Jesus and Atonement. What is Sin Really? A Prophetic Think Tank

The author’s proof texts on this end, with one from Hebrews, are an extended, unadulterated apologetic for Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets. All theological arguments are taken from that fount, not the other way around.

Does this now clarify the meaning of the Atonement and why all other theories are sophisticated exercises in a language game?

Let’s return to our Wikipedia and rewrite it. Perhaps then we can see the real difference between these theories against what the atonement is really about. Here I have pulled a quote that explains Anselm’s view in contrast to the reformed view, but I have rehabilitated both by changing the keywords to what they should be. My substitutions are in italics.

“Anselm speaks of human sin as defrauding God of the honour he is due in believing His Prophetic Word. Christ’s death, the ultimate act of obedience to the prophetic plan of redemption, brings God great honour. As it was beyond the call of duty for Christ, it is more honour than he was obliged to give. Christ’s surplus can therefore repay our deficit. Hence Christ’s prophetic death is substitutionary; he pays the honour to the Father instead of us. Penal substitution differs in that it sees Christ’s prophetic death not as repaying God for lost honour but rather paying the penalty of prophetic death that had always been the moral consequence for prophetic sin (e.g., Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23). In Calvinist Penal Substitution, it is the prophetic punishment which satisfies the demands of prophetic justice.“¹

You can see now that such a change really makes both theories true to the same extent that they are fundamentally wrong.

The theological terms are justified only in a biblical, miraculous, historically demonstrable revelation. Failure to integrate that phenomenon into an Atonement Theory is a failure to see Christ and a put-down of him. Doing otherwise is taking Jesus as a receiver of wrath, a messiah that suffered and died, a forgiver of sin, and a dispenser of justice, that came asking us to believe in concepts, not their historical, transcendent demonstrations.

Prophetic death is the prophesied death of the Messiah, and also the appearance of prophetic failure by Messiah in the eyes of those who are unrepentant deniers of its rule over their spiritual lives, i.e., prophetic sin. This has everything to do with to who the effects of the atonement apply, and who it does not.

To say that it is those who have “faith in Jesus Christ’s work on the Cross” is a half-truth, the identity of those who have a faith built only on religious expressions cleverly hidden behind a pious expression. If Jesus’ work on the Cross is the fulfillment of the prophets, salvation is through knowledge and belief in that work, and not informed or carried along by sensibility, or dreams, or good intentions, religious philosophy (what we call theology), creeds, logic, the Ontological Theory, a love of history, tradition, bible stories, ancient languages, beautiful sentimental literature, or any other reason. On the other hand, Jesus being spat upon, whipped, knocked to the ground, humiliated and murdered is the attempt by the world to snuff out for good the insinuation of them that comes from the difference between what God has shown them in a miraculous, oracular display of his prophesied glory and what they want instead to spiritually control them.

Justice, prophetic justice, is the condemnation of these sinners on this oracular basis and the redemption of those on the same grounds.

Jesus and Atonement and what is wrong with us?

The atonement is not explained through these conceptual prosaisms, but the dirty little secret is that we sincerely want them to be. We want an atonement that is harmless, innocuous, puerile, jejune, not perfectly clear, but also one that certainly does not cast us as being outside the range of its benefit. We don’t want an alternative to this, because the alternative is that the atonement is explained only through what God promised, Christ miraculously fulfilled, what to God’s ultimate honor is known, believed, and drives faith. We as a church continue to forthrightly proclaim not a sincere “I believe in Christ,” but instead, “we will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). Whatever atonement is and by what reason its effects are applied to us, this is not the way, but the antithesis.

Keep your eyes on this website. The re-reveal has just begun.

The Meaning of Justification in the Unexpected Insight of James 2

When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: Passing by Nehushtan

The Meaning of the Cross, part 3: Persecution