TPW 66 Eastern Orthodoxy's Anti-Biblical View of the Cross of Christ - Part 2

ThornCrown Network iconThornCrown Network

0 views

0 comments

00:20
This is Pastor Patrick Hines, here at DuPont Heights Presbyterian Church, in Kingsport, Tennessee.
00:27
And today I'm going to post part two of the review of Father Thomas Hopko's sermon on the cross of Jesus Christ, and that's going to finish up today.
00:39
And I hope that you'll find it to be edifying. It was, again, a very strange thing to be given a link to this sermon by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy from some form of Protestantism, and to hear the liberal meanderings of a now deceased
01:01
Eastern Orthodox priest. So it was very strange. I still don't understand why that guy thought
01:06
I was going to find any of this to be remotely compelling, but it's a good object lesson on how not to do biblical interpretation, how to twist scripture to make it fit a system that denies the precious doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
01:21
So I hope that you find this to be edifying. And again, I apologize for the cheesy music at the beginning of these old programs, but I'd like to get them posted so that people can still be edified by them.
01:38
...handles Messiah, coming from a guy who understood the gospel, understood the glorious truth that Jesus indeed took our punishment upon himself, upon the cross of Calvary.
01:51
And just a glorious movement, it's my favorite movement to the Messiah by Handel, surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
02:02
And he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him.
02:10
Welcome to Radio Free Constantinople, and without any more ado, we're going to dig right back into it here, and picking up where we left off from Father Thomas Hopko, understanding the death of Jesus.
02:23
And I've backed it up a couple seconds here to make sure I didn't clip off anything, so here we go. ...who saw it most clearly and explained it most explicitly was a
02:33
Pharisaic Jewish disciple of Gamaliel named Shoel, who became
02:38
Paul, the apostle. So there's the first confession,
02:44
Jesus is the Christ, but the Christ has to be crucified. The Christ has to be crucified to be the
02:52
Christ, he has to suffer, he has to be degraded, rejected, ridiculed, beaten, mocked, spit upon, and put to death in order to enter into his messianic glory.
03:05
Why? This is the part that makes no sense. Remember, having jettisoned everything the
03:13
Bible says about the atonement, having told us that it's madness and it's ridiculous and stupid, now we're being told that Jesus just has to suffer to enter into his messianic glory, he just has to.
03:27
He's gotta be spit and beaten and mocked and crucified and killed to enter his messianic glory.
03:34
My question is, why? He's God, why can't he just enter his messianic glory? This can't be punishment, remember, no punishment allowed, punishment, that is absolute madness.
03:44
Remember, we agree with the lesbian lecturer on Christology. Why does he have to suffer?
03:52
For what? We're not told. And if you're hoping to be told, don't hold your breath.
03:58
And in order to fulfill his messianic ministry, that is the outrageous teaching of the
04:05
Christians that we identify with from the first century. That's not what Christians taught from the first century.
04:11
In fact, a good friend sent me just a marvelous compilation of quotations that he's pulled from original research that he's done.
04:20
Listen to this quotation from Athanasius. This is from his book, The Life of Antony and Letters to Marcellinus.
04:27
Listen to this. Says Athanasius, commenting on Psalm 22. He says, in Psalms 22 and 69, again, speaking in the
04:35
Lord's own person, tell us further that he suffered these things, not for his own sake, but for ours.
04:41
Thou hast made thy wrath to rest upon me, says the one. And the other adds, I paid them things
04:47
I never took. For he did not die as being himself liable to death. He suffered for us and bore in himself the wrath that was the penalty of our transgression.
05:00
End quote. That's Athanasius. Athanasius, brother, couldn't agree more.
05:07
Amen. Preach it, my dear brother. Preach it. That's exactly the view that this guy said was madness.
05:16
Was ridiculous. Now, in Matthew's Gospel, when
05:22
Jesus asked the question, who do you say that I am? First he asked, who do the people say
05:30
I am? They gave various answers. Then he said, who do you say I am? In Matthew, you have a longer confession.
05:38
The confession of Peter in Matthew's Gospel is, you are. Now we go off into this long discussion of the incarnation.
05:45
But remember, the incarnation is really important, but we're supposed to be being told here, what is the
05:51
Eastern Orthodox understanding of the death of Christ? Not the incarnation. What is your understanding of his death?
06:00
The Christ. This kind of goes on for a long time. The son of the living
06:07
God. The son of the living God.
06:13
And not to get into that at all tonight. The interpretation of that sentence was, he is the only son.
06:22
There isn't any other. God, the one true living
06:27
God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the prophets is literally his father.
06:35
I'd be careful with putting it quite like that. The eternal generation of the son is a very important doctrine, monogamous theos, as John 119 says here.
06:48
But again, one thing I've noticed among false teachers, and this guy is a false teacher. This guy's a false teacher.
06:54
What he's saying is not true, and nobody should believe it. And I would say, if you believe what this man believes about the death of Jesus, you're definitely not a
07:01
Christian. You're not reconciled to God. But I've noticed this about false teachers. They will illustrate very wonderful biblical knowledge about all kinds of things that aren't even relevant to what they're trying to tell you.
07:15
None of this has anything to do with the topic before us, which is the cross, the death of Jesus.
07:20
He said, we're in the season of our church calendar where we're focused on the cross. And at the beginning of this message, he talked about there's normally a cross that we keep here.
07:29
They're into icons and stuff like that. And it's all decorated and everything. And we're all focused on the cross. But then we go off into this long discussion of the incarnation and really abandon the topic.
07:39
And this goes on for a long time. And that will be put in the theological gospel, the gospel according to St.
07:46
John, by in the very first chapter, identifying
07:52
Jesus with the Devar Yagve of the Jews, the word of God, the word of God.
08:02
And so the prologue of St. John's gospel, which by the way, some of you who are not
08:07
Orthodox who are here should know, it's the gospel that's read in this church, in the
08:13
Orthodox church on Easter. If you come to the Eucharistic service on Pascha, what we call
08:20
Pascha, Passover, that's how we call it, Easter normally it's called in Western languages.
08:25
And you come to the church service, the main church service, the divine liturgy of Paschal night, the gospel is not an account of the resurrection of Jesus.
08:36
That comes, it's at Matins, it comes during the week, it comes again and again. But at that particular moment, it's not.
08:42
What is it? It's the gospel of St. John's beginning. In the beginning, which is the same -
08:48
Just to keep a deep seat in the saddle here, we're supposed to be being told here what the Eastern Orthodox understanding is of the cross, the death of Jesus.
08:57
In words, the way the Bible begins, that's the first words of Genesis, in the beginning, so St. John begins, in the beginning, he says, was the word, the logos, the verbum in Latin, in Hebrew, Devar.
09:13
And the word was with God or around God, Kros Ton Theon.
09:19
And then he writes, the word was Theos, the word was God, the word was divine.
09:27
And then he says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. Why don't you go to Hebrews chapters 5 through 10 in exegete them, that's where the death of Christ is explained.
09:37
Why not go to Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
09:43
Why not go to Galatians chapter 2, Galatians chapter 3. Why not go to the text of scripture that actually address the topic of the death of Christ and the cross of Christ.
09:53
Again, I'm not trying to bore anybody, but this goes on for a long time. The word was God, he was in the beginning with God, and then he says, all things that came to be, came to be through him, and nothing that came to be did not come to be, except through him.
10:09
All things were created by him, and the Apostle Paul will say, not only by him, but through him, in him, for him, and toward him.
10:18
This is obfuscation. This is distraction. This is, let me show you a whole bunch of things that I know about the incarnation that are not even relevant to what
10:28
I'm talking about. And because of him. And then it says, in him was life, and him was light, and he was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world did not accept him.
10:41
He came to his own, they did not receive him. I still don't know what you believe about the death of Jesus, why it happened.
