[Music] [Music] hello welcome to another installment of your favorite low production crystall logically concentrated YouTube program the Jesus trip I am your middle-aged host and part-time goat Farmer John Crowder this will be part six of 10 in our current ongoing series titled Covenant versus contract a good way to summarize this series is that God did not need to be paid off to love you and he will continue to love you even if you never return the favor but you eventually will for love will have the final word love is the final word love does not
coer you but it is the greatest power that is guaranteed to melt you now this week's topic picks up on the last we are talking about Justice and specifically what I want to address is the reality that Justice and mercy are not two bipolar sides of God's personality but in fact Justice and mercy from God's perspective are the exact same thing so to conceive of the Gospel as God's so-called Justice poured out on Jesus so that we could avoid his wrath well that's asinine because most folks are thinking Judge Judy and they have zero context
for justice in a biblical sense in fact you may want to review last week's episode God is not just not by our definitions anyway so let's start with a couple of scriptures Isaiah 30: 18 yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you therefore he will rise up to show you compassion for the Lord is a God of Justice so you see here that just Justice and compassion are actually the same thing this is not the ninth Circuit Court we're talking about here and similarly Zechariah 7:9 this is what the Lord Almighty said administer True
Justice okay how it goes on to say show mercy and compassion to one another God's justice is Mercy and compassion but that Revelation only comes through seeing a God that looks like Jesus a judge Who Bore our own self-imposed judgment not paying off a legalistic father who doesn't look like Jesus but carrying the ramifications of our own disease of sin a God who became our sin laid his own life down to our heinous cruelty and annihilated that sin within his own servant body in order to liberate his children to be the Divine offspring that we
are this was not a legal maneuver in an imaginary courtroom in the sky so God could pretend that we're holy thanks to to Jesus and could therefore stomach being around us Scoundrels the gospel is not a legal contract no he has actually liberated us from the infection of sin now we're still waking up to that but look this is where we're going to do some serious theological work and anger back to the point of this whole series okay I don't put these things together just to fill space like your pastor on Sunday morning we're shooting
for something groundbreaking here okay so unto the Greek the word for Justice which is also where we get justification justify and even corollary words like righteousness these come from the Deo family of Greek terms which mark my words have almost nothing to do with the English concepts of Justice justify justification or righteousness in other words you were given a false bill of sale when you were told that this had to do with legal judicial fantasy courtroom nonsense when God pretended that you were positionally or legally holy thanks to the death of Jesus now I'll explain
see God loves you in your sin enough to actually free you from that sin he doesn't have to put on his blood of Jesus glasses to pretend you're a good guy the blood of Jesus is not a coverup job so Deo in Greek got translated into the Latin Vulgate Bible the Bible used for all of Europe for a thousand years as the Latin word eustia from once we get the word justice and this immediately took on the shape of Roman Empire version of Justice it's Beast Justice okay primarily a legal justice hence where we start
thinking of the Gospel in terms of legal contract instead of family love rescue Covenant Justice became framed in retributive terms get what you deserve sort of thing the word judge carried into Latin brought this whole Latin Roman concept but before we look at the Greek let let's push all the way back to the Hebrew for a second think of the Book of Judges okay judges these were the deliverers of Israel a judge in Hebrew was a deliverer he or she set the people free released them from their enemies one who sets everything right in a
similar vein even think of the Book of Ruth in Hebrew a goel translated as a kinsman redeemer think Boaz and Ruth if you got in trouble let's say you went bankrupt you had creditors breathing down your neck threatening your life and you go to your closest relative well they don't they're not supposed to ask any questions this person steps into your place pays all your debt sets things right liberates you a saving judge you see the family aspect of this you don't get into God's family you are God's family his very children despite the fact
you don't know who your daddy is Allan Torrance says in short we have a foreign religion emerging the res schematization of a primarily filial family relationship toward Humanity as a fundamentally legalistic one this legal contract view of Salvation now we're going to get into this more in future episodes but Deo in Greek which would be translated into Justice and and I mean our modern view of Justice which does not look like Mercy well Deo actually means Deliverance it means rescue set free Exodus a Liberation from sin and death to be justified is not a pretend
legal status where God acts like you're not a sinner no the real meaning of the word means him meeting us right in the darkness of our confusion and actually concretely liberating us even righteousness there's no positional pretend imputed righteousness where God pretends on paperwork that you're perfect no even righteousness is a family word has more to do with right relationship you've been restored to relationship and are seated right now in the circle of Father Son and Holy Spirit So This Modern idea of so-called Justice is Pagan fiction as we mentioned last last week it's an
