Also, stop preaching to people that they can simply think God exists and they get to go to heaven. That they will magically stop sinning simply because they had one moment where their opinion about God makes God capable of forgiving them. You make God pick and choose who he saved and damns.
You reinforce the idea that behavior is completely out of your own agency and you setup people for not caring about their sin because you think the Holy Spirit will automatically do it for them like they're robots.
Christ tells us to turn the other cheek and forgive freely, with no payment demanded. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father runs to his son and forgives him on the spot. Nobody gets punished first. If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us.
And if justice is a standard above God that He has to satisfy, you've made Him subordinate to it and that's what you actually worship.
Scripture says the opposite. God doesn't answer to justice. He is the source of it.
"Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." - Hebrews 9:22
Your view clearly contradicts Scripture, and perplexingly seems to forget/ignore the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Your view is also a complete rejection of the cross. Your belief essentially says that Jesus' spilt blood on the cross was not necessary and did nothing towards our atonement. That isn't Christianity.
God isn't "asking less of Himself" when he asks us to forgive without the shedding of blood. We are commanded to forgive without shedding blood, because WE ourselves have already been forgiven by the shedding of blood. Jesus talked about this - the guy who owes a million dollars, but is forgiven completely of it, does NOT need justice for the mere ten dollars that someone owes him.
And justice isn't a "standard that is above God" that makes God subordinate to it; rather, justice IS God because it's his character. By defaulting on justice, God would be violating his character. it's not different than his Love.
Funny thing, the very chapter you quoted is about cleansing. Hebrews 9:13-14 says the blood purifies. Leviticus says the blood is life, and it gets splashed on the altar to cleanse it. Was the altar guilty? Was the goat on the Day of Atonement a sinner? Nobody is being punished in that system.
And "without blood there is no forgiveness" is a nice slogan until you remember Nineveh repented and was forgiven. David got forgiven in Psalm 51 with no sacrifice, and God says in Hosea 6:6 that He desires mercy, not sacrifice. Odd for a God who supposedly can't forgive without a body count.
I appreciate you bringing up the servant who owed a million. The king cancelled the debt. Nobody got beaten to cover it. Thanks for making my argument for me.
Last thing. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination to the Lord. So I'm curious how your God requires it.
I mean cmon man…the medieval era was insane and that's how you got PSA which came literally out of nowhere from Anselm and batsh it crazy philosophy of that time.
"Without blood there is no forgiveness" isn't a "slogan". It's straight from Scripture. Calling it a "slogan" and treating it in such a dismissive way, even as you KNOW it is straight from Scripture, pretty much sums up your stance.
Nowhere does it say that God "forgave" Ninevah after they repented. It only says God relented from his plan to destroy them. Nowhere in Psalms 51 or Hosea 6 does it say that shedding blood isn't necessary for forgiveness.
The king cancelling the debt meant that he himself had to eat the debt. The debt doesn't just go away. The king paid the penalty in the form of loss, in the stead of the servant. That's penal substitution. It's not talking about blood shedding because it's just an analogy. The king eating the debt himself is analagous to Jesus shedding his blood on the cross.
Proverbs 17:15 doesn't invalidate penal substitution, it's actually making the case for it - the only way for the wicked to be justified and the righteous to be condemned and it NOT be an abomination to God... is for the wicked to be IMPUTED the righteousness of the righteous, and the righteous to be IMPUTED the guilt of the wicked. The guilt and innocence are switched, i.e. substituted for each other. And thus, it becomes fully consistent with divine justice and avoids becoming the "abomination" of Proverbs 17:15.
You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds.
Wrath isn't the Father turning His face from the Son. The Son is a divine Person, and a divine Person can't be cut off from the Father. What a divine Person can undergo is death, in His human nature: His soul separated from His body. Scripture ties death to sin all along (Rom. 6:23, Rom. 5:12), so that's the only sense in which "the wages of sin" ever touches Him. And His divinity stays united to both His body in the tomb and His soul in Hades. Nobody is divided, not the Trinity and not Christ.
Reformed theology can't say this. Once you say the Father punishes the Son with abandonment, you either split the Trinity or push the wrath onto His human nature alone, and that's Nestorian. Chalcedonian Christology avoids the problem by asking what a divine Person can actually go through. He goes through death, voluntarily, and destroys it.
Here's the problem with your model. If God must punish every sin to the full, either on Christ or on you, then He never forgives anything. He just collects. A debt that gets paid in full isn't forgiven, it's paid. And a God who can't let anything go without a victim isn't merciful. Mercy in Greek literally means not exacting a penalty, and your system has no room for it.
It also makes justice a rule that tells God what He has to do. Then justice is above Him and that's what you're really answering to.
And you hit a fork. If the Father pours wrath on the Son, you either split the Trinity or you split Christ, saying the wrath fell on His human nature only. That second move is Nestorian.
This didn't come from the apostles. It grew out of a Western habit of looking for a mechanism that explains exactly how the cross works. PSA is literally God saving you from Himself. PSA is akin to the oldest pagan instinct there is. The Greeks and Canaanites had gods who needed appeasing too, and people paid in blood to calm them down. The Church never taught that. The Fathers said Christ came to defeat death, not to soothe the Father.
And you know where PSA came from? Anselm borrowed it from feudal law, where an offended lord's honor demanded satisfaction. The Reformers then added a courtroom. So the God of your system acts like a medieval king with a grudge, when Christ calls us to forgive freely, as the father in the prodigal son story did.
Romans 8:3 doesn't say it. It says sin was condemned in the flesh. Sin is on trial there, not Jesus. You didn't find PSA in the verse. You brought it with you and you've turned the Trinity into a bad cop and a fall guy. The Father and Son share one will and one act. Your version has an angry Father on one side and a victim Son on the other. That's not the God John describes.
You've failed your own test. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination, and your fix is to declare the innocent guilty. A legal fiction is still a fiction. Ezekiel 18:20 says guilt doesn't transfer. Your God needs an accounting trick to avoid breaking His own rule.
