A Beautiful Vision of God (part 2)
* If you haven’t yet read part 1 of this series, click here (it’ll give you greater context for this blog)
First of all, I find it difficult to accept any notion that says the Father needed to be satisfied, paid off, or that he was somehow bound to a legal demand of just punishment. This not only makes zero sense—seeing that God certainly has no needs (see Acts 17:24-25)—but if that were true, such need or demand would make him dependent on something outside of himself. Friends, I don’t think this adequately describes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Secondly, to say that the Father had a looming debt against humanity is to also say he is a record-keeper. This sort of claim stands in direct conflict with what many authors declare to be true about God’s response to sin—that he does not count or hold them against us (see Psalm 130:3; Romans 8:1; Jeremiah 31:34; 2 Corinthians 5:19). It also contradicts the life and ministry of Jesus who, time and again, did not go around counting wrongdoings. Instead, he fellowshipped, dined, talked, walked, and made friends with sinners (see Matthew 11:19). In doing so, he was showing the world that the Father’s in the business of forgiving sin, not holding it over our heads. So much so, that in the most pressing time of his life (on the cross), he would utter the words, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34 NKJV). For this, any sort of “penal” notion is simply not present in the life and ministry of Jesus. You just won’t find it. However, what you will find is Jesus going “about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38b ESV).
Simply said, Jesus was non-punitive because the Father is non-punitive. As Richard Rohr points out: “Jesus never punished anybody! Yes, he challenged people, but always for the sake of insight, healing, and restoration of people and situations to their divine origin and source. Once a person recognizes that Jesus’s mission (obvious in all four Gospels) was to heal people, not punish them, the dominant theories of retributive justice begin to lose their appeal and their authority.”
Aren’t you glad that Jesus came to reveal a Father who doesn’t treat us with such harshness of record-keeping and retribution? For in the words of the Psalmist, “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3 NIV). If God is love, as Paul suggests, then it’d be safe to assume that he “doesn’t keep score of the sins of others” (1 Corinthians 13:5 The Message).
Seeing that the Father and Son are indivisibly one, this means that just as Jesus was laying down his life, so was the Father. They were together submitting Themselves to the human condition, not participating in its gross forms of violence and punishment. Besides, if the Father was one of violence and payback, wouldn’t Jesus have shown it in the events leading up to his crucifixion, especially where the Roman guards came to arrest him? (See John 18:2-8). Instead, as John illustrates, Jesus resists the urge to fight back and tells Peter “Put the sword into the sheath…” (John 18:11). Then, shortly after releasing a tidal wave of glory and knocking them all on their bottoms, he allows them to arrest him. I imagine it was one of John’s ways of pointing out that although Jesus Christ could’ve dealt in forceful payback by fighting violence with more violence, he did the opposite: he let them lead him to his death.
Jesus Christ did not retaliate or demand payback, for:
1. He knew who he was in the Father. In fact, the force of paralyzing glory (of knocking the soldiers on their backsides) was not accomplished through the arm of the flesh or by wielding a sword, but through a simple yet profound “I Am” from the mouth of One who knew his place in Abba.
2. He understood that death was the doorway into the depths of the human condition of sin and death. In order to get “the keys” to death, hell, and the grave, he would have to descend into its depths (see Revelation 1:18; Matthew 12:40; Ephesians 4:9; Acts 2:24; 1 Peter 3:19).
3. God does not repay evil with evil, but with good (see 1 Peter 3:9-11). This is especially evident on the cross, where Jesus absorbed our violence and exhaled our forgiveness.
And what about the days following his resurrection? How would the Son respond? Would he seek out the ones responsible for his public humiliation? Would the appointed Messiah ransack the city that once hosted the brutal mutilation of his own body?
I imagine this would’ve been the perfect time to prove himself and pay back his enemies once and for all.
In any case, since he and the Father are of one accord, we definitely know that his response would be consistent with that of theFather’s heart (see John 5:19; 14:9). In the words of George MacDonald, “What Jesus did, was what the Father is always doing; the suffering he endured was that of the Father from the foundation of the world, reaching its climax in the person of his Son.”
As we know, the Risen Son would choose a different path than violence and retribution. In a way contrary to the pattern of this world, he would stay consistent in the way of the cross by forgiving and sharing his life with those he encountered. Not to mention how he would soon after disperse his Spirit into the nations (see Acts 2:1-4). This sort of forgiveness would manifest in the ministry of his disciples, whom went about preaching and extending the gospel message into the deepest parts of the earth—not by brute, physical force, but by the power and love of the Holy Spirit.
The cross is the express form of love. While men may spend their days racing to the top, vying and jostling for position, Christ spent his racing to the bottom—into the deepest recesses of the human condition. This victory, although seemingly weak, foolish and futile, proved to be the great mystery of the ages. Christ is now all in all!
Do I believe that Christ was our substitute? Absolutely.
Still yet, it’s imperative to explain what I mean when I say “substitution.” As I’ve mentioned, the Penal Substitution Atonement theory rests on the central idea that the Father’s wrath needed to be satisfied, and therefore someone had to pay. Thus, Jesus Christ took our place to balance out the ledger. However, this model puts the Son under the violent retribution of the Father. Quite simply, it places Jesus on the whipping post.
Although this concept may sound good on the front end—as it portrays Jesus as the good guy—it inevitably presents the Father as some kind of violent, retributive dictator who will stop at nothing to have his honor satisfied and repaid—even if it means pouring out his wrath on his own Son. Sadly, one of the detrimental results of this view is that it becomes difficult to break free from seeing God as a violent and vigilant record-keeper—even after one yields their life to Jesus. This is why many continue to see Jesus as the One who saves them from the Father.
If you see the Father as some sort of accountant who demanded repayment, I encourage you to look through fresh eyes, and see him as the One who stepped in as our Suffering Servant; not to pay off or appease some kind of mean-hearted deity, but to climb inside of the human condition—namely sin and death—in order to rescue us from its clutches. As our substitution, Christ initiated the movement into the deep abyss of our darkness, and by being lifted up, he drew all men into the suffering of his own body (see John 12:32). He did this so we would, once and for all, share in his death and resurrection (see Romans 6:4).
“The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.” —Brennan Manning
To be continued…Stay tuned for part 3, as we discover a more “Beautiful Vision of God.”
*This blog is an excerpt of my latest book, “Fascinated: Living in Awe of the Father.” If you want to read the entirety of this blog, jump on over and order it HERE
