IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 293

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LXXVII

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment . He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:1-21).

We looked again at Jewish history in the last post and we should ever keep in mind the role that this history plays in the writing of the apostles as, for the most part, they were Jews talking to Jews who had been ‘religious’ within the confines of the religion that they were practicing. We know from the words of the Master that what they were practicing was hypocritical insofar as the Pharisees,  Saduccees and rulers were concerned. The Master continually calls them out for the level of True spirituality in their ways and their teachings and He spends much of His time teaching them and the people at large the new and the better way of the Kingdom of God and of the repentance needed to attain it. This is fundamentally why the Master came among us in that day, to lead us out of the doldrums of religion as it had devolved into a state of ‘business’ and ritual; a state where, as He tells them, they had forgotten about the more important matters of mercy and judgement and faithfulness. We should see here and in our text from yesterday that the idea of sacrifice as we presented it was outdated even before the appearance of the Christ and is something that He never taught nor practiced. We however, since the earliest of Christian times, have ascribed His willing death as it were a sacrifice to atone for the sins of man and in Truth there is some degree of this idea in the words of the apostles but, as we shall discover, from a very different perspective.

There are several sayings in the New Testament that are claimed to be directed towards the understanding of the atoning nature of the death of Jesus on the cross.  Today we will look at these and discuss each including our two verses from John’s Gospel regarding propitiation. We will take our list of verses from the CARM website that we cited recently as they seem to have a doctrinal view of the them and the related subdivisions of the doctrine of atonement. We should understand that their perspective is to support the Substitutionary Theory of atonement and that they then offer their reasons why competing theories fail including the Ransom Theory and the Moral Influence view,. We will use parts of their text in our discussion as we can see in their presentation the essentials of the most common of the theories, Vicarious or Substitutionary, as well as what the church calls the Legalistic view. As we begin we should remember that it is our premise that there is no atonement, substitutionary or otherwise, and that the words of the apostles are taken in that direction by the early Church Fathers who could find no easier understanding. Tied to this is of course the concept of original sin and this is another point made into doctrine by the church in the absence of a better idea regarding the text in the Book of Genesis. The same must be said regarding the doctrines that teach the fall of man while still others, including the Jew, place no doctrinal weight on this at all. Can we see in this the variety of opinion and theory regarding the story of Adam and Eve and can we understand that opinion and theory are not necessarily Truths. The Truth is ever found in one’s own digestion of the ideas put forth and when a man comes to that point of sensing and recognizing the Soul, the Christ Within, he is much better able to recognize the illusion, glamour and deception that plague man in form. We should understand in this that most every man has somewhat the ability to sense the Inner Life and that it is in living one’s life according to the prompting to the Good, the Beautiful and the True, that the man progresses along this line. So we see here then the variety of opinion and theory regarding Adam and Eve and below we will see the same effects as regards the idea of atonement as it is taught in the churches today. We should make one more point before we continue on and it is one that is found in this very chapter from the First Epistle of John; he tells us at the beginning that we should “try the spirits whether they are of God” and that it is only in this way that “know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” and we can do this  “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world“. Ponder on this as it relates to the topics at hand.

We will discuss each of these verses individually from the perspective of what they are thought to mean and what we can discern from them. As we said above we are using the information from CARM to interpret these into today’s Christian doctrines.

• “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:1-2) This is a rather obscure saying but one whose obscureness does not aid any particular point of view. The idea of  “sweetsmelling savour” comes from the Old Testament where it can be taken to mean something a bit more realistic when we consider that we are speaking of God. Remembering the nature of the people in Moses day when these words were used of God, that they understood in the simple terms that the sacrifice was ‘pleasing’ to God. Vincent tells us that this idea of “sweetsmelling savour” that: A sweet smelling savor (osmhn euwdiav). Rev., correctly, odor of a sweet smell. See on 2 Cor. ii. 14, 15, 16. The Septuagint, in Lev. i. 9, uses this phrase to render the Hebrew, a savor of quietness. For (eiv) expresses design, that it might become, or result: so that it became⁴. To this end the Hebrew Lexicon tells us of the Hebrew word nichowach which is rendered sweet in this verse that speaks of sacrifice to the Lord, that it means: soothing, quieting, tranquillising^2* and from this we should see quite a different idea that is lost in the translation to and from the Greek in the New Testament. Now the Master did give “himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God” but how should we see this in the Light of day and in the tone of the Master’s overall teachings. A simple way to see this is in the Master’s own words; He tells us that in doing a thing in Love for anyman we are essentially doing that thing for the Lord. Can we see that idea at play here, that His sacrifice is for mankind and it is offered in Love and thereby it is as well “an offering and a sacrifice to God“. This is a lengthy saying and so we play here but a part to give the proper idea of this parable and it relation to our premise: “Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:37-40). Do we understand the import of this in our context and how it removes the sayings bite as regards an atonement by the Master which in this verse is attributed to the Ransom Theory.
• “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Galatians 1:4). This saying is attributed to the Moral Influence View of atonement which is to say that Christ’s death was for an example to us of how much God Loved  us. This idea goes back to the middle ages and does contain in it an important Truth which coincides with John’s pronouncements of “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). We should remember the controversy on this verse as to whether it belongs to the apostle or to the Master but in either case it does mean the same thing; that God sent His “his only begotten Son” into the world, to live and to die as was scripted and ensured by all those who shared in His experience. The purpose is also as the Apostle Paul tells us; “that he might deliver us from this present evil world” and that is by His teaching on repentance and the Kingdom of God, purposes which are not served by His death.
• “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried , and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). This saying is also attributed to the Moral Influence View. In this we find the apostle speaking of the Old Testament prophesy which, as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6), he was well familiar with. The scripture quotation that is referenced by Paul here will be covered by us a bit later in our discussion but we will here make a brief statement that will help us later regarding that the Master “died for our sins“. First we should look here at the word sin and its manifold meanings; it is not the evil that commonly is placed upon the word but it refers to most everything that is not according to the Will of God…..very broad. This being said we should recognize that it covers all that we can call unrighteousness as our understanding of righteousness should be ALL that is in line with the Word of God and this is akin to keeping His words. So then we need to look at the unrighteousness of the world as the thing that He died for and in this we can surely see that it is the unrighteousness of the world that put Him to death. The Pharisees and other rulers of the Jews plus the Romans in their ungodly ways ARE the sins that put the Master on the Cross
• “For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:17-19). This is a cumbersome saying that is broadly interpreted in a number of ways that we need not address here today. Overall it says to us the same thing as the previous one as regards our context and without the added ideas. Christ suffered for the sins of mankind, for their unrighteousness; not because He chose to take their sins upon Himself but rather because He chose to let the unrighteousness of the world take His Earthly Life away from Him as if it meant something and we should see that the takers, the Jewish rulers and the Romans, most certainly thought that it did. But the Master laid down His Life willingly showing us the relative unimportance of this Life in form and He took it up again in the Fullness of God and in the realty of the incorruptible.

We will end here for today and take up the rest of these verses that are presumed to be in regard to the atoning death of the Master in the next post. The objective here is not so much to deny the idea of atonement as it is to clearly discern the scriptures that we have in the full Light of day and away from the ages old doctrines.

Note on the Quote of the Day

• ^2*   Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ⁴    Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• **  CARM; Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (http://carm.org/christianity/christian-doctrine/substitutionary-atonement-jesus-christ)