If God Is Forgiving, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? | Table Talk S03 E07

These conversations have just been so enlightening, but also exciting. I. I don't know if you guys. Well, I do know that you guys identify with it.

Absolutely.

Yeah. This is actually fun. There's all kinds of fun. There's the fun of bungee jumping, there's the fun of surfing, there's the fun of playing tennis.

I'm glad you mentioned what I do.

The fun of.

There's the fun of eating waffles.

Hiking, champagne.

My point is, there's all kinds of fun, different kinds of fun, but intellectual and emotional and spiritual fun. The fun of discovery.

There you go.

And the fun of fellowship.

Yeah. When you realize something that raises your gaze on your fellow human beings and you just have higher hope and confidence and raises your perspective on God. And you're thinking, wow, God is more beautiful than I ever imagined. And I thought he was beautiful. And now suddenly, it just goes to a whole new level. Amen. That's what I've been experiencing in these conversations.

Me, too.

It's fun for us. I wonder if it's fun for the cameraman.

I'm wondering.

Do people realize.

He didn't want to answer.

Do the viewers realize that we are also experiencing, learning that we're grasping things and seeing things? You know what I'm saying? In other words, one that's coming here and saying, okay, yeah, this is all we know, all this stuff. Unless this John, chapter one, that was big. I know.

That was big for me.

That was beautiful.

Loved it.

God gave Ty real clarity on that. And I love the whole Deuteronomy 30 thing. Then the Proverbs 4, Proverbs 8, and then we went to Romans 10. I love that whole section.

Well, let's set this one up. This is the Hard Questions series, and we're tackling some difficult subjects. What are you thinking?

I just had a thought. Could you remember. Just a little pop quiz here on the spot. Pop quiz. Can you remember the hard questions that we've already done?

Number one.

What was number one?

Does God exist and how can I know?

How do I know what was number two?

Is the Bible trustworthy or is it the word of God?

Okay, number three.

If God is good, why do we suffer?

Why is there so much suffering?

Number four.

Number four.

I remember this one. This was, if God is in control, are we really free?

Yeah. Then number five was, can people who have never heard the name of Jesus be saved?

Excellent.

And then number six was, do we.

Need God in order to be more.

And now this question.

Those are good questions.

Those are good questions.

And I love at least the trajectory of the direction of the answers that we've given. And there's still an infinity beyond. It's not like here at the same of the four of us of like, okay, that's it. No more needs to be said. There's this great quotation from. I think it was CS Lewis who said that many a book has not been written because the author feared that his word would not be the last on the subject. You know, it's like, no, we're freely admitting that we're groping in the darkness, coming up with some gems. But there is an infinity beyond. We'd love to see small groups, churches, kitchens, living rooms.

And if we were to answer the question a year from now, we would probably answer it in a different way.

In a different way in the same general direction.

Yeah. Because Scripture is inexhaustible. So you look at the same passage, the same chapter, a year from now, and through your experiences, it has changed.

And a year from now, we would have changed. A year from now, we will be different people.

So your perspective on the text takes a different shape.

Somebody was disappointed in me one time. Well, a lot of times, but once that didn't sound right. But I got communication.

One time, somebody who was disappointed in me sent me a letter and said, I'm disappointed because I've detected a change in your view of X topic, and I can't remember what the topic was. And I was a little troubled by that. And I thought, well, how do I answer that? And the only answer that came to my mind and I wrote back and I said, what happened was I kept reading.

I love that answer. I've heard you say that before.

And I love that if you are comfortable in every respect, with every detail of what you believed last year, right now, or how you configured your understanding of God and the way you relate to people, if you're completely.

And how you communicate it to others.

And how you communicate if you're completely satisfied and in exactly the same place right now as you were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Yeah, something's wrong. Something's wrong. The truth is, you're not actually looking carefully at the complexity of the beautiful subjects that Scripture presents.

Another way I've heard that said, it's.

Like saying you've arrived.

Yeah.

Another way I've heard that said is if you haven't added a new belief to your worldview or to your system or discarded an old one in the last couple of years, and you're just simply not Using your brain.

Yeah, you're not mature.

Another way to say it is, if any man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet, as he ought to know. And Proverbs 4:18 says, the path of.

The just is like a shining light that shines more and more perfect until the perfect end. And yet another way of saying it.

Paul.

Paul.

Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.

And we see as a child, we speak as a child, or we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face.

It's progressive, isn't it?

And in glory to glory.

Well, that's faith to faith, day by day.

The topic that we're tackling now is a seriously difficult one. And quite honestly, I'm not even sure all that will emerge in our conversation, because this is a challenging question. And the question is this. If God is forgiving, then why did Jesus have to die? In other words, you could ask the question this way. If God is forgiving, that is, if that's his state of being, he's already that way. Why did Jesus have to die? Another way to ask the question is like this.

Was the death of Jesus necessary in order for God to forgive? To forgive. That would be another way of coming at the question. And yet another.

Way of looking at it is to ask this. Did God need. Did God need to see or inflict suffering in order to forgive? So you can come at that question from a number of different.

