"Silly boy, it's all about trust."

I am in the middle of writing a book on the connection between the forgiveness of sin and the death of Jesus on the Cross.

It’s part of a project of converting much of my ATS material into book-format. In this case, based on a combination of the older thread series DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT HAVE A REMEDY FOR SIN? and NEW TESTAMENT SALVATION.

I can at least share with you the draft foreword. You will see that I’m aiming at the record for the most informal introduction to a work of theology.


FOREWORD


The death of Jesus on the Cross is the central fact of the Christian faith.

So the meaning of the death of Jesus on the Cross is the central issue of Christian teaching. I propose to offer my own understanding of the event. But I need to explain first how I got there, and part of the explanation must be biographical.

The story really begins with my father, who was brought up in Lincolnshire as a Primitive Methodist. Then he went to teacher-training college, and somebody advised him to get “confirmed”. That is, to qualify himself as a member of the Church of England by means of the ceremony which supplements infant baptism. The advice made sense, because a large proportion of the country’s primary schools, my father’s chosen field, were Anglican foundations. In fact, as a career move, it worked like a charm. He spent the whole of his professional life working in two such parish schools.

As a direct result, I was brought up in a parish at the “high” or Anglo-Catholic end of the Church of England. We had “sung mass”, in the English-language pastiche devised by Victorian clergymen. We used incense and the English Hymnal. As a school, we were taken to church on Ash Wednesday to have crosses marked on our foreheads, and so on. This was important. It meant that when I entered the usual stage of adolescent rebellion, it was the more catholic version of Christianity that I was rebelling against. Evangelical Christianity would be a fresh discovery at a later time.

My religious education was compulsory, under English law, but the effects were superficial. I took the teachings for granted without fully absorbing them. I did not begin questioning things until I reached the Sixth Form (that is, in American terms, the years covered by the eleventh and twelfth grades). My primary interest was History. We were studying that classic examination period “The Tudors and the Stuarts”, which meant coming to terms with the Reformation. Looking over the disputing parties, I came to the conclusion that both sides were wrong. On the one hand the papal side were basing their claims to authority on a falsification of history. On the other hand, Luther and Calvin were promoting legalistic theories of Election and Predestination which I rejected instinctively. There needed to be a middle way. By the time we got to the eighteenth-century Deists, I was ready to accept their picture of God as a “watchmaker”, someone who set up the machinery of the world and then left it running.

The final turning-point came at Christmas, when we visited my grandparents and went to the local “midnight mass”. A nail on the back of the pew in front of us was banging into my knee every time we kneeled down in that narrow space. The very unctuous voice of the clergyman was delivering the sermon, and the decisive moment, I believe, was the phrase “little baby in the manger”. It struck me then that he was addressing the congregation in the same terms that he would have used for addressing an audience of children. I was seventeen years old, nearly eighteen. I was no longer a child. I thought to myself “I don’t believe in all this stuff”, and from that night onwards I identified myself as an atheist.

Then I became a student and went to university, which brought me up against the most important question in the universe; How do I go about meeting girls? There was a great imbalance of male to female students in that place. The figure normally quoted was “four-to-one”. I noticed at an early stage that the three most popular ways of meeting the opposite sex were disco-dancing, left-wing politics, and religion, and they were all barred to me, for different reasons. I was obliged to try other approaches.

For example, at the start of my second year, I was using notice-boards to find lists of new students, and knocking on girls’ doors in my genuine capacity as representative of the United Nations Students Association. I remember one girl, while I sat drinking her coffee and eating through her bourbon biscuits, examining the “areas of interest” portion of the membership card I had just sold her. “Is there a section here”, she inquired sweetly, “on ‘conning innocent freshers out of their money’?” “Yes”, I said, “that comes under ‘fund-raising’.” That relationship lasted for six months.

At the beginning of another term, I was about to start a course on “France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century.” A group of us gathered in the study of the relevant professor, who gave us the first essay title (on the economic background), dictated a reading list, and assigned us weekly appointments to discuss our essays. An hour or so later, one of his other students arrived at my door. He had been given a Wednesday afternoon appointment which he found inconvenient. Would I be willing to swop my Tuesdays for his Wednesdays? I agreed without much thought. Only later did I realise that my easy acquiescence had done me a favour. The original plan would have obliged me to give up the weekly bread-and-cheese lunch to raise money for War on Want, which was becoming one of my social highlights.

