Introduction to the Trinitarian Faith Course - Session 7

Finally, this is so this is session 7.

Anyone who was asking questions like from week 1 and I said, you

have to wait till you know, session 7 before we, before we

actually get there, well, we're here.

So Hooray. And it's a, it's a short chapter

in the book because I think for me, I think this is one of the

easiest lectures to follow personally, especially if you've

kind of gone through the the 1st 6.

But I think it's the it's, it's more accessible.

It's not got philosophical terms like matter narrative or, you

know, post enlightenment thinking or any of that kind of

none of that's in there. It's quite straightforward.

We're talking about what, what is the cross and why did, why

did Jesus come? So I thought actually it didn't,

it didn't need an awful lot of kind of additional, you know,

hand holding in terms of the in terms of the the manual.

So the question, well, the the learning outcomes and I'm going

to turn it over to you guys to discuss for a bit while I go and

eat some sorbet. Understand the purpose of the

cross. I probably would reword that now

actually understand the purpose of the cross, maybe begin to

understand. Do we understand?

Understanding is an overrated word, but it's a good learning

outcome word from Bloom's taxonomy for worldview education

theorists out there. Sorry.

Second one up. Yeah, yes, yeah.

Level level 2 Blooms. Yeah.

Grasp how the gospel defines our problem in relation to darkness.

Do you like that one? And three, This one you will not

read in Blooms. Dismantle.

Dismantle the false doctrine of penal substitution reatonement.

And that's deliberately strong. That's it's a strong statement

because I don't think there's any quarter to be given to the

the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, that

there may be many angles on the atonement and there are many

angles on the atonement, but that is not one of them.

And that's I think something that comes across really

strongly in this lecture and probably is a good starting

point for our discussion, which is why we've got here reflection

and exercise. Read John one or well, don't do

that right now, but or and then the essay God in the hands of

angry sinners in the course materials, which you don't have

because we're doing this off piste, but that is available.

You can get that one from Baxter's website and download it

if you want to read it. It's a riff off of Jonathan

Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which is hailed as

the most famous sermon in American history and perhaps go

some way to explain why the American psyche is so

dysfunctional. And I'm serious and the and, and

I mean on the UK side as well. Sorry, yeah, recorded.

No, I'll be on the record for saying that.

I've I've stood, I've stood up in America and said this.

I don't mind. They agree because, you know, I

think people know there's, there's a there's a deep

dysfunction there. And I think it comes from if

your if your headline, if your headline sort of figurehead of,

you know, religious ideology is someone like Jonathan Edwards

writing a book like that or a sermon like that.

It's not a book then. Yeah, no, no wonder you've got

problems. But it does go for us in the UK

as well. I think it's the whole Western

thing has got the same issue. And that particular sin is in

the hands of an angry God. I think is a great summary of

the problem, the diagnosis of the of the problem.

But if you want to read that one, you can find it on the on

Baxter's website. But consider the following

statement. Any teaching which requires the

breaking or the dissolution of the Trinity should be considered

false. Any teaching that requires the

breaking or dissolution of the Trinity should be considered

false. So up until now, really, I've

been trying to lay the foundation and make the case

that the historic witness of the church has centred around the

revelation of God in Christ, the revelation of God as Trinity.

And so any doctrines that we want to articulate need to be

expressions of the revelation of God.

And if there are expressions of the revelation of God yet they

involve breaking or dissolution or fracturing or anything like

that within the Trinity, then they ought to be immediately

rejected as false. So this is a good acid test for

what is Christian and what is not Christian.

To the point about what is Christian, it's easier to say

what's not Christian than what is Christian.

I think any anything that is breaking the Trinity apart is

false. So consider that.

And with regard to the question of what is the cross for, how

has it that often been violated, given everything we've been

looking at, you know, over the last six months, all the

different conversations, issues around the Scripture theology,

how have you heard angles or articulations about the cross

that actually do not fit in with that revelation where there

where there's a cutting across? And my example that I will give

you is it takes me back to being an undergraduate at university.

In the one time I went to the University Christian Union to

hear there was an, you know, a gospel, the mission, you know,

UCCF mission. And the preacher articulated a

message about Jesus dying on the cross.

And he considered it to be a complete gospel message.

But there was not even a mention of the resurrection.

He considered it. He considered the bare minimum,

you know, I've got this time to articulate something.

What can it be? And he painted a picture of

Jesus dying for our sins on the cross, but there was not even a

mention. My Bible says Paul says if

Christ is not risen from the dead, your faith is in vain.

So I don't know how you can preach a gospel that doesn't

involve the resurrection. But he he did and nobody seemed

to notice that this was a problem.

And that was the last time I went to a UCCF meeting.

Well, until years later when I got blacklisted, but that's

another story. So discuss anyway with reference

to the the lecture. Maybe you want to go off piece

to yourself, things that spoke to you out of the lecture, maybe

things that were making sense and not making sense where, you

know, take 15 minutes and then let's come back and just hear

what everyone has to say. We'll see where we end up.

Is that cool? Everyone's chatting away.

I don't. I kind of don't want to stop it,

but I also want to bring everyone together to distil out

what's happening in the room. We had a great, I was really

enjoying on the table with the guys in the corner.

Anyone. I mean just throw it down like

what's everyone been discussing? What are the points that have

been coming out? What are the issues?

What's everyone been wrestling with?

Anyone want to say anything? That's not me.

I can always preach, but I don't think that wasn't.

Yeah, join it. Go on.

I think one of the things that we are wrestling with a little

bit was that the whole thing in the Old Testament, a lot about

the sacrificing things was for atonement.

And then if that isn't what Jesus was doing, then does that

doesn't quite add up together? Does that make sense?

So the the question I'll ask is what is atonement?

Yeah, you don't need to answer the.

No, I wish I didn't have the microphone.

Yeah. That's fine, I'll tell you.

Did you have your hand there? No.

I can say something. Well, it's what do you want to

say something you don't have the same.

So my understanding is it means at one with.

So is that the I mean, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks.

I guess we so we're part of part of the issues.

I think what why why do we wait till session 7 for this?

Because the the questions that here like would be the same

questions people ask very early on, right.