Here's the simpler reading. Christ took on our flesh and our death, and sin died with Him (Rom. 6:6). What you're calling justice is vengeance with a Bible verse attached. Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead. Vengeance is making someone pay because you were wronged. Paul says "vengeance is Mine" (Rom. 12:19) and then tells us to overcome evil with good. God doesn't need a victim to settle a score. He enters our death and destroys it from the inside. That's justice done, and it's more just than your version, because the guilty are actually healed and the innocent isn't punished.
The tragedy here is that this is what you've ultimately come to: "The word of God is wrong, because it goes against what I think is true about God and what is more palatable to MY understanding of him."
If Jesus' purpose was simply to defeat death, then why didn't he just live a long, happy life and die naturally of old age, and then resurrect and defeat death that way? Why did he have to suffer and die on the cross? Why did God have to forsake Jesus on the cross?
Why did God command the blood sacrifice of animals and for the high priest to sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins? Why did the Israelites have to smear sacrificial blood on their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their house?
PSA didn't come from Anselm. It comes from God's word, like through the prophet Isaiah. It's the same word of God that clearly states "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", yet you are clearly and directly rejecting it.
You: "Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead." - what about the person, then, who broke the broken, who enslaved the captive, and who murdered the dead? A HOLY GOD can not tolerate evil like this, and it must be dealt with. It doesn't just go away. If you believe that it can, you simply do not understand and fully appreciate God's ultimate and perfect HOLINESS, and the extreme gravity of SIN in the presence of a HOLY GOD. Is there no "Hell" in your theology?
This doesn't make God "subordinate" to justice. This is yet another one of your constant non sequiturs and it's purely argumentative. It's like arguing that since God must act in love, then it makes him subordinate to love. And that since God must tell the truth, it makes him subordinate to honesty. And that since God must be Holy, he is subordinate to holiness. Obviously, this is a ridiculous, nonsensical argument. God must do these things, because it's who he is, it's his character. If he's being "subordinate to anything", he's being subordinate to Himself. To NOT do them, is to violate his own character, at which point he wouldn't be God.
PSA does NOT "split the Trinity". Jesus was in full agreement with God's plan and voluntarily subject himself to the penalty of sin. God and Jesus were in FULL LOVE together in this arrangement: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my lifeonly to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."- John 10: 17-18
Sadly, you're aligning Scripture to your own created theology, rather than aligning your theology to Scripture. Is there any doubt about this? You've clearly and directly denied what's in Scripture. You've essentially created your own God to match your own preferences, instead of letting God reveal Himself through his word. You are more loyal to the traditions of your church than to what God has himself revealed in his word. This is very, very dangerous ground to be in.
Both of us are quoting Scripture, so the question is whose reading is right. Mine is how the apostles' own churches read it for 1,500 years. Yours first showed up in the 1500s.
The problem is you think your interpretation is infallible. That your boomer understanding EXACTLY matches Greek language and the cultural context you clearly don't understand. You don't know anything about 2nd temple Judaism, that's a huge part of the problem.
I just don't see how it can any clearer who is reading Scripture correctly between us. When Scripture says "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" - while I'm reading it as "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", you're reading it as "the shedding of blood is NOT needed for forgiveness".
Is there any rational person who can't tell who's reading it right?
PSA is in the early church fathers' writings. It's even in the writings of Orthodox christianity. The whole "showing up in 1500's" is the same tiring argument that Catholics and Orthodox use to debunk Protestantism, but as has been clearly demonstrated in these forums for a whole range of topics, it's patently false, and this is no different.
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Also, stop preaching to people that they can simply think God exists and they get to go to heaven. That they will magically stop sinning simply because they had one moment where their opinion about God makes God capable of forgiving them. You make God pick and choose who he saved and damns.
You reinforce the idea that behavior is completely out of your own agency and you setup people for not caring about their sin because you think the Holy Spirit will automatically do it for them like they're robots.
NOTHING you said here reflects ANYTHING that I've ever said, argued, or believed. Your whole comment is one big, ridiculous, pathetic straw man. This seems to be your modus operandi.
This is about as intellectually dishonest as it gets. You clearly aren't interested in engaging the actual debate. You're only interested in engaging the argument that's going on in your own head. I'm very disappointed at how childish and intellectually immature this is.
Christ tells us to turn the other cheek and forgive freely, with no payment demanded. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father runs to his son and forgives him on the spot. Nobody gets punished first. If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us.
And if justice is a standard above God that He has to satisfy, you've made Him subordinate to it and that's what you actually worship.
Scripture says the opposite. God doesn't answer to justice. He is the source of it.
"Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." - Hebrews 9:22
Your view clearly contradicts Scripture, and perplexingly seems to forget/ignore the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Your view is also a complete rejection of the cross. Your belief essentially says that Jesus' spilt blood on the cross was not necessary and did nothing towards our atonement. That isn't Christianity.
God isn't "asking less of Himself" when he asks us to forgive without the shedding of blood. We are commanded to forgive without shedding blood, because WE ourselves have already been forgiven by the shedding of blood. Jesus talked about this - the guy who owes a million dollars, but is forgiven completely of it, does NOT need justice for the mere ten dollars that someone owes him.
And justice isn't a "standard that is above God" that makes God subordinate to it; rather, justice IS God because it's his character. By defaulting on justice, God would be violating his character. it's not different than his Love.
Funny thing, the very chapter you quoted is about cleansing. Hebrews 9:13-14 says the blood purifies. Leviticus says the blood is life, and it gets splashed on the altar to cleanse it. Was the altar guilty? Was the goat on the Day of Atonement a sinner? Nobody is being punished in that system.
And "without blood there is no forgiveness" is a nice slogan until you remember Nineveh repented and was forgiven. David got forgiven in Psalm 51 with no sacrifice, and God says in Hosea 6:6 that He desires mercy, not sacrifice. Odd for a God who supposedly can't forgive without a body count.
I appreciate you bringing up the servant who owed a million. The king cancelled the debt. Nobody got beaten to cover it. Thanks for making my argument for me.