10:49
And then it says, there was a man sent from God named John, and that meant
10:54
John the Baptist, and he said he came to bear witness to this light, to this truth, but he was not the
11:01
Christ. And then it says, and this is the punchline, 14th verse, and the word became flesh, kehologosarx
11:11
The word became flesh, flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
11:20
Actually, in Greek it says, the grace, the truth. And we have beheld his kabod, that's a technical term in Hebrew.
11:28
It doesn't say, the grace and the truth. It says, full of grace and truth.
11:39
It doesn't say, there's no definite article in front of karatas or oletheos there. I'm looking at the
11:44
Greek text right here in front of me. And again, this is, I'm sorry, but false teachers do this.
11:51
This is all a distraction. This is, let me show you a whole bunch of other stuff I know that has nothing to do with what
11:57
I'm talking about. Also, his divine, splendid, majestic, divine glory, we have seen it, the glory of the monogenese
12:07
Theos, the only begotten son, and some ancient texts even say monogenese
12:12
Theos, the only begotten God. We have beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten
12:20
God, and of his fullness, his pleroma, we have received harin antiharitos, grace on top of grace.
12:29
And then it says, for the law came through Moses, the grace, the truth came through Jesus and then you have the word.
12:38
That's actually where it says the grace and the truth. It's not verse 14, it's verse 17, where it says, he karis kai, he oletheo, dia
12:48
Jesu Christu agenata. Christ already, through Jesus the
12:54
Christ. And then it says, no man has seen
12:59
God at any time, but the only begotten son who dwells in the loins, the guts of the father, the bosom of the father, he has, in English translation, has made him known.
13:12
It says literally, he has exegeted him. He has revealed him. That's true.
13:17
It says a kenos exegesata. That's where you get the word exegesis. But again, this is all fine and dandy, but this is obfuscation and this is a diversion.
13:29
This is smoke and mirrors. This is him trying to distract you from what he's supposed to be doing, which is telling us how the
13:35
Orthodox understand all of the key passages in the New Testament about what the death of Christ accomplishes, which he is self -consciously trying to avoid, in case you haven't noticed.
13:46
Now interestingly enough, the word in Hebrew, davar, which is word, doesn't just mean a spoken word.
13:52
It certainly doesn't mean a written word only. The Bible. And too many
13:57
Christians read the Bible as if it were a Koran. The Bible is not the Koran. It doesn't fall from heaven intact.
14:03
And for Christians, the word of God is not a book. The word of God is a person. That's a false dilemma.
14:11
In some places, the word of God is the scripture. In other places, yes, you could make the case
14:17
Jesus is the logos, but this is again just more obfuscation.
14:25
It's a person. It's Jesus of Nazareth, the only begotten son of God who becomes flesh.
14:32
And then, in Hebrew, the word davar doesn't only mean word. It means act.
14:38
It means thing. It's synonym. Act, thing, word. Because the
14:45
Hebrews were not metaphysical and abstract. They were concrete. The word for truth, for example, is the word for rock, you know, real, dependable, right?
14:56
Now, this word becomes us as Jesus, and then it says this
15:01
John bears witness to him. A lot of time is going by here. A lot of time is going by, and he still hasn't told us what the
15:09
Eastern Orthodox belief is about the death of Jesus. And in the very first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, John the
15:16
Baptist witnesses to him, and what does he call him? He calls him the
15:21
Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sin of the world.
15:28
Now lamb is a very biblical symbol. You have the scapegoat lamb, you have the lambs of the sacrifices in the temple.
15:38
Most important of all, you have the Passover lamb that is slain, and lamb becomes one of the titles of Jesus in the
15:45
New Testament, the Lamb of God. And you should know that in the Orthodox Church, the bread for the Holy Eucharist, it's called the lamb.
15:53
The lamb, that's the title for it. In Latin churches, it's called the host, and hostia means sacrifice.
15:58
It means the lamb also. Why is he called the lamb?
16:04
I mean, again, this guy has just an unbelievable penchant for missing the obvious.
16:11
Why is he called the Lamb of God? Because he takes away the sin of the world, it says there.
16:18
The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, it says there, I'm looking at it. The lamb is used throughout the
16:25
New Testament, and in the Apocalypse, it's used 38 times. Jesus is the lamb who conquers.
16:31
He's the lamb who is victorious. He's the lamb through whom God destroys all the enemies.
16:37
But he is the lamb who was slaughtered, who was dead and made alive again. But why was he slaughtered?
16:45
For our sins, as the punishment for sin. Again, you see, so it all comes ultimately through the cross.
16:55
Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, God, the Lamb of God, the life, the light, the truth, the way, the peace, the power, the redemption, the sanctification, all these are words about Jesus in Christian scriptures, in what we call the 27 canonical books of the
17:12
New Testament. He's just, he's getting all excited, isn't he? And you're still just left going, what are you talking about?
17:22
What are you saying? The light, the peace, the way, the lamb. But what does it do?
17:30
What does the death of Christ do? But central to it all is, he must suffer and die.
17:42
In order to do the victory of God, he must be. Okay, now think about that.
17:49
Central to it all is, he must die, what he just said is, in order to do the victory of God.
17:56
My question is, how? How does dying do the victory of God?
18:04
Betrayed, given up, surrendered, put into the hands of the
18:10
Gentiles, put to death in a death which according to Mosaic law was a curse?
18:17
Yeah, it was the curse for sin. It was the punishment for sin.
18:25
And Jesus was cursed for our transgressions of the law, the penal sanction, the penalty, the punitive retribution, the punishment was laid upon him.
18:36
Because it's written in Mosaic law, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree of the cross. He has to die that particular death and no other way at the hands of Gentiles, as a criminal, with other criminals.
18:53
All that has to happen, that's the Christian gospel, for the victory of God to be won.
19:00
That doesn't make any sense. You see, this whole, we hold to the Christus Victor model, you see, holding to an understanding that Jesus' death is a real penal legal substitution, that enables me to affirm all of the theories of the atonement.
19:16
It is a multifaceted thing, but if you jettison and discard the idea that his death actually propitiates the wrath of God, then in what way is it a victory?
19:25
It doesn't make any sense. All that has to happen. It begins from the moment he's conceived in Mary's womb.
19:35
And we like to say as a shorthand, we said it a couple times yesterday, for Eastern Orthodox Christians, the whole gospel of God and the victory of God in Jesus Christ is about Mary's womb and Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.
19:49
Because Isaiah said he would be with a rich man in his death, and it was a rich man who took his body from the tree and buried it in his own new tomb.
19:58
That is an incidental fact to the heart and soul of what the cross does, which is to propitiate the wrath of God against sin, just as my dear brother
20:10
Athanasius said, flatly against everything this guy is saying. So this
20:17
Jesus of Nazareth is divine who becomes human. He's God's own word through whom he creates the ages.
20:25
He is the one by whom, through whom and for whom all things hold together. He is the demiurges of God, the arm of God, the hand of God.
20:33
All this is the biblical way of speaking about him. Did he just say the demiurge of God? I don't think you'd want to put
20:40
Jesus in that category, especially given the Greek philosophical usage of demiurge.
20:46
But he's really divine and becomes really human in order to suffer and to die to affect
20:53
God's victory. And therefore... But how does the death of Christ affect
20:59
God's victory if it doesn't actually pay the punishment for sin against his people?
21:07
Jesus came to save his people from their sins. That's what the angel told
21:14
Joseph in the dream. You shall give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
21:21
He just dies to show the victory. How? How does that show victory? Or to show that he is the anointed one.
21:30
How does dying show he's the anointed one? Again, I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense.
21:36
This makes no biblical sense at all. Now, the Messiah, the Messiah, the anointed one, in our understanding, has to be the last and the final prophet.
21:46
He has to be the ultimate teacher. So we have to have a messianic prophet, the prophet, the one that Moses spoke about who said the day will come when the prophet will appear.
