included. So that language of exclusion,
inclusion and separation seems to be there in Ephesians.
So separation is a is a translation of a word.
And again, we bring our baggage of what separation actually
means. I would refer to Paul.
In him we live and live and have our being.
Does that mean separation? So I think we we see that there
are many ways in which our experiences of relationship
correspond to changes in fundamental changes in how we
view the world, how we view ourselves, how we relate to God.
And these are descriptions of experiences.
They're not descriptions of ontologies, right?
There's the truth of our being and the way of our being, to
quote Paul Young. So you have the spirit poured
out on all flesh, especially the believers in the book of Acts.
What does that feel like? Well, if you don't know about it
probably doesn't feel like anything.
But how can they believe unless they've heard?
Well, now that you've heard, oh, hang on a minute, that starts to
feel like something. So I think a lot, a lot of what
is written here, especially when you look at the the second parts
of the epistles, they usually, they usually start with the
grand definition of terms, right.
So you have Jesus as the creator and sustainer of all things, all
things being not just brought into unity, in fact, but
reconstituted into the head in in fact, it's not he's up there
and we're all in unity under him.
It is your all reconstituted into the very body is is the
image. So I think we've got to, we need
to be careful of the Western lens through which which the our
translations have also been passed through and what things
they emphasise and what things they don't.
That's why we don't, as you'll know from my book, right, my
thoughts on the concept of solar scriptura is a problem because
you can never read scriptura solar.
You always bring it with the the baggage and the the baggage that
others have included in, you know, in the however well
meaning there might be. We'll do it in terms of those
translations. So I would say if you we don't,
we don't have a univocal layout in the Bible.
Like you can pick proof text and end up almost anywhere as we've
kind of discussed before. So I, I want to say what, what's
our first principles here? Our first principles are the,
the nature and character of God, his relationship to the world
and humanity. This is the fundamental thing
we're addressing now on on top of that, there's a whole bunch
of experiences that we account for.
And also the way that we see those experiences, we may change
how we understand them during the course of our lives as well.
This is real, this is lived. It's not, it's not abstract.
So we see Jesus talking about being outside or in the outer
darkness or inside in in the part we we see lots of these
descriptions of what this looks like.
But if you try and add them all up together in literally into a
coherent whole that's nonsensical.
Well, are you in? Are you out?
It's like, well, the lake of fires in, but the outer darkness
is out. Are they two different things?
Are they the same thing? Like what?
What are we dealing with here? The problem is we're approaching
it with a a Western systematic mentality that thinks these
things all piece together on a flat puzzle, like a flat puzzle
on the table. But that's not what the early
church gave us. Hence our conversations before
theology and biblical studies, especially when it comes to the
proof texting. So faith is faith is not only
important, I mean, it's essential.
But Paul also gives us that faith is a gift from God.
He also says it's not of ourselves.
He also says faith is the person of the Holy Spirit.
How do you get the person of the Holy Spirit if you require faith
to get the Holy Spirit? Again, it comes back to how do
you get the Father if you need the Son to get the Father, but
you can't get the Son without the Father.
All of these things, the more you think about it, the more it
throws you. It's like it, it starts to
recede out of view beyond the horizon because you realise
there's no, there's no accessibility to it until you
realise all of this is not I but Christ, right?
What he has done, what he has accomplished from the foundation
of the world. So you have the the issue with
the Calvinist and the Armenian views on this is that they both
start with this faulty assumption that it is about us
at all. It's not about us.
We were talking on the table. When God makes the covenant with
Abraham, Abraham makes no covenant.
Abraham waits to make the covenant and he waits long
enough to fall asleep, which is a symbol of death.
And then while he's asleep, the Spirit appears and makes the
covenant with God, makes the covenant with God's self.
Where's Abraham? He's as the guy's asleep, he's
not doing anything. So again, this issue of we, we
can, we can take practical descriptions about what life is
like within the family of believers who have awoken to the
reality. We can take that.