Last thing. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination to the Lord. So I'm curious how your God requires it.
I mean cmon man…the medieval era was insane and that's how you got PSA which came literally out of nowhere from Anselm and batsh it crazy philosophy of that time.
"Without blood there is no forgiveness" isn't a "slogan". It's straight from Scripture. Calling it a "slogan" and treating it in such a dismissive way, even as you KNOW it is straight from Scripture, pretty much sums up your stance.
Nowhere does it say that God "forgave" Ninevah after they repented. It only says God relented from his plan to destroy them. Nowhere in Psalms 51 or Hosea 6 does it say that shedding blood isn't necessary for forgiveness.
The king cancelling the debt meant that he himself had to eat the debt. The debt doesn't just go away. The king paid the penalty in the form of loss, in the stead of the servant. That's penal substitution. It's not talking about blood shedding because it's just an analogy. The king eating the debt himself is analagous to Jesus shedding his blood on the cross.
Proverbs 17:15 doesn't invalidate penal substitution, it's actually making the case for it - the only way for the wicked to be justified and the righteous to be condemned and it NOT be an abomination to God... is for the wicked to be IMPUTED the righteousness of the righteous, and the righteous to be IMPUTED the guilt of the wicked. The guilt and innocence are switched, i.e. substituted for each other. And thus, it becomes fully consistent with divine justice and avoids becoming the "abomination" of Proverbs 17:15.
You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds.
Wrath isn't the Father turning His face from the Son. The Son is a divine Person, and a divine Person can't be cut off from the Father. What a divine Person can undergo is death, in His human nature: His soul separated from His body. Scripture ties death to sin all along (Rom. 6:23, Rom. 5:12), so that's the only sense in which "the wages of sin" ever touches Him. And His divinity stays united to both His body in the tomb and His soul in Hades. Nobody is divided, not the Trinity and not Christ.
Reformed theology can't say this. Once you say the Father punishes the Son with abandonment, you either split the Trinity or push the wrath onto His human nature alone, and that's Nestorian. Chalcedonian Christology avoids the problem by asking what a divine Person can actually go through. He goes through death, voluntarily, and destroys it.
Here's the problem with your model. If God must punish every sin to the full, either on Christ or on you, then He never forgives anything. He just collects. A debt that gets paid in full isn't forgiven, it's paid. And a God who can't let anything go without a victim isn't merciful. Mercy in Greek literally means not exacting a penalty, and your system has no room for it.
It also makes justice a rule that tells God what He has to do. Then justice is above Him and that's what you're really answering to.
And you hit a fork. If the Father pours wrath on the Son, you either split the Trinity or you split Christ, saying the wrath fell on His human nature only. That second move is Nestorian.
This didn't come from the apostles. It grew out of a Western habit of looking for a mechanism that explains exactly how the cross works. PSA is literally God saving you from Himself. PSA is akin to the oldest pagan instinct there is. The Greeks and Canaanites had gods who needed appeasing too, and people paid in blood to calm them down. The Church never taught that. The Fathers said Christ came to defeat death, not to soothe the Father.
And you know where PSA came from? Anselm borrowed it from feudal law, where an offended lord's honor demanded satisfaction. The Reformers then added a courtroom. So the God of your system acts like a medieval king with a grudge, when Christ calls us to forgive freely, as the father in the prodigal son story did.
Romans 8:3 doesn't say it. It says sin was condemned in the flesh. Sin is on trial there, not Jesus. You didn't find PSA in the verse. You brought it with you and you've turned the Trinity into a bad cop and a fall guy. The Father and Son share one will and one act. Your version has an angry Father on one side and a victim Son on the other. That's not the God John describes.
You've failed your own test. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination, and your fix is to declare the innocent guilty. A legal fiction is still a fiction. Ezekiel 18:20 says guilt doesn't transfer. Your God needs an accounting trick to avoid breaking His own rule.
Here's the simpler reading. Christ took on our flesh and our death, and sin died with Him (Rom. 6:6). What you're calling justice is vengeance with a Bible verse attached. Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead. Vengeance is making someone pay because you were wronged. Paul says "vengeance is Mine" (Rom. 12:19) and then tells us to overcome evil with good. God doesn't need a victim to settle a score. He enters our death and destroys it from the inside. That's justice done, and it's more just than your version, because the guilty are actually healed and the innocent isn't punished.
The tragedy here is that this is what you've ultimately come to: "The word of God is wrong, because it goes against what I think is true about God and what is more palatable to MY understanding of him."
If Jesus' purpose was simply to defeat death, then why didn't he just live a long, happy life and die naturally of old age, and then resurrect and defeat death that way? Why did he have to suffer and die on the cross? Why did God have to forsake Jesus on the cross?
Why did God command the blood sacrifice of animals and for the high priest to sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins? Why did the Israelites have to smear sacrificial blood on their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their house?
PSA didn't come from Anselm. It comes from God's word, like through the prophet Isaiah. It's the same word of God that clearly states "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", yet you are clearly and directly rejecting it.
You: "Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead." - what about the person, then, who broke the broken, who enslaved the captive, and who murdered the dead? A HOLY GOD can not tolerate evil like this, and it must be dealt with. It doesn't just go away. If you believe that it can, you simply do not understand and fully appreciate God's ultimate and perfect HOLINESS, and the extreme gravity of SIN in the presence of a HOLY GOD. Is there no "Hell" in your theology?
This doesn't make God "subordinate" to justice. This is yet another one of your constant non sequiturs and it's purely argumentative. It's like arguing that since God must act in love, then it makes him subordinate to love. And that since God must tell the truth, it makes him subordinate to honesty. And that since God must be Holy, he is subordinate to holiness. Obviously, this is a ridiculous, nonsensical argument. God must do these things, because it's who he is, it's his character. If he's being "subordinate to anything", he's being subordinate to Himself. To NOT do them, is to violate his own character, at which point he wouldn't be God.
