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

Welcome to the Protestant Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, we're at DuPont Hill Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee, 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, 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 Eastern Orthodox priest, so it was very strange, I still don't understand why that guy thought 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, 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. ...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, 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, and he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him.

The Death of Christ Must Be Understood Through Scripture, Not Distraction

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, 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 Pharisaic Jewish disciple of Gamaliel named Shoel, who became Paul, the apostle. So there's the first confession, Jesus is the Christ, but the Christ has to be crucified.

The Christ has to be crucified to be the 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.

Why? This is the part that makes no sense. Remember, having jettisoned everything the 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. He's got to be spit and beaten and mocked and crucified and killed to enter his messianic glory. 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. Remember, we agree with the lesbian lecturer on Christology. Why does he have to suffer? For what? We're not told. And if you're hoping to be told,.

Don't hold your breath. And in order to fulfill his messianic ministry, that is the outrageous teaching of the Christians that we identify with from the first century. That's not what.

Christians taught from the first century. In fact, a good friend sent me just a marvelous compilation of quotations that he's pulled from original research that he's done. Listen to this quotation from Athanasius.

This is from his book, The Life of Antony and Letters to Marcellinus. Listen to this. It says, Athanasius, commenting on Psalm 22, he says, in Psalms 22 and 69, again speaking in the Lord's own person, tell us further that he suffered these things, not for his own sake, but for ours.

Thou hast made thy wrath to rest upon me, says the one. And the other adds, I paid them things 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.

End quote. That's Athanasius. Athanasius, brother, couldn't agree more. Amen. Preach it, my dear brother. Preach it. That's exactly the view that this guy said was madness, was ridiculous.

Now in Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus asked the question, who do you say that I am? First he asked, who do the people say I am? They gave various answers. Then he said, who do you say I am? In Matthew, you have a longer confession.

The confession of Peter in Matthew's Gospel is, you are...

Now we go off into this long discussion of the Incarnation. But remember, the Incarnation is really important, but we're supposed to be being told here, what is the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the death of Christ?

Not the Incarnation. What is your understanding of his death?

The Christ...

This kind of goes on for a long time.

The Son of the Living God. The Son of the Living God. And not to get into that at all tonight, the interpretation of that sentence was, he is the only Son. There isn't any other. And God, the one true living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the prophets, is literally his Father.

I'd be careful with putting it quite like that. It's the eternal generation of the Son is a very important doctrine, monogamous theos, as John 119 says here. But again, one thing I've noticed among false teachers, and this guy is a false teacher.

This guy's a false teacher. 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 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.

None of this has anything to do with the topic before us, which is the cross, the death of Jesus. 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.

They're into icons and stuff like that. 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, and this goes on for a long time.

And that will be put in the theological gospel, the gospel according to St. John, by in the very first chapter, identifying Jesus with the Devar Yagve of the Jews, the Word of God, the Word of God. And so the prologue of St. John's gospel, which by the way, some of you who are not Orthodox who are here should know, it's the gospel that's read in this church, in Orthodox church, on Easter.

If you come to the Eucharistic service on Pascha, what we call Pascha, Passover, that's how we call it, Easter normally it's called in Western languages, 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.

That comes, it's at Matins, it comes during the week, it comes again and again. But at that particular moment, it's not. What is it? It's the gospel of St. John's beginning. In the beginning,.

Which is the same... 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. 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, the Bar, and the Word was with God, or around God, Chros ton Theon, and then he writes, the Word was Theos, the Word was God, the Word was Divine.

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 exegetum, that's where the death of Christ is explained. Why not go to Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

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. 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. 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. This is obfuscation. This is distraction. Let me show you a whole bunch of things that I know about the incarnation that are not even relevant to.

What 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. He came to His own, they did not receive Him.

I still don't know what you, what you believe about the death of Jesus, why it happened. And then it says, there was a man sent from God named John, and that meant John the Baptist, and he said he came to bear witness to this light, to this truth, but he was not the Christ.

And then it says, and this is the punchline, 14th verse, and the word became flesh. The word became flesh, flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. Actually, in Greek it says, the grace, the truth.

And we have beheld His kabod. That's a technical term in Hebrew.

It doesn't say the grace and the truth. It says, full of grace and truth. It doesn't say, there's no definite article in front of there. I'm looking at the Greek text right here in front of me. And again, this is, I'm sorry, but false teachers do this.

