Did "Jesus literally change" w/declared righteous?!?

[Lion]

Onto the discussion.

Onto the discussion.

I stated to you in the beginning of my posts as well as later on, that I believe that the one (and only) place we are in disagreement is in ”what change is”. I have no argument with the substitution of sin argument (obviously), but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a real and true change in Christ.

You claim that there was no change in Christ becoming a curse, sin, and dying, where as I have tried to show you that there was an absolute change, in that that He took on the sins of the world (something He had never done or experienced before). He was forsaken by the Father (something He had never experienced before and never will again) That He was separated from the Father (He died, something He had never experienced before and never will again).

Did Christ turn into rape? No, of course not! Did He suddenly become a rapist? No, of course not! But did He, for the first time ever, take those sins upon Himself? In other words, did He accept guilt for them on our behalf? YES! And that was a change. Just as it was a change when He bore the brunt of His actions, accepting the cost of our sin, and paying the price in full.

As to your supposed only question:

As I said earlier, I am not objecting to any other change in Christ except that He changed in His righteousness, which is on account of two main phrases, that He became sin for us, and that God declared Him righteous.

That’s what we’ve been leading up to. And yes, there was a change in His righteousness. While He was righteous, before taking on our sin, He was, and had always been, in perfect union with the Father. Then, when Jesus said:

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

At this point, I believe He became a curse (for our sake,) taking the sins of the world upon Himself and becoming unrighteous. Does this mean that He became “a sin”? No. Does it mean that He became “a rapist?” No. It means that when God saw Him as unrighteous, loaded with the curse due the world, He allowed His full wrath to come down on Jesus, killing Him (separation).

Let me put it like this: At the beginning of this discussion I took great pains to show that sin is not a thing, but an action. This is very important because without really taking that concept (as well as three others) into consideration, it is difficult to see the practicality of the argument.

The other three concepts that are vital to this discussion are these: (1) That death is separation from God. (2) That the price of guilt is death (separation from God). And (3) That being unrighteous means having guilt.

Since sin is an action, and not a thing, once we have done it, it is gone. For instance, you don’t have a bunch of little black marbles rolling around in your heart labeled with the names of all your sins. No. The action of the sin is in the past and no longer exists. The fact that you did it exists, and the consequences, but not the sin itself, because it is nothing more than an action.

So when you make the statement that “sin can not be separated from the sinner” you have to be careful. Why? Because this is a cliché, and like most clichés it is trying to make an analogy. And analogies only go so far to show what something means. Taken too literally an analogy becomes a wrong statement.

What is meant in the phrase that sin cannot be separated from the sinner is that the actions we perform are a direct correlation to who we are. The sin itself does not stay with us, but rather the consequences. The consequence of sin is guilt. And guilt brings forth death (separation from God). Therefore the unbeliever bears the guilt of his sins (being unrighteous). And the punishment of that guilt is death.

When we became believers God says He put our sin as far away from us as the east is from the west. How does He do this? By having paid for our guilt, thereby negating the need for our death (making us righteous). He accomplished this by truly paying the price for our debt (guilt), by Christ dying on the cross, and being separated from the Trinity. He bore our guilt and in so doing became unrighteous (guilty).

This is where you have a problem with this idea, but think it through with the mind set of sin being an action instead of a thing. Christ didn’t die for our sin, but for our guilt. In other words, He didn’t die to take on our evil actions, but rather for the price of those evil actions. The price of our guilt is death (separation from God). Christ took our guilt on Himself, paid the price and redeemed us. But the cost of that redemption was change, He became a curse. He died, (was separated), paying our price. But Christ, being more than just a man (man and God), could not be defeated by death (separation from the Father) and was made righteous by the Spirit.

So in this sense the term unrighteous means having guilt. Christ did have our guilt because He took it from us. He then paid the price and was made righteous (no longer separated which is the price of unrighteousness) and was the first to truly rise from the dead, because He is the first to have died and then been reunited with the Father.

I agree with you that this is a difficult subject, but great for study.

 

[1Way]

Lion – One (accurate, not misunderstood) step at a time.

Thanks for taking the time to address the personal aspect of this discussion. I hope to respond to the bible discussion as time avails. But first things first. As to

So, if you don’t want to get burned with insults, then learn to post without making any. Otherwise, let’s not worry about hurting each other’s feelings and just get on with the discussion.