I can see how that could be really controversial.

That's a thorny question.

You could also ask the question like this. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first? Forgiveness. And then the sacrifice. Or the sacrifice and then forgiveness. You see what's going on there? There's a dynamic to the whole thing.

Did Jesus die because it was necessary for him to die in order for God to show us his love? Or did God do that? Just what am I trying to say?

I don't know.

Is it necessary, legal, the legal language, Jesus had to die, or is that just a way God expressed his love? You see what I'm saying? Was it a necessity or was it just a way for God to express?

So you do feel the weight of the question? I feel the weight of the question. It's not a trite, simple. Here's one Bible verse, and we can close with prayer.

None of these questions are that way.

Yeah, it's genuinely a hard question. So where would you begin? I've thought it through and I think I know where I would begin. But where would you begin to answer that question?

Well, let me Just say this right at the outset. And I think this would be just helpful for the readers to know a bit of behind the scenes or the.

Reader'S experience or the viewers.

In many cases. This being a case in point, we just sit down. This is a table talk. It's not like, okay, James, then you'll say this. And after he's done talking for about two minutes, then you come in. Here's the question. And in many of these questions, we're thinking about it right now.

Here are my notes.

Show that to the camera.

Here are my notes.

Basically, just read it, read it.

There.

It's number seven. If God is forgiving, why did Jesus have to die? And then there's just a bunch of lines with nothing written down. Because we're genuinely trying to understand this subject. We want to comprehend it. Now, as I approach the subject personally, I think that the best place to start is in Genesis 3, and I'll tell you why. In Genesis chapter 3, we see the fall of humanity and we see the aftermath of that fall is some very serious psychological and emotional fallout. Adam and Eve are impacted by the fall and they experience.

Guilt and fear and a sense that they are now in need of covering. Something needs to compensate. Something needs to make up something. This can't be exposed. What I am is no longer to be open to just the gaze of God and one another. They're afraid, they're hiding. They're hiding from God. They're expecting something from God that is unlike what you see, actually pan out. They're expecting God to come in such a way that requires them to hide. Then God does come, and he says, where are you? They come and present themselves before him. And they say, we were naked and afraid, so we hid ourselves. God says, who told you you were naked? Who told you you were naked? And then God proceeds to explain that there will be something that he refers to with the language curse. There's going to be fallout. Things are going to happen. Things are going to unfold upon the human race because of the fall, because of sin. And then God makes a promise that I'm going to save you. I'm going to do something. I'm going to step into human history. I'm going to send through the lineage of the woman a seed, a particular offspring, capital S, capital O. And that offspring is going to crush the head of the serpent and.

Is.

Going to turn the tide of history. So that's Genesis chapter three. I think that that is the basis for the answer to the question, is God forgiving.

And If God is forgiving, why would Jesus have to die? Why didn't God just come into the garden, in other words, and say, listen, I forgive you? Let's just move on from here? Why not?

When I think of that question first.

That was a great synopsis, by the way.

I'm thinking we should follow our rule that we've been following, that is, define our terms. Okay, if God is forgiving, I would just stop right there.

On that word, forgiving. What is the nature of the thing that God is trying to find a solution for? What's the nature of the thing that's going on?

What's the nature of forgiveness?

Well, what's the nature of the thing? What is the nature of the thing that's being forgiven? Okay, since to me, an exploration of the nature of sin and the nature.

Of God, I'm thinking that would take.

Us into some good territory there to show.

What is the inevitable answer to that question? What is the thing being forgiven?

Well, there's no better place to start than Genesis 3.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Where you started, I think is the place. But analyzing that question, I think James.

Has something on the tip of his tongue.

2. Nature of sin and the nature of God. Who is God? Who is he? And then what is sin? Those two things. We identify those two things. And I'd like to start with God. Just in the context of Exodus chapter 20. Just looking at. There's a number of verses in the Old Testament, but just this verse, this one verse in Exodus chapter 20, God is giving to Moses for the people a revelation of the Ten Commandments, which is really a revelation of him, his character, what he's like. And in the context of this, he actually describes himself in this way. In verse six, he says. He says, showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

Excuse me. Verse 5.

Sorry.

Thou shalt not bow down unto thyself, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. In other words, verses 5 and 6 are basically saying, and in a number of other verses we can affirm this, that God is merciful and God is just. God is love. And in being a God of love, God is merciful. He wants to forgive, forgive, forgive, But God is also just. There's this aspect to love that includes being just or being what my daughter Says a lot of. And it's really funny because.

There'S this.

Innate sense of justice even in kids today. My daughter is five years younger than my son, and when he got to a certain age, he had a lot of liberties that she didn't have. And when these liberties started, we started to bestow them on him. And she saw these liberties that he had that she didn't have. She said, that's not fair. Just is fair. God is fair. God is fair. He's just, but he's also merciful. Now, in the thinking of sin, and we still need to identify that, but just to get us moving in that direction, in that thinking, how can you forgive sin and allow mercy and justice both at the same time? That's a dilemma, I think, that we have to deal with.