22:00
Right, that's Deuteronomy 18, and definitely that is fulfilled in the office that Christ executes of being our prophet.
22:08
He's also our priest and our king as well. And if you don't listen to him, you've had it. And the apostle
22:14
Peter, on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the crucifixion and glorification of Jesus, preached the first Christian sermon and he referred to Moses and he said, this is the prophet.
22:25
Jesus of Nazareth, whom we crucified, is the prophet. He's the last one. He shows the truth of God.
22:31
And that is a salvific, healing, redeeming act. Why? Well, not really.
22:40
He reveals to us the will of God by his word and spirit, the will of God for our salvation. Remember, this is supposed to be about the death of Jesus.
22:51
So you would want to focus more on his priestly work. So you would need to go to the book of Hebrews, you would need to go to Hebrews 5, where it speaks about we have such a high priest, and then look at all the details there, how that fulfills the
23:00
Abrahamic promise there in Hebrews chapter 6, the Melchizedek priesthood,
23:05
Hebrews chapter 7, Hebrews 8, the new covenant, Hebrews 9, the work of Christ in the Holy of Holies and his obtaining eternal redemption in chapter 10.
23:14
That's where you would want to go if you want to explain what his death actually accomplished. But if you're actually hoping to get some information here about what his death did accomplish, that's already been discarded from this man's thinking and he wants you to disbelieve it as well because he hates it.
23:29
But, well, his death achieves victory. How? We're not told. Because we must be healed from our ignorance.
23:37
We must be healed from our stupidity. In a good biblical word, we must be healed from our foolishness. We must be healed from our darkness, from our ignorance that comes to us through our sin.
23:47
So the Messiah has to be the ultimate teacher. But the Messiah in the
23:53
New Testament understanding about Jesus of Nazareth, he's not only the ultimate teacher, the ultimate rabbi, he is the word itself.
24:02
He is not only the teacher, he's what is taught. He is not only the proclaimer, he's the proclaimed.
24:08
He's the one who shows God, reveals God, speaks the ultimate word of God, is the ultimate word of God on the planet
24:18
Earth. And that is all perfected and fulfilled when he dies on the cross.
24:26
Why? Still, the death does not make any sense in this system.
24:32
It's all fulfilled when he dies on the cross. Why does that have to happen?
24:38
Again, we're not told. And in fact, in St. John's Gospel, the theological gospel, the last word of Jesus from the cross is one
24:46
Greek word, Theteliste, in Greek. In Latin, it's two words, consummatum est.
24:53
In English, usually it's three words. It is finished. And most people don't understand it.
25:00
Because when they hear it is finished, they think it means he's going to die. That's not what it means. It means everything is now accomplished.
25:07
Everything is now fulfilled. Everything is now completed. There's nothing more that God can say. There's nothing more that God can show.
25:13
There's nothing more that God can do. In the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Son of God, the
25:19
Lamb of God, God has done his final act. That's it.
25:26
It's fulfilled. Nothing can surpass it. That's it. So the first level of redemption, of healing is the prophetic act of the revelation of God to redeem us and ransom us from our ignorance, our stupidity, our darkness, our not knowing what life is about.
25:44
It's a revelation of the truth. That's why Jesus. How does Jesus's death on the cross do that?
25:50
Yes. Do we need to be rescued from our foolishness and from ignorance and things like that? Yeah. That's why God gave us revelation that Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God.
25:59
But we're also reliant upon what the scriptures tell us about him. We don't just, you know, in a nebulous fashion, look to him.
26:08
What we believe about Jesus has to be tempered by and limited to what God has told us about him in divine scripture.
26:15
If you go beyond that, you're looking in the wrong place. It says, I am the truth. It doesn't say
26:20
I'll show you the truth. He says, I am the truth. I am the light of the world. St.
26:26
Paul says in him is hidden all the fullness of divinity, somaticos, in bodily form.
26:33
So the first level of redemption and salvation is the salvation from ignorance, foolishness, darkness, madness, insanity, as Jesus, the
26:46
Messianic prophet. And he shows this on the cross. Why? Because on the cross, he reveals
26:53
God. How on the cross, he reveals God. How does him being nailed to wood reveal
27:00
God? It reveals the love of God.
27:05
If you understand he's taking the punishment of his people's sins away, it would reveal the heart of God, the love of God in that way.
27:13
But this guy says it is madness and it is insanity. It's blasphemy to think that Jesus is being punished on the cross.
27:22
So somehow it reveals God, but it's not that. The cross does not conceal
27:28
God. The cross reveals God. How? And here there might be a little difference from certain
27:34
Western Christian groups because the West, some Western churches say the cross is the theologia crucis.
27:40
And then the resurrection is the theologia gloriae that the cross is the humiliation and the darkness.
27:46
And then the resurrection shows the glory in the Eastern church. And in the Bible, the cross itself is the glory.
27:52
The cross doesn't conceal God. The cross reveals God. Well, we would, we would certainly agree, agree with that.
27:59
Um, yeah, it is the, the crosses is where the wisdom of God is on display. First Corinthians one and two, um, and his glory.
28:06
And without a doubt, yeah. Reveals God as love, as mercy, as forgiveness, as mercy.
28:13
You mean mercy, like on mercy, showing mercy to us because the punishment's been taken away.
28:19
As absolutely faithful to his creatures as the one, like the mad lover in love with a harlot whore, as the prophets would write, he's faithful to her, even unto death and comes in after her and shows what he is.
28:32
So Jesus shows us what, who, how, and even why God is real
28:38
Abba father, how he is. Now the Messiah is also, how does that show?
28:45
How does the death of Jesus on the cross show the love of God? If it's not him taking the punishment for sin away and reconciling us to God, how does the death of Christ on the cross show us the what, who, where, how, why of God?
28:56
Um, if it's not actually taking a punishment away, we are not told. And this is, that's what makes this talk so completely confusing.
29:06
King, he's the messianic King. What does the King do? The King destroys the enemies. What are the enemies?
29:13
The enemies are not the King, the people, the Moabites, the Jebusites, the Edomites, whom God slew back and forth, if you read the
29:21
Bible, but he slain them because they were idolaters, all that battles and blood of the old covenant is battles between gods to prove that only
29:31
Yahweh, the God of Abraham, who's Yahweh. It's Yahweh, not
29:39
Yahweh. I said, Jacob Moses is the real God. He's the God of God's, the Lord of Lords.
29:45
And those terms will be applied to Jesus in the new Testament. But how does the death of Jesus show this again? This makes no sense.
29:53
This guy's penchant for missing the obvious is incredible to me. He's saying all kinds of stuff.
29:58
That's true in one sense, but it doesn't explain the death of Christ.
30:04
In fact, the gospel of Jesus applies everything that the Bible applies to God. The father is applied to him in his divinity, but he reveals it in his humanity, in his humiliation and in his death on the cross.
30:17
So when Jesus, how, how does that reveal God except showing that God is holy and just, but also merciful because he's taking the punishment of sin away.
30:31
This makes no sense. Dies. It is death that is put to death.
30:36
When light enters the darkness of the tomb. And what is death? Death is the punishment for sin.
30:42
The darkness is overcome. When righteousness is in touch with unrighteousness and injustice is the injustice that is destroyed.
30:52
When what is innocent and pure is entering into what is ugly and unholy.
30:58
It's the unholy that is defeated. It's the unholy that is defeated.
31:03
And the only way that God can do this is by sending his son in the form of a slave to die on the cross so that he could become cursed for us, sin for us.
31:13
This is all the words of St. Paul that I don't believe so he can become cursed for us and sin for us.
31:24
Wow. He can become a humiliated slave for us. And that becomes then what they, the holy father is called the blessed exchange.