Apathy is not an option for me, and I hope you did not mean to promote such a thing as a valid consideration. How we treat one another is supposed to be of the utmost importance for the Christian. How we treat one another has eternal consequences. As to your primary suggestion, if you really mean that, then I should multiply offensive burning insults at you because you were just previously offensive to me. If you find fault in your brother (righteously so or not), make the same fault in yourself, and make it larger too.

I don’t believe you really want it to be either of those suggestions.

As for my suggestion, I care about how we treat one another (just as everyone should), and in our case, because I thought we were more than just distant theological acquaintances. I completely disagree about your late allegations of my behavior. I “would” consider what you have done as defensively creating unnecessary strife because of being offended by some imagined wrong that did not exist in the first place. However, since I care about our relationship and I want to be a blessing and not otherwise, I would like to

first understand why you think that I was wrongfully insulting
before I personally establish your guilt by my judgment against you.

After all, we are supposed to

confront first
prior to judgment against a brother

for at least one very good reason. Sometimes the error perceived may exist only in the eyes of the beholder and not in any other way. Also, it might be partially accurate and partially inaccurate, etc. I’m sure you’d agree that our personal judgments are subject to error, even things we think are simply observations often turn out to be some sort of mistake. And what is neat is, when we find out that we are somehow mistaken about a wrong that we think someone else did, that should be an excuse for joyful gladness. We don’t want to be like Jonah who was pridefully unhappy that things turned out so righteous and loving.

So now I’ve confronted you, and I’ve done so prior to harshly judging against you personally. I hope this helps you understand my offense at your treatment of me, which we can table for a latter time after we deal with your claims of my wrongdoing, even though I am ready for amends on this issue any time you are. (Me or you standing corrected) If you have questions or comments on this issue, I welcome your input.

So, walking back a couple of steps back to “initial confrontation”, forgetting the just mentioned offense I perceive in you. Your claims seem completely wrong to me. So, please explain what in particular was the offensive insulting error. Let us establish the truth of the matter so that at the very least, I could become able to be sorry for what I did, after all, only then would you and or others be able to accept my repentance as being suitable and appropriate.

I’d be happy to continue this privately or publicly, but if you think it wont be settled in short order, (it hardly ever is) we probably should continue this away from the forum.

 

[Lion]

I agree that this should be done privately. So I agree to discuss it in private e-mails or over the phone.

Also this will stop any distraction from the topic in question.

 

[Lion]

Anybody home?

Anybody home?

Ummmm…. Hello?

I meant to discuss the personal stuff in private. The discussion should continue unchecked.

 

[1Way]

Lion – Sure, I knew that. I’m an OTR truck driver, which means I have almost no free time as it is, and there may be times when I’m gone from TOL for extended periods. I’ll do what I can when I can, and feel I’ve done much already. Although I don’t feel you’ve given some of my points very good consideration, and to some you’ve given very bad consideration. (I admit that I barely considered your last topical post, I need to catch up when time permits.) I’m going to try to refocus again, and make some general and summary comments; I’ll get back to particulars some other time. And I hope we are not battling over semantics when in reality we effectively believe the same thing.

I am concerned over the issue of Christ’s own personal righteousness, which may be restated as God’s righteousness because Christ is God (3in1), and whether or not it ever actually changed into being unrighteous. It’s my view (and I think is also the overwhelming view of most Christians) that God never actually changed in His personal righteousness; God never became unrighteous.

A quick recap, Bob Enyart claimed that Jesus Christ Himself personally underwent change concerning two main things, taking on the sins of the world and then being declared the righteous. I could agree with that by defining the particular change in any number of ways that would not include His personal righteousness. But when I pressed for a more clear particular explanation here at TOL for what particular sort of change Bob was implying, you took up the argument and plainly said that He did become unrighteous, a claim that I believe is patently false. If you really disagree with God’s own personal unchanged holy righteousness, then for starters, I have to wonder what we should do with all the passages that establish quite clearly His unchanging holy righteousness.

(Please respond to this issue in two ways, clarify if you do believe that God via Jesus actually (not figuratively) became unrighteous, and secondly, if you believe that He actually became unrighteous, what do we do with all the teachings in the bible to the contrary?)

What about the event of personal sacrificial substitution itself? Are there any biblical or absolute moral grounds for a (general) rule that lovingly and sacrificially and rightly paying off someone else’s debt, somehow makes that person unrighteous in so doing? I claim there are none. In fact, since it was a righteous loving act, Christians accept Jesus’ atonement for our sins as being the ultimate in sacrificial and righteous love. I think the last attribute they would impute to God is unrighteousness, especially during His most wonderful and glorious act.