And they get frustrated with me when I say, Please wait a few

weeks because we're doing all of this groundwork to try and get

underneath the surface of things that we, we think we're dealing

with the foundational questions when actually we're not.

We don't realise that there's a much several layers deeper than

that. There are other foundations that

we've not even been aware of. So we use a word like atonement.

Well, what does atonement mean? Or we use what we're talking

about the word saved. What does saved mean?

So what we throw around all the time, but what does it actually

mean? What are you being saved from?

Because if we've not defined that, then there's a huge

assumption about what the whole landscape is, what's going on

here and what we're what we can be when we just jump into the

Bible. We're coming into the Bible with

all of our 2000 years of Christendom and whatever

experience we've had baggage that we've inherited and we just

read that, not necessarily even conscious that what we're

reading is through multiple different lenses that are

filtering what we're seeing and colouring it in a certain

direction. So the question of, well,

obviously atonement is this or sin is this, but what is it

though? I think it's interesting.

I still to this day when I've asked the question, can anybody

give me the the verse that defines sin in the New

Testament? I've never had anyone able to

give it to me. It's just conspicuous.

Anyone maybe break the trend and I'm thinking from Paul's

writings, he gives a very specific clear definition of the

word sin. Anyone.

No, no, I mean, that's etymologically we could talk

about he says all have sinned and fallen short.

But there's, there's one part where he defines sin and we, and

I think we can look at it the the hamartia falling short, what

that means again, studying the word.

But there's, there's a point in the New Testament and I think

it's the no, no, no, not at all. No, no, no, death, death is the

the consequence of sin. But he says everything.

No, no, he's definitely, I'm thinking, I'm thinking of a

Bible verse in it. Everything that is not of faith,

everything that is not of faith is sin, which is a very, very

strange statement. It's weird.

What the heck does that mean? Everything that is not faith,

just like we repeat, repeat so much, but what does it actually

mean when it's saying everything that is not of faith?

Yeah. Everything that is not of faith

is sin, he says, which is a definition, a working

definition, Sarah. Yes.

I think it is interesting. This is a it's a very relational

term, right? Everything that's not of faith

is very, very relational. Faith is a relational word.

It's trust. So, you know, let's just put

that in the pipe and smoke it for a little bit.

So we're used to thinking of saying in very, you know, well,

we're used to thinking of it in legalistic terms is the truth.

So we're thinking, well, this is the this is the rule.

So OK, I stole an apple from the the market.

Nobody saw that. In fact, the guy who was selling

the apple, he was had too many apples anyway, and, you know,

always ends up with some that he wastes at the end.

I stole it. I was hungry.

I ate it. I'm fine.

I'm happy. What's the problem?

There's It was a victimless crime, right?

And what do I need saving from? Well, yeah, so.

Right. So we get it.

We get into it now. So the, the issue then is we're

used to a scheme that is like, well, yeah, I get that that's

wrong. The problem is because it's

wrong and I violated this command, I'm going to get in

trouble for it. In which case the thing I need

to be saved from is the trouble, right?

I need to be saved from the fact that I'm going to get punished

by the judge. Actually, nobody else has got.

There's not not actually a problem otherwise, because if

the judge didn't have a problem, nobody will have a problem.

The guy who had the apple didn't have a problem.

I didn't have a problem, nobody had a problem.

But oh, it's the wrong thing and the judge is going to get me.

Now I feel bad about it. And so in that sense, what do we

need to be saved from? We need to be saved from the

punishment of the judge, hence the penal bit in penal

substitution. The real problem is the

punishment. Now if the judge didn't have a

problem with us, then we'll be like, oh, well, there's no issue

then, is there? So there's a big issue, but the

question comes down to, but what is it we're being saved from?

And then we could get into what Sarah's talking about.

Well, OK, so you, you took the apple.

We can understand and rationalise why somebody might

do that. And you think, well, if

somebody's hungry and they need an apple and it's the only way

you can do it, nobody's blaming them, right?

You're not, nobody's thinking that that's a bad person for

doing that. But what's coming out of that

person? There's a there's a belief right

underneath that. The belief is I will not have

enough. I'm on my own.

I have to take matters into my own hands.

I have to control, I have to manipulate, I have to do

whatever in order to cover my own bases, take care of my

needs, whatever it is. And now what we have is the

construction of a false self that is built on a lie.

The lie that it depends on me. This is the same lie as the lie

of separation. God is not with me.

If God was with me, I wouldn't need to steal the apple.

And I know there's complexities here, right when we're talking

about real life, but we take it back to Jesus did.

He pushed it right back to the fundamentals.

He said anyone who hates his brother is guilty of murder.

Foolishly explained in many evangelical contexts as well,

hatred is as bad as murder. No it's not.

Freaking idiot. Like taking a gun and blowing up

civilians in the in the centre of town is not the same as

hating somebody. He's a materially light years

apart from one another. That Jesus is not an idiot.

He's not saying that God looks at you being angry and flipping

someone off because they cut you up on the road and you like

taking a machine gun and shooting up a school and saying,

well, these are basically all sinners alike.

No, it's not all sin is not alike.

That's ridiculous. Like whoever said that's an

idiot. Jesus never said it.

In fact, he even talked about when Judas betrays me, he says

the one who betrays me as guilty of a greater sin.

So even Jesus says not all sin is alike.

But but why anybody would even think that?

It's kind of moronic. That's not what he's saying.

He's trying to push you down into understand you.

You're judging by external outcomes.

I'm trying to point you to what's the issue within the

heart that is The Fountainhead of the the outcomes.

And the issue that lies at the heart is the lie.

I'm on my own, right? So there's the shame piece.

Why am I on my own? Well, because I'm not worthy.

There's the fear piece. If I don't take control, I'm

going to get bad outcomes. And then if I do the wrong

thing, I'm afraid that I'm going to get punished for it, which is

fear has to do with punishment right One John.

So we have all of the language around sin and around atonement

all funnels us down to questions of the nature of our being and

our relationship in God right. It's it's fundamentally

relational all the way through. Even when Jesus says do unto

others as you would have them do unto you or love your neighbour

as you love yourself. You think about that.