That's at the heart of the question.

That's at the heart of the question.

It's a balancing act that is. Can I say it this way? It's a balancing act that is natural to God's character. In other words, God is 100% fully just, and God is 1, 100% fully merciful. And both of those.

Attributes, both of those hemispheres of reality are present in God simultaneously all the time.

They're not playing against.

They're not playing against one another. There's a sense in which, as you read Scripture, you get the sense that in fact, they're one in the same thing. And that's the composite word that James used, and that's love. For example, we think of justice as.

Dealing out punishment sometimes. But if you read the word justice over and over again in the Old Testament, God is asking his people to exercise justice by being merciful to the poor. He's saying, you've got the oppressed and the widows and the people who are in need. Do the right thing, be just, by extending compassion and mercy and relieving their suffering. So in that sense, do justly love.

Mercy, walk humbly with your God.

So mercy is justice. Or you could say it this way. The right thing to do, the just thing to do, is to forgive, to be merciful simultaneously. If you flip it around, the merciful thing to do is to be just. So they're married in the character of God. They are one and the same thing, manifesting themselves for different needs and situations. So I think we're getting at the heart of the matter. By the justice and mercy thing, I'm.

Jumping way ahead, perhaps, but I just like to center this in the cross. And a lot of times when we talk about the love of God and the manifestation of that love in Jesus Christ. I like to ask the question, when you look at Calvary, what do you see? Mercy or justice? Yes, yes.

Oh, I said the same thing.

And this is what I think Ty is saying. Inevitably, we look at the heart of God and we see the perfect blending of both. And you see this in the Book of Revelation. There's this picture in the Book of Revelation of the throne of God, and there's this rainbow, this emerald rainbow, this green rainbow above the throne. Now, does it say emerald? Well, the color there is. I think it's emerald, yeah.

Oh, man.

I don't remember that. It doesn't say it in the King James. But in other.

No, I'm just. I'm not questioning you. I just. That's a beautiful picture. Came into my mind.

I didn't heard that. And when we think of a rainbow in our physical world, when we look out in nature and we look for a rainbow, there are two elements that are necessary for a rainbow to be present. The first element, of course, is rain. Most of the times when there's a blue sky and sunshine, we're not going to even think that there's going to be a rainbow possibility. But the other element that is necessary for a rainbow is sunlight. Sunshine have to have sunshine. So you have this rain coming down, and then all of a sudden the clouds break, the sun comes through, and then you're looking around, you're thinking, there's got to be a rainbow around here somewhere. It's a combination of these two elements that seem to be opposite. Usually you either have rain or you have sunshine. But when these two elements come together and they blend perfectly, you have this rainbow.

Beautiful.

And so when you look at the throne of God, it says, it's established. And this is so powerful to me because in Revelation 5, the word used is the throne. I saw a throne set in heaven. And then in Revelation 5, it gives us a picture of the Lamb slain in the midst of the throne. So what I think is happening here is that we're seeing Calvary establishing God's throne in our minds and hearts, establishing this picture of love that is based on the perfect blend of justice and mercy.

I like that rainbow analogy. Where I live in Australia, on the southern part of the Gold coast, we get a lot of those beautiful rainbows because they'll be storms just offshore, and the sun will be shining. You know, as the sun is going down in the west, it will just light up the sky. I mean, we get the most astonishing rainbows There because the rainbows are out on the ocean. Oh, it's something to see.

So far we've articulated the question and we've begun to inch in to what the answer might be regarding the forgiveness of God and whether or not the death of Jesus was necessary for it, or it the forgiveness was manifested in his death. We have to take a break, but we just need to be thinking.

This is the thing that we'll be exploring through all eternity. So we couldn't possibly exhaust things here, but I think we could give some scripture, we could wrap some biblical language around this idea. So we'll do that after the break.

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All right, so we've set up the question quite nicely, I think, and we all kind of feel how serious the question is. You can't help but wonder, is God a certain way? And because he is the way he is, well, sure, then he does what he does. Yes. Or does God do what he does because he's Prompted.

By something that was done to make him otherwise than he was.

That was what Jeffrey was saying. That's a good question.

Now the first scripture, this is a very common scripture that almost anybody who's had familiarity with the Bible has read. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That's John 3:16, then verse 17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Yes.

Then the scripture very interestingly goes on to say that condemnation is already in the world. In other words, we're already under condemnation and Jesus has come for the express purpose of giving the light of God's non condemnatory love for us to respond to. So according to this scripture, it sure looks to me like God is the way he is. That is God is love. And out of that love God says, I'm going to give, I'm going to give my son to die. And when I give him, when I send Jesus into the world and the sacrifice is made, what people are going to encounter in him is an absence of condemnation because they're already under condemnation. Condemnation is natural to the sin problem that is already weighing upon their hearts and their minds. And Jesus comes to lift that condemnation by the revelation that of his love and the Father's love in the sacrifice that's made.

So Jeffrey's going next, then I got the next ticket. We need a little ticket machine here.

