One of my favorite female artists is Sheryl Crowe. She was raised in the church, and has come back home to it in recent years. She went through breast cancer and a mastectomy, and also the infidelities and lies of Lance Armstrong. This song is one of my favorites which is talking about the source of love, God, always being on our side despite all the things that go wrong, and our lack of understanding things. Read more
STEADFAST Steadfast. God is quite steadfast I thought I’d stop and feast that But He said… ‘instead fast’. Because it means we failed him Because we’re just not true Because we test his patience By what we say and do. Not good in a pandemic Not good when things go right Not good at waiting for it Not good in a close fight Not good at loving others? Who don’t look just like us? Not good at... Read more
Q. I think you are right that the moral influence of the death of Jesus is vast, but only if we also realize that his death was a penal substitutionary atonement which propitiates and also expiates. It should have been us on the cross, paying for our sins. It seems to me that the best case for explaining all this is the necessitarian one—the God of love and mercy could not simply take a pass on dealing with sin, or... Read more
Q. Like with the statement ‘forgiveness offered is not the same as forgiveness received’ on pp. 256-57 you make the important point that if a person rejects God’s saving grace, rejects his offer of substitute payment by Christ for sin, then such a person remains guilty for the sins they commit, and faces the legitimate punishment for said sins. This conclusion, it seems to me only really makes sense if we accept a non-Reformed view of salvation, namely that it... Read more
Q. On p. 243 you once more get to the heart of the matter— God’s own righteous character, and how that affects his actions, namely the judge of the earth must, according to his very nature, enact justice, must judge justly. Put another way in Pauline terms, God cannot pass over or ignore human sin forever. A Righteous God must deal with it. This it seems is the basis for saying retributive justice is a necessary function of a righteous... Read more
Q. I think the conclusion drawn at the end of the first redemption chapter is helpful in explicating guilt— guilt means someone has done something wrong, and only by punishment or pardon can the guilt be expiated or done away with. This is quite helpful. Guilt shouldn’t be associated with the past fact of having done something wrong, in itself. Otherwise, a person is perpetually guilty since the past cannot be erased. Also helpful is the discussion of tenses. Just... Read more
Q. Thinking further about this, it would seem that the issue is not an issue of law. It’s an issue of God’s unchanging righteous character. After all, Gal. 4 is clear that Christ came to redeem those under the Mosaic law out from under the Mosaic law (and under the stoicheia—the elementary principles and teachings Gentiles were under), and Rom. 10.4 says Christ is the telos, the end/terminus/goal/fulfillment of the Mosaic law as a means of right standing or righteousness... Read more
Q. If in fact Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice issue in regard to our sins, completely satisfies it, why then do we need a legal pardon at all? If the demands of justice are met by Christ, then a pardon would seem to be completely unnecessary because the issue has been resolved. God no longer has anything against us, and we are no longer his enemies. We just need to be reconciled to God by grace through faith. Please explain... Read more
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