Atonement

So how does His resurrection change anything? I want to know the legal basis of justification

 

Explaining where I think you go wrong is similar to explaining what's wrong with the teaching of Joel Osteen. It's not so much what you state but what you leave out.

 

Well let me put it Biblically again to you, JonC. How do the life, death and resurrection of Christ 'establish the law'? How do you square Romans 3:21 with Romans 3:31? How do they enable God to be 'just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus'? [I rather think I may have quoted this last Scripture to you several times ] If you would stop dodging the issue ands seek a biblical basis rather than an emotional response and understand that God is the 'righteous Judge' and not Santa Claus in the sky, we might get somewhere.

 

I do. Justification is a forensic term (or don't you think it is?). Here, for the third time, are the opening paragraphs of my OP in the thread 'Penal Substitution:

Penal Substitution is rooted in the character of God as He revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7. “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding with goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty.” Immediately the question arises, how can God be merciful and gracious, how can He forgive iniquity, transgression and sin without clearing the guilty? How can He clear the guilty if He abounds with truth—if He is a ‘just Judge’ (Psalm 7:11)? How can it be said that, ‘Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed’ unless God can simultaneously punish sin and forgive sinners? The answer is that ‘God……devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him’ (2 Samuel 14:14). Those means are Penal Substitution. “Learn ye, my friends, to look upon God as being as severe in His justice as if He were not loving, and yet as loving as if He were not severe. His love does not diminish His justice nor does His justice, in the least degree, make warfare upon His love. The two are sweetly linked together in the atonement of Christ” (C.H. Spurgeon).

Right at the start of the Bible (Genesis 2:16-17) we have a direct command to Adam, Adam, the ‘first man’ (1 Corinthians 15:47): ‘And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”’ The command is accompanied by a penal sanction-- death. Yet we know that in the Bible death is not restricted to simply the end of existence. ‘….It is appointed to men to die once, but after this the judgement’ (Hebrews 9:27).

In Genesis 1:28, we see that God blessed His creation; marriage, child-bearing and work are specifically mentioned in that verse as part of this blessing. But at the Fall in Genesis 3, the blessings are turned to curses. Childbirth is marked by pain, the marriage bond is marred, and work becomes hardship and struggle, with death as the final inevitable result (Genesis 3:16-19). These are penal sanctions by God; they are His righteous response to sin. Sinful men and women are not going to live in a perfect environment; every aspect of it has been marred by sin. ‘For the whole creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope’ (Romans 8:20).

So both our lives and our deaths are subject to the curse because of sin. We learn from Romans 5 that Adam was our federal head—what he did, we have done in him. Therefore just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned…..’ (v.12). God’s curse extends to mankind because we are every one of us sinners (eg. 2 Chronicles 6:36). We read in Psalm 7:11 that ‘God is a just Judge [therefore whomever God punishes for sin must be guilty of sin], and God is angry with sinners every day,’ and in Proverbs 17:15 we learn that ‘he who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to God.’

So we come to the necessity of Atonement. We must be very careful in saying that God cannot do something, but the Scriptures tell us that God ‘cannot deny Himself’ (2 Timothy 2:13). In the light of Proverbs 17:15, God surely cannot become an abomination to Himself by justifying guilty sinners without a penalty for sin! Be it said that God is under no obligation to show mercy to sinful humans; the angels who sinned had no Redeemer but were ‘cast down to hell and delivered into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgement’ (2 Peter 2:4). But if God, ‘according to the good pleasure of His will’ (Ephesians 1:5), has decreed mercy and salvation for a vast crowd of sinful men and women, it surely cannot be at the expense of His justice. Someone must pay the price and satisfy God’s justice and His righteous anger against sin.

 

You are conflating two things. There are two distinct things going on here. The death of Christ, on our behalf, which removes our guilt, and the life of Christ, on our behalf, which is our righteousness. Although many skip over it, he active obedience of Christ is essential in our salvation.

 

Praise the Lord, Scripture does work in exactly that way!
How does the holy, righteous God justify the ungodly without reneging on His own justice?
How does He subject to punishment the sinless spotless Christ in the light of Proverbs 17:15 (which I keep quoting and you keep ignoring)?
These are the questions which are most certainly relevant to any understanding of the Atonement.