You know, where we place it like the dmv.

Yeah.

Maybe we can just hand out these.

Blocks to go back on this whole nature of sin. Because I think that we're kind of skirting around the question. But we have to face, we have to identify our terms, define our terms. Back in Genesis chapter two and three, the death concept is introduced as the result of sin, right? So if God is forgiving, why did Jesus have to die? Right. So there's death. But I think if we explore the foundation of that whole concept, why did Jesus have to die in order to extend forgiveness to sin? It's because, I mean, at least one step towards this is Genesis 2:17. That's the original warning here. In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. That's where the whole concept of death is introduced, right? And so sin comes into the race and sin leads to death. But the interesting thing in chapter three, and this goes more to the psychology of sin, is lies were introduced to Adam and Eve that caused Them to. To question God, to question God's character, to question God's motive, love, motive, mercy, justice, blah, blah, blah. And in that questioning process is when they were led to sever themselves from God. And because of that separation, they were susceptible to death. So the nature of sin as it's couched in Genesis chapter three is it's a separation from God. Right? So God is the source of life. When people sever their connection from God, they're now, they're not susceptible to death. So I think, at least in my mind, that takes me a step towards the answer to the question, why did Jesus have to die? Because what he's dealing with is sin. And the nature of sin is separation from God, the source of life. So Jesus had to die because in order to deal with the problem, death had to take place.

But. So, okay, okay. I had to save all three of us. Okay, go, go.

I won't forget the question because it's a serious one in relation to what he's saying.

Romans 6:23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So I want to affirm what Jeffrey said. The wages of sin is death. But I want to go back to what Ty said, because what Jeffrey. Another point Jeffrey made that I think is really significant is this. There was a misrepresentation of God in the Garden of Eden. And that misrepresentation representation of God clouded God in such a darkness that there had to be a revelation of who he really is. And so when we get to John 3:16, we have that revelation. And here's the revelation. God so loved the world that he gave. God does not love the world. Jesus did not allow for the Father to love the world. God doesn't love the world because Jesus died for us. God already loved the world, and that's why he gave. His Son died for us. Exactly. There you go. And to me, that verse unlocks the whole key to this mystery. So when we look at why we've got to couch it in the context, it's not because Jesus had to somehow persuade or convince the Father to win.

The Father's love for us.

No, the Father's love was already there. It was there. And that unlocks. I mean, it disclouds, it disquiets, it.

Clears forward, it decimates.

Just go back.

Just go with decimate.

You like that.

Yeah, it decimates this misapprehension or misrepresentation of God and his character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where I was going to go.

He had the next paper, rock, scissors, go. Are you sure?

Yeah.

Well, I love what you're saying there, James. I just want to pick up the track that Jeffrey had about. I think I'm with Jeffrey 100% here when he says that. The way that we discern why Jesus had to die. Right. I'm assuming now that this is a necessity, not just a novelty or a nicety. It's a necessity. Is because of the nature of sin.

Yes.

Sin is separation from God. And the illustration. All I was going to say is very simple as this. Sin is not spilled milk.

Right.

If I were to spill some water on this table right now, we wouldn't need to. Okay, bring the bulldozer in.

Beep, beep, beep.

You know, we wouldn't have to. None of that. We'd wipe it out. It's a small problem, small solution, because the nature of the thing is such that there's just a facile, simple, quick. And all is done and dusted. We continue on. Okay, so God comes down into the garden, and Ty asked the question, why didn't he just say, okay, sorry about that? Or, you know, you guys are sorry, I forgive you. Let's move on. Because we're not dealing with. We're dealing with a radioactive nuclear meltdown. Something has been released into the universe that is at absolute polar odds with the nature, character, government, goodness of God. And I can just imagine. Just allow me to just do this little anthropomorphism personification here. God is saying.

Oh, no.

This is a thing. This is a thing.

This is damage.

This is a thing. The angels don't understand the nature of the thing. Oh, no, no, no, no. Adam and Eve certainly don't understand because. And you know that because they're like, okay, oh, yeah, hand me some of those leaves and. Oh, that'll look nice. You know, they're down. Like, they know that there's a problem, but they think the problem will just. This is spilled milk. We'll wipe this out. We'll put some stuff on. I'll be good. And God comes down and says, you know what? You are going to get clothed because there is a nakedness. There is a shame. But let me show you what that's going to involve. Genesis 3:21. He makes them tunics of skins.

Death.

There's death. The last thing I want to say on this is that the nature of the sin thing is this. Watch this. God didn't say in Genesis 2:17, in the day, you eat of that tree, I'm going to kill you.

This is not something external that God is imposing on the situation.

It's the nature of that.

He says, in the day you eat of that, you will surely die. And there's a difference. There's a difference. This is not an external imposition. The nature of that thing. That's a radioactive leak. It's a hand grenade that's been thrown into the universe.

And.

And God is going to throw himself onto the hand grenade in order to preserve the lives of those who would be radioactively contaminated.

And the scripture that James Read in Romans 6:23 parallels Genesis 2:17. It does, and says, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Notice that again.

