Oh No!

My computer is being sent away for service.
I will be laptopless for awhile.

No blogging.
No twitter.
No facebook.
No online conversation.

For days!
This will be good for me, right?

Feel free to continue the conversation on PSA.

So that I have something to look forward to come back to, how about if you tell me a little about yourself, even if you don’t normally comment.

Where are you at with Jesus? How about church?
Do you tend to mostly agree or disagree with the things I write?
Are you emerging? missional? post-anything? clergy? laity? Norwegian?

Or if you’d rather, just tell me what you’re reading or drinking these days. :)

Penal Substitionary Atonement

It was interesting encountering arguments about this in my reading this week. I learned that proponents of this atonement theory hold to it passionately.

Legalism reads the scriptures of wrath and judgment through the lens of punishment and debt. Love reads the same scriptures with a lens that sees God’s determination for reconciliation.

The wrath of God was not against us. The focus of His wrath is against sin because He loves us. It is the wrath of mankind that was poured out upon Jesus.

Jesus did not die to either punish or fix our behavior. Rather than a punishment, his crucifixion was a cure. Sin is the root of our brokenness. Whether it results in murder or low self-esteem, in lust or loneliness, the need for healing is the same.

There is an interesting discussion about all of this following Tony Jones’ post, Why Jesus Died:

Some people today may find it compelling that some Great Cosmic Transaction took place on that day 1,980 years ago, that God’s wrath burned against his son instead of against me. I find that version of atonement theory neither intellectually compelling, spiritually compelling, nor in keeping with the biblical narrative.

I’m with Tony here. I do not find it compelling or in keeping with Scripture that God’s wrath burned against Jesus or against us.

In response to Tony’s post, Michael Spencer said:

Seems the room is full of people who believe in the incarnation, believe Jesus became one with us, believe in the humanity of Jesus, believe in the loving, Trinitarian God and STILL believe that Jesus bore the Father’s wrath against sin in our place.

Jesus bore the complete weight of the curse of sin and death FOR US, but I do not believe that He bore the wrath of the Father, even the Father’s wrath against sin. Substitution, yes. Substitution as targets of God’s anger, no.

Both “the wrathful God demanding payment” and “Jesus as our example of humility” neglect the passion of God’s intention to restore us to Himself. This quote from Rachel Mee-Chapman represents the opposite end of the spectrum:

“You know what? Jesus did not die for my sins. He died because his message of equity, justice, and charity clashed with the political and religious leaders of his time. He died because he was teaching people things that threatened the power of the institutions. He died because he lived in a time and a place where insurrectionists were nailed to a cross. It was terribly sad–bloody and raw and awful–but it had nothing to do with the consequences of my actions.”

Absolutely not! Thank God Jesus did die for my sin. It was much more than a political tragedy and subversion of empire. God was not demanding payment for my bad behavior. He remedied the terminal condition that I was born into. I needed to be restored, I needed to know forgiveness, and I needed to be loved in a way that had nothing to do with my own merit.

Sin was dealt with decisively on the cross as Christ willingly gave His life to defeat the power of death and alienation that ruled over His creation. We should never diminish what He accomplished or why He did it.

In The Lap of Luxury

They dined in pristine opulence on gourmet fare such as Quail Eggs with Caviar, while steaming unknowingly into oblivion.

I was just thinking about the delusion that occurs from experiencing success in a vessel that is ultimately failing.

Why Did Jesus Die?

I will be out for the next few days. I wanted to leave you with this over the weekend. I believe that you will find it full of truth, hope, and life. Happy Easter.

Jesus’ coming and his death are the living expression of the unwavering and single-minded devotion of the Father to His dreams for our adoption. The reality that drives the coming of Jesus Christ, and pushes him even to the cross, is the relentless and determined passion of the Father to have us as His beloved children. He will not abandon us. It has never crossed the Father’s mind to forsake His plans for us. Jesus is the proof.

