'Bearing.'

[Martin Marprelate]

People may have wondered why I have not contributed to the 'Atonement (not PSA)' thread. The reason is that @JonC has used his position as a moderator to keep me (and, I believe, @DaveXR650 ) excluded from the thread. This has not worried me unduly because I have been very busy with local church affairs and family matters so that I haven't had time to give even to the threads that I started.
However, @JonC wrote:

How can bearing something not mean "instead of"?

Obviously, there are burdens that can be shared. If I see a man struggling to get a big wardrobe out of his car and into his house, and I help him by taking one end of it, I am sharing his burden, not bearing it. But if the person whose burden I share gets no benefit at all from it then I would seem to have wasted my time.
But I want to ask just a couple of questions:
Matthew 27:32. 'Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross.' So Simon of Cyrene bore our Lord's cross. Did the Lord Jesus still have to bear it? Yes or no? If yes, it seems rather pointless for Simon to bear it.
Isaiah 53:6. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' We know from 1 Peter 2:24 that the Lord Jesus bore our sins that were laid on Him, and the curse attached to them, so do we still have to bear them? Yes or no? If the Lord Jesus is simply 'showing solidarity with us,' how will that help us on the day of judgment? Will He go to hell alongside us to shaow solidarity? No, no! He is 'Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come' (1 Thes. 1:10).

 

[JonC]

Yes, @Martin Marprelate , I have kept you and @DaveXR650 off of that thread because I wanted to engage in an honest conversation with Christians who hold other views. My goal was a Christian discussion and history has shown me that this would have been impossible if the two of you were involved.

I am not interested in changing people's views, but instead in allowing others to understand another prominent position for their consideration.

I also excluded @JesusFan because I did not want the thread to get bogged down with explaining to one who could not understand that wrath is not literally things stored in a container and must go somewhere.

And that is where my discussion of this topic will remain. I have no interest in entertaining nonprofitable dialogue.

Please feel free to discuss whatever you desire. But leave me out of it. I consider my participation with a few on this topic to be casting pearls before swine. I am not interested.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Here is what I believe divine justice to be:

God is just (righteous). Towards the Just He offers deliverance, towards the wicked condemnation. He will not punish the Just, but will avenge the Righteous when unjustly oppressed. He will not clear the guilty. He will condemn the wicked. The end state of justice (righteousness) is holiness. It is a state where no unrighteousness exists. This is the kingdom of God. The wicked will not enter.

One problem with this. Romans 3:9-18. 'For we have already charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written:
"There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.......etc."'
v.19. '....That every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God.'
If God will "not clear the guilty," but "condemn the wicked," then there is no hope for any of us. We need a Saviour. We need the Lord Jesus Christ to take our sins upon Himself and to pay in full the penalty for them and the curse attached to them. If He has not done that; if He has not paid that penalty in full, then nothing is more certain than that we shall have to pay it ourselves.

But we read that our Lord has indeed done just that: 'Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed [by the O.T. saints], to demonstrate [also] at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus' (Romans 3:25-26).

And that is also why I can never go back from believing PSA. I have seen where other theories "fall short" of the glory of God, where they miss the mark of Scripture. My understanding certainly can change. But I will not abandon the faith once given. I will not go backwards, away from the truth.

 

[DaveXR650]

Yes, @Martin Marprelate , I have kept you and @DaveXR650 off of that thread because I wanted to engage in an honest conversation with Christians who hold other views. My goal was a Christian discussion and history has shown me that this would have been impossible if the two of you were involved.

Jon. No problem. I don't plan on posting much on here with you as a moderator anyway, but I do admit to a sort of enjoyment in checking in occasionally to see how your latest thread is deteriorating like the rest as you do the same thing to someone else with the shifting and doubletalk. Their growing frustration is palpable as it went from this is the most substantial discussion ever to where in the world are you going with that. I can predict the end result and this is the reason why.

