A bed of thorns?

Recently, something in my pastor's sermon suddenly made a thought flash in my mind. As I toyed with it and tried to make it more clear, give it shape and color, I came to the conclusion that I had just managed to come up with one of those "Thorny Theological Problems". Now to try to unravel it.


Now, I don't profess to be a Biblical scholar, but I do believe I know far more about scripture than the average person. I knew it well enough to teach Sunday school for two years. I had a special interest in what we call the "Old Testament" which is really, mostly, the original Hebrew scriptures. You could call it my area of specialty, but I love and study the New Testament as well.


The thorny issue is this:

• Given: Jesus was wholly Human, and was and is wholly God. He was as human as any other human, but possessed, and evinced on earth, in totality, the full, pure Spirit of His Father, God.
• Given: God appears to have one limitation, He is not capable of looking at sin. If sin comes near to His being He must turn His face away. But this is not a limitation; God simply does not possess in His being the capacity for sin to be presented directly before or to Him.
• Given: Jesus allowed His physical body to be abused and tortured, and ultimately nailed to a cross to become the redeeming sacrifice for everyones' sins—past, present, and future. His death would provide the payment to satisfy God's requirements for us to be allowed to be His children again.
• Given: Jesus' great suffering in the garden of Gethsemane was not about facing the physical agony of the crucifixion, but of knowing that for the only time in eternity would He and the Father be separated in their Spirit.
• The Question: At that moment when Jesus cried "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", the moment when Jesus literally became sin, the moment when His Father turned His face away from His spotless, unblemished Son who was now the epitome of all sin in the world for all eternity, where was the Holy Spirit?
• If the Holy Spirit is God's spirit and God cannot look at sin, then it follows that the Spirit must have left Jesus, even if only momentarily. He couldn't have "become sin" if the Spirit of God was in Him.
• Conclusion: I believe that at the critical moment when Jesus was at the brink of being made sin, God withdrew His Spirit from Jesus so that the unbelievable burden of all humanity's sins could be allowed to infest Him. In that moment God's wrath was poured out on Christ and then the Spirit was restored to Him. It was at that time when Jesus could say "tetelestai", voluntarily surrender His human life, and die.

"Tetelestai" is the Greek word that means "it is finished". What was finished? By accepting God's full measure of wrath that rightfully belonged to the human race, Jesus "conquered sin and death" forever. Do people still die? Of course, but that's physical death and comes to all people. But those who refuse to accept Christ's completed work on the cross will also choose the certainty of spiritual "death", which is eternal separation from God and the chance to live in Hell for eternity. Those who accept Christ will enter into life and the chance to spend eternity with God and Jesus, sharing with them, forever, in the complete filling of the Holy Spirit.

I chose eternal life. How about you?

Judge Not......

I don't know the statistics but from experience, I know that many folks believe capital punishment is not only necessary but is also just. What surprises me is how many professing Christians feel that way. I'm convinced capital punishment is merely legalized murder and no matter what rationalization we use, no matter what euphemisms we apply to it, at its core it is revenge, not justice.

We are incredibly complex and highly irrational creatures incapable of rendering truly impartial decisions. There can be no capital punishment where the slightest possibility exists that the innocent could mistakenly be executed. This has been proven in a rash of instances where convictions have been overturned, most often due to new and better science, DNA for one, new evidence, or witnesses who later recant their testimony, etc. Some states here in the U.S. have repealed or are seriously considering repealing their death penalty laws as a result of these alarming facts. But there's a more important reason that capital punishment is totally in error......
Jesus, Himself, completely tossed-out the death penalty.

In John 8:3-11, a woman caught in adultery was brought before Him. The mob that was going to stone her was made up of the scribes and Pharisees not concerned with justice; they were specifically trying to lure Jesus into saying something that would give them grounds to cause Him trouble. Let's examine the case:

1. The Law, handed down to Moses by God, specifically stated that a man and a woman caught in adultery were both to be put to death by stoning, outside the city walls (Lev. 20:10, Deut. 22:22). This mob brought only the woman— the man was most likely one of them, or someone whom they could not or would not prosecute.

2. Jesus knew the law about adultery thoroughly—He should have—as God, He had created it—and as God He could enforce it Himself if He so chose. But since the advent of Christ in the world, this was the age of grace, not sacrifice and judgement; Jesus chose the better way, the way of grace.

3. He said to the mob "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."(NIV). If you know nothing else about Christian teachings you should know this: as human beings, we are all sinners. That's why Christ came, to pay for all our sins, for everybody, past, present and future, by His death on the cross so we could be forgiven if we confess our belief in Him. Compassion and forgiveness is what He was (and is) all about.

4. Jesus did not condemn the woman and told her so. He let her go!

5. Hence-- as God, Jesus voided His own death penalty. He told the crowd, in effect, that only if they were as sinless as God Himself were they qualified to be the woman's judges and executioners. They had to drop their stones and walk away because they were convicted in their souls about the reality of their own sins. They too knew the law and knew that they were born as sinners—they had no defense to state otherwise.

So, why no death penalty? Aside from the aforementioned travesty of executing the innocent, the most important reason is simply this: our Lord showed us clearly, simply and most definitely that we, as born sinners, can never presume to be Godly enough to pre-empt God's authority over life and death. Only His judgement of sin is perfect. Only His justice is pure and motivated only by a desire to eliminate evil. His justice is not subject to the error, questionable motives and just plain irrational thinking that even the most noble of humans bring to the process of alleged 'justice'. Jesus Himself was arrested, illegally tried in "kangaroo courts", and executed by people who had personal and political agendas. Nobody can claim credit for killing Him either; the Jews put Him on trial, the Romans handled the execution, but He had said that He would lay His life down and later, take it back—and that's exactly what He did.

In the Old Testament, whenever God executed someone or caused someone to be executed, it was because they were guilty—period. In the New Testament, under the covenant of Grace, the most important theme is love. One other major theme running throughout the collection of books is mercy. God's charge to humanity is to live in and be like Christ, that is, living in love being merciful. The closer we get to being like Him, the less our human natures will make us want to destroy each other— among other things. We are no more qualified to judge another human being's right to live or die as we are to explain the mind of God. Let us not attempt to usurp the authority that rightfully belongs to God.

Where capital punishment exists, it must be eliminated—we are not God.