How can you actually obey that command Will in all he he's

moving the centre of gravity from out here is an external

code that tells you do this and don't do that.

He moves that right into the the locus of the conversation is the

human heart where he says do unto others as you would have

them do unto you, which means you have to you have to be able

to know how you'd want them to treat you.

And then you'd need to be able to extend outwards and empathise

with them in order to see them as yourself.

How can you do that? Well, we love because he first

loved us, that there's a rehabilitating effect of knowing

and experiencing the love of God that transforms us from the

inside out in a way that external regulations have no

power or ability to do anything. So back to the question of

atonement. Hebrews says it was impossible

for the blood of bulls and goats offered year after year to

cleanse the conscience of the worshipper.

Interesting is it's not saying it's it was impossible for the

blood to make atonement with God since it was impossible for it

to cleanse the conscience of the worshipper, showing that the

problem is not on God's side, right?

The problem is on internally we, we're the sacrifices are for us,

right? Sacrifice is not for God.

In fact, God even says sacrifice and burnt offering I have not

desired. That's a strange thing for you

to say God, didn't you author this whole sacrificial system?

Yet you say now I don't, I don't want this.

And then you said, but a, but a body you have prepared for me is

in prophesying the incarnation here, here comes Christ into the

equation. So we're we're wrestling some of

these things. We're wrestling with, we're

wrestling with them because the Bible is a story of wrestling

with these things. I mean, the New Testament is

written by the apostles wrestling with how on earth do

we process this stuff with the scriptural tradition that we've

inherited? How do we figure that out?

Now? How do we, how do we go back and

read the, the, the first part of the book now that we've seen the

surprise ending that changes the story as we go through.

And that's what John's doing in John one in the beginning.

So Genesis one in the beginning, God created the heavens and the

earth. OK, we see an action.

God created John One in the beginning was the word and the

word was face to face with God. That's different.

That's a different perspective. If we think about the curtain

we've got, Genesis 1 is telling us what's happening on one side

of the curtain, but John 1 is telling us what's happening on

the other side of the curtain. What's happening within the mind

of God, What's happening within this invisible place that we

cannot penetrate, We can't deduce, we can't infer, And as

Jesus says in in John's Gospel, no one knows the Father except

the Son. This is inaccessible to us by

any natural mechanism or means. To reach our way back into God

is completely impossible. We cannot do that.

The natural mind cannot grasp the things of the Spirit.

But he says, and those to whom the Son wills to reveal him.

And later on, yeah. I think that that question about

the sacrificial system. So I haven't read the book but I

heard this guy on a podcast last year someone wrote Lamb of the

free recovering the varied sacrificial understandings of

Jesus death. It's 2024 by Andrew Remington

Relaria. He basically says that this I I

think the argument is this idea that the Old Testament

sacrificial system is set up something, then expecting a New

Testament sacrifice isn't actually really what's going on

in the text. This was then famously endorsed

by John Mark Comer, who said final biblical as a final

biblical and exegetal refutation of penal substitution

reatonement. So what I would do if you want,

if you're really interested in how what the sacrificial system

is doing or not doing to set us up for the New Testament, either

try and find a podcast by him. So his name is Andrew Remington

Rolera. He's like a conservative

theologian or fight or read the book Lamb of the free recovering

the varied sacrificial understandings of Jesus death.

And he essentially kind of he's trying to say what what the

sacrificial system is doing and what it's not doing and what

we've can think it's doing. If that is a very niche.

That was just a specific question I think you guys had.

I just wanted to answer. Here's another question, maybe

slightly easier than my other one.

Anyone. I'm thinking of a specific

verse. What does the Bible say the law

is for? Sorry more than that close, but

even more to increase sin, Paul said the law was added so that

sin would increase. I mean just plug that back into

the equation for a moment. What, like the, the purpose of

the law was to increase sin. And yes, Peter's right.

He also says through the law, I become conscious of sin.

So there's a revelatory part of that as well.

But the the intention when he when he is the intention

statement, the law was added so that sin would increase.

So I would, yeah, Yeah. I mean, I, I see it.

I see it as a it's an expression of in the, the genesis count,

right? The tree of the knowledge of

good and evil. What is the knowledge of good

and evil tree? It it makes a promise to you.

The promise is here's the tree. It will teach you good and it

will teach you evil. Well, what are you supposed to

do with it then? Well, now that you've learned

the one and the other, choose the good, reject the bad.

How do I do that? Exercise your willpower to do

it. Now you are informed, you're

accountable. Choose the good, reject the

badge. Deuteronomy 2829.

Here are two mountains, blessings and curses.

Choose you know, A or B. Which one ABC Which one will it

be right? Take your pick, but it's on you,

right? Choose the good, you'll get

blessed. Choose the badge, you'll get

punished. Carrot and stick.

That's the expression of the law.

So then you have throughout the story of the, the Jewish

scriptures, you have a, a progressively narrowing window

where, OK, we've got Abraham out of all the families of the

earth. And then we've got Jacob instead

of Esau. And then we, we start narrowing

down to the, the 12 tribes. And then of the 12 tribes, it's

Judah out of the 12. And then it's one family out of

Judah, David's line. And then David himself is the

one who says there's no one righteous, not even 1.

So David's, David's own expression of this is what we're

we're progressively narrowing. If there's an in and an out,

we're narrowing to the point where, well, actually

everybody's out. Paul goes on to say God has

bound all men over to disobedience in order to have

mercy on them all. So the law has added that sin

would increase actually with what's the point that he's

expressing within that is he's painting everyone into the same

corner of disobedience in order that mercy is functional.

This is the cross, if we can recognise that.

So Jesus, sheep and the goats. Favourite favourite parable that

people like to throw at me whenever I kind of start this

one. What's going on in the sheep and

the goats? They say, well, when did we when

did we see you and we didn't give you a cup of water.

They said, well, as much as you did to the least of these, you

did to me. Why?

Because Christ has so fully identified himself with everyone

and everything. As you treat that person, so you

treat Christ. If we can recognise the

implication of the parable, we recognise that every act of

mistreatment is complicit in the crucifixion of Christ on the

cross. So we say all of our sin is

brought to the Ground Zero of the cross.