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 I'm talking about. Also, His divine, splendid, majestic, divine glory. We have seen it. The glory of the monogenes theos, the only begotten son. And some ancient texts even say monogenes theos, the only begotten God.

We have beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten God, and of His fullness, His pleroma, we have received harin anticharitos, grace on top of grace. And then it says, for the law came through Moses, the grace, the truth came through Jesus, and then you have the word.

That's actually.

Where it says the grace and the truth. It's not verse 14, it's verse 17, where it says,.

He caris cae he aletheia, dia Jesu Christu aegonata. Christ already, through Jesus, the Christ. And then it says, no man has seen 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.

It says, literally, He has exegeted Him. He has revealed Him. That's true. It says,.

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. 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 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.

Now, interestingly enough, the word in Hebrew, devar, which is word, doesn't just mean a spoken word. It certainly doesn't mean a written word only. The Bible. And too many Christians read the Bible as if it were a Koran.

The Bible is not the Koran. It doesn't fall from heaven intact. And for Christians, the Word of God is not a book. The Word of God is a person.

That's a false dilemma. In some places, the Word of God is the scripture. In other places, yes, you could make the case Jesus is the Lagos, but this is, again, just more obfuscation.

It's a person. It's Jesus of Nazareth, the only begotten Son of God who becomes flesh. And then, in Hebrew, the word devar doesn't only mean word. It means act. It means thing. It's synonym. Act, thing, word.

Because the 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? Now, this word becomes us as Jesus, and then it says this 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 Eastern Orthodox belief is about the death of Jesus.

And in the very first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, John the Baptist witnesses to him, and what does he call him? He calls him the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sin of the world. Now, lamb is a very biblical symbol.

You have the scapegoat lamb. You have the lambs of the sacrifices in the temple. Most important of all, you have the Passover lamb that is slain, and lamb becomes one of the titles of Jesus in the 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. The lamb, that's the title for it. In Latin churches, it's called the host, and hostia means sacrifice.

It means the lamb also. Now, why is he called the lamb? I mean, again, this guy has just an unbelievable penchant for missing the obvious. Why is he called the Lamb of God? Because he takes away the sin of the world, it says there.

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 New Testament, and in the Apocalypse, it's used 38 times. That Jesus is the lamb who conquers. He's the lamb who is victorious. He is the lamb through whom God destroys all the enemies, but he is the lamb who was slaughtered,.

Who was dead and made alive again. But why was he slaughtered? For our sins, as the punishment for.

Sin. Again, you see. So, it all comes ultimately through the cross. 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 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? What are you saying? The light, the peace, the way, the lamb.

But what does it do? What does the death of Christ do?

But central to it all is, he must suffer and die. In order to do the victory of God,.

He must be. Okay, now think about that. Central to it all is, he must die, as what he just said is, in order to do the victory of God. My question is, how? How does dying do the victory of God?

Betrayed, given up, surrendered, put into the hands of the Gentiles, put to death in a death which, according to Mosaic law, was a curse.

Yeah, it was the curse for sin. It was the punishment for sin. And Jesus was cursed for our transgressions of the law, the penal sanction, the penalty, the punitive retribution, the punishment was laid upon him.

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 in no other way, at the hands of Gentiles, as a criminal, with other criminals. All that has to happen, that's the Christian gospel, for the victory of God to be won.

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.

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? It doesn't make any sense.

On the planet Earth, all that has to happen. It begins from the moment he's conceived in Mary's womb. 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.

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. 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 Athanasius said,.

Flatly against everything this guy is saying. So this Jesus of Nazareth is divine who becomes human. He's God's own word through whom he creates the ages. He is the one by whom, through whom and for whom all things hold together.

He is the demiurge of God, the arm of God, the hand of God. 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 Jesus in that category, especially given the Greek philosophical usage of demiurge.

But he's really divine and becomes really human in order to suffer and to die to affect God's victory. And therefore,.

How does the death of Christ affect God's victory if it doesn't actually pay the punishment for sin? Against his people. Jesus came to save his people from their sins. That's what the angel told Joseph in the dream.

You shall give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. He just dies to show the victory. How? How does that show victory?

Or to show that he is the anointed one.

How does dying show he's the anointed one? Again, I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense. 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. 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.

Right. That's Deuteronomy 18. And definitely that is fulfilled in the office that Christ executes of our prophet, of being our prophet. He's also our priest and our king as well.