 

...to which the Jews committed both abominations:

14 But ye denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you,
15 and killed the Prince of life; whom God raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. Acts 3

23 who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: 1 Pet 2

God showed Christ to be just by His righteous judgement. He raised Him from the dead.

 

They weren't ALL ignorant (Matthew 21:38), and to receive forgiveness they had to repent ( Acts 3:19 ), and if they didn't hearken the wrath to the uttermost would soon descend upon them ( Acts 3:23 ).

 

It was the serpent's seed (John 8:44), that by the hand of lawless men (the Romans) did crucify and slay, who condemned the Righteous One. God didn't condemn Him, He judged Him to be righteous by raising Him from the dead.

 

You are not now ignoring the passage. Thank you. Better late than never.

Exactly so. But Jesus' body had top be broken and His blood shed (1 Corinthians 11:24-25) to bring in that covenant. God's justice and His wrath against sin had to be propitiated. Now if you had read OP in the 'Penal Substitution' thread, you wouldn't have to ask about this. Here it is AGAIN

So we come to the necessity of Atonement. We must be very careful in saying that God cannot do something, but the Scriptures tell us that God ‘cannot deny Himself’ (2 Timothy 2:13). In the light of Proverbs 17:15, God surely cannot become an abomination to Himself by justifying guilty sinners without a penalty for sin! Be it said that God is under no obligation to show mercy to sinful humans; the angels who sinned had no Redeemer but were ‘cast down to hell and delivered into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgement’ (2 Peter 2:4). But if God, ‘according to the good pleasure of His will’ (Ephesians 1:5), has decreed mercy and salvation for a vast crowd of sinful men and women, it surely cannot be at the expense of His justice. Someone must pay the price and satisfy God’s justice and His righteous anger against sin.

In the Scriptures we have the concept of the mediator, one who might fill up the gap between the outraged holiness of God and rebellious man (Isaiah 59:2). Job complained, “For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us who may lay his hand on us both.” But mediation requires a satisfaction to be made to the offended party. We see this is the book of Philemon. Here we have an offended party, Philemon, whose servant has run away from him, perhaps stealing some goods as he went; an offending party, Onesimus, and Paul who is attempting to mediate between them. Onesimus needs to return to his master, but fears the sanctions that may be imposed upon him if he does so. Paul takes these sanctions upon himself: ‘But if he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on my account. I, Paul, am writing with my own hand. I will repay…..’ (Philemon 18-19). Whatever is wanting to propitiate Philemon’s anger against his servant and to effect reconciliation, Paul the mediator willingly provides. In the same way, the Lord Jesus has become a Mediator between men and God (1 Timothy 2:5).

In 2 Corinthians 5:19, we learn that God does not impute trespasses against His people; in Christ; He has reconciled the world [believing Jew and Gentile alike] to Himself. How has He done this? Through the Mediator Jesus Christ. ‘For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us….’ (v.21). The Lord Jesus has taken our sins upon Himself and made satisfaction to God for them. Therefore the message of reconciliation can be preached to all.

A similar concept is that of a surety. This is someone who guarantees the debts of a friend and must pay them in full if the friend defaults. There are several warnings in the Book of Proverbs against becoming a surety (Proverbs 6:1-5; 11:15; 17:18), since one is making the debts of one’s friend effectively one’s own, yet we read in Hebrews 7:22, ‘By so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.’

Indeed it is, and He is, but only because God executed judgement on Christ 'made sin for us.' Christ was made the very epitome of sin, all the sin's of God's people being imputed to Him (Isalah 53:6). He took our guilt and shame and God punished Him, the guilty One by imputation, for them, so that we, the truly guilty, might be considered wholly righteous. 'The chastisement for our peace was upon Him.'.

Psalm 69 is a messianic psalm, quoted with reference to Christ in the N.T. (vs 9 & 20-21; cf. also vs. 8 & 22). There He declares, "My sins are not hidden from You' (v.5). He made our sins His own and bore them, and the shame and punishment of them, on our behalf.

 

That is true, but of course that was only after He had borne our punishment.