Yeah, it absolutely is. Because every act of human

suffering, every act of human evil is connected to what

happened at the cross. And it's, it's suffering and

evil, right? So Christ Co suffers with

everyone who has ever suffered, with everything they have ever

suffered in that moment of the cross.

He is, he is demonstrating his irreversible connection with

whatever it is that you have suffered.

There on the cross is Christ in the gas Chamber of Auschwitz.

There on the cross is Christ in the cobalt mines of Congo,

right? He, he is there fully there, not

there in an abstract way, not not there.

And I'm, I'm aloof and I can kind of empathise from a

distance. This is him in his physical body

accepting the the suffering that is Co suffering with everyone

who has ever suffered anything big, small or otherwise.

He bore his sins in our body on the tree.

It's that connectivity, past, past, present, future to

everything and everyone. Also, he's there similarly and

equally assigned a grave with the wicked in his death, right?

So he is also simultaneously inextricably linked to everyone

who is committing and perpetrating the acts of

suffering because they're actually the same people, right?

The cycle, the cycle of abuse that passes down from one

generation to another. Well, OK, the, the, the, you

know, the, the, the, the abused 5 year old becomes the abusing

15 year old, right? So he's united himself with All

in all of, in the Ground Zero of all of these acts of suffering

and inflicting of suffering and on, on others.

So at that point we see all brought to the Ground Zero of

the cross, because here is the Son of God who has united

himself with all, and he takes that moment to address the issue

of our shame. Father forgive them, for they

don't know what they do. Which if we understand from a

Trinitarian perspective, if Jesus is saying Father forgive

them, what is the Father saying? The same thing, right?

The Son can only do what he sees the Father doing.

When Jesus praise Father forgive them, he is not taking a break

from being the Son of God. This is why union is essential.

If we if we see separation here, then what we see is the Son

making a petition to the Father. Well, does the Father hear the

petition or not? But we don't know because we

don't know the Father. We still the Father is still

inscrutable to us. Yet before Jesus goes to the

cross, he says to Philip, if you've seen me, you have seen

the father. Why does he say that just before

he goes right, you're going to see something that you cannot

understand. This is coming your way in a

couple of verses time, Philip and all the other disciples,

you're going to see the Son of man lifted up, lifted up his

language for coronation, right? You're going to see him lifted

up in his coronation, but it's not going to be what you expect.

And in that day you will know that I am in you, you are in me

and I am in the father. In that day you will know I am

not. I will be.

So he tells them. You pay attention when you see

this. This is this is what you're

going to be bearing witness to as Philips asking the question.

Show us the father and it will be enough.

So the penal substitution thing puts the Father on one side, us

on the other and the son in the middle, kind of like playing

both sides. So when we when we hear father

forgive them for they don't know what they do.

We don't even know if that prayer has been answered.

We think it's a petition. It's not.

It is a declaration. This is the pronounce, the

pronouncement of absolution. It is the benediction on the

human race. This is saying what exactly what

the angels declare in the incarnation, peace on earth and

goodwill to all men. That's the angels declaration, a

moment of rejoicing when the Son of God is born in the in the

stable, right, Because that's what the incarnation means, that

the incarnation is the final word to answer the question of

is man separated from God? Well, I, well, I thought no one

may see my face and live. What about that?

Why is Philip asking the question?

Well, because they've got the tradition.

God says to Moses, no one may see my face and live.

Well, Moses does see the face of God there, doesn't he?

On the mount of Transfiguration. He's transfigured and stands

there with Jesus face to face. So Jesus saying to Philip, if

you've seen me, you have seen the Father.

But I thought no one may see my face and live.

Apparently not, because now I'm seeing your face and I'm living.

So when the Son of Man is lifted up, I'll he says I will draw all

to myself. So in that, that moment of

glorification in John the cross is the moment of glorification,

the moment of coronation. He doesn't have, John doesn't

have a future coronation of Jesus in the Gospel.

He has. This is the moment even to the

point where when Jesus goes to the cross, he says now is the

judgement of the world. Now the Prince of this earth

stands condemned and I, when I'm lifted up, will draw all to

myself. So he doesn't, John does not

have a future judgement in the Gospel if it's not there.

It all happens. It's realised in that, that

moment in the cross. And that's deliberate.

You know, John doesn't have Jesus going away and coming back

like you get at the end of Luke, he goes up and says he's going

to come back again, not there in John's gospel.

Why? Because he's like, I'm zoning

in. You need to see what is taking

place here on the cross. This is the moment of Ground

Zero. Everything is being brought back

to here. Not only that this in in it all

being brought to that moment, we also see the origin of all

creation is there too, because he's the lamb slain from the

foundation of the world, the foundation of the world, meaning

before there's any Adam, before there's any fall that the the

revelation there is saying in the life that is shared in the

Father, Son and Holy Spirit out of which they create the world.

What is it that they create the world out of?

Well, John, John tells us that God is love.

The essential nature of God is love.

So therefore what they create the world out of his love.

What does that love look like? It looks like Christ on the

cross. That's the origin of creation.

That's The Fountainhead of creation.

It's why the New Testament picks up all this language of this is

the birth of the new creation. And it's interesting because you

get that that Psalm today, you're my son today I've

begotten you is applied twice in the New Testament.

Once is in the incarnation, but the second time is in the

resurrection and it's applied it's applied both both times.

So you and my son today have begotten you.

Well, when when was the Son begotten from the Father?

Well, the creed tells us he was never there was never a time

when he wasn't begotten of the Father.

He's the eternal Son. He doesn't become the Son and

the Father does not become the father.

He's always been the Father. The Son has always been the son.

Again, why we keep banging on about the Trinity.

If we, if we see all of this tracks back to if we are

prepared to pay attention to what the New Testament authors

and what the early church theologians and Mystics are

trying to tell us is the main event here.

We will realise why they keep going on and on about the

Trinity. Because they understand that all

these other ideas that we have about the nature of sin and

judgement and human life and all of these things, they all track

back to who is God? Because who is God is going to

tell us everything about the true nature of reality.