And there is an example of the way God works, because he had his own plans for that event. Nobody had warned me that War on Want lunches were a hotbed of Christian activity. I was about to meet the girl who would make it her business, a couple of months later, to begin introducing me to the Christian faith. I was a very difficult pupil, but a captive audience. I found ways of continuing the discussion, though she was shrewd enough to guess that we were following different agendas, as my diary records; “Later, in a period of rest, she asked me why I had sent her a note. Because, I said, eventually, I had thought she might not be in if I didn’t. She said that wasn’t answering the question. We finally agreed that I had been driven by curiosity, which was (she said) the result of the Holy Ghost working in me”.

This process came to a climax when I took back to my room, and began reading, the book she had lent me (“My God is real”, by David C.K, Watson). The book set in motion a number of thought processes about the symptoms of sin, and about the death on the Cross. I began to recognise how much of my character was governed by pride. I realised that I was proud of my self-sufficiency, and that this was the real remaining barrier between myself and Christianity. But the biggest impact on my mind came from the one page that explored the meaning and implications of the cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

I finally came to the point of making a decision. Giving up the attempt to work things out on my own, I decided to put my trust in an action of faith, and made the suggested prayer. I was expecting some kind of tangible spiritual change, but nothing seemed to be happening, so I went to bed. Nevertheless, the point had been settled. I had made a commitment which I was taking for granted from the next morning onwards. The secretary of the college Christian Union was nearly as startled as I was. “We’ve been praying for people to be converted”, he told me, “but you weren’t one of them.” But I don’t think that was meant to come out quite the way it sounds.

In the following years, I was probing ways of getting involved in evangelism or apologetics, hoping to help other people to follow the same course. For example, I spent some time in a coffee bar run by my local church, and experienced at first hand the modern teenage reaction to presentations of the gospel. One important discovery was that the conventional “substitution” language about the Atonement is now an obstacle to understanding the message. If people have not been acclimatised to Christian language, the mere quotation of “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin” is not enough to convince them of the premise. While the further premise that one person can take the penalty that belongs to another offends their sense of justice. They cannot believe in the objective Atonement because they cannot understand how it works.

That is not a good reason to abandon the objective Atonement and replace it with “He set a good example”. It is a good reason, though, to find other ways, consistent with Biblical teaching, of explaining the objective Atonement. Two remarks, separated by decades, have helped me in this quest.

“But what exactly do you think sin is?”

That very awkward question came from a Jehovah’s Witness. I had invited them to meet me as part of my self-training in apologetics. Though this was a role, like “anti-abortion campaigner”, which did not develop in the long-term. At some point in the discussion I threw out a line which I had picked up in my reading around the Arian controversy; that only someone who was infinite could effectively deal with infinite sin. I was walking myself into a trap, I realised later, because “infinite sin” implies the possibility of “finite sin”, which seems to imply that sin can be something quantifiable. Hence the question, presumably. Having no immediate answer that I could lay my hands on, I backed out of that line of argument.

It was a very important question, all the same. The task of solving any problem begins with finding out the cause of the problem. We need a germ theory of disease before we can develop a science of antiseptics. The entire Bible, culminating in the gospel, is about the problem of sin and how it gets resolved. How can we understand what God is doing about sin without sorting out more clearly our view of the nature of sin?

“Silly boy, it’s all about trust.”

That one came from my own mouth as I sat on the bed, alone in my room. The strange thing is that it came without any intention to speak, on my part, and without any previous warning. The words were not coming from my conscious mind, nor were they connected with anything in my current train of thought. That was why the mild rebuke “Silly boy!” sounded so odd. Apart from the fact that I was in my forties at the time. So I’ve always taken the remark as a message from God, though it’s unique as such in my experience.

At first, I thought of it as personal advice. In the long term, I began to think of it as a theological guideline. For what is faith but the act of throwing ourselves upon God in trust, giving up our distrustful self-sufficiency?

And that is also, I believe, our answer to the puzzle of the Atonement.
For what is the problem of sin? I premise that sin is our disobedience, our disengagement from the will of God, following on from the shortfall in our trust.
How is the problem of sin resolved? I premise that sin was reversed in the death of Christ, as the final act of his perfect obedience, following on from his absolute trust in his Father..
An act which is our own, in Christ, not by substitution but by inclusion, becoming an act of restored obedience, following on from our self-commitment in trust.

The solution fits the problem. The key fits the lock.