It doesn’t make the debt payer unrighteous by taking on their debt. Suffering and dieing for us entailed great changes in Christ, but Him changing in His righteousness simply is not such a change. That would make every teaching in the bible about God’s holy righteousness in direct contradiction to this teaching that He actually became unrighteous, even if only for a moment, and even if the depth or severity of this unrighteousness was the sum total of all unrighteousness that would ever exist (i.e. God actually became completely unrighteous by literally taking on “all” the sins of the world.)

(What do you say?)

Here’s an example of a biblical rule that I find to be consistent. But first some related bible references.

(A free will moral agent’s morality is self-determined and characterizes the person.)

Ge 4:7 "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire [is] for you, but you should rule over it."

Lu 6:45 "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

(Being righteous and unrighteous are absolute issues, consider the case of murder, you can not murder someone and at the same time, and in the same relationship, be considered righteous.)

Isa 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Mal 2:17 You have wearied the LORD with your words; Yet you say, "In what way have we wearied [Him]?" In that you say, "Everyone who does evil [Is] good in the sight of the LORD, And He delights in them," Or, "Where [is] the God of justice?"

(General Bible rule) You cannot separate the sin from the sinner, nor the right from the righteous, or the wrong from the unrighteous. But you can forgive them if they are repentant, i.e. not “attribute” guilt, “account” them as righteous. A free will moral being is good or bad depending upon their own personal moral responses and deeds.

No one can force someone else to actually be good or evil, it’s always according to his or her own free will responding/acting in a righteous or unrighteous way. And just suppose that God could violate someone else’s will, then that will would not really be their own will, it would at least partially be God’s will also. So literally having unrighteousness in yourself would only happen if you personally acted in some unrighteous way (even if only in thought or intention). I also reference Pharaoh’s heart being hardened by God, and that it does not mean that God violated his free will in so doing, so even God can not actually exchange a person’s morality with another.

We should not profane or falsify God, and we should never attribute unrighteousness in Him. Anyone who holds to a direct contradiction is not worth much time arguing the case, and the last thing I’d expect from you or Bob Enyart is to espouse an outright biblical contradiction. So I await some explanation that would straighten out my biblical misunderstandings, or how I am mistaken in presuming that both changing and not changing in God’s righteousness is a direct contradiction, or whatever other mistakes I have made. I’m reminded of what I understand we both agree in, that you can NOT separate the sin from the sinner. It’s not, you may not separate the sin from the sinner, it’s you can not. That being the case, any notion of God taking our sins (literally transferring) upon Himself is not literal, but figurative of something else, like Him substituting Himself for our sakes. Also consider the following.

A new particular point.

Also, as some friends helped me understand, they deserve the credit, not myself. This idea of Jesus becoming “sin” may well derive it’s “intended” meaning from a Hebrew use, where one of the words for “sin” also can mean “sin offering”. That can explain why the scriptures stated the seemingly contradictory statement that He who knew no sin, became sin. But, I feel certain enough about Christ’s holy righteousness and Him not being unrighteous. Also, if the idea that “sin” means “sin offering” is correct, then I would have to wonder if you would still want to assert that Jesus became unrighteous since there may not be any other such bold reference to persuade someone into that position.

 

[1Way]

Lion – I forgot some references that seems especially on topic. Just more food for thought.

Ro 3:24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 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, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

= The moral action being considered.

= the result of this moral action.

During the same event, Christ’s work of redemption at the cross, God was not both unrighteous while He was demonstrating His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier.

And what if we consider the entire act of Christ’s sacrificial death?

Joh 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

Godly sacrificial love is a good thing, it is not unrighteousness.

And also.

Ro 9:14 What shall we say then? [Is there] unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!

2Ch 19:7 "Now therefore, let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take care and do [it], for [there is] no iniquity with the LORD our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes."

3Jo 1:11 Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.

God is good, He is not unrighteous, and He is trustworthy in His righteous character, He is always righteous.

That's all for now...

 

[1Way]

The bible repeatedly accounts what Christ did on the cross as being a righteous good and loving deed. I am gathering these on the fly, I feel quite certain that many more could be found, but I’m sure these passages are fully in keeping with what the bible teaches about Christ and His righteousness.

• 1Pe 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
  
  (Not utterly filled with sin and unrighteousness, just the opposite)
  
• Ro 5:18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense [judgment] came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act [the free gift came] to all men, resulting in justification of life.
  