PSA does NOT "split the Trinity". Jesus was in full agreement with God's plan and voluntarily subject himself to the penalty of sin. God and Jesus were in FULL LOVE together in this arrangement: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my lifeonly to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."- John 10: 17-18
Sadly, you're aligning Scripture to your own created theology, rather than aligning your theology to Scripture. Is there any doubt about this? You've clearly and directly denied what's in Scripture. You've essentially created your own God to match your own preferences, instead of letting God reveal Himself through his word. You are more loyal to the traditions of your church than to what God has himself revealed in his word. This is very, very dangerous ground to be in.
Both of us are quoting Scripture, so the question is whose reading is right. Mine is how the apostles' own churches read it for 1,500 years. Yours first showed up in the 1500s.
The problem is you think your interpretation is infallible. That your boomer understanding EXACTLY matches Greek language and the cultural context you clearly don't understand. You don't know anything about 2nd temple Judaism, that's a huge part of the problem.
I just don't see how it can any clearer who is reading Scripture correctly between us. When Scripture says "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" - while I'm reading it as "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", you're reading it as "the shedding of blood is NOT needed for forgiveness".
Is there any rational person who can't tell who's reading it right?
PSA is in the early church fathers' writings. It's even in the writings of Orthodox christianity. The whole "showing up in 1500's" is the same tiring argument that Catholics and Orthodox use to debunk Protestantism, but as has been clearly demonstrated in these forums for a whole range of topics, it's patently false, and this is no different.
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
Doc HollidayThe tragedy here is that this is what you've ultimately come to: "The word of God is wrong, because it goes against what I think is true about God and what is more palatable to MY understanding of him." said:
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If Jesus' purpose was simply to defeat death, then why didn't he just live a long, happy life and die naturally of old age, and then resurrect and defeat death that way? Why did he have to suffer and die on the cross? Why did God have to forsake Jesus on the cross?
Why did God command the blood sacrifice of animals and for the high priest to sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins? Why did the Israelites have to smear sacrificial blood on their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their house?
PSA didn't come from Anselm. It comes from God's word, like through the prophet Isaiah. It's the same word of God that clearly states "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", yet you are clearly and directly rejecting it.
You: "Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead." - what about the person, then, who broke the broken, who enslaved the captive, and who murdered the dead? A HOLY GOD can not tolerate evil like this, and it must be dealt with. It doesn't just go away. If you believe that it can, you simply do not understand and fully appreciate God's ultimate and perfect HOLINESS, and the extreme gravity of SIN in the presence of a HOLY GOD. Is there no "Hell" in your theology?
This doesn't make God "subordinate" to justice. This is yet another one of your constant non sequiturs and it's purely argumentative. It's like arguing that since God must act in love, then it makes him subordinate to love. And that since God must tell the truth, it makes him subordinate to honesty. And that since God must be Holy, he is subordinate to holiness. Obviously, this is a ridiculous, nonsensical argument. God must do these things, because it's who he is, it's his character. If he's being "subordinate to anything", he's being subordinate to Himself. To NOT do them, is to violate his own character, at which point he wouldn't be God.
PSA does NOT "split the Trinity". Jesus was in full agreement with God's plan and voluntarily subject himself to the penalty of sin. God and Jesus were in FULL LOVE together in this arrangement: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my lifeonly to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."- John 10: 17-18
Sadly, you're aligning Scripture to your own created theology, rather than aligning your theology to Scripture. Is there any doubt about this? You've clearly and directly denied what's in Scripture. You've essentially created your own God to match your own preferences, instead of letting God reveal Himself through his word. You are more loyal to the traditions of your church than to what God has himself revealed in his word. This is very, very dangerous ground to be in.
Both of us are quoting Scripture, so the question is whose reading is right. Mine is how the apostles' own churches read it for 1,500 years. Yours first showed up in the 1500s.
The problem is you think your interpretation is infallible. That your boomer understanding EXACTLY matches Greek language and the cultural context you clearly don't understand. You don't know anything about 2nd temple Judaism, that's a huge part of the problem.
I just don't see how it can any clearer who is reading Scripture correctly between us. When Scripture says "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" - while I'm reading it as "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", you're reading it as "the shedding of blood is NOT needed for forgiveness".
Is there any rational person who can't tell who's reading it right?
PSA is in the early church fathers' writings. It's even in the writings of Orthodox christianity. The whole "showing up in 1500's" is the same tiring argument that Catholics and Orthodox use to debunk Protestantism, but as has been clearly demonstrated in these forums for a whole range of topics, it's patently false, and this is no different.
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
The reason why we would still be in our sins if Jesus wasn't raised, is because if Jesus wasn't raised, then he would have been just another sacrifice, just like all the other temple animal sacrifices, which only were able to atone for past sins. But because Jesus was raised, it meant that he was the perfect sacrfice, and thus the perfect, once-for-all time payment for all sin - past, present, and future.
*Simple question - MUST God keep his promises? Yes or no? If you say yes, are you "telling God what he is bound to do"?
Scripture does not only say the cross "breaks death". Scripture CLEARLY says that Jesus' death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:2
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you have been healed." - 1 Peter 2:24
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." - Colossians 2:14
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" - Hebrews 9:28
"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." - 1 Timothy 2:6
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" - 1 Peter 3:18
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" - Ephesians 1:7
You: "You think the Cross exists to settle an account"
Look at the third verse above. That is exactly the language being used. You simply aren't getting your theology from Scripture. You're getting it from your own preferred understanding, from the fallible minds of men within your chosen tradition.
Doc HollidayThe tragedy here is that this is what you've ultimately come to: "The word of God is wrong, because it goes against what I think is true about God and what is more palatable to MY understanding of him." said:
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If Jesus' purpose was simply to defeat death, then why didn't he just live a long, happy life and die naturally of old age, and then resurrect and defeat death that way? Why did he have to suffer and die on the cross? Why did God have to forsake Jesus on the cross?
Why did God command the blood sacrifice of animals and for the high priest to sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins? Why did the Israelites have to smear sacrificial blood on their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their house?