One, you attempt to concede all the elements of penal substitution and yet turn around and deny it based on the fact that the words "penal substitution" are not in scripture. And two, as in the quote above that @Martin Marprelate used (post 3 above) you show a serious variant with orthodox (small "o") Christianity in that you take the position that those of us who come to Christ are righteous as opposed to "the wicked" whereas Christianity teaches that we are all either outright wicked or at least fall short of God's standard and must have those sins dealt with or else we are undone and without hope. You deny that in that quote, but of course then if someone points that out you will say that you believe Jesus cleanses us and makes us righteous, cry slander and start editing. Christianity starts with our own sin first, as insurmountable and something that Christ deals with by actually "bearing" the penalty and wrath due us. You are not able to explain what Christ does for us in any coherent way which you should not feel bad about because it is always the case that throughout scripture and in Early Church writings whenever this is looked at something like penal substitution is discussed. The fact that you insist on denying that this is true doesn't make it so and in fact there is simply no other way to explain the atonement fully without penal substitution.

And while it's true that for purposes of salvation and saving faith a knowledge of Christ ransoming us or having the right to forgive sins is a sufficient understanding, I do and will always question the orthodoxy of someone claiming a complete understanding of the atonement and still rejecting penal substitution. I fear for anyone taking such a position. And I also feel that a Baptist site that officially has moderators who think that defending penal substitution makes one "swine", well, it speaks for itself.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Nobody has answered the questions I asked in the O.P.

But I want to ask just a couple of questions:
Matthew 27:32. 'Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross.' So Simon of Cyrene bore our Lord's cross. Did the Lord Jesus still have to bear it? Yes or no? If yes, it seems rather pointless for Simon to bear it.
Isaiah 53:6. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' We know from 1 Peter 2:24 that the Lord Jesus bore our sins that were laid on Him, and the curse attached to them, so do we still have to bear them? Yes or no? If the Lord Jesus is simply 'showing solidarity with us,' how will that help us on the day of judgment? Will He go to hell alongside us to show solidarity? No, no! He is 'Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come' (1 Thes. 1:10).

 

[Armchair Apologist]

People may have wondered why I have not contributed to the 'Atonement (not PSA)' thread. The reason is that @JonC has used his position as a moderator to keep me (and, I believe, @DaveXR650 ) excluded from the thread. This has not worried me unduly because I have been very busy with local church affairs and family matters so that I haven't had time to give even to the threads that I started.
However, @JonC wrote:

Obviously, there are burdens that can be shared. If I see a man struggling to get a big wardrobe out of his car and into his house, and I help him by taking one end of it, I am sharing his burden, not bearing it. But if the person whose burden I share gets no benefit at all from it then I would seem to have wasted my time.
But I want to ask just a couple of questions:
Matthew 27:32. 'Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross.' So Simon of Cyrene bore our Lord's cross. Did the Lord Jesus still have to bear it? Yes or no? If yes, it seems rather pointless for Simon to bear it.
Isaiah 53:6. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' We know from 1 Peter 2:24 that the Lord Jesus bore our sins that were laid on Him, and the curse attached to them, so do we still have to bear them? Yes or no? If the Lord Jesus is simply 'showing solidarity with us,' how will that help us on the day of judgment? Will He go to hell alongside us to shaow solidarity? No, no! He is 'Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come' (1 Thes. 1:10).

I have used the illustration of Simon Cyrene in my preaching somewhat looking into what must've been going in his mind as he was carrying the cross with Jesus walking along nearby thinking perhaps "Why is this man being condemned to die? What wrong has he done? All he did was show mercy and compassion, heal the sick, and raise the dead! If any man ought should be crucified, it ought to be me!" When they come to Calvary, the cross is taken from Simon Cyrene and Jesus is nailed to it! - great preaching illustration for the substitutionary atonement!

 

[Martin Marprelate]

If I say I bore your burden that itself does not mean as your substitute. If I bore your burden instead of you doing so, then that could mean as your substitute.

If I bear someone's burden, and that someone stills bears it, then I have not borne his burden in any meaningful sense. I might have shared it, but I have not borne it.
If the Lord Jesus bore our sins,and the curse attached to them, then He bore them instead of us - as our substitute. Otherwise we are still bearing our sins and Christ died for nothing. But of course that cannot be because, 'The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' If our sins were laid upon Christ, then they are no more upon us, and there is no penalty for us to pay. If there is, then again, Christ died for nothing.