And if you don't listen to him, you're padding. And the apostle Peter, on the day of Pentecost, the 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.

Jesus of Nazareth, whom we crucified, is the prophet. He's the last one. He shows the truth of God. And that is a salvific, healing, redeeming act. Why?

Well, not really. 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. 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 Abrahamic promise there in Hebrews chapter 6, the Melchizedek priesthood, 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.

That's where you would want to go if you want to explain what is 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.

But, well, his death.

Achieves victory. How? We're not told. Because we must be healed from our ignorance. 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.

So the Messiah has to be the ultimate teacher. But the Messiah, in the New Testament understanding about Jesus of Nazareth, he's not only the ultimate teacher, the ultimate rabbi, he is the word itself.

He is not only the teacher, he's what is taught. He is not only the proclaimer, he's the proclaimed. He's the one who shows God, reveals God, speaks the ultimate word of God, is the ultimate word of God on the planet Earth.

And that is all perfected and.

Fulfilled when he dies on the cross. Why? Still, the death does not make any sense in this system. It's all fulfilled when he dies on the cross. Why does that have to happen? 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 Greek word, theteliste, in Greek. In Latin, it's two words, consummatum est. In English, usually it's three words, it is finished.

And most people don't understand it. 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. Everything is now fulfilled.

Everything is now completed. There's nothing more that God can say. There's nothing more that God can show. There's nothing more that God can do. In the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, God has done his final act.

That's it. 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.

It's a revelation of the truth. That's why Jesus...

How does Jesus's death on the cross do that? 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.

But we're also reliant upon what the scriptures tell us about him. We don't just, in a nebulous fashion, look to him. What we believe about Jesus has to be tempered by and limited to what God has told us about him in divine scripture.

If you go beyond.

That, you're looking in the wrong place. It says, I am the truth. It doesn't say, I'll show you the truth. He says, I am the truth. I am the light of the world. St. Paul says, in him is hidden all the fullness of divinity, somaticos, in bodily form.

So the first level of redemption and salvation is the salvation from ignorance, foolishness, darkness, madness, insanity, as Jesus the messianic prophet. And he shows this on the cross. Why?

Because on the cross, he reveals God. How? On the cross, he reveals God. How does him being nailed to wood reveal God? It reveals the love of God. 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.

But this guy says it is madness and it is insanity. It's blasphemy to think that Jesus is being punished on the cross. So somehow it reveals God, but it's not that. The cross does not conceal God.

The cross reveals God. How? And here there might be a little difference from certain Western Christian groups because the West, some Western churches say the cross is the theologia crucis, and then the resurrection is the theologia gloriae, that the cross is the humiliation and the darkness, and then the resurrection shows the glory.

In the Eastern church and in the Bible, the cross itself is the glory. The cross doesn't conceal God. The cross reveals God. Well, we would.

Certainly agree with that. Yeah, the cross is where the wisdom of God is on display,.

1 Corinthians 1 and 2, and his glory, without a doubt. It reveals God as love, as mercy,.

As forgiveness. Mercy? You mean mercy like on mercy, showing mercy to us because the punishment's.

Been taken away? 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.

So Jesus shows us what, who, how, and even why God, his real.

Father, how he is. Now, the messiah is also... 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 if it's not actually taking punishment away?

We are not told, and that's what makes this talk so completely confusing.

King. He's the messianic king. What does the king do? The king destroys the enemies. What are the enemies? The enemies are not the Canaanite people, the Moabites, the Jebusites, the Edomites, whom God slew back and forth, if you read the 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 Yahweh, the God of Abraham... Who's Yahweh? It's Yahweh, not Yahgweh.

I said, Jacob Moses is the real God. He's the God of gods, the Lord of lords, 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. This guy's penchant for missing the obvious is incredible to me. He's saying all kinds of stuff. That's true in one sense, but it doesn't explain the death of Christ.

In fact, the gospel of Jesus applies everything that the Bible applies to God the Father has applied to him in his divinity, but he reveals it in his humanity, in his humiliation, and in his death on the cross.

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? This makes no sense.

When Jesus dies, it is death that is put to death. When light enters the darkness of the tomb...

And what is death? Death is the punishment for sin.

The darkness is overcome. When righteousness is in touch with unrighteousness, an injustice is the injustice that is destroyed. When what is innocent and pure is entering into what is ugly and unholy, it's the unholy that is defeated.