PSA didn't come from Anselm. It comes from God's word, like through the prophet Isaiah. It's the same word of God that clearly states "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", yet you are clearly and directly rejecting it.
You: "Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead." - what about the person, then, who broke the broken, who enslaved the captive, and who murdered the dead? A HOLY GOD can not tolerate evil like this, and it must be dealt with. It doesn't just go away. If you believe that it can, you simply do not understand and fully appreciate God's ultimate and perfect HOLINESS, and the extreme gravity of SIN in the presence of a HOLY GOD. Is there no "Hell" in your theology?
This doesn't make God "subordinate" to justice. This is yet another one of your constant non sequiturs and it's purely argumentative. It's like arguing that since God must act in love, then it makes him subordinate to love. And that since God must tell the truth, it makes him subordinate to honesty. And that since God must be Holy, he is subordinate to holiness. Obviously, this is a ridiculous, nonsensical argument. God must do these things, because it's who he is, it's his character. If he's being "subordinate to anything", he's being subordinate to Himself. To NOT do them, is to violate his own character, at which point he wouldn't be God.
PSA does NOT "split the Trinity". Jesus was in full agreement with God's plan and voluntarily subject himself to the penalty of sin. God and Jesus were in FULL LOVE together in this arrangement: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my lifeonly to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."- John 10: 17-18
Sadly, you're aligning Scripture to your own created theology, rather than aligning your theology to Scripture. Is there any doubt about this? You've clearly and directly denied what's in Scripture. You've essentially created your own God to match your own preferences, instead of letting God reveal Himself through his word. You are more loyal to the traditions of your church than to what God has himself revealed in his word. This is very, very dangerous ground to be in.
Both of us are quoting Scripture, so the question is whose reading is right. Mine is how the apostles' own churches read it for 1,500 years. Yours first showed up in the 1500s.
The problem is you think your interpretation is infallible. That your boomer understanding EXACTLY matches Greek language and the cultural context you clearly don't understand. You don't know anything about 2nd temple Judaism, that's a huge part of the problem.
I just don't see how it can any clearer who is reading Scripture correctly between us. When Scripture says "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" - while I'm reading it as "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", you're reading it as "the shedding of blood is NOT needed for forgiveness".
Is there any rational person who can't tell who's reading it right?
PSA is in the early church fathers' writings. It's even in the writings of Orthodox christianity. The whole "showing up in 1500's" is the same tiring argument that Catholics and Orthodox use to debunk Protestantism, but as has been clearly demonstrated in these forums for a whole range of topics, it's patently false, and this is no different.
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
The reason why we would still be in our sins if Jesus wasn't raised, is because if Jesus wasn't raised, then he would have been just another sacrifice, just like all the other temple animal sacrifices, which only were able to atone for past sins. But because Jesus was raised, it meant that he was the perfect sacrfice, and thus the perfect, once-for-all time payment for all sin - past, present, and future.
*Simple question - MUST God keep his promises? Yes or no? If you say yes, are you "telling God what he is bound to do"?
Scripture does not only say the cross "breaks death". Scripture CLEARLY says that Jesus' death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:2
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you have been healed." - 1 Peter 2:24
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." - Colossians 2:14
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" - Hebrews 9:28
"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." - 1 Timothy 2:6
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" - 1 Peter 3:18
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" - Ephesians 1:7
You: "You think the Cross exists to settle an account"
Look at the third verse above. That is exactly the language being used. You simply aren't getting your theology from Scripture. You're getting it from your own preferred understanding, from the fallible minds of men within your chosen tradition.
Nobody here denies the Cross was an atoning sacrifice for sins. Orthodoxy confesses it. The fight is over what atonement does, and a list of verses doesn't settle that. You're reading each one through the lens you already have.
Colossians 2:14. You say this is "exactly" settling an account. Look at the word: canceled. If I owe you a thousand dollars and you tear up the note, nobody paid you. That's forgiveness. And read the verses around it. Verse 13: you were dead in trespasses and God made you alive. Verse 15: he disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them. Death to life and victory over powers, in your own proof text.
1 Timothy 2:6, Ephesians 1:7. Ransom and redemption. When God ransomed Israel from Egypt, who got paid? Pharaoh? Ransom in Scripture means rescue from captivity. Hosea 13:14: "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol."
1 Peter 2:24. "By his stripes you were healed." That's healing language, and the purpose is that we die to sin and live to righteousness. Transformation, not a verdict. 1 Peter 3:18 says he suffered "that he might bring us to God." The goal is communion.
1 John 2:2. Read 4:10: God loved us and sent his Son. The Father is the one who sends. He isn't the one who needs to be changed.
Hebrews 9:28. "Bear the sins of many." Leviticus 16 uses the same language for the goat that was never killed. Bearing sin doesn't mean being punished for it.
Now your question. Yes, God keeps his promises. He promised the Seed would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). That's victory over an enemy. Name the promise that says God can't forgive until someone is punished. You can't. I gave you Ezekiel 18 and Exodus 34:6-7, where he promised the opposite.
You say I'm getting my theology from my tradition. Everyone reads with a tradition, including you. The question is whose. The Greek Fathers read these same verses in their own language and understood them as ransom from death and healing of our nature. The full penal version shows up 1,500 years later. And the Bible you're quoting was gathered by the same Church whose reading you're rejecting.
Start with the animals. They weren't punished. Nobody in Leviticus beats a goat or makes it suffer for the offerer. Its blood is life, offered and applied for cleansing. Then look at Leviticus 16. That's the one place where a people's sins are confessed over an animal, and that animal is never sacrificed. It's sent away alive. The goat that dies is the spotless one, and the sin is never put on it. If transfer-and-punish were the pattern, you'd have it backwards.
Now the prodigal son. Who was punished? Nobody. The father sees him a long way off, runs to him, and cuts off his speech. No payment, no victim, no satisfaction. The only person in the story who demands justice is the elder brother, and he's the one standing outside the feast. Jesus told that story to explain how God forgives.
