We had an interesting class discussion on this today in Sabbath School.

Here is a summary of what we discussed:

First we looked at and dissected the Memory Text.

Then we discussed the meaning of the word metaphor as in Metaphors of Salvation and came up with the word Symbols of Salvation, Images of Salvation.

We then looked at each metaphor or symbol of salvation.

The first one was redemption in Sunday's study. The meaning was stated in the first sentence, "Redemption is deliverance from debt or slavery through the payment of a ransom, and it’s an image used in the New Testament to interpret Christ’s death."

By sinning we became a slave to sin with the penalty being eternal death in that the wages of sin is eternal death. Christ redeemed us from that penalty by relinguishing His own life and by such an act paid the price for our redemption.

The next metaphor is reconciliation from Monday's section. The meaning was also stated in the very first sentence of Monday's section, "Reconciliation is the restoration of peaceful relationships between individuals or groups once at enmity." God reconciled Himself to us through Christ. This reconciliation on the part of God through Christ made it possible for us to proclaim the message of reconciliation as ambassadors of Christ.

The next metaphor is justification. When asked about the meaning of this, somebody said, "Just as if I had never sinned." This says it all from Tuesday's section: "We have here the combination of two images, redemption and justification, that describe and provide a legal basis for God’s decision to justify those who accept the righteousness of Christ (Rom. 4:3-6). God can do the unimaginable because Christ took our sin and died in our place (2 Cor. 5:21)."

The next metaphor in Wednesday's section is expiatory sacrifice. This means that Christ sacrificed Himself for us. Here are some excerpts from Wednesday's section: This was an act of substitution. Our redemption and reconciliation would not have been possible without the sacrificial blood of Christ.

This was as far as we got in our discussion time, however, we actually covered much of Thursday's section in that we stressed that it was the love of God that brought about our redemption, reconciliation, and justification through the expiatory sacrifice of Christ for us; the display of God's love in the death of Christ.

Before closing the discussion class, I read the following summary from Friday's section:

This is true, but it doesn't explain why this is necessary, nor how it works. Here's a comment regarding this:





Nowhere does the Bible say that God reconciled Himself to us. Here's a comment from Ty Gibson:



A bit later in the same book:



Another comment by a contemporary of Ellen White:



I won't go through each one, but I will point out that every metaphor, or symbol, you are mentioning in your explanation is only being looked at from one point of view. There is much more than happened by Christ's death then simply solving a legal problem.



This summary is good. It brings out several different aspects of Christ's death. The chapter "It Is Finished" from "The Desire of Ages" brings out many things that Christ's death accomplished.

It says God reconciled the world with Himself. This sentence has an ambiguous sense and can - should - be understood in both ways.

The trials and sufferings of Christ were to impress man with a sense of his great sin in breaking the law of God, and to bring him to repentance and obedience to that law, and through obedience to acceptance with God. He would impute His righteousness to man and so raise him in moral value with God that his efforts to keep the divine law would be acceptable. Christ's work was to reconcile man to God through His human nature, and God to man through His divine nature. {Con 38.1}

We see in the midst of the throne One bearing in hands, and feet, and side the marks of the suffering endured to reconcile man to God, and God to man. Matchless mercy reveals to us a Father, infinite, dwelling in light unapproachable, yet receiving us to Himself through the merits of His Son. The cloud of vengeance which threatened only misery and despair in the reflected light from the cross reveals the writing of God: "Live, sinner, live! ye penitent and believing souls, live! I have paid a ransom." {LHU 249.4}

Through the cross, man was drawn to God, and God to man. Justice moved from its high and awful position, and the heavenly hosts, the armies of holiness, drew near to the cross, bowing with reverence; for at the cross justice was satisfied. Through the cross the sinner was drawn from the stronghold of sin, from the confederacy of evil, and at every approach to the cross his heart relents and in penitence he cries, "It was my sins that crucified the Son of God." At the cross he leaves his sins, and through the grace of Christ His character is transformed. --The Signs of the Times, June 5, 1893.

His [Christ's] mission was to reconcile God to man, and man to God. {2SP 39.1}

For argument's sake, let's say 2 Cor. 5 isn't clear and throw it out of consideration, following the principle that ambiguous statements should be interpreted in the light of clear ones.



This says Christ suffered for sins that He might "bring us to God."



This says we are now "returned to God."



This presents the same idea.



This also brings out that we have been reconciled to God.

The lesson points out:



God was never at enmity with us. Therefore the reconciliation can only be one way. There is no need to "reconcile" someone who is not an angry party.

We have seen there are no unambiguous texts in Scripture which state that God was reconciled to us. However, there are many texts which bring out that we are reconciled to Him.

The following bears on our discussion concerning reconciliation:

What Is peace? Most people have the idea that it is a sort of ecstatic feeling. They think that peace with God means an indescribable heavenly feeling; and so they always look for that imaginary feeling as evidence that they are accepted with God.

