Featured Christ made Sin?

I get the point entirely. The part where it falls apart is where God punishes Jesus with the punishment we would have experienced at the Great White Throne judgment.

 

I never believed the priests thought of their sacrifices as actually punishing those animals. Your view of penal substitution seems off.

 

That's why I stuck with those "biblical words". And no, Scripture affirms substitutionary atonement...just not necessarily your version.

 

NOT semantics at all.....remember YOUR statement - "words have meaning".

Scripture teaches that the Father laid our iniquities upon His Son and offered Him as a guilt offering. Scripture teaches that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. By His stripes we are healed. And Scripture teaches that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.Your theology takes this and twists it into saying that the Father punished Christ with our punishment we deserved for our sins and would have received on the Day of Judgment (but since God already punished Jesus His wrath towards us is satisfied). The sad part is that you probably cannot read those passages of Scripture and understand it can (and, for the most part of history, has) been understood differently.

What you are missing is that the importance of the Old Testament sacrifices was not the animals or the people but obedience and faith. Those animals were not viewed as being punished. Substitution Atonement refers to the Atonement – not Jesus becoming our substitute and being punished in our place, but Jesus’ obedience…the Cross….being a substitute, a redemption, for us. Jesus did not have to suffer being cast into the “outer darkness” for eternity because He is sinless, He is God, and He suffered for our sins.

No passage states that Jesus was punished with our punishment. What we are talking about is a substitutionary atonement far beyond what you have even suggested. Your position is far too much oriented on man and far too less oriented on God.

 

Because Jesus became man, became a curse for us. This is how God is both just and the justifier of sinners.

 

Yea, me too (in a bit). Went to the lake yesterday. The docs put me on a couple of different medications for arthritis and they make me sensitive to the sun. I forgot about that, unfortunately. Haven't been this sunburned in some time.

 

No, there is not a law against becoming man but there did stand a law against mankind. Through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men (and even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men).

I am not sure how it seems to you that I am suggesting that the Law justly charged Christ with sin because He was hung on a tree. I said that Christ became a curse for us – NOT that He became a sinner by hanging on a tree. In fact, I did not even mention hanging on a tree at all (you are arguing against a text of Scripture, not against what I have suggested).

I am suggesting that Jesus humbled Himself in obedience to the Father by becoming flesh (by becoming human) and that this obedience extended even to death. When Jesus was born as a child in Bethlehem he was born under the curse. As soon as life begins to live, in that moment we begin to die. This is the curse – not hanging on a tree.

Hanging someone on a tree was not some supernatural act where by man could curse another man. It was, however, a visible sign that one was esteemed to be cursed. The passage you are referencing is Galatians 3:12-14 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE"— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” I am suggesting that you have misunderstood the passage to be that “Jesus became cursed by hanging on a tree” rather than “cursed is everyone who hangs” (which points to the work of Christ).

 

Not exactly. The Bible says that death spread even to those who were not transgressors, but the point being that mankind came under the curse of death (God was not proven a liar in Genesis). The wages of sin is death, and mankind has inherited this wage from Adam just as men will now inherit life through Christ.

What you are not grasping here is the difference between a satsifactory punishment and a simple punishment. Sin does not create a debt that must be collected by God (God is not "injured") but a sin debt that is a deficiency in man.

 

Yet Scripture indicates Christ's obedience to include being made flesh (the Incarnation is not separate from God laying our iniquities on Christ). What you have done here is take the atonement and place it in a contemporary framework. This is fine if you are illustrating a point, but it should never become the basis of your theology.

There is no "substitution" under the Law. There is only obedience, disobedience, and atonement to propitiate the consequences of disobedience (a substitution only in the sense it satisfies the demands of the Law Giver).

The difference here is that you are viewing sin as having an effect on God rather than on man (you are elevating the role of man). So a sin is a wrong to God which forms a debt that must be collected. But what if all of this focuses on God and not man? Then a sin is a matter the heart and punishment can only be in relation to the will of those who sinned. Jesus could not have been punished (in this sense) for the sins of anyone else. But Jesus could receive punishment (or the consequences) for our sins in terms of satisfying the demands of the Law Giver on our behalf (God literally redeemed man by becoming man, reconciling man to Himself).

Jesus was made to be sin for us, that is he was made to be substitute for our sins.

 

Context is your friend. Especially cultural context.

It was the supreme principle of the Magian religion, which prevailed in Persia in the time of Cyrus, and in which he was educated, that there are two supreme, co-eternal, and independent causes always acting in opposition one to the other; one the author of all good, the other of all evil.

The good being they called Light; the evil being they called Darkness. When Light was ascendant, then good and happiness prevailed among men; when Darkness reigned, then eviI and misery abounded.

Isaiah is telling Cyrus to acknowledge the one and only Supreme Being, infinitely good as well as powerful. Isaiah asserts God's omnipotence and absolute supremacy over the false dieties of the Magian religion and its nonsense.

 

The reason it is a mystery is not because it is beyond our understanding but because your idea of punishment contradicts what Scripture says. My suggestion is your theory may not be exactly right.The fact that some passages speak against your conclusion should have led you to reexamine things instead of appealing to mystery.