Sin was reversed by the death of Christ?
Yet many were forgiven their sin before Jesus was put to death, still wondering what that means

a reply to: Raggedyman
The effect was retrospective.
So Jesus was able to say "your sins are forgiven" even before the event on the Cross, and the men described in Hebrews ch11 could be men of faith.
The same question comes up on any other theory of the Atonement.

a reply to: DISRAELI

“Silly boy, it’s all about trust.”

That one came from my own mouth as I sat on the bed, alone in my room. The strange thing is that it came without any intention to speak, on my part, and without any previous warning. The words were not coming from my conscious mind, nor were they connected with anything in my current train of thought. That was why the mild rebuke “Silly boy!” sounded so odd. Apart from the fact that I was in my forties at the time. So I’ve always taken the remark as a message from God, though it’s unique as such in my experience.

At first, I thought of it as personal advice. In the long term, I began to think of it as a theological guideline. For what is faith but the act of throwing ourselves upon God in trust, giving up our distrustful self-sufficiency?

And that is also, I believe, our answer to the puzzle of the Atonement.
For what is the problem of sin? I premise that sin is our disobedience, our disengagement from the will of God, following on from the shortfall in our trust.
How is the problem of sin resolved? I premise that sin was reversed in the death of Christ, as the final act of his perfect obedience, following on from his absolute trust in his Father..
An act which is our own, in Christ, not by substitution but by inclusion, becoming an act of restored obedience,

Compliance will be rewarded, resistance will be eradicated

originally posted by: TzarChasm
a reply to: DISRAELI

“Silly boy, it’s all about trust.”

That one came from my own mouth as I sat on the bed, alone in my room. The strange thing is that it came without any intention to speak, on my part, and without any previous warning. The words were not coming from my conscious mind, nor were they connected with anything in my current train of thought. That was why the mild rebuke “Silly boy!” sounded so odd. Apart from the fact that I was in my forties at the time. So I’ve always taken the remark as a message from God, though it’s unique as such in my experience.

At first, I thought of it as personal advice. In the long term, I began to think of it as a theological guideline. For what is faith but the act of throwing ourselves upon God in trust, giving up our distrustful self-sufficiency?

And that is also, I believe, our answer to the puzzle of the Atonement.
For what is the problem of sin? I premise that sin is our disobedience, our disengagement from the will of God, following on from the shortfall in our trust.
How is the problem of sin resolved? I premise that sin was reversed in the death of Christ, as the final act of his perfect obedience, following on from his absolute trust in his Father..
An act which is our own, in Christ, not by substitution but by inclusion, becoming an act of restored obedience,

Compliance will be rewarded, resistance will be eradicated

You are confusing Statism with Christianity.

Although to some, both are religions...

And that is also, I believe, our answer to the puzzle of the Atonement.
For what is the problem of sin? I premise that sin is our disobedience, our disengagement from the will of God, following on from the shortfall in our trust.
How is the problem of sin resolved? I premise that sin was reversed in the death of Christ, as the final act of his perfect obedience, following on from his absolute trust in his Father..

Is your premise falsifiable?

Matthew 7:21, broken down states... ONLY HE THAT DOES the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

"ONLY HE THAT DOES" determines the outcome. Not what Jesus did or died for.

The "will of the Father" is the key to heaven. Yet the key is undefined in Christianity. I suspect knowledge of that key was only given to advanced disciple's that met a prerequisite ...

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

Those that exist in the will of their mind exist in sin.
Those that exist in the will of their Father do not exist in sin.

It is because Jesus is God the Son, who is the ONLY God in flesh and ge and he has can forgive sins, not a Catholic or Protestant priests.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Raggedyman
The effect was retrospective.
So Jesus was able to say "your sins are forgiven" even before the event on the Cross, and the men described in Hebrews ch11 could be men of faith.
The same question comes up on any other theory of the Atonement.

originally posted by: DeathSlayer
It is because Jesus is God the Son, who is the ONLY God in flesh and he has can forgive sins, not a Catholic or Protestant priests.

No one on this planet can forgive sins.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Raggedyman
The effect was retrospective.
So Jesus was able to say "your sins are forgiven" even before the event on the Cross, and the men described in Hebrews ch11 could be men of faith.
The same question comes up on any other theory of the Atonement.

It is because Jesus is God, the Son, who is the ONLY God in flesh and he and his Father can forgive sins, not a Catholic or Protestant priests.

