Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
What is this does in verb sense? What is God doing exactly
Remitting the sinner's guilt and punishment, as Christ took the sinner's sin upon himself and died in our place. I can understand someone disagreeing with the doctrine, but I do not think it is hard to understand.
How does God remit guilt and punishment? Again, through exhausting in a mechanical sense His own wrath on Jesus' body on the Cross? Is Jesus being literally punished on our behalf? See, let me explain our Orthodox approach so you can understand my confusion. In Orthodox ontology, God's punishment for sin is not necessarily direct or personal, it is almost mechanical. Sin distorts human nature, like a wound or injury to the spiritual body, and like all wounds, if left untreated can either bleed to death or get infected towards death. When Christ became Incarnate, He began the process of restoring Human Nature by Grace (mechanically so to speak).
Think of Sin as like a cancer, which has negatively impacts the spiritual DNA of human nature. Like all cancers and DNA damage, inevitably this leads to damage and death. By Grace, Jesus Christ like our cosmic immunoresponse, not only attacks the cancer growth (i.e. the actions of sin) but also the damage caused (i.e. restores the spiritual DNA to its original state of perfection). If a person smokes tobacco, they expose themselves to dangerous chemicals which damage the body and lead to pain, injury, and even death. When a person sins, they expose themselves to the same spiritual harm. When we are exposed to Grace, we are healed of these wounds. It isn't exactly an instant becoming, rather, like all matters of the body, a gradual process.
So on the Cross, Jesus Christ was not directly or personally bearing any one person's punishment for Sin (i.e. the wrath of God) rather was experiencing that same ontological reality which humans have experienced since sin and death marred our spiritual DNA (e.g. our human nature). God's wrath is not personal, it is mechanical. It is a natural consequence of what our sins accumulate as spiritual damage to our bodies (both physical and spiritual). Jesus Christ restores the damage, not necessarily by bearing God's punishment in our place, rather, but experiencing the natural consequence of sin (i.e. the punishment) so that by His Grace He sanctified death and suffering, so that we can now be restored by Grace. We are not dodging a rightfully due punishment, rather we are in a very real and eternal way healed. So there is no call for wrath or judgement in the first place! It'd be like needing chemotherapy for cancer after the body has already been healed.
So in our ontology, what God is doing in the mechanical sense is restoring human nature, not necessarily bearing our punishment so that we are not punished. We would still inevitably need to be punished as a natural consequence of the wounds of sin. Rather, God then restored and healed us of these wounds so that naturally speaking, there is no consequence because there is no longer any wounds to speak of.
In the ontology of Penal Substitution, it seems that God has a set and determined amount of wrath as a punishment in the vindictive or personal sense for sins committed by people. Since we can't bear this punishment without being vindictively destroyed, God attacked Jesus Christ with this set amount of wrath and Jesus Christ being God Himself was able to bear the attack. Sort of like God being angry at the world and punching Himself in the face instead to vent His anger.. Is that a correct interpretation? If not, could you please elaborate further for me? I hope by explaining my position you can better understand exactly what I am questioning.
stay blessed,
habte selassie
stay blessed,
habte selassie