  (Christ’s act on the cross was righteous, it was the opposite of unrighteous which was what the first Adam represented, this is the entire teaching of the bible, that a righteous God would provide the means to justify the sins of the world, the righteous would fix the unrighteous to make a way for salvation.)
  
• Joh 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
  
  (Agape Love is the greatest and most godly attribute. Of course, godly love can never be unrighteous, and so here we see an understatement about the righteous deed done on the cross, because it was the epitome of true love.)
  
• Heb 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all [points] tempted as [we are, yet] without sin.
  
  (Christ’s sinless perfection, was tempted in all ways man is tempted, yet without sin. Man could certainly be “tempted” to sacrificially take on someone else’s unrighteousness, but then again, this teaching says that concerning every temptation, Christ remained without sin.)

God became sin for us. God took on the sin of the world. These are relational ideas; they represent a replacement of Christ “for us”, it is substitution. Concerning justice, Christ took the world’s sin upon Himself, so that He could redeem us. This idea of substitution is a bible wide concept and is what happened when Christ took on the sins of the world.

My main points are these.

- Morality is absolutely attached to the moral agent.
You can not separate the sin from the sinner (morality is eternally connected to the moral agent), thus the ideas of “transference” and “sin” (= Jesus became sin for us) is a statement of account, a reckoning, an imputation, a substitution, even the context declares this truth that it is by way of personal substitution, became sin “for us”, not “actually took our sin from us”.

- God is steadfastly righteous.
God is without unrighteousness. This is especially true at the crucifixion where the most loving and Godly event ever happened. To suggest that this righteous deed involved God actually becoming unrighteous is perfectly contrary to the entire bible’s message.

I conclude that these two unique ideas (became sin for us, and afterward declared righteous) need to be understood in such a way as to not violate the rest of the bible. As to the second phrase, I suppose it relates to the following.

• Ro 3:26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Might?!? What could be uncertain about God in this issue of becoming our justifier? Well, I suppose that the temptations for Jesus to fail in some way were real. Thus it was possible for Christ to sin, otherwise He could not really be tempted to sin like we are if He could never possibly sin. So, Christ possibly could have not completed His work of redemption at the cross, thus after this issue had been taken care of for all eternity, only then could He be officially recognized for this glorious deed. Even I could remain sinless for my entire life “if I could not possibly sin”. So this proclamation of Christ’s righteousness, is fully in accordance to the completion of His work of redemption, which evidently held perhaps the largest temptation to fail (who wants pain and suffering and death and terrible intense torment?), yet the most difficult sacrifice had been completed, and only after that point could Christ truly be said to be “just and the justifier”, and to have lived a life and faced every temptation common to man, yet He remained “without” sin/unrighteousness. Proclaimed righteous, sure, He just completed His entire life without sinning, even during the most difficult sacrifice and perhaps temptation ever. Not that He was previously and briefly unrighteous, but that He had never before attained absolute certain completion of His work of redemption, and without failing too!

I see no reason to assume that Christ actually changed in His righteousness. God is faithful exactly because He doesn’t change in His righteous character. And becoming “sin for us” is a statement of personal substitution, not otherwise.

I hope this has been helpful. To attribute unrighteousness in God is a most dangerous and I dare say blasphemous notion.

 

[1Way]

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Knight - Lion - billwald - philosophizer - and all interested parties –

I was hoping for a bit more interest and interaction than this, almost three months and no responses. Perhaps the personal offense sidetrack dampened the topic’s interest.

Bilwald still owes me a response to my last post to him. Knight and myself have apparently just sort of dropped our differences without discussing it, but I think we understand and even respect each other pretty well. Lion owes me some private and public responses, although I’m not sure either of us is looking forward to dealing with the private part. ... What do you do when you just can’t see eye to eye with your brother and your relationship is as broken as it appeared to be? Maybe the trust and respect built up between us was previously artificially too high (in my eyes), and so the not much depth was broken between us, I just don’t know. I just know that nothing has happened since he agreed to continue privately.

Your thoughts and prayers are encouraged and welcome. I hope Lion is well and is still prayerfully considering what happened. And my previous two posts remain unanswered above. (?)

Here’s to some long awaited objective bible study and discussion! Although I should say, I usually get a pretty good feel for the other person’s argument/position “prior” to engaging in debate, but I still have a somewhat of a hard time understanding their “Jesus/God actually became unrighteous” view. I hear the claims, but I don’t see much bible apologetic defending the view, especially in light of my biblical defense against their view. I hope to see more dealing with the passages that teach that what Jesus did on the cross and during His entire life was loving and righteous, and so until then, I remain somewhat confused as to why they claim that Jesus actually became unrighteous, not just figuratively via personal substitution.