What kind of God creates the world?

Who God is going to tell us what we expect to see the handiwork

of the of the Creator. The nature of the Creator is

seen in the Creator's handiwork, the the image of God, right?

So, but, but that is a testimony over and against all sorts of

things that we see that tell us a different story.

That's John 1, the darkness. He calls it the darkness.

He says we have a world system which does not tell us the truth

about who God is and what are places in the world.

In fact, the system of law makes a lot of sense to that world

system. And we understand that, right?

We understand. How do you run a society without

laws? It's very easy for us to track

into in a in a human sense. Well, yeah, obviously you need

rules, otherwise what's going to happen?

Except Jesus repeatedly blows a cannonball through this stuff,

like with the when the disciples try to stop the children coming

to him. Why are the disciples trying to

stop the children? Because the children could be

ceremonially unclean. They could have inadvertently

violated the law, but they're not old enough to know.

So we have to contain them somehow out of the risk that

they might bring ceremonial, ceremonial uncleanliness to the

holy teacher. Maybe a dog licks them,

something like that, and they come close.

But not only does Jesus say let them come to me, he says, but

you have to become like them if you even want to see the

Kingdom. And who is the Kingdom is

Christ, right? The Kingdom is sitting in front

of them. They can't recognise him.

If they could recognise him, they wouldn't have stopped the

children coming, right? And when Jesus says to the

disciples you have to become like them, he's not telling them

to become something that they're not.

He's telling them to become something that they were because

they were children once. So he's saying return same

language used in the prodigal son when it says he came to

himself and said I'm better off in my father's house as a

servant. So again, back to the question

of sin. If we say sin is falling short

of the glory of God, we've often read that is sin is falling

short of the standard of God, but that's not what it says.

It says glory not standard. Standard is a legal term.

Glory is something else altogether.

The glory of God is his very nature.

So, and what the Genesis account tells us is that humanity is the

very nature of God, the very image of God.

So sin therefore is to be out of sync or alignment with our true

nature, which is grounded in who God is.

What we get in the church is we get a confusion about this when

we get into this issue of the doctrine of original sin.

It's a Western doctrine, not an Eastern 1 And over time it

builds up this idea of we are, we are in intrinsically

shameful, corrupt, unworthy and deficient.

And that problem needs to be resolved in order for us to

return to God. But actually it's not God you

need to return to. You need to return to yourself,

in fact, because you have now you have been misled as to your

true identity. And now that true identity can

only be discovered in the light of the face of Christ.

When we see him, we become like him.

The Scripture says in seeing him, we become like him is what

Peter experienced. You're the Christ, the Son of

the living God, and Jesus responds to him immediately.

Simon, son of Jonah, you are actually Peter.

My father has revealed this to you and your father.

So Peter's true identity appears in the very moment that he

glimpses something by revelation in the face of Christ.

So here we have at the at the cross.

We were talking about the veil being torn.

The veil is torn at the cross because at that moment you

cannot be more exposed than the Son of God hanging naked on the

tree and not only that, having been so brutalised that even his

innards is showing, right. You can't be more physically

exposed than crisis on the cross.

This is this is God making known in the ultimate way the complete

and Full disclosure. This is who I am fully

revelatory. It's not even just revelatory in

an example sense. This is what love looks like.

It's saying this is who I am. And in that day you'll realise I

am in you and you are in me and I am in the Father, that if we,

if we catch that revelation or if it catches us, we've seen,

oh, this is, this is the nature of the Father, Son and Spirit.

Therefore, the way the world is, the way the world presents

itself to us is not the way that it truly is.

We need to wake up because it's like we've been engaging it in a

sleepwalk, in a coma, you know, seeing half, you know, like the

man who's half healed, right. I see people, they're like trees

walking around. There's a there's still this

kind of half dysfunction. You know, Hebrews talks about it

like types and shadows. So we get little glimpses and

approximations. But then we take those glimpses

and approximations and we begin to build religious constructs,

tell a load of stories about that, then build a temple and

say, and here's where God lives. Jesus says, I will you destroy

this temple? I will raise it again.

But it's not the temple that you think God does not build, does

not live in a temple built by human hands.

So all, all of this is there in the undercurrents of the the

question of what's going on at the cross.

What we do not see anywhere is God is over here, you are over

there and here is the bridge to get back to him.

It's just not there anywhere. And we really should expect it

to be if that's the if that's the equation that's being laid

before us. So I think on the on the flip

side, the issue with the penal substitution, it says our

problem is a judicial problem. We're guilty before a judge.

Whether or not we really should be guilty, we don't know.

I mean, didn't really seem like such a big problem to me.

But stealing that apple, but I'm guilty before a judge and

apparently if I've stolen that apple, I'm as bad as Hitler.

So OK, everyone, everyone's then in the in the same boat.

Also, if you think about it, if, if we can see, as we should see

correctly from the scripture, that there is no declaration of

separation, nor can there be a declaration of separation that

the the between the son and the father on the cross.

If the Son does not suffer separation from the Father on

the cross, then there was never a thread of separation for us

either because the cross has to in under that scheme, has to

atone for the thing that we're in threat of suffering.

So Jesus takes our punishment so we don't get punishment.

So if our punishment is a slap on the wrist, Jesus has to have

a slap on the wrist. If our punishment is go to your

room, Jesus has to go to your room.

If your punishment is separation from God, Jesus has to be

separated from God. If he's not separated from God,

that's not the threat. It just the the rug goes

completely out from underneath. This sin is in the hands of the

angry God schema, right? It dissolves.

There's no longer any grounds for us to talk in those terms.

And when we first confront that, it might be a bit like, well,

gosh, hang on a minute. That's that's really unravelling

the the real core of my sort of theological basis.

Like, yeah, absolutely. Welcome to the Western world.

The foundations of the Western mind have been built on a

separation mentality. Why we keep saying separation

mentality? What do you mean separation

mentality? This is what we're talking

about, the idea that our problem is to be punished by separation

from God for doing the wrong things.

Antichrist here. Oh, yeah, We were talking about

the other day. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the the the question for the recording, can we separate

ourselves from God by an act of our will?