anthropomorphism that means projecting human ideas onto God human ideas of legal wrath legal retribution but the word deaun justice is a translation of the Hebrew word Sedaka and that word is actually the Divine energy which achieves man's salvation this idea of justice is actually deliverance from sin again not legal fiction to protect us from our own father God is is the deliverer and this is actually parallel and almost the same as another Hebrew word has said which means Mercy or compassion in fact love it's connected to the word emth which means Fidelity or truth guys
we've gotten this so backward and this would have made me so angry years ago and it does but it really just saddens me the thought at how oppressed people are how lost and disconnected people are from the reality of God's love who've been sold a false bill of goods and the crappier people feel about themselves they just get beat up at church with these Pagan views of God and his just wrath and Holiness that's somehow against them and it just causes them to spiral more and more into Despair and the delusion of this mental illness
the the church fathers who actually spoke Greek ironically they got this but Protestants don't take them seriously because the church apparently started with Martin Luther a monk who was so scared of hell he and Calvin and the boys were asking the wrong questions and help solidify This legal fiction that if you have faith God will pretend that you're holy in a cosmic courtroom now look I I I I love so much about Luther I'm not running Luther under the bus but I'm just saying where's the intimacy here and what developed in protestantism was something called
the Ordo salus which is the order of Salvation which means the steps processes of appropriating Salvation okay that is you must be first convicted of sin by the law and then step two realize you're a scumbag and then turn to Faith and then your faith becomes a legal loophole where you weren't able to fulfill the law then God will pretend that you're holy even though you're not and then he will decide not to fry you forever on Judgment Day well te of Torrance calls this the Latin heresy and look my friends it doesn't work the
whole thing is driven not by love but by individual ual istic self-interest by fear of judgment if you look at that cartoonish legalistic version of hell if if you get that out of the equation how many folks would still even be Christians it's just behavior management so many aren't Christians out of love for Christ but out of fear of Hell which by definition they're not yet Christians just god-fearers what this does it it sees God's justice as his primary attribute and his love is a secondary thing the real issue under the contract model is getting
all this law and sin stuff worked out before the love of Jesus even comes into the equation and you got to deal with sin before you even get to the relationship but the truth is you can't even adequately understand the sin problem until after God's Own self-disclosure in Jesus I mean your very reasons for approaching him were sinful and self-serving if if this were about legal holiness you wouldn't even just you wouldn't comprehend the nature of your problem much less understand the actual solution in Jesus are you guys following me are you ready to flip
over to Joe Rogan yet I mean I'm not even in the room with you and I can feel your attention dissipating what I'm saying is this it's all about love Fellowship relationality coia but if we start with this legal contract sin problem that needs to be justified before we come to God as Sinners we couldn't even comprehend our problem much less the solution but according to the contract in our pre-christian state we needed to First understand we are sinners and the whole thing was driven by this conditional agreement obey and you're rewarded disobey and you're
punished now maybe we we could grasp that because that's how our whole Twisted Western culture is modeled Crime and Punishment and then we needed to see that we couldn't obey and so then Faith becomes the new lead legal contract and from there on you're always looking over your shoulder to make sure you've believed enough but no Christ died for us while we were still Sinners this was a rescue again an exodus he reaches into our helplessness our wretched humanity and pulls us out of its condition and transforms it which is an act of Mercy which
is simultaneously an act of delivering restorative justice setting things right we didn't just need legal forgiveness we needed actual deliverance from the problem itself who will rescue me from this body of death we must start with Christ and then we can rightly see and understand the sin problem we can't be expected that while we're still in the blindness of our sin to understand sin and then understand justification by faith and all this nonsense transactional requirement list did the guy being crucified next to Jesus understand justification ation theory in order to enter Paradise that day God's
justice is his Mercy God's Wrath is his love Malcolm Smith says the wrath of God is never to be thought of as the opposite of Love there is no opposite in God God is not God intention where there are opposites within him when we say the wrath of God it isn't that God lost it with human beings and just flew off the handle or got mad no please that's paganism he says the wrath of God is the love of God the wrath of God is his passionate Limitless passion love to overcome anything and everything that