But peace with God means the same thing that it means with men: it means simply the absence of war. As sinners we are enemies of God. He is not our enemy, but we are his enemies. He is not fighting against us, but we are fighting against him. How then may we have peace with him? Simply by ceasing to fight, and laying down our arms. We may have peace whenever we are ready to stop fighting....

"Great peace have they which love thy law." Ps. 119:165. "O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." Isa. 48:18. Righteousness is peace, because our warfare against God was our sins that we cherished. God's life is righteousness, and he is the God of peace. Since the enmity is the carnal mind and its wicked works, peace must be the opposite, namely, righteousness. So it is simply the statement of an obvious fact, that being justified by faith we have peace with God. The righteousness that we have by faith carries peace with it. The two things can not be separated.(Articles on Romans, Waggoner;emphasis mine)

Repeating from Ty Gibson:



The movement is one way. All the "reconciliation" that God does towards us is simply to make it possible for us to move to Him. Here's a very poignant representation of this thought:

I would say "between individuals or groups once at enmity/disharmony." God wasn't at enmity with man, but was in disharmony with man. So reconciliation also encompasses this aspect.

What do you make of the EGW quotes I provided? They speak clearly of the need of reconciliation between man and God, and between God and man.

I think her comments were not dealing with the issue I was. Also, if the assertion is made that Scripture nowhere says something (e.g. that God was reconciled to man), the only way to deal with this is by citing some Scripture. As things remain, the assertion stands, that Scripture nowhere unambiguously states that God was/is reconciled to man, whereas it in many places states that man was/is reconciled to God.

God's disharmony with man was due entirely to man's having rebelled against God. Once man sets aside that rebellion, then there is peace. This is a one-way street. However, it's not a path that man can work out for himself. Man, of himself, is unable to return to God, and is unable to obey the law. So God must take it upon Himself to enable man to do these things. This is what I understand Ellen White's comments to be dealing with.

The whole thing comes down to what we see the problem being. If we see the problem as being a legal problem, with God not being able to perform an action (i.e. forgive) unless some other action occurs (i.e. someone is killed) then we will see the solution along these lines.

On the other hand, if the problem is perceived to be one of man's having been deceived in regards to God's character, which led man to distrust God, which led man to sin, with its attendant problems of guilt, which in turn leads to further misapprehension of God's character, more distrust, and more sin and guilt. The "whole purpose" of Christ's mission on earth was the "revelation of God," which takes care of the aforementioned problems. It also deals with the accusations Satan made in regards to God's character and His law before the entire universe.

At the root level, it looks like we have two different ways of looking at things. I'll post separately, next post, an explanation which makes sense to me. If you wish, you can point out what aspects of what's written you disagree with.

The law is not an arbitrary set of rules made up at random by God to prove His authority over us, but rather a practical explanation of what love looks like in real life…Sin is anything contrary to the character of God; more specifically, anything contrary to His love…

Love is God’s law, the principle by which He lives. It is a law because it is not arbitrary, but based on reality as it is, governing life by its righteous principles. Love is the law by which God made and sustains life….

Sin is the opposite, antagonistic principle at war with the law of love. Do not view sin as merely an alternative way of living, which happens to be harmlessly different from God’s way. God’s way is the only way to live, not because He happens to be more powerful and can arbitrarily punish us if we don’t comply, but because life is actually, intrinsically present only in God’s way, which is the way of love. The problem with sin is that it is wrong, actually, essentially, inherently wrong. And it is wrong for good reason, not just because the One in charge doesn’t like it. To be sure, God does not like sin, but He doesn’t like it because of what it does to is victims, not because He is a picky control freak who decided to come up with a list of arbitrary rules to keep us under His thumb. Sin, by its very nature, is anti-life. It is intrinsically destructive. Hence the Bible calls it the “law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).

Once the nature of sin is understood, it is easy to see why sin is a law of death: sin is selfishness, the antithesis of love. As such, it leads inevitably to the exclusion of, and isolation from, the sustaining love and support of all others….

Because God’s love is the law of the universe, by which He created and sustains all things, the principles of that law are designed into our very natures. Within our psycho-emotional makeup, love is encoded as the law of life. When we violate that law, a malfunction signal issues a warning in the form of guilt. That part of our minds we call *conscience* senses discomfort with sin and identifies it as a destructive virus in the computer system, so to speak. Guilt is not arbitrarily imposed by God any more than His law is arbitrary. He is the Architect of conscience, but He is not the source of guilt. He made us with the capacity to feel guilt as a merciful and wise deterrent to sin, desiring, of course, that we would never experience its pain….

While God does not desire that anyone ever experience physical pain or the psychological pain of guilt, even more so He does not desire our utter destruction. Pain is a built-in mercy mechanism intended to aid in the preservation of life. Pain is not an indication that God is exercising some kind of power above, beyond, or contrary to His law of love in order to inflict suffering as an arbitrary punishment for sin. Punishment is organic to sin itself….