31:35
The blessed exchange. Um, Josiah Trenum in his book, rock and sand said that that's, that's, we don't believe in the blessed exchange.
31:45
He was powerful, becomes weak through his weakness. His power is victorious. He who owns everything in his rich becomes totally poor through his poverty, the riches of God is given through his being shut up in the darkness of the tomb, the light of God comes and destroys that darkness.
32:05
And ultimately when he dies, he is the one who is ultimately victorious.
32:11
And so the main hymn of Pascha of Easter in the Orthodox churches, Christ has risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life, but what about the messianic priesthood?
32:26
What about the sacrifice? What about the redemptive act? Yeah. What about that?
32:33
He could be messianic prophet. He could be messianic king, but why did he have to offer himself as a victim on the cross?
32:43
See, now he's, he recognizes he still hasn't answered that question. He knows he hasn't, he hasn't.
32:50
So let's, let's see if he does here. But like I said, this is the third time I've listened to this. Don't, uh, don't hold your breath.
32:57
Why did he have to be the lamb of God who, as it says in the apocalypse was slain from before the foundation of the world, why did he have to say to his disciples, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give himself as a ransom, a ransom, a litron, hyperpolon for the multitude.
33:23
And by the way, when it says for many, that's a Hebrewism that means for everyone. No, it doesn't.
33:32
It's not a, it's not a Hebrewism that means everyone. It means for the multitudes, for everybody, for all.
33:38
Why is it? No, many means many. That John in his letter twice will call him a elasmos translated into King James Bible as propitiation for sin translated into revised standard as expiation.
33:56
Expiation is not a good translation of hilasterion or hilasmos for sin. Why is
34:03
Isaiah's canticle about the Ebed Yahweh, slave of God, who is like a lamb beaten, slain, despised, hated, sorrow, put to death, bearing our burdens.
34:14
Why is that applied to him? Well, no, the, the Ebed Yahweh in Isaiah, it doesn't say that he's just beaten up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
34:23
It's for our transgressions, for our iniquities, for our sins.
34:30
Not just beaten up to show the victory of God. It's for our sins. How does that work?
34:38
And please remember, he knows he hasn't answered this yet and he hasn't.
34:43
So just let's keep a deep seat in the saddle here. He keeps asking the question. He just goes on and on and on asking, what does it mean this?
34:50
What does it mean that he's got to go through, you know, a hundred biblical themes and try to explain them away.
34:58
Or to put it in the way we started, why is it that his death fulfills the law?
35:06
Why is it that his death satisfies divine justice?
35:13
Yeah, it fulfills the law and satisfies divine justice. That means punishment.
35:21
The retributive penal sanction of having broken the law is satisfied by the death of Christ.
35:29
That's what propitiation assumes. That God has wrath against sin that is propitiated, placated by the, the shed blood of the innocent
35:40
Christ. Why is it that his death removes the wrath of God?
35:46
See, and again, this is a very common tactic of false teachers. He's just leading you along the way here. He's asking,
35:52
I mean, he has asked this question. I'm serious. At least, at least 50 times already, we are now 38 minutes and 44 seconds into the sermon and he still hasn't answered it.
36:05
From God's creation that was duly rightly put upon it because of sin and transgression.
36:12
In other words, why does it work? Why does it work? And here's where we get to the main point for tonight.
36:20
Well, that's good because we're 39 minutes into this sermon now, 39 minutes in.
36:26
Now we're getting to the main point. Folks, are you ready? You ready for this? Here's the, here's the understanding of the only true church on earth.
36:35
Their exegetical insights into the word of God about the very death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and what it means.
36:41
You ready? Here we go. It is not because he's punished. There you go. How does it satisfy divine justice?
36:49
How does it reconcile us to God? How is it a ransom? It is not because he's punished.
36:56
He says, God doesn't want the punishment. And in the scripture,
37:01
God wants to punish nobody. You hear that? I want you to,
37:08
I want you to listen to that again. Let's listen to that again. How does it work? And here's where we get to the main point for tonight.
37:18
It is not because he's punished. God doesn't want the punishment.
37:24
And in the scripture, God wants to punish nobody. Wow. You know what that means?
37:32
That means that the death of Jesus on the cross is a cruel and arbitrary act on God's part that accomplishes nothing.
37:41
God doesn't want to punish anybody. God is holy.
37:48
Part of God's nature is divine retribution. God has to punish sin.
37:55
God is zealous for his own glory. And yes, indeed, God does punish sin.
38:02
It's all the way through the whole Bible. God punishes sin. And this part of the sermon, this is why
38:09
I was just like, this guy's a flaming liberal. Okay. I'm sorry. God doesn't want the punishment.
38:15
He doesn't want to punish. He wants to punish no one. Okay. Keep listening. It is not that he's paying off God.
38:23
St. Gregory, the theologian, one of the great Greek fathers of the fourth century said to think that paying the price was paying
38:30
God is a blasphemy. Notice here again, I mentioned this in the previous program.
38:36
Um, he will quote with such sublime awe, these Greek Orthodox theologians, but when he quotes the
38:44
Bible, he chuckles and laughs. I think that's very telling, very telling to say he's paying
38:51
God is blasphemy. That's exactly what Jesus did. Jesus's death on the cross is the propitiation of the wrath of God.
39:01
It is the payment of the punishment, the penalty for our transgressions, for our sins, that's the whole reason he suffered.
39:09
God doesn't want to hold us in our sin and God is not the one holding us. And if you would not even accept the sacrifice of Isaac from Abraham, why would he want to kill his own son?
39:21
And why would he rejoice? That is Theo Babel. That is Theo Babel, written by someone who no more believes what the
39:29
Bible says about this than this father Hopko does. And such a thing. He says, well, in the 1898
39:36
English translation that I first read when I was a student, it said, fie upon the outrage that anyone would think that when scripture says he offered himself as a pure sacrifice to God, it was because God was holding him and wanted him beaten up and slain so that God could let us off.
39:56
For the message of the cross is foolishness. This is 1 Corinthians 1 .18. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
40:09
Paul also elsewhere calls the cross an offense. In Galatians chapter five, he says in verse 10,
40:19
I have confidence in you and the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.
40:24
And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased.
40:33
Why is the cross called a skandalon, an offense? For the very reason it offends this man.
40:39
He doesn't like the idea that God has wrath against sin. There are a lot of people that don't like that idea. There are a lot of people who are repelled by it.
40:46
But the fact is anyone who is under the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God knows that God indeed is very angry at sin and that indeed it is the death of Jesus that pays the penalty of our sins to God so that we are released from it and we have peace with God.
41:02
Blessed is he whose transgressions are covered and whose sins the Lord will not take into account.
41:07
Psalm 32, 1 and 2. Then there were some people who thought maybe he's paying the devil.
41:15
It's the devil who's holding us. It's death who is holding us. So there's a transaction, so to speak.
41:21
Again, does the father say, fie upon the outrage. No, actually the ransom, ransom payment to Satan theory is very prevalent in the anti -Nicene church and the pre -Nicene church fathers, which again shows us why we need sola scriptura to correct such things.
41:39
But then they said, but how do you interpret this language? Exactly. He knows that anyone sitting there who has a biblical bone in their body is going to be sitting there going, you're dancing a jig around the obvious here, dude.
41:53
You're dancing a jig around the clear pronouncements of scripture. How do you interpret the language of paying the debt?
42:02
Yeah. How do you interpret that? Purchasing with blood. How do you interpret that? With effecting a redemption.
42:08
Yeah. Of offering an expiation or a propitiation. Yeah. How do you understand all that?
42:15
How do you understand it? And this is their answer. Their answer is the law.
42:25
The law is wholly just and good. He says, this is their answer.
42:31
Meaning the people he doesn't agree with. The law is wholly just and good. That is a quotation from Romans chapter seven.
42:37
And the law must be fulfilled. Romans eight four. And when the law is broken, then things are not right.
