How can you minimize something you say God disapproves of. What natural consequence is more important than God's disapproval? What is worse than disobeying God? What natural consequence of sin is not ultimately the result of God's created will and order?
I don't have any problem with Jesus dying with us if you mean in the sense of the necessity of our union and identification with Christ. You are still skirting around the issue that Christ's death had something to do directly for us in regards to our sinful condition. Like you say above you believe that the purpose of Christ's death was so that we can rise with him. I say, his death and shed blood had a specific purpose. I'm not a theologian and don't represent any group or school of thought so I am not a stickler on how this is put - but his death did something for us and it had to do with our sin. And it had to do with more than our general sinful state as a member of the human race - it had something to do with our individual committed sins.
The idea above that "The problem is we are dead in sin. The solution is resurrection in Christ", is not a sufficient explanation of the atonement. Sorry. Am I missing something or is there some reason you refuse to have Christ's atonement be directly involved in the resolution of our individual sin before God? Do you believe in any concept of you, as an individual, standing before God as a sinner, guilty of sins you have committed yourself; or is this all to you a matter of our basic mortality and hard life experience and general condition of mankind in general.
How can you minimize something you say God disapproves of.
I am not sure how I am minimizing. I am adding another category to sin's destructive consequences.
Me:
1) sin is intrinsically destructive in and of itself, independent from and prior to the wrath of God
2) God also punishes sin
Them (most PSA advocates I talk to):
1) sin only results in destructive consequences because God punishes it.
What natural consequence is more important than God's disapproval?
Not a matter of "more important." Sin's intrinsic destruction happens
prior to God's wrath, because the destruction and disorder takes place in the act of sin itself.
What is worse than disobeying God?
Nothing. I am adding further description to why sin is so bad, in addition to God punishing disobedience. We are designed to love God and enjoy Him forever. When we rebel against Him, we rebel against our own design and our own joy in the act itself, necessarily doing disorder, destruction and dissatisfaction in the act of sin itself.
What natural consequence of sin is not ultimately the result of God's created will and order?
Sin is an act of creature, not of Creator. It is humans that commit the act of disorder, destruction, and dissatisfaction that inherent to sin. Not God.
You are still skirting around the issue that Christ's death had something to do directly for us in regards to our sinful condition.
I don't understand this charge at all.
I say, his death and shed blood had a specific purpose. I'm not a theologian and don't represent any group or school of thought so I am not a stickler on how this is put - but his death did something for us and it had to do with our sin. And it had to do with more than our general sinful state as a member of the human race - it had something to do with our individual committed sins.
I disagree with nothing here. But you also haven't presented penal substitution.
Here is a thorough explanation of the atonement and justice relationship. This might be helpful:
Due to God’s gracious covenant, justice requires restoration for damage suffered by innocent parties. Humans have totally and severely damaged themselves by their own sin (God is not damaged by our sin. In the case of sin against God, sin is an offense that damages the offender). God desires to enact restoration for this destruction, but humans are not innocent, they are guilty. There is none righteous, not one. So the question is: How can a just God, a covenant God, enact restoration for guilty humanity’s self-destruction? Answer: God becomes a human in the person of Jesus Christ, lives completely innocently (or righteously) and therefore merits the covenantal blessings by which humanity’s destruction will be restored. Jesus then voluntarily endures all of humanity’s sinful destruction against himself by suffering crucifixion at the hands of all humans on the cross. He therefore merits restoration for all of humanity’s sinful destruction, for he alone has suffered sin’s destruction as an innocent party. This restoration manifests in His resurrection, when “God raised our Great Shepherd up from the dead through the blood of the eternal covenant (Heb 13:20).” So the correct response to the question “Why did Jesus die?” is: in order for all suffering and death to be repaired by God in accordance with his justice, all suffering and death had to be endured by a perfectly innocent and righteous person (for only innocent persons have the right of restoration for wrongs suffered) and only Jesus qualifies as that perfectly righteous person.
Divine justice is therefore satisfied in the resurrection as the reversal and reparation of all the sin that Jesus unjustly suffered on the cross. Jesus dies under the unjust judgment of humans, and is raised by the just judgment of God. Jesus’ reward, or inheritance, of the covenantal blessings applies to the rest of humanity if by the power of the Holy Spirit we participate in His death (through remorse) and participate in His resurrection (through repentance). So the gospel is not that “God substituted Himself to satisfy His own wrath,” which is not Biblical terminology. Again, the gospel is exactly what Paul says it is: “the good news that God has fulfilled His promises to our children in that He raised Jesus up from the dead” (Acts 13:32). And again, the gospel is that God’s covenantal promises to restore the world from Adam’s curse (the subject of the Old Testament) are fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection (the subject of the New Testament).
But how exactly do the merits of Jesus’ death and resurrection apply to us? We participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection through remorse and repentance for our sin. An offender feels remorse when he puts himself in his victim’s shoes and, through empathy, mentally and emotionally suffers his own offense against himself as his victim suffered it. This type of remorse is required for an offender to apologize to his victim. Notice also that this remorse is a fulfillment of the priority of retribution, that is, a suffering of one’s own sin against oneself, but internally in the soul rather than merely externally enduring physical punishment. Remorse is what the cross should cause in us. When we look to the cross, we the offenders should put ourselves in the shoes of our victim, Jesus, and suffer (in an internal sense) our crucifixion of him as crucifixion of our sinful selves. We are then “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20) and have “died with Christ” (Rom 6:8) and our sin is “condemned in the flesh” (Rom 8:3). When we die in Christ in this way, we are also able to rise to new life in Christ, for His unjust death has merited for us the reversal of death in His resurrection.
This restoration based logic emphasizes important things penal substitution overlooks or de-emphasizes, such as the self-destructive nature of sin, the death of Jesus at the hands of sinners, the fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises in Jesus’ resurrection, and the necessity of our participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection by undergoing a death and resurrection ourselves.