It is commonly thought that the connection between sin and death is imply that if we don’t repent of our sins God will kill us. Often no actual, intrinsic relationship is discerned between sin and death. But even a casual consideration of Scripture on this point persuades us otherwise. Notice just these few examples (quotes Gal. 6:7, 8; Rom. 6:16, 21-23; Rom. 8:6; Rom. 8:13; Prov. 8:36; James 1:15)…

So, when Paul says that holiness results in eternal life, he is not removing God from the equation and making life a mere naturalistic cause and effect matter. He is simply describing *how* God gives us eternal life….

God does not threaten, “If you keep sinning, I will kill you.” Rather, He warns, “If you continue in sin, you will die,” for “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” And so He pleads, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die …? (Ezek. 33:11). We’re caught off guard by a question like this from God. We are more inclined to ask Him, “Why do You kill?” But He points to our sin and asks us, “Why do you choose death?”…

(quotes Rom. 5:11; 1 Pet. 3:18; 1 Pet. 2:24, 25; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15)
Please not the recurring point in the preceding verses:
• Through Christ we receive “atonement”; we are made one with God.
• The purpose of the substitutionary death of Christ is to “bring us to God”; not Him to us. God has demonstrated His reconciled position toward us in Christ.
• Through sin we have gone “astray”; but through the sacrifice of Christ we “are not returned” to God.
• The love of Christ, revealed in His death, causes us to cease living for self and to start living for Him; we are reestablished in the circle of selfless, other-centered love through the atoning death of Christ….

(discussing the three-party picture of the atonement)
1. The sinner, who has aroused the anger of God.
2. A wrathful God, who needs personal satisfaction that can only be derived from inflicting suffering and imposing death; only then will He even consider letting us off the hook with forgiveness.
3. A third-party victim, who is made to suffer and die as a substitute for the sinner.

There are a number of serious problems with the three-party picture, foremost of which is that it makes no legal or moral sense for an innocent third-party victim to suffer the penalty for the wrongdoer. If such an arrangement could actually satisfy God, then we would be forced to conclude that His law and His wrath are irrational and arbitrary, meaning there is no actual relationship between law and sin and death. If God’s wrath can be appeased by venting rage on an innocent third party, then it follows that there is no real problem with sin other than the fact that God doesn’t want us doing it: His law is arbitrary. Moreover, since we have failed to meet His arbitrary demands, we had better suffer ourselves or find a whipping boy to suffer in our place: His wrath is arbitrary.

Biblical Christianity proclaims, in extreme contrast to the third-party view of substitution, that God has given Himself as our Substitute, to bear our sin and its inherent, divinely-ordained penalty. Hence there are only two parties involved in the atonement: 1. The sinner, who has aroused in God a painful tension between a holy, rational anger against sin and an equally holy, rational mercy toward the sinner. 2. An infinitely just an definitely merciful God, who loves us so selflessly that He has chosen to give Himself to suffer and die as our Substitute….

So what actually happened on that hill far away as the Son of God hung between heaven and earth? Did Christ bear the wrath of God at Calvary? What part did the Father act in the suffering and death of Christ? A number of Scriptures bear a consistent testimony to answer these questions:

(quotes Acts 2:23, 24; Acts 4:24-28) ….

Did the Father cause the suffering and death of Christ?

Yes and no!

Yes, if we mean He delivered Him over to suffering and death according to His own wise purpose of grace. Yes, if we mean that the Father gave up His Son to experience the tormenting psychological agony of our guilt.

No, if we mean He acted as an arbitrary source of pain and death, as the tormentor and executioner of His Son. No, if we mean that the Father assumed a position of vicious hostility toward His Son. Christ suffered and died at *our* hands, under the burden of *our* sin, by the gracious, self-sacrificing purpose of the Father….

In holy hatred of sin and unrelenting love for the sinner, the Father handed over His Son to bear the guilt inherent in our sin and to endure the selfish, murderous rage lashing out from our sin. This fits perfectly with Paul’s definition of divine wrath. He explains that it is God giving sinners over to receive in themselves the penalty inherent in their sin (Romans 1:18-28). Christ felt “forsaken” by God, “delivered” up to suffer all that sin ultimately is, not pounced upon with hostility.

The Father was right there with His Son all along, behind the darkening veil imposed by our sin, feeling the pain of the agonizing separation.

I can love a God like that. I am so glad He is that kind of God. You can love Him too. I know you can, because your heart, like mine, yearns to love and be loved with such passionate grace.

(The above is from "Shades of Grace" by Ty Gibson)

Nowhere does the Bible say that God reconciled Himself to us. Here's a comment from Ty Gibson:

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wow!! no wonder i could never see anything good in Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

since the emphasis was on Gods wrath against sinners, etc, how could anyone possibly see the love supposedly expressed in john or anywhere else. one cancels out the other!!

You know, I was just thinking about this very thing you're pointing out yesterday! This wonderful verse is usually not understood to be saying what it says. It says God so loved the world that He gave His Son, which is usually understood as meaning that Christ paid the penalty for our sins so that God could forgive us, as opposed to what it says.

God gave His Son so that we could believe in Him. This is the same idea that the whole purpose of Christ's mission on earth is the revelation of God in order that men might be set right with Him.

It's interesting how our paradigm influences so greatly how we perceive things.