42:47
That's certainly true. Everything is madness and we're in the hands of demons and we die and everything is no good.
42:54
Well, we're under the wrath of God. We're under the curse of the law. And from the very beginning, humanity has sinned.
43:03
That's the meaning of the Adam and Eve story. So the only way that the world could be saved is if there would be a new
43:10
Adam, a new Adam who doesn't sin. And remember, this is the view he rejects.
43:17
Yeah, there has to be a new Adam. Again, his detestation of this doesn't affect its truthfulness.
43:27
First Corinthians 15, 45. And so it is written, the first man, Adam became a living being.
43:33
The last Adam became a life giving spirit. That's Christ. The first Adam failed.
43:39
The second Adam succeeds. Jesus. A new Adam who really loves God, the father with all his mind, soul, heart and strength, loves his neighbor, loves his worst enemy, loves people who are killing him, beating him, mocking him, scourging him, crucifying him.
43:54
And he still loves them and he still puts the love of God on them. And he never sins in the smallest way.
44:02
Remember, this is the view he rejects. Hebrews 4, 15. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin.
44:12
For some reason, the biblical writers thought that that was a pretty important point. That's why we think it's important too.
44:19
Even if he doesn't. When that would happen, then the law would be fulfilled.
44:26
Yeah. I also get this passage. Romans 8, 3 and 4. For what the law could not do and that it was weak to the flesh, namely justify us.
44:34
God did by sending his own son, the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.
44:47
It's right there. And there would be no wrath of God upon humanity. So the teaching, as we understand it, is the following.
44:57
Okay, so here we go. We're going to get their teaching now. He says he said there would be no more wrath upon humanity.
45:03
Chuckles. Uh, Romans 5, 9, how much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
45:10
I'm very thankful that I've been saved from the wrath of God by the blood of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ blood has assuaged that wrath and turned it aside, that it's taken that punishment away so that I now stand justified before him.
45:23
Praise God. Jesus, the Christ, the son of God, born of the virgin becomes a man to be the man, the son of man.
45:36
And he always refers to himself, by the way, in scripture as the son of man. No, he doesn't.
45:42
He does a lot, but he also refers to himself, um, as the son of God, uh, in several places.
45:49
Um, uh, just find this for a second son of man. Other people confess him as the son of God. He speaks about himself as the son of man.
45:57
There has to be the son of man who is completely and totally obedient in Jesus heard that they had cast the man out who was born blind and John nine 35.
46:08
And Jesus said to him, do you believe in the son of God? And there he's referring to himself. So he does not always refer to himself as the son of man.
46:15
And by the way, uh, the phrase son of man is actually a divine title from Daniel chapter seven, uh, and nine love and trust to God, no matter what, even when the whole world is hating him, the religious leaders, the
46:35
Imperial leaders. See, but this is, this is here. So here's the Eastern Orthodox understanding. He had to be the son of God, the son of God who would love no matter who was against them, the
46:46
Imperial leaders and these people, and those people, not people, which again, is simply dancing a jig around the question.
46:52
And he knows he's not answering it. He knows he's not the politicians, the priests, the high priest, the scribes, the
47:00
Pharisees, the leaders of the people, the crowds, everybody, as it says in the song, the whole world has risen up against the
47:09
Lord and against his Christ handles Messiah, right? He's getting pretty excited about it.
47:15
Doesn't he? But he still hasn't answered the question. Has he? But the Christ does not sin.
47:25
And since his death has nothing to do with taking punishment away. So what? How is that of any help to me?
47:35
No matter what's going on, he shows the love and mercy of God. No matter what is going on, he fulfills the commandments of God.
47:43
And how does that redeem me from my sins? How does that propitiate the wrath of God? How does that satisfy divine justice?
47:50
We're not told. And it's written in the New Testament, as well as according to old, that all of the law and the prophets hang on two commandments,
48:01
Deuteronomy seven and Leviticus 17, you know, hero,
48:06
Israel, the Lord God, he is one, the Lord, he is God. Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad, the
48:13
Lord is God. And no, it doesn't say Adonai. The Shema in Hebrew is
48:19
Shema Yisrael Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad, not Adonai. Um, the, the
48:25
Jews would often write, uh, the word Adonai instead of the Tetragrammaton because they were, they were afraid they might accidentally be irreverent when they wrote it or something.
48:33
They didn't want to take the Lord's name in vain, but it does not say Adonai. Um, it's
48:39
Shema Yisrael Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. The Lord is one and you will love the
48:45
Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, who saved you, who chose you, who loved you, who was with you.
48:51
What does this have to do with how Jesus's death on the cross redeems us and is the propitiation of the wrath of God?
48:58
Again, this is an exercise in obfuscation, misdirection, smoke, and mirrors.
49:05
Who protected you, who killed everybody around you so that you could live, so that the Christ could come and save the world, so that Jesus could be born.
49:13
But how does he save us? Be born. God did all these things and he loves us first.
49:21
And the Lord is, it says in every single book of the law, Psalms and prophets, the
49:26
Lord is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and mercy. He does not always chide.
49:33
He does not deal with us according to our iniquity. And anyone who would say that the God of the Old Testament is not a
49:38
God of love, well, should be sued in court and beaten. Wow.
49:46
Forgot about that. Um, yeah, the God of the Old Testament is a God of love. And how does that, how has that love demonstrated most fully?
49:54
Um, how does that love come to us? What, what, where is it seen the clearest? Romans 5, 8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners,
50:03
Christ died for us much more than having now been justified by his blood. We shall be saved from wrath through him.
50:10
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
50:18
I had an Eastern Orthodox guy, uh, tell me, um, and this guy's part of some Eastern Orthodox mission or something.
50:25
He told me that no, no one is an enemy of God. And I quoted this passage. Yeah, when we were his enemies, we were reconciled to God.
50:32
So yes, there are people who are God's enemies and he just had a fit. He's got all upset at me and got all nasty and everything.
50:38
But again, when you hold to a system that's not based on sola scriptura, you're going to have all kinds of denials of scripture and you're not even going to see it.
50:45
And then when, when we pointed out, they just unleashed their venom on us. Well, we've been around for 2000 years and you guys started 500 years ago, which illustrates their completely unbiblical ecclesiology.
50:57
I see. And that's the thing. I'm going to do some videos on that. I'm going to resist the temptation to get into that here. It's not true, but that love has to be shown perfectly and totally and completely.
51:08
And that's what the Messiah does. And he shows it on the cross. How? If his death does not take divine punishment away, how does it show
51:21
God's love? That's my challenge to any Eastern Orthodox person watching. If the death of Jesus does not take away the punishment for our sins, how is it a demonstration of God's love?
51:33
You know, the great Princeton reformed theologian, B .B. Warfield said this idea, and of course he dealt with it with liberals and neo -Orthodox and other forms of weirdness.
51:43
Of course, he's before neo -Orthodox, excuse me. But he said, it'd be like me saying to you, here, let me show you how much
51:50
I love you by taking my son out and blowing his head off with a shotgun. Wouldn't you look at that and go, how does that show me how much you love me?
51:59
Only if that death actually accomplished something, accomplished your forgiveness, would it be of any value.
52:06
Again, it's just, this makes the cross into an arbitrary and cruel act that accomplishes nothing.
52:13
Where God is loving us to the end, but in the same cross, in the same crucifixion, it's the new
52:22
Adam who's loving God back. In that same act of the death of the
52:27
Messiah, you have the total perfection of the love of God for us and the total perfection of the love of humanity for God.
52:35
How does that, how does the death of Christ show Jesus' love for God? How? If it doesn't take away the sin of his people.
52:43
And he's the only one who loved God totally. Therefore, he's the only one who fulfills the law. Therefore, when he dies that death, he makes everything right.
52:54
How? He makes everything right. How? Everything is okay now.