But if we if we misapply that and say this is making baseline
fundamental statements about our anthropology, like who we are as
human beings, because it's making fundamental statements as
who God is, then we run into real problems.
So yes, it absolutely matters. We've got, but we, we have, you
know, Christ is the Saviour of all men, especially those who
believe. Well, how do you put that
together with the Ephesians passage about what you also were
included in him when you believed.
It's like, well, yeah, OK, you heard, now you believed, and now
you've awoken. You awoke to what you were
already in. When you weren't awake to it, it
was as if you were dead to it. So, yeah, your way of life was
destructive, had no knowledge of God, Gentiles, you didn't have
any, anything that was remotely giving you an articulation about
what God was like. So you were screwing around and
burning this child sacrifice, all this horrific stuff that you
were living. It's a bit of a caricature, but
that's the New Testament's giving.
So yeah, that's pretty destructive.
It's a good description. Now you've heard things have
changed. This is just very real, it's
very experiential. But if we, if we think it's
ontological, we're, we're, we're running up into problems.
The, the ontological stuff. If we, we look at the, the
serious statements, the really serious ontological statements
in the script, ontological meaning, what, what is the truth
about the way things are? You know, what is the nature of
our being? When we the more we start
looking at that, the more we again, we start say, hang on a
minute, this, this separation thing, if we even use that word,
I think alienation is a better word.
It's a relational word. And this alienation thing, even
that is a lie because it's deception.
The father, the father of lies has spun a lie and we're caught
in the lie. Well, that lie is very
dangerous. When we live and act on that
lie, we do destructive things, destructive things that are
going to need to be put right to the point before about justice.
But all, all of that's there. But yeah, but yeah, sure, yeah,
I'm happy. Let me, let me just finish my
thought and then I will stick around, you know, for, for, for
any others. But, but I think this is this is
the issue of why wait till week 7 to even get on to the question
of the cross? Because it's like we've got to
put the pieces down that are showing up where, where we we
have an epistemological problem with the fundamentalist approach
to Scripture that believes things about the Bible that the
Bible does not tolerate. So we have to sit and take
seriously what the scripture is saying and let it work on us.
But not every part of the scripture is designed to do the
same thing. Every part of the scripture is
telling us who we are. Some of this is just telling us
like how you should behave, right?
Let's just bring this down to some real basic levels.
And it's descriptive a lot of the time.
So, but again, from on to the final point on the
eschatological front where everything's going there, no
theologian worth their salt will tell you that the New Testament
is consistent on its eschatology.
You will not find a consistent or coherent picture.
We could say whether it's all this is all going.
That's why I take it very minimally.
Jesus is coming back. He's going to sort it all out.
So, so that should also tell us something about the nature of
the book and how we kind of need to work with the book.
But again, go back, go back to John.
That's why I think we we have a priority here in theologically,
we we have a priority in when the Bible says God is love.
That's priority to me. It's a statement about essence
when it says God is just that's telling us an attribute.
Will it? An attribute derives from the
essence. So what does justice mean for
God? It can only be an expression of
love. So there's a priority even
within that. What you often get in the
evangelical sense or the fundamentalist sense, if I put
it that way, those things get put flat out on the table and as
supposed to is where we get this idea.
You know me, I don't like it. Tension, you know, Well, there's
a tension between love and justice.
Well, only if you don't know what justice is and only if you
don't know what love is. Otherwise there's no tension.
There's no tension in God so big, obviously big topics on
hermeneutics kind of all round, but I would say there's no
attempt to dodge these kind of scriptures.
I think it's framing them in the in in in the correct manner.
And you said it yourself in there in the in the first, the
first chapter of Ephesians, it sets the table out for us, the
reconstitution of all things into the headship of Christ.
That sets the parameters. OK, now we've dealt with the
parameters, Let's deal with the practicalities.
Practicalities are look, you are a mess.
You believed. Now you've got your act
together. Now you've experienced, it's
like it's like coming home to metaphor him.
Anyway, I think I'll stop to before before Chris hasn't.
Cheers.