And here's my real question. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, forgive freely, and not seek vengeance, and gives the reason: so that you'll be sons of your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:44-45). "Be merciful, as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36). Paul says "forgive as God in Christ forgave you" (Eph. 4:32). In Matthew 18 the king cancels the whole debt with no payment, and Jesus holds that up as the model. On the Cross he says "Father, forgive them" without demanding anything first. So why would justice for the Father be justice through torture and murder of the innocent but justice for us isn't?
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
The reason why we would still be in our sins if Jesus wasn't raised, is because if Jesus wasn't raised, then he would have been just another sacrifice, just like all the other temple animal sacrifices, which only were able to atone for past sins. But because Jesus was raised, it meant that he was the perfect sacrfice, and thus the perfect, once-for-all time payment for all sin - past, present, and future.
*Simple question - MUST God keep his promises? Yes or no? If you say yes, are you "telling God what he is bound to do"?
Scripture does not only say the cross "breaks death". Scripture CLEARLY says that Jesus' death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:2
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you have been healed." - 1 Peter 2:24
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." - Colossians 2:14
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" - Hebrews 9:28
"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." - 1 Timothy 2:6
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" - 1 Peter 3:18
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" - Ephesians 1:7
You: "You think the Cross exists to settle an account"
Look at the third verse above. That is exactly the language being used. You simply aren't getting your theology from Scripture. You're getting it from your own preferred understanding, from the fallible minds of men within your chosen tradition.
Nobody here denies the Cross was an atoning sacrifice for sins. Orthodoxy confesses it. The fight is over what atonement does, and a list of verses doesn't settle that. You're reading each one through the lens you already have.
Colossians 2:14. You say this is "exactly" settling an account. Look at the word: canceled. If I owe you a thousand dollars and you tear up the note, nobody paid you. That's forgiveness. And read the verses around it. Verse 13: you were dead in trespasses and God made you alive. Verse 15: he disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them. Death to life and victory over powers, in your own proof text.
1 Timothy 2:6, Ephesians 1:7. Ransom and redemption. When God ransomed Israel from Egypt, who got paid? Pharaoh? Ransom in Scripture means rescue from captivity. Hosea 13:14: "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol."
1 Peter 2:24. "By his stripes you were healed." That's healing language, and the purpose is that we die to sin and live to righteousness. Transformation, not a verdict. 1 Peter 3:18 says he suffered "that he might bring us to God." The goal is communion.
1 John 2:2. Read 4:10: God loved us and sent his Son. The Father is the one who sends. He isn't the one who needs to be changed.
Hebrews 9:28. "Bear the sins of many." Leviticus 16 uses the same language for the goat that was never killed. Bearing sin doesn't mean being punished for it.
You keep running away from your own argument. In your previous post, you argued that "Scripture says the cross broke death". You said nothing about it atoning for our sins. That's the point I'm making with those verses.
Regarding what the atonement actually does, it is clear from all my previous arguments from Scripture that Scripture teaches that atonement includes but is not limited to penal substitutionary atonement. The verses I cited above even support this. To say otherwise is to deny what Scripture teaches.
"Cancelling" the debt in Colossians 2:14 only was possible because, as the verse states, it was nailed to the cross. That's saying that the cross was the payment for the debt. All you had to do is read a few words past what you only wanted to see.
You: "Death to life and victory over powers, in your own proof text." - yes, like I've already told you, my view of the atonement includes Christus victor, in addition to penal substitution. Because both are taught in Scripture. You are denying a part of the atonement that is taught in Scripture. This denial is what leads you to works righteousness, a false gospel. That's the difference between us.
You: "1 Peter 2:24. "By his stripes you were healed." That's healing language, and the purpose is that we die to sin and live to righteousness. Transformation, not a verdict. 1 Peter 3:18 says he suffered "that he might bring us to God." The goal is communion." - did you forget the "stripes" and the "suffering"? The "punishment that brought us peace, was laid on him"?? Isaiah, where this prophecy is from??
Doc HollidayYou're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that said:
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God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
The reason why we would still be in our sins if Jesus wasn't raised, is because if Jesus wasn't raised, then he would have been just another sacrifice, just like all the other temple animal sacrifices, which only were able to atone for past sins. But because Jesus was raised, it meant that he was the perfect sacrfice, and thus the perfect, once-for-all time payment for all sin - past, present, and future.
*Simple question - MUST God keep his promises? Yes or no? If you say yes, are you "telling God what he is bound to do"?
Scripture does not only say the cross "breaks death". Scripture CLEARLY says that Jesus' death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:2
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you have been healed." - 1 Peter 2:24
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." - Colossians 2:14
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" - Hebrews 9:28
"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." - 1 Timothy 2:6
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" - 1 Peter 3:18
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" - Ephesians 1:7
You: "You think the Cross exists to settle an account"
Look at the third verse above. That is exactly the language being used. You simply aren't getting your theology from Scripture. You're getting it from your own preferred understanding, from the fallible minds of men within your chosen tradition.
Now your question. Yes, God keeps his promises. He promised the Seed would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). That's victory over an enemy. Name the promise that says God can't forgive until someone is punished. You can't. I gave you Ezekiel 18 and Exodus 34:6-7, where he promised the opposite.
You say I'm getting my theology from my tradition. Everyone reads with a tradition, including you. The question is whose. The Greek Fathers read these same verses in their own language and understood them as ransom from death and healing of our nature. The full penal version shows up 1,500 years later. And the Bible you're quoting was gathered by the same Church whose reading you're rejecting.
I didn't ask you whether God DOES keep his promises. I asked if you believe God MUST keep his promises. You have a real problem with staying focused on the argument.
I already gave you the "promise" where God won't forgive without the shedding of blood - again, I ask you: would God have forgiven the people of Israel of their sins if the high priest did NOT offer blood on the mercy seat in the holy of holies? Yes or no?
You: "Name the promise that says God can't forgive until someone is punished. You can't"
For heaven's sake man. You have such ridiculously short memory: "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness".
"But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed."
The early church supported penal substitutionary atonement.