It's the unholy that is defeated. 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 curse for us, sin for us. This is all the words of St. Paul.

That I don't believe. So he can become curse for us and sin for us. Wow.

He can become a humiliated slave for us, and that becomes then what the Holy Father has called the blessed exchange.

The blessed exchange. Josiah Trenum in his book, Rock and Sand, said that we don't believe in the blessed exchange.

He who is powerful becomes weak through his weakness, his power is victorious. He who owns everything and is 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.

And ultimately, when he dies, he is the one who is ultimately victorious. And so the main hymn of Pascha of Easter in the Orthodox churches, Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs, bestowing life.

But what about the Messianic priesthood? What about the sacrifice? What about the redemptive act? Yeah, what about that? He could be Messianic prophet, he could be Messianic king, but why did he have to offer himself as a victim on the cross?

See now, he recognizes he still hasn't answered that question. He knows he hasn't. He hasn't. So let's see if he does here. But like I said, this is the third time I've listened to.

This. Don't hold your breath. 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, hiperpolon, for the multitude?

And by the way, when it says for many,.

That's a Hebraism that means for everyone. No, it doesn't. It's not a Hebraism that means.

Everyone. It means for the multitudes, for everybody, for all. Why is it... No, many means many. ...that John, in his letter, twice will call him a elasmos, translated in the King James Bible as propitiation for sin.

Translated in the Revised Standard as expiation... Expiation is not a good translation of hilasterion or hilasmos. ...for sin. Why is 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, why is that applied to him?

Well, no, the Ebed Yahweh in Isaiah, it doesn't say that he's just beaten up and blah, blah, blah. It's for our transgressions, for our iniquities, for our sins. Not just beaten up to show the victory of God.

It's for our sins. How does that work? And please remember, he knows he hasn't answered this yet, and he hasn't. 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?

What does it mean that? He's got to go through, you know, a hundred biblical themes and try to explain them away.

Or to put it in the way we started, why is it that his death fulfills the law? Why is it that his death satisfies divine justice?

Yeah, it fulfills the law and satisfies divine justice. That means punishment. The retributive penal sanction of having broken the law is satisfied by the death of Christ. That's what propitiation assumes, that God has wrath against sin that is propitiated, placated by the shed blood of the innocent Christ.

Why is it that his death removes the wrath of God?

See, and again, this is a very common tactic of false teachers. He's just leading you along the way here. He's asking, I mean, he has asked this question, I'm serious, at least 50 times already. We are now 38 minutes and 44 seconds into the sermon, and he still hasn't answered it.

From God's creation that was duly rightly put upon it because of sin and transgression. In other words, why does it work? Why does it work? And here's where we get to the main point for tonight.

Well, that's good because we're 39 minutes into this sermon now. 39 minutes in, now we're getting to the main point. Folks, are you ready? You ready for this? Here's the understanding of the only true church on earth, their exegetical insights into the word of God about the very death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and what it means.

You ready? Here we go.

It is not because he's punished.

There you go. How does it satisfy divine justice? How does it reconcile us to God? How is it a ransom? It is not because he's punished, he says.

God doesn't want the punishment, and in the scripture, God wants to punish nobody.

You hear that? 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. It is not because he's punished. God doesn't want the punishment, and in the scripture, God wants to punish nobody.

Wow. You know what that means? That means that the death of Jesus on the cross is a cruel and arbitrary act on God's part that accomplishes nothing. God doesn't want to punish anybody. God is holy. Part of God's nature is divine retribution.

God has to punish sin. God is zealous for his own glory. And yes, indeed, God does punish sin. It's all the way through the whole Bible. God punishes sin. And this part of the sermon, this is why I was just like, this guy's a flaming liberal.

Okay, I'm sorry. God doesn't want the punishment. He doesn't want to punish. He wants to punish no one. Okay, keep listening.

It is not that he's paying off God. St. Gregory the theologian, one of the great Greek fathers of the fourth century, said to think that paying the price was paying God is a blasphemy.

Notice here again, I mentioned this in the previous program. Um, he will quote with such sublime awe, these Greek Orthodox theologians. But when he quotes the Bible, he chuckles and laughs. I think that's very telling.

Very telling. To say he's paying God is blasphemy. That's exactly what Jesus did. Jesus's death on the cross is the propitiation of the wrath of God. It is the payment of the punishment, the penalty for our transgressions, for our sins.