That the wages of sin is death.

Exactly. That's the point.

Sin itself is the lethal force that is in play there. And then notice the grammar that eternal life is from God.

It's a gift from God.

It's a gift from God. So again, we're dealing here with the nature of the situation.

Not artificially constructed situations.

Exactly.

It's not arbitrary.

It would be something. Okay, let me go back to my analogy. Maybe this will be crude, maybe it won't be helpful, but the analogy of spilled milk, it's not as though God came into the garden, there's a little spilled milk, and he says, oh, no, there's spilled milk.

I'll handle it.

You know, and he, you know, as it were, grabs a knife or whatever and, you know, ends his own life or ends somebody else's. It's like, whoa, what is. That's quite the overreaction. That's a little much. That's overly dramatic. God is not creating a dramatic situation. In order to elicit our sympathy, our sympathies and our love, adoration and worship will be elicited, but not because of some artificial situation that God has created.

No.

Oh, man. I would say it this way. There was no other way that man could be saved. There was no other way. I can show you that in the text of Scripture.

If there were, David, God would surely have chosen that way.

Okay, let me bring you. Let me show you what I've gone that direction.

Look at this.

Galatians. Let me show you where Paul says exactly that. Galatians, Chapter two. The very thing that you just said that you and I were saying together there, Jeffrey. And look at what he says here in Galatians, Chapter two.

He says in verse.

Oh, it's going to take me just a second here. I was looking at this, but that's not it. Where he says, for if it would have been possible for righteousness to come by, verily righteousness would have come by the law. But God is. You know the text I'm looking for here? Where's that text at? For if possible, verse 21.

Last one, last one.

Verse 21 of Galatians 3. Yeah.

Of chicks. Oh, yeah, thank you.

I was looking in Galatians 2.

Okay, here.

Galatians 3:21, he says, is the law then, against the promises of God? Certainly not. Is the law. Is the Old Testament against the promise that God made to Abraham? Now, we're not going to dig into the context. We don't need to dig too deep into the context, because look at the point. Certainly not. For if there would have been a law given, if God could have given a law whereby he could have given us life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. And then look at the first word of verse 22. What's the first word of verse 22? But in other words, he's saying, if God could have saved you by your obedience, if God could have saved you by your fig leaves, by your coverings, he would have done so.

But.

And look at what it says. But Scripture has placed everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Believe in what? Believe in the solution that God would provide. And this is not an artificial or arbitrary solution. This is God in Christ doing for man what Paul is saying man couldn't. It's impossible.

The same thing in Hebrews 9:22 with.

I was just going to go there.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.

It's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. That's just a few verses later. Hebrews 10.

Let me just push this a step further and ask this question. Help me understand this then. So we've established that the death of Jesus Christ was absolutely imperative, necessary, right.

For our salvation because of the nature of sin.

And we've established that it was necessary as the extension of and revelation of a love and forgiveness that is already in the character. It's already there.

It's been there from eternity.

Is forgiving in his nature. So then why the need for suffering and death? Why the need for.

In us or in Christ?

In Christ. Why the need for. I mean, look at the cross. It's a bloody affair. There's nails driven through the hands. I mean, he's whipped, he's beaten, he's hanging there tortured and Then he experiences the greater excruciating pain of separation from the Father. And he experiences, according to the descriptions of his psychological experience in Matthew 26, that he's experiencing the weight of guilt and shame that isn't natural to him. He's not himself guilty. He's not filled with shame. So why suffering and death?

Can I give an answer here?

I'd like to hear.

Okay, shoot me down here. If I get this wrong. I'm totally willing to be corrected. But I am of the mind that the plan of salvation.

Our ability to be forgiven, our need of being forgiven in that which enables that.

Did not require the crucifixion of Jesus.

What do you mean?

But did require the death.

Oh, of course.

The mode or the manner of death.

Now here's why I say that. Go to the sanctuary service. You go to the sanctuary service. The lamb is brought to the court. The lamb is brought to the. What did they do to that lamb? Did they swing it around by its. And pound it a little bit? Torture it, torment it, tease it, bother it for an extraordinary. Take away its water, take away its food for a protected period of time.

Torture it was understandable.

And then let it die a death out in the elements of asphyxiation? And no, it was humanely killed.

What if the Jews, the religious. I'm asking. I'm not saying. I'm saying what if the religious leaders of the day had received Jesus? This is our Messiah, he's the one.

Christ still would have died.

Of course he would have still died because the wages of sin is death. But would they have had to do all of that? All of that humility? My thinking has been. And again, shoot back at me, push back if I'm wrong here that Satan is pushing, pushing, pushing buttons. He is overplaying his hand. Oh, I'll take away food. Oh, I'll put. He's doing everything in the chair. Oh, here's a rope. He's pushing, thinking he's going to break.

He's desperate.

And Jesus is calmly dignified. He's taking. All of this is going to redound to the glory of God. All of this is going to make the gospel more powerful, more beautiful. But God is not in heaven saying, oh, yeah, I love that part. I love it where they punch him in the face. I love it where they pull the beard out.