would separate humankind from his love purpose so if Justice is Mercy let's now look at the flip side Mercy is Justice Mercy is not just an overlooking of sin although it does that but an actual just deliverance from sin as Paul says his grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness uh George McDonald the primary influence on CS Lewis was a genius at reconciling these seeming opposite characteristics in God you see McDonald doesn't separate God's justice Holiness and wrath from his goodness love and mercy his love is a consuming fire his Justice is bound to
destroy the sin that afflicts Us in order to deliver his child Justice is not condemnation revenge or Vendetta and by no means is McDonald light on sin he's Puritan Fireball okay there there's no flippant reprieve where it just doesn't matter how we live you know just because all may ultimately be saved now yes all will be saved in McDonald's vision of the Gospel but love loves unto Purity his vision of apocatastasis the restoration of all things should literally scare the hell out of you okay for mcdonal Donald it is God's mercy that at times he
gives us what we choose if we want to talk about Justice God's will allow us to so what we re if we demand it in order to learn to despise the disease of sin and to be healed so McDonald he quotes Psalm 62:12 so ironically it's beautiful he says ALS the verse says also unto thee Oh Lord belongs Mercy For You render to every man according to his work so let's look at the flip side here Mercy as Justice giving us according to our work now that may not sound merciful that may not sound gracious
oh but it is we don't think of Mercy as giving according to your Deeds but for McDonald if we refuse to turn to him he demands we pay the last Farthing but this is not Eternal torture I mean if God gives eternal torment for finite limited Earthly sins that's not just for McDonald God's Justice is healing it is allowing us to face certain consequences for the sake of our Redemption with the goal of healing our diluted will uh curing our desires nothing whatsoever to do with legal retribution far from it it has to do with
a father instructing his children origin the church's first systematic Theologian likewise believed in apocatastasis the ultimate restoration of all things of all people as the majority of the early church fathers did well origin references the Eternal Flame of Matthew 25 and by the way you must remember that in the Greek the word Eternal here uh isn't necessarily forever and the word punishment is colesis it's a Horticultural term for pruning it's healing it's corrective okay an age of Correction origin knew that he never read an English Bible in his life okay well origin quotes Isaiah 5011
walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled for yourself now we touched on this last episode but I'm going to continue on this a bit because origin says the fire cannot be something that precedes The Sinner himself as if lit by someone else God's uncreated fire of love is to bless us but in terms of what seems to us to be a negative hellish experience of this flame it must be that quote every sinner kle for himself the flame of his own fire so with his own sins providing
the tender so origin takes this image further now buckle up okay I don't like to use this language but you got to understand where origin's coming from he says our sins are not only like straw fed to a roaring flame but like an excess of nasty germs ingested from eating filth which overrun the body and produce a broiling fever hallucinations accompany this fever fever and the sickly sinner is forced to relive every wrong he or she has ever done as they bubble to the surface of perception the mind says origin will be exposed before its
eyes a kind of history of its evil deeds and every foul and disgraceful act in all Unholy conduct now that's a colorful description now origin is not a literalist okay hardly ever and and and he did not believe in God tormenting folks forever plus it would be quite boring if you know all of our sins are just played at the end of our lives like a movie in the afterlife I mean it' get kind of boring after a while we've all done the same sins right ontologically your old sinful self has already been eradicated in
Christ that's the good news if we reject the Divine Mercy the fire of God's love may be received as quite uncomfortable as many of the father said hell is heaven wrongly received I believe it was Isaac of Nineveh who said hell is Regret really at the end of the day you're not accepting your acceptance but origin's point is that the fire only Burns us if we're adding sinful baggage to be burned now there are plenty of sobering passages like this throughout the Corpus of origin's work and the fathers do not dismiss the severity of rejecting
Grace nor are they saying that suffering itself heals us or that God gives suffering but for McDonald God is not so much concerned with taking away the negative effects of sin say the suffering as he is concerned with removing the cancer itself he allows us to taste the bitterness of those Waters so that we turn so that we're healed it's a severe Mercy but it's not about retribution it's about our deliverance and the question is what is this fire and how do we relate to the fire of his love and no matter the broken stubborn
determinism to fight against the love of the father his love is stronger than our hard-headed resistance he is a master surgeon who cures our stubborn resistant will our deluded desires origin says if all the factors that St Paul listed in Romans 8 cannot separate us from God's love still less shall our free will be able to separate us from God's love or as George McDonald puts it but there is a light that goes deeper than the will a light that lights up the darkness behind it that light can change your will can make it truly