53:04
The world is recreated. The handwriting of the law written against us is washed away.
53:11
What, what, what handwriting of the law that's written against us? That's from Colossians. Um, yeah.
53:17
The handwriting of requirements, the requirements of the law, the requirements we violated and incurred the sanction, the punishment.
53:24
Yeah. It's taken away. And what's the rest of that say? Having nailed it to the cross. Not because he's punished, but because he's righteous because he loves.
53:37
It doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense because he endures all of that for us. Why is he enduring it?
53:45
If it's not taking punishment, what's the point? This, the cross just shows the love of God makes no sense.
53:55
That theory of the atonement is very old. It's nothing unique to Eastern orthodoxy.
54:01
We've heard everything this guy is saying. Uh, you can read in Harry Emerson Fosdick and the liberals that Jay Gresham Machen fought with back in the 1920s and thirties, there is absolutely nothing new to what this guy is saying.
54:13
His hatred of the idea that God has divine retribution against sin is very old.
54:18
And it's been held by false teachers for a very long time. Sadly. Why? Because we can only be saved if there is one of us who is completely, totally perfect in every possible circumstance and who loves us totally, even when we are blaspheming, ridiculing, mocking, spitting and killing him, how can we be saved?
54:55
We can only be saved if someone, if one of us loved God perfectly, even when he was being beaten and spit upon and we were killing him.
55:05
Okay. How does he save us? How? You're, you're still not answering that question.
55:13
And it's just hanging out there. It's still not answered. Now here, the biblical teaching is very clear.
55:19
Every single one of us crucified Christ, because every one of us is a sinner.
55:29
Every one of us, without exception. That's certainly true. You can't blame it on some
55:34
Adam. We're all Adam in that sense. And St. Simeon, the new theologian said, we're worse than Adam.
55:40
He was some slimy creature, came out of the mud, didn't know what he was about, had this wife and some crazy serpent tells him and he blew it all.
55:47
St. Irenaeus said we should pity him, not judge him. But Irenaeus and St.
55:54
Simeon, they said, we Christians claim to know all this. And how do we act?
56:01
What do we do? So we are a million times more guilty than any one of them.
56:08
But you've made it clear, sir, that Christ isn't bearing guilt on the cross. You've made it very clear.
56:14
He is not bearing guilt or punishment on the cross. So what does the death of Jesus do then?
56:22
It shows the victory of God and the love of God. How? And how does that help me if I'm a sinner?
56:30
A million times more. And the letter to the Hebrews, which by the way, is the letter, the New Testament letter that's read all through Great Lent.
56:37
And people say, father, what's a good book to read during Lent? The letter to the Hebrews is a very good book to read during Lent. Read it three times, at least.
56:43
Why would you read Hebrews during Lent? I'm so thankful we don't follow the church calendar.
56:54
Lent is the repudiation of everything the Bible teaches about fasting. I did a whole sermon on that once, and I made the conclusion.
57:03
If you sat down with people with everything scripture teaches about fasting and said, come up with a teaching that will deny everything the
57:12
Bible teaches and everything Jesus taught about fasting, and what would you come up with? Lent. Because everything
57:17
I'm saying here is in that book. I'd love to hear you talk about Hebrews.
57:23
Hebrews 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, please. That would tell us what you think Jesus did on the cross.
57:29
That is no more the offering of lambs and bulls and cows and bloods and so on. It's God offering his own blood, which stands for his life in total and complete.
57:38
Right. Because by one offering, he is perfected for all time. Those who are sanctified by that one offering, the debt load of sin is actually taken away.
57:49
The punishment is actually completely removed. That's why no more offerings are necessary. There is no longer an offering for sin.
57:57
It says complete love for God and for every worst possible sinful creature, which means every human being who ever lived, who is guilty of his crucifixion, but the crucifixion saves them.
58:09
Why? Because he loves them. No, it saves people because the wrath of God is taken away by the shed blood.
58:18
We are justified by his blood. That blood is the propitiation through faith in his blood.
58:26
The wrath is taken away. The punishment is taken away. That's how it saves us.
58:31
We're saved from the wrath of God against our sin. It's not, how does, how does he save us?
58:39
Cause he loves us. That makes no sense. No sense. And God is love and love is the fulfillment.
58:46
And the reason that you can say the cross is a loving act is because it does a reconciliation because it does remove the wrath.
58:55
It does remove the punishment. That's the only reason you can call it a loving act on God's part. And that's what paying the debt means when it says he paid the debt on the cross, it's not the debt of being punished.
59:08
Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's the debt of loving.
59:16
How is that loving? If it doesn't remove our guilt and our sin and the wrath and the punishment and the debt we owe to God, then how can you say the cross of Christ is loving?
59:28
Is a loving act on God's part or is Christ loving the father? How? Why?
59:35
St. Paul said, Oh, no one, anything but to love one another in the
59:40
Lord's prayer. Jesus taught his disciples to prayer, loose us our debts as we have already loosed the debts of those who owe us.
59:49
The word there in Greek is, which means forgive, not loose.
59:56
I've never heard translated as loose us our debts as we lose those.
01:00:05
In other words, loose us from our fact of not loving you. No, that loose us from our sin.
01:00:15
Yes. Not loving God is a sin, but it's more than that. There's sins of commission as well. That there are transgressions of the law.
01:00:22
There's failure to conform to it, but there's also a flat out breaking it as well as we forgive in imitation of Christ and together with him, those who are killing us, and if you're a
01:00:34
Christian, you don't kill people. If you're a Christian, you get killed, you get killed and you forgive the person who kills you.
01:00:43
That's the teaching of the gospel. But if you think that the God of the old Testament is not a God of love, you should be beaten in court as he says.
01:00:50
Now, one last thing, and then we'll open it up for your rejoinders. There is a certain substitutionary character to this.
01:01:02
You think, you think. Because none of us can do it.
01:01:09
So he has to come and do it for us in the sense of in our place. But by the way, the for in a lot of the
01:01:16
English translations should rather be translated from, at least from the Greek old Testament as because of our sin, he dies, because of us, he dies.
01:01:27
They translated often for, but there are three words for for in Greek, perig, kiper, and via, and it's used differently in different places.
01:01:35
Well, it's certainly true that prepositions have, have a very wide semantic domain, but the fact is huper when it's used in scripture with a genitive means in behalf of.
01:01:48
Okay. So you can sit here and yammer all day long about because, or for, or whatever huper means in behalf of, when it talks about dying for our sins, antipi, those prepositions, it is speaking of the substitutionary aspect.
01:02:02
There's no question about it. Jesus isn't dying for his own sins. He's dying for our sins. He's taking the punishment for our sins, not for sins he committed.
01:02:11
But in English, almost every time it just says for, but there's a different nuance every time, not, not necessarily.
01:02:18
It's not, not every time, but it's because of our sin, an account of our sin. He has to be the man of sorrow bearing the grief because of our sin.
01:02:27
You see? Yeah. Just as long as you understand, he's not being punished. That's the thing that this guy hates for some reason.
01:02:34
I don't, it's very common among liberals, which is really weird. Cause you would think that these folks would be conservative, but I don't know.
01:02:42
And God places this all on him, as it says in Isaiah, because he took it all upon himself to expiate it in his own broken body and spilled blood, which is the greatest expression of keeping the law of God and loving
01:02:56
God and the neighbor. Is everyone as confused as I am now? I mean, if you were hoping to walk away from this with a, with a biblical understanding of the cross,
01:03:06
I mean, this is one of the most confusing the dances and obfuscations of scripture
01:03:14
I've ever heard in my life. And it's interesting that in the Eastern Orthodox church, I'm great in Holy Friday.