No, angels can't even.

I don't know. That's my thinking. That's the point. I was thinking something totally different.

No, I totally get that.

You get that?

Yes, absolutely. Satan is Trying to break him. He's trying to break him.

Yeah, but go ahead.

I was just going to say, I was thinking.

Guy looks troubled.

There might be a sense in which sin causes not merely death, but it causes pain, suffering and misery.

True enough.

And the fact that Jesus was subjected to that through that process just simply symbolizes that he embodied not only the death that sin brings, but the pain, the suffering that it also entails, the effects of sin.

Can I just push back on that a little bit? Here's my response to that. Sure. There are so many passages in the whole of Scripture, in the Gospels in which Jesus is clearly under pain and suffering, in misery. The pain of unbelief, the pain of people not accepting him, the pain of the emotional duress being surrounded by. I mean, think of this. From the highest, most glorious, beautiful heaven, he comes down here and there's a woman that, through some scandalous situation thrown at his feet. And these are the religious leaders. He was in a continual state of torturous pain, of sin, in other words. I agree with that, but I think that happens.

But I get what you're saying, but I don't think we as human beings had the capacity nor the people in the state to process everything you've just said. Therefore, he's subjected to the obvious physical ramifications. You're talking about inward. None of the disciples were privy to that.

They were all clueless. In the wilderness. In the wilderness. Oh, yeah, the hunger in the wilderness.

But even then, I would still say, you read Matthew 27, that process there. To me, Matthew 27 would have still happened.

Or Matthew 26 would have still happened.

Yeah. No, I'm referring to what, what you're talking about. The physical beatings that Jesus was subjected to. To me, that embodies the fact that sin is not merely a quick, like you say, humane death. It's dirty, it's nasty, it's painful.

And I agree with that. And the plan of salvation is all the more amazing and beautiful. And God's character was shown through that.

It's complementary.

The sanctuary service does not communicate that that was required.

Correct.

I don't know. I'm pushing back against this thing as a sacrifice.

That is significant. About what you're saying, David, is that it's revealing that God's salvation plan, the purpose for God to save us, didn't require those things that he knew were going to happen. He predicted in Isaiah 53. But we don't have to put that on God's shoulders.

Yes, that's my point. Thank you. For that, God is clear of that.

Even though it is going to happen. And God knows it's going to happen.

And remember, Peter stands up in, what is it, Acts 2 or Acts 1, where he says Acts, Acts 2 or 1 where he says delivered by the determined. Acts 2, foreknowledge and counsel of God. In other words, they're sitting around saying, how does a Messiah end up on a Roman crucifix? A Messiah, a deliverer, how does that happen? And he's like, hey, God knew this was coming. He's thinking, Isaiah 53. He's thinking, suffering servant.

Absolutely, because he was Satan.

But how was that lamb go back to the Garden of Eden when the skins were made, how was that lamb dispatched? Well, it was. God didn't say to Satan, hey, come in here and come take care of this lamb. Because he would have had his way. You know, I'm just using an imaginative situation here. That lamb would have been humanely dispatched.

Of course, we have to take a break and then come back. And I just, I think this is just very eye opening. It's extremely helpful for me to think about it in these terms. And I think that as I'm processing what I've heard you guys saying, there are obvious implications to what you're saying. So we'll explore that when we come back.

Let's do it.

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I think this is for sure, maybe the hardest question, the biggest question. This is the subject we're going to be probing for all eternity. I can hardly wrap my mind around it, but I want to call to our attention some additional biblical scripture, some biblical insight that might fill out the picture. First of all, In Acts chapter 2 and verse 23, there is the juxtaposition of two ideas.

I'm sorry, I was distracted there. In Acts 2.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 2, we have two ideas that are running parallel and Intersecting.

Okay, yes, gotcha.

And what the two ideas are. Just see if this makes sense. The action of God at Calvary is described. And it says that God delivered Christ up, delivered him to them. Notice then it describes the action of the human beings. It says that they.

What verse are you in?

Took him. Verse 23. 23, Acts 2, 23. God delivered him up, but lawless hands took him. So God's part in the situation is described as basically.

Okay, you're making vision there.

Yeah. Giving Jesus over to sinners. And those who actually crucified him, according to this text, are the sinners. Now, the reason this is important to my thinking is because in 1 Peter, chapter 2, verses 21 through 25, there is this fascinating description of the cross that Peter gives to us that I think is very rarely explored, at least in theological discussions I've been a part of. Rarely discussed. And that is that in Jesus we see what is called an example. And the example that he gave was one in which he was innocent and he committed no sin in verse 22. Right.

Okay.

No deceit was found in his mouth, who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes we are healed. There's a dynamic that is taking place here in which Jesus and God the Father, in giving Jesus, what are they doing? What is their action in the process? They're refusing to retaliate against the hostility and the enmity and the anger that is proceeding from human beings. And rather than responding in kind, you have Jesus with no returning violence, Jesus submitting himself to angry, raging, hostile human beings who are at enmity with God. And so what we see taking place at the cross is not the Father.