Is it coercive for God to not allow that?

And we mentioned Wes Huff. OK, so great, great question.

So I think it's interesting. You've got the the it's Luke, is

it Luke 15? Am I getting that right?

The prodigal son, There's three, there are three parables, right?

And you, you have the, the prodigal son, you have the lost

coin and the lost sheep. And they're all telling the same

story from different angles, right?

So the prodigal son, what's interesting is that parable of

all of them does end with somebody who is on the outside

and it's the elder son who's who's outside the party, right?

There's a consistent metaphor of Jesus's inside the party,

outside the party, but the eldest son is not separated from

God, because where's the Father? He's with the eldest son outside

the party. What's the father doing, trying

to persuade him to come in? Will the older son come in?

Up to you to finish the story, because it's supposed to be

about you, right? Well, are you going to come in

or not? He, he, he leaves.

He leaves you. Jesus leaves you to write the

ending. Where do you want to be in this

picture? You know this is supposed to

create an immediate reaction. It's not supposed to be like an

abstract thing. It's supposed to bring you to

Ground Zero at that moment. I'm talking about you.

Where are you in the read yourself in the story.

You know the other two parables, though.

You have the lost sheep. The lost sheep has fallen down

the mountainside. It has no way to get itself

back, has no will. It's a sheep.

You know what's it supposed to do?

The shepherd goes down and picks it up and takes it with him.

Does the sheep have a choice in what's happening here?

I mean, this doesn't doesn't really say like free choice

factors very highly in that particular parable.

Equally with the lost coin, the coin is lost.

But where is the coin lost? It's lost in the house, not out

of the house. And as my friend Francois

Detroit puts it, the the the lost coin never lost its value.

It still has the same value. And you get back to this

question of Jesus and Caesar, whose inscription is on the

coin. The point is it's Caesar's

inscription on the coin, but whose inscription is on Caesar?

God, because Caesar's in God's image.

So render to Caesar what Caesar's but render to God what

is God's in other, in other words, there is no God but God,

Caesar. You need to return even in even

in that you have this the, the issue of whose, whose hallmark

is carried on the coin. So in those parables, we don't

have a picture of separation either.

Even in Revelation. I mean, let's go, let's go

straight to the heavy guns. You don't have anybody separated

from God in Revelation. You have the the beast and the

false prophet in the lake of fire that says explicitly in the

presence of the Lamb and his holy angels.

And you have the people who are the resistors saying, let the

rocks fall on us and hide us from his presence.

Implication being, you can't hide, right?

So actually what you have in this picture are people who are

trying to achieve separation and they cannot.

Why can't you achieve separation in him?

We live and move and have our being.

It's the nature of reality. How can you be separated from

reality? It's nonsensical.

Jesus is Mr Reality, He is the divine word by which God upholds

the existence of all things. So the revelation of that we get

of God in Christ is not one that says here's a law you can be in

or out. Here's a mechanism to, you know,

Orient yourself. It's one that says it's no

longer I who live, but Christ living in me.

So I haven't got I haven't got any any.

There's no self power here at all.

And that's not something that I initiated by believing correctly

or praying correctly or doing correctly.

That's something that was always true and I never knew it.

All the while the very Higgs field, if you like, if it's an

appropriate metaphor that is the fabric of physical reality has a

has a personal name and it's Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

How do you get away from that? So yes, we affirm this love is

not coercive and that relationship is relationship is

only relationship when it's uncoerced.

But because we if we understand the when we talk about this

issue of glory, you know, the Bible talks about the sun

glorifying God. How does the sun glorify God?

Well, it glorifies God by being a son, right?

It's created to be a son and that's what it's supposed to be.

And by being what it is created to be, it glorifies God.

Well, in the same way that how do we as human beings glorify

God? Well, by being human, which

means that our, our original design, going back to this issue

of Jesus saying, let the children come to me because you

have to become like them, is to say that any will that is

resisting God is not a will that is free because it is a will

that is acting not in accordance with its true nature or its true

origin. So we can say, well, I'm free to

reject God. Well, that's not freedom though.

That's called enslavement to sin.

It's not freedom. There's a, there's a kind of

mythological idea that we have a, an, an, a disconnected will

that is transcendent and is able to act fully autonomously in

this situation and rationally choose God or not.

Bible doesn't say that. It says no one can come to the

Father unless the Son, and no one can come to the Son unless

the Father draws him. And no one knows the Father

except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals him.

Break your way into that loop. Can't get to the Father without

going through the Son, Can't get to the Son without going through

the Father. How am I supposed to break into

that? How am I supposed to choose

that? But you can't, right?

It's supposed. It's supposed to crash you into

the wall. It's supposed to be with the law

has so increased sin that you no longer under the delusion that

you're able to break your way back into this thing.

And now through the law, I die to the law.

Ah, OK, I realise that's the end.

Finished. Christ is the last Adam, not the

second Adam. That's the end of Adam.

Now he's the second creation. He's the new man.

OK, had her hand up first. I'll try the concept of justice.

I mean, I like to, to discuss. I think for me, I think in, in

injustice means there are things going on right now that should

not be going on. Justice means those things being

put right. What does it look like for them

to be put right? I mean, it depends right, on a

lot of a lot of things, a lot of situations.

So to me, the issue of justice and injustice is all the things

that are wrong getting put right.

My best definition for it in terms of ABS, the issue of

absolution is an important one. How are we absolved from the

weight of the consequences of our actions?

Well, the cross addresses that, right?

It's that, well, I'm, it's no longer I who live for Christ,

who lives in me. It's why I don't like worthiness

language. I have to say this is a little

bit of a bugbear of mine. We're so unworthy.

Well, who decides who's worthy? Well, God decides who's worthy.

How does he decide who's worthy? Well, by his actions, he decided

like what to be worthy means to be worth something, right?

So if he if he chooses to become, to take on flesh and be

Incarnate and share in our humanity, is that not a

declaration that he says, well, yeah, I consider that worth it.

Otherwise we're in a situation where we're saying, well, God,

you're kind of wrong about that, aren't you?

We get that you're being nice to us, but we're still unworthy.

