God Punishes Sin not the Sinner! 09-07-2017

God Punishes Sin not the Sinner!
Romans 7:15-8:4; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Whose place did Jesus take on the Cross: Gods or ours?

I came back from my study week quite stimulated. Amongst other reading I read N T Wright’s, 400pp The Day the Revolution Began. The subtitle of Wright’s book is ‘Reconsidering the meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion’. By reading I mean studying. I took notes, reflected and cross-referenced the book. Much of what Wright was saying I had picked up over the years, but Wright put the jigsaw pieces together and presented a powerful picture which was so helpful.

The Easter event, I mean the Crucifixion and Resurrection, is not easily understood, but the Easter event revolutionised the followers of Jesus. That’s why it is so important. Those first followers didn’t feel that Jesus was just another way to understand life and God. It wasn’t the friendship and fellowship of the church that mattered. Neither was it the ethical standard of loving your neighbour with selfless love. It was a revolution. They realised that this Jesus of Nazareth had dealt the Roman Empire a mortal blow. The Cross of Jesus had destroyed the power of sin. If these seem absurd statements then remember the powerful political and military forces of Rome finally dissipated, but Christ’s influence and self-giving love grew and spread in the hearts and minds of an ever-growing number of influential people. Yes, we Christians behave badly at times when we forget our Lord and look elsewhere, but the Holy Spirit brings the transforming love of Christ to the surface from time to time. When that happens the revolutionary love of God in Christ transforms and empowers. I believe we need to put ourselves in the place where God can begin to work afresh with us. We might do that by understanding afresh the Cross of Jesus.

I turned to the Lectionary readings for this Sunday. The Matthew reading described people in the shopping centre who heard the music but couldn’t dance to it, and who were unable to see the needs of others. Jesus says, “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
I wondered what has changed. We are still busy feeding our enslavement to capitalism and other isms. We use the panacea of ‘retail therapy’ to dull the pains of life. In the background then and now is the invitation of Jesus to share our burdens and give us a real purpose for living. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; says Jesus. But we ignore the offer.

If our first reading reminds us of our superficiality and inability to understand like those in Jesus’ day, the second reading from Romans tells us how God dealt with Sin.

We would say that we know how God deals with sin. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus paid the price and took our place. We deserved the punishment, but Jesus took our place. We call that the substitutionary theory of atonement. And the result is that we, if we accept Jesus, will go to heaven? Right? … No! Wrong!

Those who have followed my preaching know that salvation is not about going to heaven, but being set free to live out the Kingdom of God in this world? And this notion that Jesus died in our place is not what the Bible is saying. Jesus was not our substitute. It’s not what Paul is saying in Romans 7 and 8 where we read; Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is … no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. … For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin … . [Rom 7:25; 8:1, 3] There are texts like Mark 10:45 that speak of Jesus being a ransom and Romans 3: 25 that speak of Jesus as a sacrificial atonement. But we are never told to whom the ransom is paid; and the Biblical writers don’t spell out how Jesus is an atonement for our sins. They just make statements like that.

It is true that Jesus died ‘for us’, but ‘dying for us’ does not mean that Jesus died ‘in our place’. Neither does the notion that Jesus died ‘for us’ mean that Jesus took our punishment to satisfy an angry God. If you are saying that God needed to punish the sinner then you are talking about ‘a god’ who is angry and desires to punish the wrong doer. There are big problems with such a view. We end up with an angry God who believes in punitive justice and who is willing to place a substitute for us just to satisfy some concept of justice. Such logic flies in the face of the Bible. The Bible presents God as patient, merciful and loving. So what does it say?

Let us go back to Romans and let me add a few words that I left out. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is … no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. … For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. [Rom 8:3] God does not condemn Jesus but condemns Sin.

Paul uses a phrase ‘sinful flesh’. The Greek word for flesh is best translated as humanity. But Paul talks about ‘sinful flesh’ a number of times in his writings. In these instances ‘sinful flesh’ means that sin has mingled with our humanity to form a power that we cannot control. For Paul, ‘sinful flesh’, is sin ‘being on steroids’. We know when we look at our world there are forces that seem so big we feel overwhelmed. Further to the point it seems we only know how to respond with negativity or punitive justice to such forces. We meet violence with violence and hatred with hatred. And sometimes we do so with very little thought.

But God … by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, deals with sin by condemning sin in the flesh. Christ Jesus is sent by God to deal with sin. Jesus is God sent. Jesus is God with us. The Cross of Christ destroys the power of Sin. At the Cross the powers of Sin meet. Political systems, military force, self-interest, religiosity, fear and prejudice convene at the Cross to destroy this one, Jesus. These powers representing Sin meet God’s representative the Christ, where it seems that Sin’s power destroys Selfless Love the opposite occurs. Love conquers sin and breaks its power. If God had used violence there would merely have been an escalation of violence resulting in winners and losers. But God’s self-giving sacrificial love results only in winners: forgiveness is the result of the Cross.

The Cross is the place where God defeats Sin with love: the love of God in Christ. Jesus is God’s substitute and humanity’s substitute. Jesus hangs there for God and for humanity. Jesus doesn’t hang there in our place; he hangs there because we couldn’t do what he did, because what he did only God could do. The power of Sin is broken – the battle won. We share in that victory. Jesus is our substitute. A simple example of this is the fire-fighter who takes our place and fights the fire, because we couldn’t do it. The fire-fighter is our substitute at the place of fire.

This is the powerful story of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus. Sin’s power is broken and forgiveness reigns. Forgiveness does not only rule over our lives but rains on our lives as a result of the Cross.

This has been a dense sermon, but I hope helpful. I hope that you can recognise a few important things to take with you. People of God recognise:-

That Sin on steroids is broken by Love on steroids. Jesus is God’s and humanity’s substitute. Jesus is God with us who breaks the power of Sin with Love.

That you are part of a revolutionary movement and the power is with you.

That you will become more Christ like by looking to and getting to know Jesus.

That you have been gifted with the faith to praise and speak for God. Take the courage and do so. Don’t be silenced by social niceness or the fear of scorn.

 

*******

 

 

Peter C Whitaker, Leighmoor UC: 09/07/2017
pgwhitaker@tpg.com.au
/ Www.leighmoorunitingchurch.org.au