No one on this planet can forgive sins.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Raggedyman
The effect was retrospective.
So Jesus was able to say "your sins are forgiven" even before the event on the Cross, and the men described in Hebrews ch11 could be men of faith.
The same question comes up on any other theory of the Atonement.

a reply to: DeathSlayer
Agreed. Jesus had authority because he was "sent" from heaven. The Incarnation cannot be left out of the story.

a reply to: glend
Faith comes first, in order of time, because "doing the will of God" is the effect of faith. That is the shared teaching of Jesus and Paul and James. Even James offers "works" only as evidence of faith, not as a substitute.

Even then, we do it imperfectly, so relying on that guarantees nothing. But participating in what Christ has done means that we are brought into a state of "having done" the will of God, because he did it first.

Sorry about double posts on your thread......too late to change

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: DeathSlayer
Agreed. Jesus had authority because he was "sent" from heaven. The Incarnation cannot be left out of the story.

Christ is what is appearing presently.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

Atonement......is at one ment...

God is ever present......now now now.

But man is always next and before.....living outside of now.

Man believes in his self outside of now.
This is the sin.......

a reply to: Itisnowagain
I'd better warn readers of this thread that there is no point in debating with this particular post.
The poster is one who delights in meaningless mystification as a form of self-entertainment.

a reply to: DISRAELI
Lol.
It's not debatable.
It's not self entertainment.

It is a sharing.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Matthew 7:21-23 tells us that it is not faith alone DISRAELI. There is still a seperation between faith and the will of the Father. Which is only removed when the word transforms our mind (Matthew 6:22 KJV).

One eye is our mind, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, with the serpent representing our ego that chases the wind. The other eye is the I AM. Our seat of conciousness that exists before thought. The pure awareness at the root of our being that some intuitively access in prayer. That I AM is the word.

So faith is nothing if we continue to chase the wind into heaven and expect Jesus to welcome us.

"I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!"

originally posted by: glend
Matthew 7:21-23 tells us that it is not faith alone DISRAELI. There is still a seperation between faith and the will of the Father. Which is only removed when the word transforms our mind (Matthew 6:22 KJV).

Read that Matthew ch7 passage again. If anything, it tells against works, not faith.
The people criticised in that verse have been doing works, "many mighty works", including prophecies and casting out demons. They are condemned because "I never knew you". That is, the faith-relationship was not there.

And note that I did not say "faith alone". I said faith comes first. In order of time, that is. The obedience to God follows on from the faith.

Think about it. They are told to pay attention to the words of Jesus and obey them. But nobody is going to listen to the words of Jesus unless they first trust that his words have authority. In other words, the faith has to come first. Hebrews ch11 v6 spells it out; it is logically necessary to believe in God in order to please him, because nobody will even bother to try to please him unles they believe in him first.

I have already pointed out, and will point out again, that even James treats works as evidence of faith, not as a substitute. If works are going to be evidence that faith already exists, the faith has to come first. When Robinson Crusoe saw a footprint, it was evidence of a visitor; but the visitor necessarily came before the footprint.

|It is the testimony of Jesus and James and Paul and everybody else in the New Testament that faith and obedience are both expected from us, but the faith comes first and governs the rest.

The rest of your post is mystical theorising which has nothing to do with Biblical teaching, even when it picks up Biblical words and phrases.
I'm interested in what the Bible actually says and means to say.

a reply to: DISRAELI

All Christians have faith but the gate is narrow that lets only a few past. If its not faith nor works that guarantee's passage then it must be something else. Consider for a moment that the Fathers will could be distinct from our minds will. That Matthew 7:21-23. is warning that those that those that not doeth the Fathers will are not known by Jesus.

If Jesus the Son represents the I AM. He is the soul that exists within you. if you do not access your soul then Jesus could never know you. Unlike your beliefs that can never be tested. The I AM can be accessed through prayer and meditation.

I am not asking your mind to believe me. I am asking your being to experience that truth for yourself. If I am wrong you have nothing to loose. If I am right you have everything to gain.

originally posted by: glend
If Jesus the Son represents the I AM. He is the soul that exists within you.

Again, this is not Biblical teaching but mystical speculation.
It is based on your own deliberate mistranslation of the text, as I pointed out when you first posted it.
Anyone who wanders down the new path you're signaling will not get anywhere near the gate, let alone through it.
You are a Will O' The Wisp.