And as a as an aside, I think that's what the whole business

about head coverings is in Corinthians, by the way, there's

a as a rabbit trail on that one. So I think do not call anything

unclean that God has declared clean.

So do not call anything unworthy that God has declared unworthy.

And that starts with ourselves. When the apostle Peter first

meets Jesus, he says, go away from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man.

Well, he doesn't say that six months later when he's arguing

about who's going to be the greatest in the Kingdom of

heaven. So hanging out with Jesus for a

couple of months has radically altered his perception of

himself. And he seems to be shedding

quite rapidly a lot of things that we just take for granted as

well as that's just take. That's just a given, isn't it?

But the question of, well, what, what does, what does justice

mean then? Well, is justice not?

I see there are things that are wrong and I am compelled to act

to put them right. Is justice not?

I'm so aware that when I disregarded that person, I

actually disregarded the Christ who holds me together.

How what a low vision I've had of human beings and what kind of

catastrophic effects has it had on my relationships, on the

planet, on society and on myself?

It's is that, is that not something that summons us to

live according to the reality of who Christ says we are and who

he is? Is that not the new creation?

Is that not to put on Christ? To me, this is this is all about

acting as the Scripture says, as you look forward to the day of

the Lord and hasten its arrival. And there's my eschatology.

Jesus is coming back. He's going to put all, all

wrongs right. I don't really know how that's

going to happen, but I do know we get to participate in that

right now in acting to put all wrongs right.

One of the problems with the evangelical message is it

doesn't really provide any, any mechanism for restitution

because it's so burnt by the Catholic penance mentality that

you need to, you need to make reparations, you know, through

what whatever it's so burnt by that it doesn't see that

Zacchaeus gives back fourfold what he embezzled.

And then Jesus said salvation has come to this house,

Wholeness has come to this house, that the image of God has

been restored in this place because Zacchaeus is now so

seen. Hang on a minute.

How could I, I, I, I could do with a hard heart.

I could mistreat people, you know, steamroll over them and,

and sleep perfectly well at night.

Now I've seen Jesus, I can't do that anymore.

It's impossible for me to do that.

That's called the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is what you feel when you hold a newborn

child in your arms. I'm on full alert that I do not

drop this kid on his head, Right?

That's called the fear of the Lord, not the fear of the Lord.

I'm afraid that if I do this wrong thing, I'm going to get

punished by God. John tells us to throw that out.

So that kind of fear is to do with punishment.

And the one who fears is not made perfect in love.

God is love. Perfect love casts out all fear.

So our conceptualizations of justice need to be much holier.

They are far too base, far too secular, far too involved with

our arbitrary notions of fairness, economics, legalities,

all of those things that characterise this world system

that will pass away. We need to be liberated from the

that debased way of thinking and understand God's kind of justice

is nothing short of the rest than the restoration of all

things into the headship of Christ.

The recapitulation of all things into the headship of Christ,

which Ephesians says is the administration we've been given

to participate in as the church. Restoration of all things,

putting all things that are wrong, putting them right.

Put it. Put it simply.

That's my riff on the concept of justice.

I'm sure there's hundreds of other things to say, but Alice.

And then we'll finish if you wanted to.

Yeah, this. Is in Ephesians and I'm not I'm

genuinely not proof texting because that's irritating I but

I'm genuinely asking how this fits in So in Ephesians one and

two in him we have redemption through his blood, the

forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of

God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and

understanding. He made known to us the mystery

of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed

in Christ to be put into effect when the times reached their

fulfilment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on

earth under Christ. In Him we were also chosen,

having been predestined according to the plan of Him who

works out everything in conformity with the purpose of

His will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope

in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the

message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you

believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy

Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance

until the redemption of those who are in God's possession to

the praise of his glory. And then the other one.

And then in in chapter 2, it talks about, you know, we were,

we're in darkness, now we're in light.

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by

birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the

circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands.

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ,

excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the

covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in

the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who

are once far away have been brought near by the blood of

Christ, for he himself is our peace, who has made the two

groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of

hostility. And so I think, I think it's

probably obvious what I'm asking, but it feels like in

that first section that there is a distinction between people who

have been marked by the Holy Spirit depositing deposit as a

deposit, what is to come. And there's a moment of

inclusion through faith. And then also the the Gentiles,

it seemed like they were excluded and separated.

And now through the the death and resurrection of Jesus are

included. So that language of exclusion,

inclusion and separation seems to be there in Ephesians.

So separation is a is a translation of a word.

And again, we bring our baggage of what separation actually

means. I would refer to Paul.

In him we live and live and have our being.

Does that mean separation? So I think we we see that there

are many ways in which our experiences of relationship

correspond to changes in fundamental changes in how we

view the world, how we view ourselves, how we relate to God.

And these are descriptions of experiences.

They're not descriptions of ontologies, right?

There's the truth of our being and the way of our being, to

quote Paul Young. So you have the spirit poured

out on all flesh, especially the believers in the book of Acts.

What does that feel like? Well, if you don't know about it

probably doesn't feel like anything.

But how can they believe unless they've heard?

Well, now that you've heard, oh, hang on a minute, that starts to

feel like something. So I think a lot, a lot of what

is written here, especially when you look at the the second parts

of the epistles, they usually, they usually start with the

grand definition of terms, right.

So you have Jesus as the creator and sustainer of all things, all

things being not just brought into unity, in fact, but

reconstituted into the head in in fact, it's not he's up there

and we're all in unity under him.

It is your all reconstituted into the very body is is the

image. So I think we've got to, we need

to be careful of the Western lens through which which the our

translations have also been passed through and what things

they emphasise and what things they don't.

That's why we don't, as you'll know from my book, right, my

thoughts on the concept of solar scriptura is a problem because

you can never read scriptura solar.

You always bring it with the the baggage and the the baggage that

others have included in, you know, in the however well

meaning there might be. We'll do it in terms of those

translations. So I would say if you we don't,

we don't have a univocal layout in the Bible.

Like you can pick proof text and end up almost anywhere as we've

kind of discussed before. So I, I want to say what, what's

our first principles here? Our first principles are the,

the nature and character of God, his relationship to the world

and humanity. This is the fundamental thing

we're addressing now on on top of that, there's a whole bunch

of experiences that we account for.