Venting on Jesus as a third party whipping boy. What we have at the cross is the Father giving Jesus over to the hostility and anger and hatred that is in the human heart against God. And then he's suffering at our hands, not at the Father's hands. And the reason this is important for me.

Come on.

Is because you basically have two models or two views of sacrifice or of atonement that are present in our world of religion and philosophy. The pagan idea, if I can use that terminology, is that sacrifice involves three parties.

Use the blocks, three parties.

All right, so if you have a three party view, you have the sinner, you have God, who's the offended party. And then you have a third party that has to be put in the middle of the situation in order to receive the wrath, the anger, the hostility that will come from God, the offended party and block it from reaching the center. That's one view. In that view of the sacrifice, in that view of sacrifice and of atonement, what's taking place is that there's a third party that God is offloading his wrath, anger and hostility on justice. But here's the thing. The biblical picture isn't a three party view of atonement. It's a two party view of atonement. This is so important. Yeah. There isn't God the sinner and then someone put in between to receive. There's God in the sinner. And the one on the cross is none other than God.

God.

God is the one who is submitting himself to receive the punishment, the weight, the horror, and everything that is in what we referred to earlier as the nature of sin. The wages of sin is death. And the reason this is vital is because if the sacrifice.

Is made by a third party in between God and the sinner, then God's not actually making sacrifice. God's requiring sacrifice.

Oh, say that again.

Yeah, God's not making the sacrifice. So it's not a display of self sacrificing love on God's part.

Say that again.

He's requiring the sacrifice from somebody else. You can do an imaginary scenario like this. Just imagine that the sin problem has now become a reality. Adam and Eve have fallen. And imagine that an angel or two angels or a thousand angels step forward and say, we'll be the sacrifice, we'll take the suffering.

We'Ll be the ones to make the sacrifice. And God has to say, it can't be you, it has to be me. Because what's required, what's necessary to resolve the hostility and the anger in the human heart, the enmity that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8, that the human heart is an enmity against God and the law of God. That enmity can only be resolved by what Peter describes here. God in Christ has to submit and not retaliate against us and make a non violent approach to us and exhaust our violence against him. And in not retaliating, Peter goes on and says, this is fascinating. He says, for we were like sheep who were going astray, but now we've returned to the shepherd and overseer of our souls. We return or we repent because we see in him, we're punching him, we're crucifying him, we're venting on him. And he just keeps taking it and taking it and taking it and taking it. And the devil is hoping, hoping he's going to break and he's going to do what the mob is telling him to do. The mob is saying, if you're the son of God, save yourself, save yourself, come down from the cross. Here's the irony. He could have. He could have changed in his attitude toward them. And rather than, father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. I'm gonna lay waste. You're not gonna treat me like this. I'm gonna respond to you in kind. But no. He overcomes evil with good. And what is the good that he puts on display that he overcomes with. By loving them, loving them, loving them, loving them, loving them, loving them to.

The end of the 10. I know what you're gonna say, but let me just.

Don't touch John 10.

I'm not gonna touch John 10. And this will take 20 seconds. That very attitude was displayed just hours before when Peter pulls out the sword and chops off the ear of the high priest's servant. And Jesus turns and says, wait a minute. You're confused about what's happening here. Don't you think that I could call my father right now and, as you say, lay waste? But if you're going to live by that sword, then you're going to die by that sword. I'm going to show you a better power. I'm going to show you something more powerful than the sword.

This is what's called in some circles the myth of redemptive violence. And the myth of redemptive violence shows up in all superhero movies, in all cop shows.

In the idea that the way you take care of bad behavior, Jeffrey, you're doing something wrong. The way I'm going to deal with your violence is by being violent to you. This is why nations rise up against nations in war, right? But what would happen?

Violence is not redemptive. You can't respond in kind. And in the violence, soft answer turneth away wrath. What does it say? What does it turn. What does it say in Revelation, chapter 13? I don't know the verse. I think it's verse nine. That's what my memory's telling me.

He kills with a sword will be with a sword.

Anyone who kills with a sword will be killed with a sword.

He that leads into captivity will go into captivity. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

And the patience and the faith of the saints is that they don't participate in the tit for tat, the violence. If you kill with the sword, you're going to be. That's the cycle.

You're repeating the cycle you're perpetuating.

Broke the cycle of sin and violence by refusing to respond to us with violence. We're standing before the cross and he's forgiving us and loving us. And all we can do is look at that.

And say, I'm either going to keep being like this or that's going to break the cycle in me of retaliation. And I'm going to submit and bow before this and say, wow, you're not going to. Are you sure you're not going to throw any blows? Because if he throws blows, then what is that going to perpetuate in us throwing blows?

Respond in kind.

This whole thing that you mentioned about the third party and how Jesus is not just some third party that jumps in, that the Father requires Jesus. If that were the case, as you were saying, the Father wouldn't be sacrificing. He would be requiring.