Atonement is more about honor than justice. Two very different things. A loving father doesn't want vengeance against his children. He wants their honor, not for his own sake, but so that they can have a right and good relationship with him.
On Hebrews 9:22. You read "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" as a payment to the Father. It's an OFFERING, and an offering is NOT a payment. John of Damascus says Christ offers Himself to the Father for our sakes, and in the same section he says the ransom wasn't paid to the devil either. The Byzantine Church dealt with this head on in the 11th century dispute over Soterichos. The synod condemned the idea that a created thing could pay God off, and it ruled that the offering is triadic: the Son offers the human nature to the Father in the Holy Spirit. That's the logic of "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee."
You're moving the goalposts here. That, or you're running away from your argument. You initially claimed that God doesn't need the shedding of blood in order to forgive. Now you're arguing that the problem is that the shedding of blood is being wrongly understood as a "payment" rather than an "offering". Does this mean that you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus? Let's start there.
God doesn't need blood in the sense that His hands are tied until someone pays. He isn't bound by anything outside Himself. That's my claim, and it hasn't changed.
The cross is still necessary, but it's necessary for us. We are held by death, corruption, and the devil, and the only way to free us is for the Son to enter death and destroy it from the inside (Heb. 2:14-15). The blood is the means of that victory and cleansing. It isn't a bill paid to the Father. "Necessary" and "payment to satisfy God" are two different claims, and only the first one is in Scripture.
So I don't concede your point. I'm saying yes, the shedding of blood is essential, because of what it does to us and to death. And no, God isn't a debtor's creditor who can't forgive otherwise.
These are what you originally stated:
"If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us." "You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds."
These are clearly arguing that God does NOT need blood in order to forgive. Now you're moving the goalposts to the argument that God does in fact need blood to forgive, but it's not a "payment" to satisfy Him. This clearly IS conceding the point: "do you concede that you're wrong, that God in fact does need the shedding of blood in order for us to have forgiveness through Jesus?"
We need to be clear here.
I'm being very clear. God is not bound by a legal ledger, nor does He need to be "appeased" or "satisfied" before He can love or forgive. PSA has to say otherwise and it has to place
Hebrews 9:22 states: "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The verse specifically describes the mechanics of the Old Covenant ritual system ("under the law"). The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament were pedagogicaldesigned to teach humanity about the gravity of sin, impurity, and death, while prefiguring Christ.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was offered not to "satisfy God's anger," but to cleanse, purify, and impart life.
St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen): Famous for rejecting the idea that Christ's blood was paid to God the Father:
Quote:
"To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?... If to the Father, first, how? For we were not under His captivity. And secondly, on what rationale could the blood of His Only-begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who did not accept even Isaac when offered by his father?
Blood represents life. Christ's blood poured out is not a transaction to change God's mind toward us, but the free gift of God's own life pouring into our dead, wounded world to heal, purify, and unite us to Him.
You're still trying to run away from your original point. You clearly said that God did NOT blood in order to forgive sins. You were clearly and unequivocally wrong. Now you are internally conceding it, but you can't admit it.
What I'm trying to get you to realize is that even though you were fully convinced that you were correct here, you were clearly shown (and conceded) that you were in fact wrong about a very KEY point. And this wasn't the only time you've been wrong. Far from it.
So shouldn't this humble you to the fact that your understanding of all this may not be sound, and that perhaps your rejection of PSA might be built upon flawed reasoning and grounds?
Hebrews 9:22 describes how the Law worked. Under the covenant God set up, cleansing ran through blood. I never denied that. What I denied is that blood is a metaphysical requirement that binds God's hand, and you haven't touched that. Even in the Law, Leviticus 5:11 lets a poor man bring flour for a sin offering. David is forgiven in Psalm 51 while being told God takes no delight in sacrifice. Nineveh repents and is spared. The tax collector goes home justified. Christ forgives sins before the Cross. Explain those, or stop pretending you've won something.
As I clearly showed straight from the Old Testament Law, blood was not just for "cleansing", but for atonement for sin. That you continually leave that out, is very telling.
Your "binding God's hand" argument has been "touched". You just aren't letting yourself grasp it. God's hand is bound by his OWN CHARACTER. Whatever God declares, whatever he promises, whatever he prescribes, HE MUST HONOR IT, or he isn't God. If God's justice required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of the Israeli people, then it must be. If God's justice required that Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the final and complete atonement for sin, then it must be also. This isn't "binding God's hands" as if he is being subjugated. This is God being true to his character of holiness and justice. The poor man with a grain offering, and the tax collector made righteous - they are only temporarily forgiven, because blood ultimately had to be shed for their sin. The high priest had to achieve this every year in the Temple for ALL the people. And Jesus achieved the final sacrifice for all sin on the cross.
The critical point is, had the high priest NOT performed the blood atonement for the whole nation as directed by God, and had Jesus NOT shed his blood on the cross, then there would NOT have been forgiveness for the sins of Israel, and for the sins for the world, respectively. What you are arguing is that Jesus did not have to shed his blood, which makes Jesus' self-sacrificial work on the cross superfluous and unnecessary. This is as about as anti-Christian as it gets.
Your paradigm is wrong from the start. Forgiveness isn't the fundamental problem. Death and sin are, and sin isn't just a ledger entry. It's a power that enslaved us (Romans 5-7).
Look at what sin is. Adam and Eve tried to play God, deciding good and evil for themselves, and the result was death. Every sin since is the same grab in miniature. We try to be our own source of life and our own judge, and since God is the source of life, cutting ourselves off from him ends in death. That's what we're being rescued from. The whole Bible is telling you that you are not God.
Christ reverses it. Adam grasped and fell. Christ refused to grasp at equality with God, emptied himself, and went into death (Phil. 2). Paul calls death the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Hebrews 2:14-15 says Christ took flesh to destroy the one who has the power of death. 1 John 3:8 says he appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Paul asks "who will deliver me from this body of death?" not "who will cancel my debt?"
And your own view can't handle 1 Cor. 15:17: if Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins. If the Cross were a finished payment, the Resurrection would be a receipt and your sins would be gone either way. Paul says the opposite. Forgiveness depends on death being defeated, so death is the deeper problem.
