Best ask Dedication, too...: but I'd say we can actually, keeping other texts in mind - many angles involved; I noticed Dedication was covering several aspects of truth using key texts, but not every text one could mention.

Rom 5:12 is [i]full[/i[ of meaning: It's all in that verse - even the detail of v.18, sinned in the beginning, and death sentence for sinning, including all men & women of Adam's race. Doesn't say anything about grace and God's gift, but that's for other verses, of course.

Maybe this discussion of ours will draw her back in to this thread more than once a week.

Fine questions!

The cross - if needed as you ask - followed 33 odd years because Jesus had to earn his resurrection: Rom 4:25 says his death and his resurrection serve two different functions in the gospel, and at least the second wouldn't be fulfilled by his actions had he died as a newborn baby.

He died the 2nd death, as Heb 2:9 specifies, as all men die their own 1st death, except for however many live to see him come while waiting for him.

Your illustration of deception killing isn't scientifically premised, unfortunately. HIV needs an awful lot of extra toxic interference internally to produce lethal weakness, so there's no direct link between that label and death following. It's our choices about grace that determine our fate, as Jesus said in Jn 3 about not believing him and being condemned by that choice, not our choices for sin. Grace and law work hand in hand, the former to the standards of the latter (Rom 3:21b) - exclusion from the Lamb's book of life involves not taking both on board, in Christ.

Yes, failing to see the Biblical God as both just and merciful leaves unbearable tensions instead of legitimate tensions: we are created in Adam in God's image (our parents pro-create us), so we can bear right tensions. God gave Jesus to suffer his wrath for us (sorry, I refer Jn 3:16's word; but you're welcome!), so we can obtain Jesus' glory with his righteousness (2 Thes 2:14) - there's no escape from justice without merciful & graceous reformation to perfection.

I don't see how one can think that suffering guilt is not a natural result of sin.



Everything that Christ taught and lived shows that God wouldn't take such a privilege. The fact that He gave His Son shows this. It was God's privilege to have Adam and Eve die for what they did, and have the race die with them. He could have just created two new humans. But God so loved the world, He gave His Son instead. Certainly judging is a personal privilege, but it's not one He takes.



And Christ doesn't take the privilege either, also denying that He will judge anyone.



Also



Jesus says that He will not judge, but His words will judge. What does this mean? It means that He spoke the truth. He warned His listeners of the perils of following sin, of rejecting Him, in whom alone one can find life and light. If one rejects life and light what is left but death and darkness? Why? Because He does something to inflict death or darkness upon those who reject life and light? No, but because without life and light, there is nothing left but death and darkness.

The whole idea that God has to take arbitrary action to punish sin is predicated on the idea that sin, of itself, is not powerful enough to destroy those who practice it. Jesus' whole life (and death) reveals the falsehood of this idea. Jesus judged Satan, and sin, by unmasking him, and it, showing him, and it, to be what he/it really is; a liar and murderer and a thief from the beginning.



Let those who do not wish to be disagreed with, do so elsewhere! If you're going to post something on a topic, it's axiomatic that it one can disagree with it or comment on it.

"Ransom" (I assume you have in mind its use in Scripture here) means "the price for redeeming a slave." "Substitution" isn't in the Greek, but is an English word meaning:



Since this uses the word "subsituting" as a part of its definition, the definition for substitute will be mentioned as well:



So to say that Christ was our substitution means that He took our place.

Just for the record, I agree both of these words should be understood according to their normal, everyday meaning.



I don't know if you meant this as a derogatory comment, or it was just a jest in fun. If it's the latter, that's fine with me, but including a smiley face would help communicate that. If it's the former, please stop.

Sure..., Jesus tasted eternal separation for only "three days", but it was effectively eternal separation, as he died without assurance from and of his Father's Spirit (it having been withdrawn from him) that he would be raised from the dead: he didn't have Abraham's luxury about Isaac... SOP says he couldn't see through the portals of the tomb. Sorry if this is too obvious....

The meted out penalty for sin, yes: God doesn't leave such matters of divine justice to natural, sinful forces! He's very business is eradicating precisely that natural, sinful phenomenon!! - when the time to do so is perfect, in his will.

Thus judgement day itself, just like the 2nd Coming for his people who shall then be ready for heavenly society, shall be when those it's meant for - in each case! - are ready for it. God is both Creator, Saviour and Judge of all the earth. There's nothing coincidental with him; that includes his knowledge of the definite future - not merely all the possibilities: he sees past our weighing up of options! I don't know how: he's God, not me!!

If Adam and Eve hadn't fallen but hadn't eaten of the tree of life....: yes, since we are still yet, after putting on incorruption, gifted immortality without being naturally immortal, eating of the tree of life is necessary, on the new earth, too, of course, to live eternally: the provision will be there for all of us and the provision was there for them, originally, so it's needed: however, that's a logical deduction, and I don't like such reasoning....reality gets lost somewhere!