01:03:20
And by the way, I would just point out to you nowhere in the Bible and nowhere in the
01:03:26
Orthodox liturgy is the word punishment ever applied to the death of Jesus. Nowhere in the
01:03:35
Bible is the word punishment ever applied to the death of Jesus. We're told, uh, never, never applied to the death of Jesus anywhere in the
01:03:45
Bible. Um, the, the fact of the matter is the word Hilasterion presupposes divine wrath against human sin.
01:03:53
That is punishment. That is punishment. Now, if you're going to be in a quibble and say, well, the
01:03:59
English word punishment, you can translate, uh, lots of different words as punishment. Um, understanding it is the penalty of having broken the law.
01:04:09
Um, but that, that kind of a statement is just, that's ridiculous. I'm sorry. Nowhere.
01:04:15
If you can find it, show it to me. But it's okay.
01:04:21
Okay. Let's, uh, let's see here. Um, what Christ, uh, is bearing on the cross.
01:04:26
He says there's nothing about punishment anywhere in scripture, nothing about, uh, punishment anywhere in scripture.
01:04:36
Um, let's see here. Just looking at a few passages here. Uh, the, the, the death of Christ, the presupposition of his death and his work as high priest is human sin and guilt, which requires punishment.
01:04:52
That's why it's a work of, of sacrifice. Jesus's cross is represented in Hebrews 7, 26 through 27.
01:05:00
In Hebrews 9, 11 through 14 is the work of a high priest who offered himself up as a sacrifice to God.
01:05:07
That is the punishment, uh, for our sins, his work as a sacrifice. Christ, our
01:05:12
Passover lamb, uh, bearing the punishment, bearing the, the sacrifice, um, for our sins.
01:05:19
Um, Ephesians 5, 2, Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a sacrifice to God.
01:05:27
Uh, he's bearing the punishment, uh, in that Hebrews 9, 23, it was necessary then for the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these
01:05:36
Hebrews 9, 26. He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
01:05:45
And the, it is the wrath of God that is taken away, which is the punishment for sin, uh,
01:05:51
God, God's wrath is revealed against all the ungodliness and the wickedness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
01:05:57
If you want to say, well, you still haven't found the English word punishment. You don't have to find the word punishment. Hellas Darion assumes punishment.
01:06:03
Uh, all those terms assume punishment. Uh, so again, um, here's a good quotation from John Murray.
01:06:11
It lies on the face of the new Testament that Christ's work is construed as sacrifice. It is also because of this testimony to Christ's death as a sacrifice for sin that the church has embraced so many hymns that speak of the blood and his death as a sacrifice, such as that by Isaac Watson, he gives a quotation there.
01:06:29
Uh, the, the, the reason that the death of Christ is taking away the punishment for sin,
01:06:34
I want you to just think about this. First of all, the death of Christ, you have to have the sinless perfection of with, uh, with, since any sacrifice for it to be acceptable to God has to be without blemish, you also have the imputation or transfer of the sinner's sin to Christ on the analogy of the
01:06:53
Levitical legislation. When the hands were laid on the animal, the guilt of sin was transferred to that animal, uh,
01:07:02
Leviticus one, four, then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
01:07:11
Um, there you have the use of all those prepositions, ante, dia, peri, uh, numerous paths decided for each one of them, uh, in behalf of, uh, over and over again, um, the, those centers whose sins have been imputed to him and the necessary expiation or cancellation of their sins, uh,
01:07:27
Gerhardus Voss has written wherever in the sacrificial system, there is slaying and manipulation of blood.
01:07:33
There is expiation or propitiation. So it is the punishment for our sin.
01:07:39
Uh, so there it is. It's as clear as the noonday brightness of the sun all the way through, uh, scripture. Yes. By his righteousness, everything has been made right through what he suffered, through what he died.
01:07:51
It doesn't make any sense. Everything has been made right. What has been made right? Me with God? What, what has been made right?
01:07:58
And how and why? He still hasn't answered it. He puts things right. He pays the price to make everything right.
01:08:06
Pays the price? Pays, pays the price? What does that mean? Pays a penalty?
01:08:13
And the way he does that is by being the incarnate word who keeps all the words of God in the human life.
01:08:20
So as I was saying, I'm great and holy Friday. If you come to this church on great and holy Friday night, you have the 12 gospels of the passion.
01:08:27
Then there's a big, uh, tomb put in the middle of the church with an icon of Jesus lying dead in the tomb.
01:08:33
And by the way, in our church on great and holy Saturday, the great beast of the day between Friday and Easter Sunday is called the blessed
01:08:39
Sabbath on which God finally rests from all of his work. Because only when the
01:08:45
Messiah is dead in the tomb is God almighty finished with all of his work with us. Now he's done everything he can do.
01:08:52
And the holy father's teachers, he created the world for the sake of the crucifixion of Christ and his death, because the only way
01:09:00
God could justify himself for creating a world of a son in human flesh to die on the cross, there's no other way.
01:09:06
And we really believe there's no other way. None. Are you, are you following this?
01:09:12
I'm not, this makes no biblical sense whatsoever. So on this great Friday, most parishes because of time don't do this.
01:09:20
They do it in an abbreviated form, but if you know the Psalter, the longest psalm in the
01:09:26
Bible is 118, 119, depending on how you count them. It's like 177 verses or the entire psalm is read over the body of the dead
01:09:36
Jesus. Why? Because it says, if you keep the commandment and the statute of God, you cannot die.
01:09:48
You die because you break the commandment of God. And that's why we're all dead. The wages of sin is death.
01:09:55
But when you've got a sin less person, that person cannot die. And that's why we understand the death of Christ is totally voluntary.
01:10:03
He could have kept himself alive if he wanted to, would have been kind of stupid because he came in order to die to save the world.
01:10:09
He wouldn't have been the messianic king. Is anyone tracking with us? I, he lost me a long time ago. I don't know where we are now.
01:10:15
He didn't die. He wouldn't have been the messianic priest. He wouldn't have been the messianic prophet. He has to die to reveal God and to do
01:10:21
God's victory. To do God's victory. He has to die to do God's victory, but it's not punishment.
01:10:27
So how is it a victory over anything is my question. And what's the point of all that suffering in his, in his death?
01:10:33
If it doesn't take the punishment of sin away, what in the world good does it do? However, why is that Psalm read?
01:10:41
It's read because you might say in our, because Psalm 119 says over and over and over and over and over again, it's about the word of God, the word of God, the word of God, the word of God, the word of God.
01:10:51
And I would argue in that Psalm, it's talking about the written word of God. It's not talking about Jesus. That's kind of a strange thing.
01:10:57
They stand there over, over an icon of Jesus and read Psalm 119, which is about,
01:11:03
I mean, I mean, look at when you listen, listen to Psalm 119, it's a glorious Psalm. It's one of my favorite Psalms in the whole
01:11:09
Bible. Blessed are those who keep his commandments. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the
01:11:14
Lord, who seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity. They walk in his ways over and over and over again.
01:11:19
Look into your law, your commandments, your judgments, things like that. But the word, it's about the word of God, the written word of God, the law of God.
01:11:30
Instead, and on our behalf, he keeps the law of God perfectly.
01:11:39
So is that imputed to us or something? I mean, that's certainly true. He does do that, but these people don't believe in that.
01:11:45
The imputation of Christ's righteousness as Romans 4, 6 teaches us. And therefore his death is voluntary and therefore it destroys death and therefore the
01:11:58
Holy one cannot see corruption and God, so to speak, is obliged to raise him from the dead.
01:12:06
And that's how it works. So when we ask the question, what does it mean that Jesus died for us?
01:12:15
Simply put, it means that he revealed the truth. Yeah, that's what
01:12:21
I've always thought. What does it mean when I say as a Christian, Jesus died for me, he revealed the truth, did the truth.
01:12:30
He did the truth. The truth is love. The truth is love.
01:12:37
Fulfills it completely. He fulfills it. Therefore the law is now kept. Therefore God has no case against us.