It is precisely because the Triune God has spoken an eternal “Yes!” to the human race, a “Yes!” to life and fullness and joy for us, that the Fall and its disaster is met with a stout and intolerable “No! This is not acceptable. I did not create you to perish in the darkness, not you.” The Fall of Adam was met by the eternal Word of God. The love of the Father, Son and Spirit is as tireless and unflinching as it is determined and unyielding.

Why did Jesus Christ die? What happened in his death? Jesus Christ died because the Father would not forsake us, because the Father had a dream for us that He would not abandon, because the love of the Father for us is endless and unflinching. And Jesus died because the only way to get from the Fall of Adam to the right hand of the Father was through the crucifixion of Adamic existence.

Jesus Christ did not go to the cross to change the Father; he went to the cross to change us. He did not die to appease the Father’s anger or to heal the Father’s divided heart. Jesus Christ went to the cross to call a halt to the Fall and undo it, to convert fallen Adamic existence to his Father, to systematically eliminate our estrangement, so that he could accomplish his Father’s dream for our adoption in his ascension.

In the incarnation, the fellowship and life of the Holy Trinity established a bridgehead inside human alienation. In the life of Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the Holy Trinity began beating its way through the whole course of human sin and estrangement and alienation. The faithful and beloved Son entered into Adam’s fallen world, but he steadfastly refused to be fallen in it. For 33 years he fought, moment by moment, blow by blow, hammering fallen Adamic existence back into real relationship with His Father.

What we see in Gethsemane, when Jesus falls on his face, the gut wrench of it all, the pain and overwhelming weight, the struggle, the passion, the agony, all of this is a window into the whole life of Christ. His whole life was a cross. From the moment of his birth, he began paying the price of our liberation. His whole life was a harrowing ordeal of struggle, of suffering, of trial and tribulation and pain, as he penetrated deeper and deeper into human estrangement.

On the cross, Jesus Christ made contact with the Garden of Eden, contact with Adam and Eve hiding in fear, contact with the original sin, with the original lie and its darkness. There the Son of the Father plunged himself into the deepest abyss of human alienation, into the quagmire of darkness and human brokenness and estrangement. He baptized himself in the waters of Adam’s fall.

There on the cross, he penetrated the last stronghold of darkness. There he walked into the utter depths of our alienation. There the intolerable “No!” shouted by God the Father at the Fall of Adam, found its true fulfillment in Jesus’ “Yes! Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit,” as he took his final step into Adam’s disaster. Jesus died–and the Fall of Adam died with him.

The darkness that infiltrated the scene of human history and wreaked such havoc upon the human race, on this day and in this moment, met the light of Trinitarian life in Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. How could the darkness win? As surely as the flip of a light switch dispels the darkness in our homes, so surely the light and life of the Triune God conquered darkness, and death itself, in this moment, in the very person of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.

It is not called dark Friday; it is called good Friday. Amen.

Excerpt of a sermon from Dr. Baxter Kruger’s book, Jesus and the Undoing of Adam.
Read the entire sermon here.

PlanetChristian: Biblical Womanhood

Explaining another term from the list Leaving the Orbit of Planet Christian.

This isn’t a phrase from our previous church experience. In fact, I didn’t really encounter this belief until I began reading blogs. To be honest, I had not given the topic much thought and was quite surprised to discover that many Christians do not believe in gender equality.

When my husband was reading the post, he said, “What’s Biblical Womanhood?”

I replied, “That would be like if I would submit to you.” ;)

Actually, I believe quite strongly in submission within relationships, including marriage. However, I also believe that submission is given voluntary as an expression of love and that it is mutual within the relationship.

Whenever I see the term Biblical Womanhood used, it is used to define requirements and restrictions for women which contradict the freedom that we have in Christ.

I reject that bondage.

A few posts that I wrote related to this topic:

• Head of the Home
• I Don’t Have the Balls to Be a Leader
• The Gender Issue
• A Relational Ethos of Leadership