'Bearing.'

[Martin Marprelate]

People may have wondered why I have not contributed to the 'Atonement (not PSA)' thread. The reason is that @JonC has used his position as a moderator to keep me (and, I believe, @DaveXR650 ) excluded from the thread. This has not worried me unduly because I have been very busy with local church affairs and family matters so that I haven't had time to give even to the threads that I started.
However, @JonC wrote:

How can bearing something not mean "instead of"?

Obviously, there are burdens that can be shared. If I see a man struggling to get a big wardrobe out of his car and into his house, and I help him by taking one end of it, I am sharing his burden, not bearing it. But if the person whose burden I share gets no benefit at all from it then I would seem to have wasted my time.
But I want to ask just a couple of questions:
Matthew 27:32. 'Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross.' So Simon of Cyrene bore our Lord's cross. Did the Lord Jesus still have to bear it? Yes or no? If yes, it seems rather pointless for Simon to bear it.
Isaiah 53:6. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' We know from 1 Peter 2:24 that the Lord Jesus bore our sins that were laid on Him, and the curse attached to them, so do we still have to bear them? Yes or no? If the Lord Jesus is simply 'showing solidarity with us,' how will that help us on the day of judgment? Will He go to hell alongside us to shaow solidarity? No, no! He is 'Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come' (1 Thes. 1:10).

 

[JonC]

Yes, @Martin Marprelate , I have kept you and @DaveXR650 off of that thread because I wanted to engage in an honest conversation with Christians who hold other views. My goal was a Christian discussion and history has shown me that this would have been impossible if the two of you were involved.

I am not interested in changing people's views, but instead in allowing others to understand another prominent position for their consideration.

I also excluded @JesusFan because I did not want the thread to get bogged down with explaining to one who could not understand that wrath is not literally things stored in a container and must go somewhere.

And that is where my discussion of this topic will remain. I have no interest in entertaining nonprofitable dialogue.

Please feel free to discuss whatever you desire. But leave me out of it. I consider my participation with a few on this topic to be casting pearls before swine. I am not interested.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Here is what I believe divine justice to be:

God is just (righteous). Towards the Just He offers deliverance, towards the wicked condemnation. He will not punish the Just, but will avenge the Righteous when unjustly oppressed. He will not clear the guilty. He will condemn the wicked. The end state of justice (righteousness) is holiness. It is a state where no unrighteousness exists. This is the kingdom of God. The wicked will not enter.

One problem with this. Romans 3:9-18. 'For we have already charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written:
"There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.......etc."'
v.19. '....That every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God.'
If God will "not clear the guilty," but "condemn the wicked," then there is no hope for any of us. We need a Saviour. We need the Lord Jesus Christ to take our sins upon Himself and to pay in full the penalty for them and the curse attached to them. If He has not done that; if He has not paid that penalty in full, then nothing is more certain than that we shall have to pay it ourselves.

But we read that our Lord has indeed done just that: 'Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed [by the O.T. saints], to demonstrate [also] at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus' (Romans 3:25-26).

And that is also why I can never go back from believing PSA. I have seen where other theories "fall short" of the glory of God, where they miss the mark of Scripture. My understanding certainly can change. But I will not abandon the faith once given. I will not go backwards, away from the truth.

 

[DaveXR650]

Yes, @Martin Marprelate , I have kept you and @DaveXR650 off of that thread because I wanted to engage in an honest conversation with Christians who hold other views. My goal was a Christian discussion and history has shown me that this would have been impossible if the two of you were involved.

Jon. No problem. I don't plan on posting much on here with you as a moderator anyway, but I do admit to a sort of enjoyment in checking in occasionally to see how your latest thread is deteriorating like the rest as you do the same thing to someone else with the shifting and doubletalk. Their growing frustration is palpable as it went from this is the most substantial discussion ever to where in the world are you going with that. I can predict the end result and this is the reason why.

One, you attempt to concede all the elements of penal substitution and yet turn around and deny it based on the fact that the words "penal substitution" are not in scripture. And two, as in the quote above that @Martin Marprelate used (post 3 above) you show a serious variant with orthodox (small "o") Christianity in that you take the position that those of us who come to Christ are righteous as opposed to "the wicked" whereas Christianity teaches that we are all either outright wicked or at least fall short of God's standard and must have those sins dealt with or else we are undone and without hope. You deny that in that quote, but of course then if someone points that out you will say that you believe Jesus cleanses us and makes us righteous, cry slander and start editing. Christianity starts with our own sin first, as insurmountable and something that Christ deals with by actually "bearing" the penalty and wrath due us. You are not able to explain what Christ does for us in any coherent way which you should not feel bad about because it is always the case that throughout scripture and in Early Church writings whenever this is looked at something like penal substitution is discussed. The fact that you insist on denying that this is true doesn't make it so and in fact there is simply no other way to explain the atonement fully without penal substitution.

And while it's true that for purposes of salvation and saving faith a knowledge of Christ ransoming us or having the right to forgive sins is a sufficient understanding, I do and will always question the orthodoxy of someone claiming a complete understanding of the atonement and still rejecting penal substitution. I fear for anyone taking such a position. And I also feel that a Baptist site that officially has moderators who think that defending penal substitution makes one "swine", well, it speaks for itself.