01:12:46
Huh? He has no case against us. Against us. Meaning he can't bring a charge against us because Jesus took the punishment away, but he doesn't believe that.
01:12:59
So I don't know what he's talking about. Cause he can't have a case against us. If the law is not broken and he didn't break it.
01:13:05
Yeah. But what about our having broken it? What about our having broken it and having provoked the wrath of God?
01:13:12
That's what the propitiation is all about. Romans 3, 25, 1 John 2, 2, 1 John 4, 10,
01:13:18
Hebrews 1, verse three. And therefore he voluntarily enters into the realm of sin, curse, and death in order to obliterate it, to wipe it out once and for all forever.
01:13:32
And that's why Christians, classical Christians believe that when the Messiah dies on the cross, this sacrifice is all embracing is for the whole of humanity.
01:13:42
It's for the whole world. It's for Jews, Gentiles, Sodomites, Gomorrahites, all the people that God himself wiped out in the old
01:13:49
Testament. Everybody is raised by God through the death of Jesus without exception. And this is the judgment of the world.
01:13:57
And this is the gospel. And we would believe. See, and that's why I asked, uh, Orthodox person.
01:14:02
Um, sounds like he's a universalist to me. The death is for everyone on earth and everyone without exception is saved by it.
01:14:09
Everyone without exception is going to be raised up and, uh, no charge can be brought against us. God has no case against us because the law is fulfilled.
01:14:16
And that's for every single person in the entire human race. I said to an
01:14:21
Eastern Orthodox guy, so does, uh, you guys, do you all not believe in hell? Uh, and he said, no, no, no, we, we believe in hell.
01:14:27
And he sent me another message by the same guy, which believe it or not, is actually 10 times more confusing than this one, if you believe that try to live by it and most important of all die together with him, if you believe it and try to live by it, try to die together with him, cause you got to die with him.
01:14:50
If you're going to live with him, you got to love with my disciples, love one another as I have loved them completely, totally unqualified, even unto death with no exception whatsoever.
01:15:03
When there's the good news, love perfectly. And hopefully if you, if you love perfectly, maybe things will go well.
01:15:10
They do that, then they cannot die, but they can only do that by the power of Christ and by the power of the
01:15:17
Holy spirit. I can't do it without grace. Can't do it without the help of God. You can only do it with his help, but this is our faith.
01:15:25
This is our, our conviction, our faith, our conviction. Um, how can
01:15:31
I be saved? Um, God does his part. Hopefully I do my part in the meantime.
01:15:36
I can't have assurance cause I don't know if I've ever done enough. And there you go. There's a summary of all man's religions, all this blather to get to this point.
01:15:48
So one last word is he doesn't do all this. So we don't have to do it.
01:15:57
He does all this so that we would have the power to do it. There you go.
01:16:04
Synergism dressed up, um, with various garbs. You know, it's, it goes by many names, but it's always an interesting nuanced version of the same old thing.
01:16:18
This is the Galatian heresy. We're commanded to do it.
01:16:25
And our whole life is a struggle to love the way he loved and to keep the commandments the way he did.
01:16:30
And he said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments and not to give into evil, no matter what.
01:16:36
Even when people are spitting on us, mocking us, beating us, cursing us, stealing from us, robbing us, lying about us, deceiving us, kicking us out of Jerusalem, putting us on a cross with a couple of criminals and claiming that we are an imposter and a blasphemer.
01:16:52
You still love and the victory is one. And every so you better love, you better love as Jesus did.
01:17:02
There's, there's good news. There's good news for the brokenhearted. Go love better. And God will help you do it.
01:17:10
Everything is made right. That's the view, but we have to do it too. Or a little bit more humbly.
01:17:17
We have to struggle and pray to do it. And even a little bit more humbly, we have to confess when we don't do it and trust in the mercy of God to forgive us our sins too, for our failure as Christians.
01:17:33
But what we must never do is to say we don't need to do this.
01:17:41
We do, we do. That's the teaching. As the grounds of our acceptance with God or in response to his grace as an act of gratitude, that's the difference.
01:17:58
You see, Christians are motivated only by gratitude to love
01:18:03
God and neighbor. This system is motivated by self -centeredness. Why do
01:18:09
I do the good works that I do? Why do I want to go venerate this icon or that thing? And why should
01:18:14
I love those? Oh, I better, better do that or I might not end up in heaven.
01:18:21
See, the Christian does it out of gratitude. Why, why do I love my neighbor? Cause he's my neighbor. Why do
01:18:27
I love other people? Cause there are other people made in the image of God. I'm not trying to save myself. I'm not trying to make myself right with God.
01:18:34
Jesus already did that for me. And it's because of that, that gratitude is what motivates the
01:18:41
Christian ethic and the Christian way of life. There's a great text in second Corinthians 4 .15, for all things are for your sakes that grace having spread through the many may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.
01:18:53
Grace brings about gratitude, thanksgiving, not fear of punishment or hope of rewards.
01:18:59
But none of us does, but God sends his son, he does. And therefore everything is made right.
01:19:06
And we are loosed. We are redeemed. We are ransomed. We are forgiven. We are healed. We are raised. We are reconciled. We are liberated.
01:19:13
We are glorified. We are sanctified. We are deified all through the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus on the cross.
01:19:21
And are you as confused as I am? I have no idea what he thinks the gospel is. None. Then our whole life is to take up that cross and to struggle till our last breath, to love as he.
01:19:32
You see, this is why it is so important to allow the Bible, to define your theology, to have the biblical categories of justification and sanctification in place, and to have them clearly distinct from one another as they are in the writings of Paul.
01:19:44
If you read very carefully in exegete Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 and 8, you will see this as plain as the noonday brightness of the sun.
01:19:50
And it's exactly what he has completely muddled throughout this entire message.
01:19:56
And especially here at the end. And to admit it when we fail. And if we fail 70 times a day, we get up 70 times a day.
01:20:03
We say, father, forgive me. You start all over and he forgives us every single time because of the blood of Jesus.
01:20:12
There you go. That's the end of the, of that message. What can you say about that?
01:20:20
Well, it's very confusing. I don't think anybody that was there and listened to that has any idea what
01:20:28
Jesus did. That's what breaks my heart about it. As a preacher of the gospel, as a minister, as a called and ordained servant of the word of God, as someone who works very hard to try to make the
01:20:37
Bible understandable and clear to people, that was one of the worst 56 minute long messages
01:20:46
I've ever heard on anything. It was thoroughly confusing. It was a direct denial of biblical truth over and over again, all the while trying to sound by using biblical terminology, like he's affirming it, but it's very clear he's denying it.
01:21:04
And so Eastern Orthodoxy, the more I, the more I'm listening to these folks and interacting with them, there's a, there's a real smugness here.
01:21:13
We're the true church and the same kind of attitude I've seen in lots of other groups. And there's not a willingness to go to the text of scripture and to really look at it either.
01:21:25
Um, radio free Constantinople, uh, responding to that sermon, I was asked to listen to it with an open mind.
01:21:30
I did so. Um, I will say I learned nothing about the death of Jesus, um, except how to obfuscate it, how to dance a jig around what scripture says about it and how to make sure everyone that listened to you didn't understand it accurately or biblically.
01:21:46
And for that, I'm very sad and very sorry, but that's just fuel to the fire of my own resolve to be an evangelist for the truth and to speak the truth and to preach that truth so that people can hear that truth, repent, and come to Christ and be saved and know that they're saved and know that the punishment for their sin was taken away in the death of the shed blood of Christ.
01:22:07
Thanks for watching. This is
01:22:16
Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian church located at 108 Brittle Heights road in Kingsport, Tennessee.
01:22:22
And you've been listening to the Protestant witness podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m.
01:22:28
sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittleheightspca
01:22:38
.org and may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.