Now look at what you keep saying: God MUST do this, or he isn't God. You're telling God what he's bound to do. That's the same move as the Garden, a man defining what God requires. Scripture's answer is Job 38. God told us what he has done. He didn't ask you to write his terms.
Forgiveness is real and necessary. Nobody here denies it. But a forgiven man who is still dying is still lost. And if you quote 1 Cor. 15:3, read the rest of the chapter. Paul rests everything on the Resurrection, not a transaction.
You think the Cross exists to settle an account. Scripture says it exists to break death. One is a courtroom. The other is a rescue.
The reason why we would still be in our sins if Jesus wasn't raised, is because if Jesus wasn't raised, then he would have been just another sacrifice, just like all the other temple animal sacrifices, which only were able to atone for past sins. But because Jesus was raised, it meant that he was the perfect sacrfice, and thus the perfect, once-for-all time payment for all sin - past, present, and future.
*Simple question - MUST God keep his promises? Yes or no? If you say yes, are you "telling God what he is bound to do"?
Scripture does not only say the cross "breaks death". Scripture CLEARLY says that Jesus' death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for our sins:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:2
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you have been healed." - 1 Peter 2:24
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." - Colossians 2:14
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" - Hebrews 9:28
"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." - 1 Timothy 2:6
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" - 1 Peter 3:18
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" - Ephesians 1:7
You: "You think the Cross exists to settle an account"
Look at the third verse above. That is exactly the language being used. You simply aren't getting your theology from Scripture. You're getting it from your own preferred understanding, from the fallible minds of men within your chosen tradition.
Nobody here denies the Cross was an atoning sacrifice for sins. Orthodoxy confesses it. The fight is over what atonement does, and a list of verses doesn't settle that. You're reading each one through the lens you already have.
Colossians 2:14. You say this is "exactly" settling an account. Look at the word: canceled. If I owe you a thousand dollars and you tear up the note, nobody paid you. That's forgiveness. And read the verses around it. Verse 13: you were dead in trespasses and God made you alive. Verse 15: he disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them. Death to life and victory over powers, in your own proof text.
1 Timothy 2:6, Ephesians 1:7. Ransom and redemption. When God ransomed Israel from Egypt, who got paid? Pharaoh? Ransom in Scripture means rescue from captivity. Hosea 13:14: "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol."
1 Peter 2:24. "By his stripes you were healed." That's healing language, and the purpose is that we die to sin and live to righteousness. Transformation, not a verdict. 1 Peter 3:18 says he suffered "that he might bring us to God." The goal is communion.
1 John 2:2. Read 4:10: God loved us and sent his Son. The Father is the one who sends. He isn't the one who needs to be changed.
Hebrews 9:28. "Bear the sins of many." Leviticus 16 uses the same language for the goat that was never killed. Bearing sin doesn't mean being punished for it.
You keep running away from your own argument. In your previous post, you argued that "Scripture says the cross broke death". You said nothing about it atoning for our sins. That's the point I'm making with those verses.
Regarding what the atonement actually does, it is clear from all my previous arguments from Scripture that Scripture teaches that atonement includes but is not limited to penal substitutionary atonement. The verses I cited above even support this. To say otherwise is to deny what Scripture teaches.
"Cancelling" the debt in Colossians 2:14 only was possible because, as the verse states, it was nailed to the cross. That's saying that the cross was the payment for the debt. All you had to do is read a few words past what you only wanted to see.
You: "Death to life and victory over powers, in your own proof text." - yes, like I've already told you, my view of the atonement includes Christus victor, in addition to penal substitution. Because both are taught in Scripture. You are denying a part of the atonement that is taught in Scripture. This denial is what leads you to works righteousness, a false gospel. That's the difference between us.
You: "1 Peter 2:24. "By his stripes you were healed." That's healing language, and the purpose is that we die to sin and live to righteousness. Transformation, not a verdict. 1 Peter 3:18 says he suffered "that he might bring us to God." The goal is communion." - did you forget the "stripes" and the "suffering"? The "punishment that brought us peace, was laid on him"?? Isaiah, where this prophecy is from??
You literally are a brick wall.
It would help if you actually understood the Orthodox and early Church teachings instead of what reformers made up in the 1500s.
Atonement doesn't automatically mean penal. Penal implies that the Father is the one who has to be won over.
Orthodoxy has atonement. It means at-one-ment: reconciliation (Rom. 5:10-11, 2 Cor. 5:19). Christ died for us, he offered himself, and he took our death on himself. What we deny is the word "penal." Nowhere does Scripture say the Father punished the Son to satisfy his justice. It says God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us. Sharing a word with you doesn't mean sharing your meaning.
PSA needs a God whose wrath at us has to be spent before he can love us. Call it settled opposition instead of temper if you like, but it's still a Father whose stance toward us the Son has to change. Scripture says the opposite: God shows his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). The love came first. When Paul describes wrath, it's God handing people over to what they chose (Rom. 1:24-28). The cross doesn't calm God down. It heals us.
Romans 5:9 says we're "saved from the wrath of God through him." You would read that as proof the Father punished the Son. Read the verses around it. Verse 8: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The love came first. Verse 10: while we were enemies, we were reconciled. Who was the enemy? We were. Paul never says God was reconciled to us. We were reconciled to him. Then he says "we shall be saved by his life." Not by his punishment. By his life. That's the Resurrection, and it's why Paul's argument runs on "much more" through verse 11 and then goes straight into Adam, death reigning, and Christ's life overcoming it (5:12-21). The whole passage is about death being defeated.
And what is the wrath? Paul tells us. In Romans 1:24, 26, 28, wrath is God handing people over to the results of what they chose. In 2:5 it's the coming day of judgment. In 1 Thess. 1:10, Jesus "delivers us from the wrath to come." That's the final outcome of sin and death, and Christ saves us from it by destroying death and uniting us to his life. Nothing in Romans 5 says the Father poured out anger on the Son.