 

[DaveXR650]

If the Lord Jesus bore our sins,and the curse attached to them, then He bore them instead of us - as our substitute.

This is indeed simply a truth that if denied, guts Christianity.

If our sins were laid upon Christ, then they are no more upon us, and there is no penalty for us to pay. If there is, then again, Christ died for nothing.

That right there is the key which again, simply cannot be denied with Christianity remaining intact. You have to believe that our sins must necessarily be dealt with. You have to believe that we simply cannot bear them in any way that does not leave us in endless separation from God. And you have to believe that Jesus bore them himself because we can't. That is the very definition of "substitution". The fact is that it obviously was on our behalf as well. And it is true that our salvation does depend on out and out forgiveness by God (which he can do and remain just because of Christ's work). And it is true that in a sense as we are brought into union with Christ it can be said that we died with him in that sense and we identify with him in believers baptism. But when some on here use all those additional things and twist the logic to make it seem to someone uninformed that these things contradict each other instead of the truth - which is that they all work together to explain the miracle of our salvation - I just find that to be beyond giving any slack to and at this point I just point out the Socinian attempt at deconstruction that it really is.

Thanks Martyn for taking all the time to try to explain this in so many different ways. You have more patience than me.

 

[37818]

Modern Literal Version, Mark 10:45, For* the Son of Man also came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a redemption in exchange-for many.

 

[Anthony Pritchard]

I have used the illustration of Simon Cyrene in my preaching somewhat looking into what must've been going in his mind as he was carrying the cross with Jesus walking along nearby thinking perhaps "Why is this man being condemned to die? What wrong has he done? All he did was show mercy and compassion, heal the sick, and raise the dead! If any man ought should be crucified, it ought to be me!" When they come to Calvary, the cross is taken from Simon Cyrene and Jesus is nailed to it! - great preaching illustration for the substitutionary atonement!

Yes, Simon of Cyrene bore the Cross for a short distance. That act did not remove the Lord’s responsibility to go to Calvary, nor did it remove the purpose for which He came. Simon’s bearing was temporary and external. Christ’s bearing was internal and redemptive. The fact that Simon carried the wood does not mean Christ did not bear the burden appointed to Him. It simply means Simon assisted Him physically on the road. The text itself makes that distinction.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

A very old pop/rock song came into my head today: Substitute by the Who, written by the band. I am not recommending the song for its theology, but solely for its use of the English language. Among the lyrics are:
'I'm a substitute FOR another guy.' The singer's girl-friend has been dumped by her previous boyfriend, and has now taken up with the singer. So what does the for mean here? Clearly, it is not on the previous boyfriend's behalf; nor is it for his benefit. She can't have the bloke she realy likes, so she's taking up with the singer instead. Instead of the one, she will have the other. Substitution!
Next lyric:
'Substitute! You FOR my mum.....' What does for mean here? Is this for the benefit of his mum? Is it on her behalf. No. He has left his mum to take up with this girl, instead of staying with his mother.
Substitute! Your lies FOR facts....' Not on behalf of the facts, nor for their benefits. He experiences his girlfriend's lies instead of the truth.
Substitute! Me FOR him;
Substitute! My coke FOR gin....' Again, 'for' means 'instead of.' Whatever you may think of the song, and I'm not recommending it, the writer knows what a substitute is, he uses the word 'for' and everyone knows what it means.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Yes, Simon of Cyrene bore the Cross for a short distance. That act did not remove the Lord’s responsibility to go to Calvary, nor did it remove the purpose for which He came. Simon’s bearing was temporary and external. Christ’s bearing was internal and redemptive. The fact that Simon carried the wood does not mean Christ did not bear the burden appointed to Him. It simply means Simon assisted Him physically on the road. The text itself makes that distinction.

I don't disagree with what you say, but you're missing the point I was making. Simon carried the cross - we don't know how far he carried it - instead of the Lord Jesus; obviously he didn't die instead of Him! I'm not sure why you would be suggesting that I was proposing it. Crazy idea!