yours and Not Another Not the Shadows into the created can pour itself the creating will and so redeem it for origin as with many early church fathers and mothers God so-called Justice was a mercy it was the very flame of the all-consuming love of God aimed at curing his creature I mean even quoting Matthew 22 cast him out into outer Darkness origin said so that living out there in the outer Darkness he may become thirsty for the light and cry out to God who can help him and liberate him guys I did not intend for
this session to go to hell maybe we'll do a a series coming up soon on the allc consuming fire in coming days but rest assured this is a healing fire it's the fire of love that burns up the wood hay and stubble of our lives so that the gold silver and precious stones of the Divine image come forth all of us will be salted with fire and again as Jesus says oh that we're already kindled and I've mentioned this is the very fire of Pentecost it's the fire of his loving presence and if you dread
it then you need to get your head on the shoulders because this is the last thing you'd ever want to fizzle out this fire of Love is the very Bliss of the saint does it purify yes is it healing yes is it justice yes is it Mercy 100% yes but by no means is this some retributive payback scheme it's not legalistic it's not Vendetta it's a Curative judgment against sin itself which in our baptism we recognize we already died to in Jesus we're talking about the white hot love of the father for his children we're
talking about restoration if exposure is ever involved it's for for healing Not For Shame not for suffering he is the Liberator from such things so let's drop this religious contract idea of a God who can't stomach to be in the presence of Sinners as Alan torrent says the universal tendency of human pride is to want to turn God's Covenant of Grace into a contract so let me switch gears here at the end because next week we'll dive into Romans a bit more to explore the common Evangelical IDE idea of justification Theory but just from what
we've learned so far in this series how about we take a look at one mangled English Bible verse from what we now have learned in Greek okay it's a verse that will segue into next episode for us it's one of those verses that when read incorrectly does indeed sound like salvation is a contract and it's Romans 51 I'll read it from a standard English translation therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ okay who's faith and what is justification having your papers magically stamped his holy
in that courtroom to save you from the legal execution or God we aren't rescued by our own flimsy fickle attempt at believing if salvation is up to my faith again how much is enough do I believe enough until I'm not sleeping with the interns do I believe enough until I walk walk on water that is humanistic nonsense me me me I do not save myself and as we said faith is not our transactional part in this legal scheme called justification you will remember from our previous episode that the pistus faith language in Paul is relating
to Jesus's own perfect faithfulness pistus christu is not faith in Christ but the very Faith of Christ we are rescued by his Fidelity my belief in him doesn't make him good further furore justification Is Not Mere legal acceptance there were no courtrooms in Paul's day justification and the other Deo rooted words Justice justify righteousness it means actual Deliverance Jesus isn't saving us from himself or from his bloodthirsty father he's rescuing us from our own plunge into the self-destruction of sin and death so these two verses first two verses of Romans 5 are better translated like
this and I will give Douglas Campbell Credit for this we're going to talk more about Douglas Campbell next episode it goes like this quote being delivered through faithfulness I.E the faithfulness of the righteous one we will have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we also have access by means of that Fidelity that faithfulness into this favor by which the means of which we stand now Paul goes on to explain in this chapter Romans 5 that we're saved uh indeed from wrath but again you'll remember your English Bible spirly adds of God
after that phrase it's not even there God has no wrath except that which is an extension of his love against the darkness that has molested us his wrath saves us okay his children his wrath is positively for us Paul then explains that the last Adam has gotten inside of our corporate Humanity in order to heal it to Lance the boil of that bubbling disease and bring us into wholeness and in the same chapter here we read therefore as one trespass in Adam has led to condemnation for all men so one righteous act in Jesus Christ
leads to deliverance and life for all men guys the church's Creed Rings true that the sun will return in glory and goodness to judge the quick and the dead but is this judgment retributive or is it a restorative judgment it is a Deo delivering redeeming Exodus judgment in which every eye will see the desire of all Nations where every knee bows and every tongue confesses this irresistible Beauty when our wandering broken Wills are truly free to respond to their deepest desire without the hindrance of the World the Flesh the devil the delusion an ultimate apocalyptic
unveiling revealing of the the Judgment which has already come to the World on Calvary when we look to see that the cross is indeed the throne the Judgment seat upon which the slain lamb has borne away the disease of Adam's race we'll see you next week hey guys if you are looking for a wild adventure I want to welcome you to come out for a live inperson event this year 2024 for some Hands-On gospel interaction I'm coming to Reading California later this year it's my only event on the west coast plus don't miss our Holy
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