Back to the topic at hand, here is my last post to billwald.

Billwald – As to

Could be correct but at least to me it makes God appear infantile. The substitution theory boils down to the concept that pain has a positive qualitative and quantitative value that offsets the negative qualitative and quantitative value of sin.

Infantile? Substitution is a bible wide theme. Pain? Pain? . . . Pain. Pain?

Substitution is not about pain. Look at what the Bible teaches on the topic. That man can not save himself, he needs God’s rescue and God seems right in thinking that only a perfect (sinless) sacrifice could possibly redeem the world for all eternity. Not pain, but biblical righteousness and forgiveness. Forgiveness never says, the offender is not guilty of offending, it’s, the offender is guilty BUT he repented AND I forgive the offense they did against me.

And as far as forgiveness in salvation goes, God imputes Christ’s righteousness into our account. Imputation is not something that is separates the sin from the sinner, it’s outright substitution, God esteems/declares our account as righteous as though our righteousness is really Christ’s perfection! Yet even though Christ lives in us, “our” own righteousness is not perfect, it’s is merely accounted that way by God despite all our sin and unrighteousness. That’s love and forgiveness and biblical accounting and substitution, and lastly, the fact that you can never separate the sin from the sinner, or the good from the righteous.

Bob Enyart was the one who is saying that Jesus changed when He became sin for us, and when He later was declared righteous. Unless someone finally comes forward and explains what other change in God we are talking about, this teaching is saying that God was at least temporarily less than righteous because of sin. I am saying that is not possible, the sacrifice at the cross was without blemish, the price tag for the gift of salvation to the world was not paid by a person filled sin, the infinite price was paid by a perfect person without sin.

(As to) “He became sin for us”, must not mean what Bob is teaching, which would be focusing only on the first part and ignoring the second half, it must be some statement of substitution. And look, consider the phrase, it is substitution. God did something:
- for us,
- instead of us,
- on our behalf.
Substitution, or “on our behalf”, or “on our account”, is the idea plainly presented, and in other parts of scripture, being “accounted for righteousness” is God’s word concerning our salvation and forgiveness.

Surely you can at least acknowledge these precepts as Biblical.(?)

Looking forward to your response.

 

[Aimiel]

I.M.H.O. ...

I.M.H.O. ...

I, personally, believe that the only reason Jesus was able to die, since the wages of sin is death, was the fact that He allowed Himself to be hung upon a tree (see Deuteronomy 21:23, below). If He were not hanged, His sinless life would not have allowed death to have any hold upon Him, having never sinned. This is, in itself, the most righteous act ever performed by flesh, and since God looks upon the heart and knows the thoughts and intents, Jesus' righteousness never comes into question, even when He allowed His flesh to take on the curse of sin, never having done anything deserving of such judgement. It is this travesty of God's justice, that is to say, the death of pure innocence, that allows us (sinners) to trade our sinfulness for His Righteousness, by faith in His Finished Work upon the cross.

His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

 

[1Way]

Thanks Aimiel – I think that even God becoming a curse for us is not like the curse put on man, which was the result of sin (at the tree). He was as you mentioned without the problem of inherited death because of sin, He could have lived forever just as Adam and Eve would have prior to the fall and subsequent curse of death. Now, lets see, how do we understand the curse for being hung on a tree. :crackup: how about it’s because you were hung on a tree, there is no moral or ethical evil for being hung on a tree as apposed to hung on metal or whatever. Sin is a curse for man, and God would take away the sins of the world by hanging on a tree, so it is poetic justice and shows the relationship all the way back to the beginning of it all, yet that was taken care of by way of personal substitution, unrighteousness did not “somehow” become detached and reattached.

Suppose you had purposefully did something as painful as purposefully giving your own son as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, would you want to look at it right as it was happening? Wouldn’t the pain and heartache rip at you terribly? Wouldn’t the loss and agony and pain just tear you up inside and make you wish it did not have to happen? Of course that would be the case, so it is not surprising that we find Jesus and God at a point of separation, which is possibly more on account of God the Father’s heart, than it was for Jesus. I imagine that two thoughts went through God’s mind as Jesus was dying on the cross. First, His death and pain would only be temporary, and second, the love for the lost that they might be saved was worth the sacrifices and pain. God really cares for others, even though all the saints together not nearly as worthy as His one son is, God did it “for us”.

