It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were too lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.
Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.
We should note that there is more than one way to interpret doctrine, more than one way to think about the faith, and more than one way to read the Scriptures. We would not suggest that our way is the only way, or the right way; we are not Bible scholars. But we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to rightly divide the Word of God.
There seems to be a lot of confusion and bad teaching regarding Jesus' sacrificial death. We have frequently commented on some of these errors. So we have made it a priority in our blog to regularly examine the errant teaching regarding this.
This quote is a succinct description of today's subject:
Christ carried our sin. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree… (1 Peter 2:24). There’s no way we could begin to fathom what it was like for Christ to carry every single sin of billions of people in His body. But He didn’t just have the weight of that sin on His shoulders, He also propitiated God’s wrath toward every single one of those sins. God poured out the cup of His wrath for our sin and Jesus drank every last drop of it.
There are two intertwined false assertions here:
1) Christ bore our sin, and,2) Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath.
Assertion # 1) Many Christians, particularly reformationists and Calvinists, believe the Father punished Jesus for our sins, i.e., Jesus "bore" our sins in the sense that God punished Him as our substitute. We disagree. Jesus did indeed bear our sins, but He didn't "bear up" under the punishment for our sins.
Let's look at the verse cited in the quote:
1Pe. 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
"Bore is:" anapheró, carry... to bring to the altar, to offer of presentation as a priestly act...
He bore our sins in the sense of someone who carries something as a sacred act. In this case, it was our sin brought to the altar to be washed away by His blood. Thus Jesus was our burden-bearer, the vehicle for carrying our sin:
Is. 53:12 ...For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
"Bore is:" nasa or nasah, to lift, carry, take... Jesus was the transporter of our sins, the One who brought our sin to the cross:
Col. 2:14 having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.
"Took is:" airó, I raise, lift up, take away, remove. He lifted up this great burden.
So Jesus did not bear our punishment, He bore our sin as a burden to be lifted up and carried away, like garbage being taken out. Jesus removed our condemnation from us and brought it to the cross, where it was nailed.
Jesus did not experience punishment from God.
This is a key concept, for if we no longer need to view Jesus as being punished in our place, a lot of other issues fall to the wayside. For example, the cup from which Jesus drank.
Assertion # 2) Some Christians believe that the cup Jesus drank from was the cup of God's wrath:
Mt. 26:39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Because of the belief that Jesus was punished for our sins this verse is interpreted to mean that this cup was the Father's wrath. There are several problems with the assertion:
- The verse does not mention wrath, so it is assumed. In fact, there is no verse in the Bible that indicates that the cup Jesus drank from was God's wrath.
- The testimony of other Scriptures. Previously in Matthew we read this:
Mt. 20:21-23 “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” 22 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. 23 Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”
If the cup in Mt. 26:39 was God's wrath, then these two disciples (James and John) also drank from it. This of course is false.
- The cup of God's wrath was always symbolically drank by God's enemies in judgment against them. We can find no example of substitutionary punishment in the Bible. It is always a case of the evil doer drinking from the cup of God's wrath. For example:
Je. 25:15 This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.”
Is. 51:17 Awake, awake! Rise up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes men stagger.
Habakkuk 2:15-17 “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness! You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory! The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
- Jesus did not turn away every bit of the Father's wrath. We find this passage in Revelation:
Re. 14:9-10 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.
There yet remains a pouring out of God's wrath against the unrighteous as He executes judgment against them. But the author of the above excerpt tells us that Jesus drank the cup of wrath in full for all sin:
He also propitiated God’s wrath toward every single one of those sins.
If Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath, how is it possible that it is still there? God's wrath should now be gone.
Therefore, we conclude that Jesus did not drink the cup of God's wrath.
Conclusion
We have found in our examinations of reformed doctrine and Calvinism that these doctrines get a little more complicated as more elements are considered. This makes it difficult for advocates to find an explanation that somehow harmonizes them.
But we have found there almost always seems to be a simpler explanation. We believe the cup from which Jesus drank was the destiny set before Him, a way of pain, persecution, torture, and hardship. This destiny was indeed shared by James and John, as well as the other apostles and early believers.
If we adopt a simpler and dare we say more biblical approach by asserting that the Father did not punish Jesus for our sin, a lot of complicated explanations are no longer needed. The Father did not need to punish Him because by His blood He carried away the sin for which we would have been punished. Jesus, the Lamb of God, spilled His blood to wash away our sin:
He. 9:22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
The OT sacrifices were a Type of Jesus' own sacrifice. His death was like those sacrifices. His blood is the agent of forgiveness and cleansed lives. There is no punishment needed in this equation.
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