And also the way that we see those experiences, we may change

how we understand them during the course of our lives as well.

This is real, this is lived. It's not, it's not abstract.

So we see Jesus talking about being outside or in the outer

darkness or inside in in the part we we see lots of these

descriptions of what this looks like.

But if you try and add them all up together in literally into a

coherent whole that's nonsensical.

Well, are you in? Are you out?

It's like, well, the lake of fires in, but the outer darkness

is out. Are they two different things?

Are they the same thing? Like what?

What are we dealing with here? The problem is we're approaching

it with a a Western systematic mentality that thinks these

things all piece together on a flat puzzle, like a flat puzzle

on the table. But that's not what the early

church gave us. Hence our conversations before

theology and biblical studies, especially when it comes to the

proof texting. So faith is faith is not only

important, I mean, it's essential.

But Paul also gives us that faith is a gift from God.

He also says it's not of ourselves.

He also says faith is the person of the Holy Spirit.

How do you get the person of the Holy Spirit if you require faith

to get the Holy Spirit? Again, it comes back to how do

you get the Father if you need the Son to get the Father, but

you can't get the Son without the Father.

All of these things, the more you think about it, the more it

throws you. It's like it, it starts to

recede out of view beyond the horizon because you realise

there's no, there's no accessibility to it until you

realise all of this is not I but Christ, right?

What he has done, what he has accomplished from the foundation

of the world. So you have the the issue with

the Calvinist and the Armenian views on this is that they both

start with this faulty assumption that it is about us

at all. It's not about us.

We were talking on the table. When God makes the covenant with

Abraham, Abraham makes no covenant.

Abraham waits to make the covenant and he waits long

enough to fall asleep, which is a symbol of death.

And then while he's asleep, the Spirit appears and makes the

covenant with God, makes the covenant with God's self.

Where's Abraham? He's as the guy's asleep, he's

not doing anything. So again, this issue of we, we

can, we can take practical descriptions about what life is

like within the family of believers who have awoken to the

reality. We can take that.

But if we if we misapply that and say this is making baseline

fundamental statements about our anthropology, like who we are as

human beings, because it's making fundamental statements as

who God is, then we run into real problems.

So yes, it absolutely matters. We've got, but we, we have, you

know, Christ is the Saviour of all men, especially those who

believe. Well, how do you put that

together with the Ephesians passage about what you also were

included in him when you believed.

It's like, well, yeah, OK, you heard, now you believed, and now

you've awoken. You awoke to what you were

already in. When you weren't awake to it, it

was as if you were dead to it. So, yeah, your way of life was

destructive, had no knowledge of God, Gentiles, you didn't have

any, anything that was remotely giving you an articulation about

what God was like. So you were screwing around and

burning this child sacrifice, all this horrific stuff that you

were living. It's a bit of a caricature, but

that's the New Testament's giving.

So yeah, that's pretty destructive.

It's a good description. Now you've heard things have

changed. This is just very real, it's

very experiential. But if we, if we think it's

ontological, we're, we're, we're running up into problems.

The, the ontological stuff. If we, we look at the, the

serious statements, the really serious ontological statements

in the script, ontological meaning, what, what is the truth

about the way things are? You know, what is the nature of

our being? When we the more we start

looking at that, the more we again, we start say, hang on a

minute, this, this separation thing, if we even use that word,

I think alienation is a better word.

It's a relational word. And this alienation thing, even

that is a lie because it's deception.

The father, the father of lies has spun a lie and we're caught

in the lie. Well, that lie is very

dangerous. When we live and act on that

lie, we do destructive things, destructive things that are

going to need to be put right to the point before about justice.

But all, all of that's there. But yeah, but yeah, sure, yeah,

I'm happy. Let me, let me just finish my

thought and then I will stick around, you know, for, for, for

any others. But, but I think this is this is

the issue of why wait till week 7 to even get on to the question

of the cross? Because it's like we've got to

put the pieces down that are showing up where, where we we

have an epistemological problem with the fundamentalist approach

to Scripture that believes things about the Bible that the

Bible does not tolerate. So we have to sit and take

seriously what the scripture is saying and let it work on us.

But not every part of the scripture is designed to do the

same thing. Every part of the scripture is

telling us who we are. Some of this is just telling us

like how you should behave, right?

Let's just bring this down to some real basic levels.

And it's descriptive a lot of the time.

So, but again, from on to the final point on the

eschatological front where everything's going there, no

theologian worth their salt will tell you that the New Testament

is consistent on its eschatology.

You will not find a consistent or coherent picture.

We could say whether it's all this is all going.

That's why I take it very minimally.

Jesus is coming back. He's going to sort it all out.

So, so that should also tell us something about the nature of

the book and how we kind of need to work with the book.

But again, go back, go back to John.

That's why I think we we have a priority here in theologically,

we we have a priority in when the Bible says God is love.

That's priority to me. It's a statement about essence

when it says God is just that's telling us an attribute.

Will it? An attribute derives from the

essence. So what does justice mean for

God? It can only be an expression of

love. So there's a priority even

within that. What you often get in the

evangelical sense or the fundamentalist sense, if I put

it that way, those things get put flat out on the table and as

supposed to is where we get this idea.

You know me, I don't like it. Tension, you know, Well, there's

a tension between love and justice.

Well, only if you don't know what justice is and only if you

don't know what love is. Otherwise there's no tension.

There's no tension in God so big, obviously big topics on

hermeneutics kind of all round, but I would say there's no

attempt to dodge these kind of scriptures.

I think it's framing them in the in in in the correct manner.

And you said it yourself in there in the in the first, the

first chapter of Ephesians, it sets the table out for us, the

reconstitution of all things into the headship of Christ.

That sets the parameters. OK, now we've dealt with the

parameters, Let's deal with the practicalities.

Practicalities are look, you are a mess.

You believed. Now you've got your act

together. Now you've experienced, it's

like it's like coming home to metaphor him.

Anyway, I think I'll stop to before before Chris hasn't.

Cheers.