Great, so far I have philosophizer and Aimiel in my favor and Lion and billwald against. But then again, billwald and Lion has not responded to my last posts, so their current position is less clear.

Any thoughts for what could be done to actually get Bob Enyart involved in this? Or do you think he should remain unawares? (So far those close to Bob have given me the unambiguous impression that he should not be bothered with this issue. Patience and humility are virtues, although not always easy to produce.)

I have actually entertained the idea that Bob Enyart put out this false teaching as a sort of test or something. Because when I consider the rest of his teaching, which is great, I just can not figure out why he would teach that Jesus actually became the most sin filled person ever when He took on “some”, opps, I mean “most”, opps, I mean “all” of the sins of the world. See the implication, I say He took on all the sins of the world by way of substitution, which makes no change in His personal state of righteousness, except to confer yet another act of righteousness on His behalf. But the opposing position is that all the sins of the world were actually put on Jesus such that His righteousness actually changed and He later needed to be declared Jesus the righteous, as in, prior to that declaration, Jesus was not righteous! At least that is the way Lion has weighed in on this topic (Lion is in leadership in Bob Enyart’s church).

I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard Bob plainly say that God never changes in His righteous character, we can count on Him to be a righteous and just God, yet when it comes to Jesus on the cross, he teaches that God the Son changed in His righteousness, which is a direct contradiction, and, what makes matters more strange and foggy, is that he stated that this notion of Jesus actually becoming unrighteous is according to orthodox Christianity. I have never heard such a thing, and would challenge Bob Enyart to provide references, but more importantly, I would challenge Bob Enyart to back it up biblically.

Bob Enyarts is the best bible teacher I have ever learned from in terms of number of great teachings, not to neglect others who in different ways deserve the same sort of respect. But I have seen him make what appears to be some careless remarks about the Hebrew word ra’ which means evil/ruin/calamity etc. I believe he misrepresented the occurrence use between several different translated words in the English, and also at the same time, he suggested that one of the variant meanings in the English = “evil” which has a greater number of occurrences, implies that that particular meaning is the better or right translation in a particular verse where God was doing ra’, when in fact the number of occurances have little to do with which variant meaning should be used in any given setting. Even if it is 1,000 to 5, the context is the more foundational guide to determine which of the word’s variant meanings should be represented in the English. And he used the information off of one single translation which many conclude is not so accurate that you need not investigate other translatory considerations. Since I happened to have spent a fair amount of time studying that word, I find those two mistakes about that word ra’ to be somewhat gross mistakes, although to his credit, his conclusion of the teaching is right, even though some of his reasoning is dubious. But other than that, I have found practically nothing to speak of concerning Bob E. making such mistakes, which is remarkable, given that He has taught probably many thousands of discrete teachings and bible lessons, I am utterly surprised to find that I have only found like two issues of contention or meaningful error.

Given Bob’s extreme sharp and deliberate style and care to detail, and because Bob walked down this path with purposed questions and follow up reasoning, I would have to say that I understood what he taught and concluded and claimed, and that because of that, Bob is wrong and should reconsider his position.

Apparently he has not taken a wider more comprehensive approach to understanding what it means for God the Son to “take on the sins of the world for us”, and to be under God’s curse (“for us”), that at basically every angle concerning what Jesus did on the cross, we can insert the idea of substitution that Jesus did it “for us”, so that we can know beyond a doubt that our God and savior Jesus Christ really was sinless and really was without spot or blemish, and that God the Father esteems the requirements of justice to be paid in full by the most righteous and loving sacrifice ever. That sacrifice was not even marred by sin and unrighteousness, it was “on account of” sin and unrighteousness that Jesus did what He did, not otherwise. He did not become unrighteous by doing the most Godly and loving thing ever. The atonement was real, the pain and the punishment was real, the terribleness of it all was real, but Jesus remained unchanged in His righteousness through it all.

You can not separate the sin from the sinner, that is impossible and nonsense, so it is immediately impossible for our sin to actually be on Christ and not on us. But you can be forgiven, which does not do away with the sins, it just “accounts” them as reconciled, like as though they are gone. And, you can also substitute yourself in the place of another to pay off his or her debt. And there is absolutely no iniquity or unrighteousness in doing that. Sin brought a curse upon man, and Jesus bore the weight of that curse for us, = substitutionally.

Think of it, if Jesus really became unrighteous, and not just symbolically by way of substitution, but He really was filled with sin and unrighteousness, then God is “usually” but “not always” righteous. He is usually but not always without iniquity, at least once, God was the most wicked and sinful being ever, yet they would say that He became that way to do good, yet Bob always says, and rightly so, do right and risk the consequences, never do evil that good may come of it.