He wouldn't be making a sacrifice. He would be requiring a sacrifice.

So there's a succession, a sequence of verses in John 10:15 where Jesus says, I laid down my life for the sheep. John 10:17, I lay down my life. John 13:37, I lay down my life for your sake. So there's this, like. There's this anthem, this echo all through the New Testament where Jesus is saying, I laid down my life. I laid down my life. So that's an affirmation of what you were just saying here.

God the Father and God the Son. The whole Godhead is involved, is involved in this sacrifice. And it's not second Corinthians 5.

God was in Christ.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

He chose to lay down his life.

And we understand this. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. Well, I was going to say we understand this in the context of the need for us to be reconciled to God and the need for us to break the cycle, but we also need to understand it in the context of the wages of sin is death. So we can't leave that out of the picture. You understand what I'm saying?

Of course.

In other words, okay, God has done this and he's broken the cycle. So now we say to God, yes, that's what we want. We accept that. And in that context, there is still this wages of sin is death that God has to deal with.

Yeah, but aren't we saying, though, that the death.

Is the product of the sin problem itself, so that he's taken by God, the Father delivers him up and the sinners take him and crucify him. That's the dynamic. So that chapter nine of Hebrews, verse 27 says that Christ appeared once at the end of the world to put away sin. It's verse 26, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. So God's action is an action of self sacrifice. And that self sacrifice that he's making is giving himself over to suffer the full wages of sin in himself. Rather than saying, no, you're going to have to go through it, you're going to suffer it. No, I'm going to suffer it in your place. For you, I'm going to be your substitute and surety.

And if Jesus is not fully and completely by nature, in all the fullness and sense of what it means to.

Be God, he is one.

The plan of salvation is fundamentally broken because now it's a God requirement, acquiring a whipping boy rather than God himself making the sacrifice. And you were reading there in John 10. My favorite part is verse 18 where he says, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down myself. He says the same thing to Peter. Listen, when he speaks to Peter, he says, or excuse me, when he's speaking to Pilate, listen to what he says. You would have no power at all against me unless it hadn't been given to you from above. And I love this idea that he's saying.

You can't take my life from me. I'm going to lay myself down. I'm not being sacrificed. I'm making a sacrifice. The other word I want to say on that, that's so this is just gigantic. We had the question about who was delivered to. You know, who delivered. And it's very interesting because in Acts, chapter two, Peter says that he was delivered by the determinant, determined counsel and foreknowledge of God.

Right?

But you know what's interesting? Listen to this. John, chapter 19, verse 16. Then he delivered him. Then Pilate delivered him to the Jews to be crucified. Jesus says, therefore, the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin. There's all this deliverance that's going on. The Jews actually take and deliver Jesus to Pilate because they didn't have the right to administer an executive punishment, a capital punishment. So they give it to Pilate. Pilate's like, well, I don't find any. So then Jesus says, the one that delivered me to you has the greater sin. Then Pilate's like, Well, I don't find any fault in him. He delivers them back to the Jews and then the Jews, basically the Jewish leadership of the day. Of course, not all Jews. The disciples themselves were Jews. They then initiate a series of events, a sequence of events that will result in not just the death of Jesus, but the tragic, terrible, unjust humiliation of Jesus. And yet Peter can look on that and say that the deliverance to the Jews, the deliverance from the Jews, the deliverance to Pilate, the deliverance from Pilate, all of that, he says God was in that.

But we're talking about a temporal death. And that's my point. My point is that all that we described here is what we talk about in the consequences of sin. But all that we've described here is a temporal death.

I don't think so.

What I want to just say, just to throw it out so that we're clear on this, is that Jesus gave his soul up to death. That's right. He died the second death. I agree with that. And Jesus says, don't fear him that kills the body, but fear him that can kill body and soul in hell. So there's a separation fact.

My Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me?

There's a separation factor there that has.

To be the essence of sin.

That's the consequence of sin. That's the essence of sin, not just the temporal.

And that brings. Yeah, that's a good rapture.

And that brings it full circle.

And the thing I want to say, the only slight pushback I would have, and I love the fact that you've said that, is when Jesus says, I lay down my life. The life that he's laying down is not just the earthly fleshly life that he is laying down.

He's God.

Yeah, he's giving.

He's giving totality of himself over, you know, Jesus. He wasn't play acting. Father, let this cup pass for me. Let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me. If there's any other way, you know.

You guys, there's an article that was written back in the 1800s where Ellen White was describing the very thing that we're trying to get at here. And this is a really good summary statement for me that's been helpful over the years. The atonement of Christ was not made in order to induce God to love those whom he otherwise hated. It was not made to produce a love that was not in existence. But it was made as a manifestation of the love that was already in God's heart as an exponent of the divine favor, in the sight of heavenly intelligences, in the sight of worlds unfallen, and in the sight of the fallen race.

Beautiful.

And then John 3:16 is quoted, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And then this we are not to entertain the idea that God loves us because Christ has died for us.

But.

That he so loved us that he gave his only begotten Son to die for us. That's a good note upon which to close.

Sam.