How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only One Way. Part 4. The Man.
Since this is the case, you have to be ten times more careful in how you talk about it if you want to be qualified as a theologian and not a scientist at best, and a huckster or worse. Not to mention your qualification as having a real faith issued/caused/made available by a transcendent authority.
Theology is not the study of God’s theology because “theo” means “God,” but because a study of God is only legitimate if God’s revealed qualities and acts from that dimension in that which is not God is the focus of the study. “God” does not stand alone as a concept, but it implies another dimension that pertains to his fact to be an industry above mere fantasy. “God,” the idea, is an unspoken but highly qualified one. Theology is then the use of words that refer to transcendence in a way that demonstrates God to yourself and others that He is known and understood by the greatest examples of his transcendence. You can’t use “righteousness” and say it means something like “obedience to God’s moral law” and call this proper theology, because “obedience,” “God,” “moral” and “law” can exist either explicitly or implicitly with no connection to a particular and ultimate example of them which is not from here. They are ideas, they are not divine predicates in a real and objective demonstration of God, and if you don’t have that you don’t have any God to faith, except faith in a nice idea.
Am I beating a dead horse now? Ok, let’s take this forward.
“God” and his Reveal
You might not have thought about it, but the Bible follows all this almost exclusively. The Bible is written not like a clueless, emotional, and groundless tout, no matter how much atheists and far-leftists want to think of it as such. The Hebrew Bible and its combined New Testament are entirely alone among this type of literature in its stubborn insistence that it’s a proven revelation, not just the wishful thinking of its subjectively inspired human authors.
Isaiah 48:3. “I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass. 4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; 5 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.6 Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. 7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them. 8 Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.”
You can confirm that fact even in its most casual use of its key nouns. Its use of, for example, “God,” is always with an explicit or at least strongly implied qualifier to his informational demonstration in the world, or his specific connection to his domain, which distinguishes him from the unrevealed and pagan gods around.
The reason why we are going down this road when I’m supposed to be talking about the Man on the Cross and that display of sin and righteousness is that I’m going to suggest that the miraculous qualifiers that are associated with “God” are much stronger for the association of both the Man on the Cross and the Cross itself. This will show how the meaning was tossed out after the1st century, and why the church is being destroyed by those who are continually let in that have no interest in this whatsoever.
“God of Heaven” (Ge 24:3,7; 2Ch 36:23; Ezr 1:2; Ezr 5:11-12; Ezr 6:9-10; Ezr 7:12,21,23; Ne 1:4-5; Ne 2:4,20; Ps 136:26; Da 2:18-19,37,44; Jon 1:9; Re 11:13; Re 16:11)
“God of Abraham” (Ge 26:24; Ge 28:13; Ge 31:42,53; Ex 3:6,15-16; Ex 4:5; 1Ki 18:36; 1Ch 29:18; 2Ch 30:6; Ps 47:9; Mt 22:32; Mr 12:26; Lu 20:37; Ac 3:13; Ac 7:32)
“God of the Hebrews” (Ex 3:18; Ex 5:3; Ex 7:16; Ex 9:1,13; Ex 10:3)
“God of Israel” (201 instances)
“God of hosts” (39 instances)
“God of truth” (De 32:4; Ps 31:5; Isa 65:16)
God of knowledge (1Sa 2:3)
God of glory (Ps 29:3; Ac 7:2)
God of the spirits of all flesh (Nu 16:22; Nu 27:16)
This is a very truncated list. It does not even come close to representing the point. Search for “Lord of,” with such as results as “Lord of Hosts” (244 instances).
References to Abraham or Israel are references not just to people or collectives, but more importantly, to precisely what God told them and what God subsequently did with them. They are this equivalent. God revealed himself to them, either by the personal presence or by disclosure of that about him and his mind, which only he could know and which proves it.
I point out that your revelation of yourself to another person must go far beyond your bodily presence and incidental actions as this disclosure of who you are. The body is a superficial thing relative to your spirit, and you can have a limitless number of false readings by it. What really does it is when you speak. You relate your beliefs, feelings, history, intentions. A police report also shows a lot and the testimony of others. Therefore, it’s mostly by information carried on spoken words or in documents, not only by sight.
For Abraham and the rest, when a Jew said “Abraham,” they were not thinking just about a guy that is the physical progenitor of the Jewish race. They thought about his connection to God in a relationship in which the two spoke to each other, with Abraham receiving a revelation about God concerning the future of humankind. Abraham talked to God, who promised him physical and spiritual progeny more numerous than the stars of heaven. To Israel, that God brought them by Moses out of Egypt by signs and wonders, sustaining them by the same agency in the desert. They were not fed by “water” or by “manna” or by “quail,” but by supernaturally produced instances of them. God finally brought them into the “promised land,” the land of prophetic promise, and through the miracle of the parting of the Jordan River.
Remember this, because it is absolutely essential to understand the plan of redemption in which we are now supposed to be partakers. Don’t forget the image of Christ on the Cross when I start to talk about how these things are written this way for a purpose, having the ability to be turned a carnal way or a particular spiritual way, which is the presentation to you of a test by a kind of question.
When the New Testament as a whole comes into view, this question is what its all about, with an answer mostly to what God is and where God is by a fulfilled demonstration of himself.
God of great price, God of peace, God of all grace, God of the holy prophets, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, God of all comfort, God of patience and consolation, God of the living (not of the dead), God of my salvation, Kingdom of God/Heaven. God (Father) of lights.
The Old Testament references often refer to a prophet, an agent of God to whom he spoke and gave a revelation of the future. This includes Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, Moses, and the rest. Then the most frequent mention of them is to their collective children, Israel, the Hebrews, who are the people of prophetic promise.
When we get to the New Testament where is related to a momentous fulfillment and representation of God’s existence, nature, and plan, you can see that a lot of these informational qualifiers are referring specifically to a past promise and its revelation. A realization of a supernatural oath, which forms a context for such ideas as grace, patience, salvation, peace, sin, and righteousness. These are not defined arbitrarily. Each one refers to a particular line of biblical evidence of God’s work, what he has realized and revealed, not only “God.” With each instance, the expositor can open scripture and show you what God has done to give peace, save, build a kingdom, give patience and consolation, which are supernatural events of history toward the outworking of his plan of redemption.
But the greatest is this:
God’s Son
What must be remembered here is that all of these informational qualifiers of the God concept are the product of the Messiah and for the Messiah. Not one of them is attributed directly to a “God” who is only a concept but only to a God who is revealed in the flesh. Messiah is the revelation of God in the flesh. Literally, God’s promise, his prophetic utterances to the Prophets, come true. This looks a lot like this necessary dichotomy of idea and demonstration of which have spoken. It also looks a lot like a man and a Cross.
“Man” is an idea. Even “Messiah,” “Christ,” and “Jesus” is an idea. What God did is not an idea. It’s not the token or representation of reality; it is reality, what the Bible calls “Truth.” You cant use the concept without the reality, or else you have an uncontrolled idea given to carnal culture to redefine according to its wishes. “God’s Son” is a concept, but the concept is qualified with a demonstrative predicate, and like ‘Abraham,” it is put to faith as the equivalent of God himself and identically for God’s Son himself, who is God.