2Co 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

From what I gather, it’s a matter of carefully considering what “for us” contributes in meaning, and also to not violate and even contradict the rest of the bible that portrays God as always being righteous, even during the crucifixion.

If you actually become unrighteous, it’s because you did something unrighteous, if you pay someone else’s debt because , , , you simply and righteously cared to do so, , , not because the debt was actually yours, , , then you did a good and gracious thing, not a bad thing. It’s as simple as that.

Interestingly, I think that Ro 3:24-26 does a great job of refutation, as well as Ro 5:18. (see above in posts 46 and 47) http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=242786#post242786
These passages are so clear, but Bob’s use of

2Co 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

seems sketchy because he does not even deal with the central idea (not to mention, bible wide idea!) of doing something on someone else’s behalf (personal substitution) which is stuck right in the middle of this his heavy verse!

Maybe some day Bob Enyart will hear of this criticism against his teaching, and maybe someday this unresolved problem will be resolved. I have a very busy schedule and so does Bob, so patience is only called for. While there is life, there is hope.

 

[1Way]

Oh, one more thing, I just re-read something in my previous post #47 and really felt the urge to elaborate a new thought.

Here is what I said

So this proclamation of Christ’s righteousness, is fully in accordance to the completion of His work of redemption, which evidently held perhaps the largest temptation to fail (who wants pain and suffering and death and terrible intense torment?), yet the most difficult sacrifice had been completed, and only after that point could Christ truly be said to be “just and the justifier”, and to have lived a life and faced every temptation common to man, yet He remained “without” sin/unrighteousness. Proclaimed righteous, sure, He just completed His entire life without sinning, even during the most difficult sacrifice and perhaps temptation ever. Not that He was previously and briefly unrighteous, but that He had never before attained absolute certain completion of His work of redemption, and without failing too!

I know what else would have made his work that much more difficult. Remember a teaching about dying for the righteous?

Ro 5:6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Scarcely for one righteous man would one man die, yet it is conceivable that even just for a good man, someone would even dare to die, but what about dying for the unrighteous? What about one man dieing for nothing but sinners? See the intense disproportion of righteousness and unrighteousness? It’s like, sure, some would die for a righteous person, but for the unrighteous? That is a special and rare love. But I think this also strengthens the idea about our sanctification process and being made into a new creature once we are saved, that way we unworthy and unrighteous become more like God, we become more of a thing worthy to die for. Thank God He has covered every corner and provided so much for us.

 

[1Way]

A summarization and request for more involvement!

A summarization and request for more involvement!

For all interested parties who do not want to re-read some 51 posts to understand what this is all about. I suggest you read my first post, perhaps also listen to the audio teaching because that is where I first heard of this problem, and the following quotes and references as well. This is from Lion’s post #41, where he says what I believe is perhaps the most disappointing teaching I have heard here at TOL, because of how uncharacteristically bad it is. (I still feel that TOL and the teachings of BEL is the best resources for bible study and biblical edification. That is why this problematic teaching is such a shocker to me.)

The audio file from the show “Do callers change” 1-30-2003.
http://kgov.com/BEL/2003/20030130-BEL021.mp3

this is from post #41 from Lion
http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=236472#post236472

Lion said:

As to your supposed only question:

As I said earlier, I am not objecting to any other change in Christ except that He changed in His righteousness, which is on account of two main phrases, that He became sin for us, and that God declared Him righteous.

That’s what we’ve been leading up to. And yes, there was a change in His righteousness. While He was righteous, before taking on our sin, He was, and had always been, in perfect union with the Father. Then, when Jesus said:

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

At this point, I believe He became a curse (for our sake,) taking the sins of the world upon Himself and becoming unrighteous. Does this mean that He became “a sin”? No. Does it mean that He became “a rapist?” No. It means that when God saw Him as unrighteous, loaded with the curse due the world, He allowed His full wrath to come down on Jesus, killing Him (separation).

In the same post, Lion said

The other three concepts that are vital to this discussion are these: (1) That death is separation from God. (2) That the price of guilt is death (separation from God). And (3) That being unrighteous means having guilt.

He later said

So in this sense the term unrighteous means having guilt. Christ did have our guilt because He took it from us. He then paid the price and was made righteous (no longer separated which is the price of unrighteousness) and was the first to truly rise from the dead, because He is the first to have died and then been reunited with the Father.