Essentially, God alone is immortal, throughout the universe, but there is no death except here...: creatures are given immortality by God, and the only way to die wouldn't just be not to eat of the tree of life - I reckon every unspoiled world God has created has such a tree, but only ours had a testing tree, as Satan fell from heaven to earth itself only like a bolt of lightning, remember. It would be God's judgement of death on not believing his promise & provision of the tree of life for to eat to live forever that would bring death, not by itself not eating of the tree of life.

Once we get there, that option just wouldn't appeal to us, would it, nor would it have appealed to Adam and Eve, right?

Just a couple of quick comments:



If He had died as a newborn baby, He would have been resurrected as a newborn baby, of course, so Rom. 4:25 could have been fulfilled. One doesn't have to be 33 years old to be resurrected.



What does this have to do with anything?

By "his Father's Spirit" do you mean the Holy Spirit, or something else?

how do you understand being "condemned" in that passage?

where does the bible say "God's judgement of death"?

Guilt is a legal experience and fact. God arouses it having published his law for us to recognise our sin, etc., or are you allowing for this within your natural environment of this sinful world?

That you can even suggest destroying Adam and Eve for falling into sin as a priviledge for God, shows - how else can I read your plain statement?! whatever else you suggest in that quote - that you have no idea what God is like and how he judges the earth!!... Then you forget (I speak mildly) that our God is both a graceous God, long suffering and so on, but also "by no means clearing the guilty" - doubtless those without contrite, blood sacrifice (I'll address Ps 51 elsewhere), as he instituted for forgiveness, and offers first at the start of v.7: Ex 34:6&7....

If judging is a priviledge that God foregoes, then there is no Biblical reason or basis of any type for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to have survived the Great Disappointment and hold its beliefs in 1844. Then we are guilty of the greatest face-saving device in the history of Christendom! That was the scoff of the questioners behind Questions on Doctrine, of course.

OF COURSE GOD JUDGES ALL MEN, quite actively, with grace, mercy, and then, after salvivic grace but with graceous meting out of eternal, proportional punishment, also with holy justice. God decides when the wicked individually perish!

Jesus' words are the basis itself of judgement, since the Gospel is preached since his Ascension using his very own words to build and sustain his body on earth. If you want texts that God shall judge the wicked with fire, I'll dig them out, starting with Rev 20:4,9,10 and the whole chapter, really. Angels and men are all in there, and judges are active in heaven, with authority of God, Jesus himself having judged his own people beforehand... That's holy justice.

God punishes sin because he is more powerful than sin. There has been a great controversy, remember??? The power of love wins on the day of judgement - conclusively, but that means it's then the day of judgement in holiness & justice! Because of rejected grace the wicked, angels and men alike, stand condemned under God's own justice - on Jesus' own words of Jn 3:18 (v.19-21 are the basis for judgement (Rev 20:13) not an individually (of sin or holiness) self-imposed judgement!!), so he judges them according to his wrath and holiness and law - the law Lucifer rejected.

On disagreeing that ransom means giving his life to release us from guilt so we may legally be forgiven - you see no legal warrant there, and that substitution means substituting his life for ours under judgement of eternal death, the curse of the law - you see it's purely the natural end of sin itself, there's another thread for that, just not this one.

NO, Tom, the "ordinary" meaning I referred to for those words is not the ordinary, everyday, dictionary definition, since they are used as faith terms here and have a Biblical meaning as the SDA church officially teaches them, and we're trying to understand and study them, on this thread. YOu don't give them the same faith meanings, as our moderator for this thread has quietly pointed out, too, so your use of them is not agreeable, here. Maybe someone might yet agree with your use and meaning of them, on your atonement thread: there you can have disagreements aplenty!

Our official beliefs are begun by voted statements, but the whole book is the whole teaching of the church, and the church position. Theologians allow themselves wiggle room with individual's books, but the FBs book is official, and the members know that, as well. They use the whole books, also the SDABC Vol.12 (which the scholars can't wiggle round as unofficial!). On the atonement teaching..., you have your thread, and it's not the same as the church belief on ransom, substitution or the meaning itself of Christ's death. Good luck with it!

This nonsense I must correct: sorry, Tom, you're being silly, if you haven't actually totally missed the point in your logical path past salvation reality.

Jesus told his mother to stop pushing his mission along, at the wedding at Cana, as "my time has not yet come". He wasn't ready to lay down his life as a baby since he hadn't built his character merits for our justification of mind and pardon for past sins.

It was his righteousness by faith life story which fulfilled every aspect of the cross of Christ necessary for him to be Saviour of the world. Critically, sinful flesh and meritorious righteousness had to combine in the Lamb of God's death, and God's timing on that was perfect, as it was also for picking Mary herself to be his mother.