I try to focus the issue around Christ’s righteousness, that is exactly my contention against Bob’s teaching, I claim that Jesus never changed in His righteousness, but Lion wants to focus on a difference between what it means to be sinful or unrighteous, as though different understandings of unrighteousness should alter anything from this discussion. I should add that Lion made another pretty glaring mistake, which I just realized after re-reading these months later. He said

He accomplished this by truly paying the price for our debt (guilt), by Christ dying on the cross, and being separated from the Trinity. He bore our guilt and in so doing became unrighteous (guilty).

Do you see it? He probably did not mean it, but he is attacking Christ’s divinity, temporarily denying His part in the trinity. I think he should have rather said, separated from the father, as I think he previously had stipulated.

So, there you have it, Lion, a leader and close associate to Bob Enyart and his church plainly defends that Jesus actually became unrighteous because of taking on the unrighteousness of the entire world. Where as I say that Jesus never was unrighteous, but righteously took on the sins of the world symbolically by way of personal substitution. I agree with all the associated and tangent changes that Lion keeps detracting to except for guilt, prior to His work of redemption, Jesus (God) had not experienced so much real pain and torment. But as should be clear by now, I disagree with what is arguably blasphemy, and that is to say that God actually became unrighteous at any time.

Last we heard from Lion, he was looking forward to more discussion on this hot topic, and I was too. I felt like I had to keep bringing Lion back onto track concerning my specific problem with the teaching, and I felt like he was getting closer and closer to dealing with it, but then he stopped responding months ago. In my post #45,
http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=242780#post242780
I said the following

(Please respond to this issue in two ways, clarify if you do believe that God via Jesus actually (not figuratively) became unrighteous, and secondly, if you believe that He actually became unrighteous, what do we do with all the teachings in the bible to the contrary?)

leaving him yet another chance to detract from this really bad teaching.

I also sighted a general rule from the bible

(General Bible rule) You cannot separate the sin from the sinner, nor the right from the righteous, or the wrong from the unrighteous. But you can forgive them if they are repentant, i.e. not “attribute” guilt, “account” them as righteous. A free will moral being is good or bad depending upon their own personal moral responses and deeds.

showing that concerning forgiveness, the bible teaches that it is an issue of “an accounting”, or “to attribute”, or “to impute”, not otherwise.

Also especially notable is the following

Also, as some friends helped me understand, they deserve the credit, not myself. This idea of Jesus becoming “sin” may well derive it’s “intended” meaning from a Hebrew use, where one of the words for “sin” also can mean “sin offering”. That can explain why the scriptures stated the seemingly contradictory statement that He who knew no sin, became sin. But, I feel certain enough about Christ’s holy righteousness and Him not being unrighteous. Also, if the idea that “sin” means “sin offering” is correct, then I would have to wonder if you would still want to assert that Jesus became unrighteous since there may not be any other such bold reference to persuade someone into that position.

which was given to me by a mutual friend of mine and Enyart’s ministry/church.

Lastly, in my posts #46 and 47, I think I did an especially good job of succinctly exposing the bible’s teaching over this issue of Christ supposedly becoming unrighteous, when in fact, the bible teaches the exact opposite.

Will Lion and or Bob Enyart humbly re-examine this issue, or do they have no problem with the reality that Bob Enyart Live is teaching that God via Jesus Christ actually became unrighteous, which I think is nearly blasphemy and certainly a false and contradictory bible teaching.

(I say “nearly blasphemy” because I fully believe they intended no disrespect towards God, but as the scripture says, Ro 9:14 What shall we say then? [Is there] unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!.)

*** *** ***

So, do you agree with Bob Enyart and Lion that God actually became unrighteous, or do you agree with me that the bible is only replete in presenting God as always righteous and just, and that it is at least error to say that God was unrighteous. And that the change in Jesus taking on the sins of the world was figurative not literal by way of personal substitution, you can not literally take someone’s sin or unrighteousness off them and put it upon someone else, thus literally changing the innocent party’s righteousness into being unrighteous, but Jesus can take on the sins of the world figuratively by way of personal substitution and terms like accounted, or imputed, or reckoned onto him, or doing it “for us”, on “account of” sin, etc.

Any comments on my two posts 46 and 47 would also be appreciated.

*** *** ***

Your prayerful and thoughtful responses and biblical comments are welcomed and encouraged. May the leading of the HS lead us in His truth and unity.

And any news about Lion would also be appreciated; he is missed, along with a long awaited attempt at reconciliation. I hope he is well.