Richard Rohr offers an alternative interpretation which seems quite reasonable to me in which our sin is condemned by being exposed in the crucifixion of Jesus. The wounds were not necessary to convince God that we were lovable; the wounds are to convince us of the path and the price of transformation. They are what will happen to you if you face and hold sin in compassion instead of projecting it in hatred. The two images contain the whole message of the Gospel.
Apparently, we have got God all wrong! Jesus is revealing a very central problem for religion, by coming into the world in this most unexpected and even unwanted way. The cross of Jesus was a mirror held up to history, so we could utterly change our normal image of God. I think this is a very compelling way of understanding the cross. God uses the cross to call out our sin and thus destroy the power that Satan has over us when our sin is kept in the dark.
In Romans 6, Paul talks about our emancipation from our slavery to sin as a change of masters in which righteousness becomes our new master Romans Another component of this passage in which the mainstream interpretation needs to be challenged is in verse 4.
Life in disharmony with God is a living death. I am free to repent and move forward. Every single moment is the first day of the rest of my life because of what Jesus did. Since God has condemned my sin in the flesh through his cross, I can walk according to the spirit instead of the flesh and gain the life that God promises through his law. Get newsletters and updates Close.
Also, send me the Progressive Christian Newsletter and special offers. God has condemned sin in the flesh — the very essence of the Adamic nature — and done it in such a way as to deliver the poor child of Adam who believes. This He did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sacrifice for sin. We turn to the cross, and in the sacrifice of Christ as bearing the judgment of sin we behold sin in the flesh condemned. The Lord Jesus was made flesh — holy flesh. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh.
Sin has invaded the angelic ranks, we learn; but sin in spirit-beings lies quite outside this verse. Remember also that sin in the flesh is condemned and not forgiven. In the administration of human justice there may be forgiveness expressed in the remission of a sentence, yet even so the law maintains its condemnation of the lawless and criminal instincts from which the crime in question proceeded. Thus also it is in the administration of Divine justice, for the human in so far as it is good and right is but a feeble reflection of the Divine.
The sacrifice of Christ truly provides the basis whereby forgiveness of offences may reach the believer righteously. It equally sets forth the Divine abhorrence and condemnation of the corrupt nature from which the offences sprang.
And here are we believers "in Christ Jesus" as to our new position before God, and not in Adam at all! And not only have we this new place, this new standing, but we also have "life in Christ Jesus"; there is a new spring of life within as well as a new position without. Now, in the text, we are told how God interposed to do by his grace what his law could not do.
After expounding these matters, I will try, in the third place, to show you how this bears upon the two desirable things I speak of namely, the forgiving the offender, and the making the offender from thenceforth yearn after holiness and purity. We believe in one God, but though we understand not the mystery of the Divine Existence, we accept the propositions declared in Scripture, clearly apprehending the obvious sense of the terms employed, and heartily assenting to the truth of the facts revealed.
The second person of that blessed unity in Trinity was sent by the Father to this earth. It is a great mystery. Indeed, were there no mystery in God, he were no God to us; for how then should we fear him with the reverence due unto his name?
The fact of there being mysteries should never stagger us, poor worms of a day, when we have to think or speak of the infinitely glorious Jehovah. So, however , it came to pass, that in the fulness of time God sent his Son.
He sent his own Son, and he sent him in the flesh. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born into this world ; he took upon himself our manhood. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and the apostles declare that they beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
The text uses very important words. He was to all intents and purposes like ourselves, tempted in all points like as we are, though without sin, with all our sinless infirmities, with all our tendencies to suffer, with everything human in him except that which comes to be human through human nature having fallen.
He was perfectly man; he was like ourselves; and God sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh. Though it is eighteen hundred years ago and more, the Christmas bells seem to ring on. The joy of his coming is still in our hearts. He lived here his two or three and thirty years, but he was sent, the text tells us, for a reason which caused him to die. He was sent for sin. This may mean that he was sent to do battle with sin, or that he was sent because sin was in the world; or, best of all, he was sent to be a sin-offering.
He was sent that he might be the substitute for sinners. This is what God did. He sent his Son to Bethlehem; he sent his Son to Calvary: he sent his Son down to the grave, and he has now recalled him unto the excellent glory where he sitteth at the right hand of God.
Why, brethren, the immediate result was that God condemned sin. Let me show you how he did it. This world of ours was such an Augean stable, that omnipotence itself must come down and turn the sluices of divine perfection right through the hideous heap, or else washed it never could be; therefore down from the highest glory came the Saviour, that he might achieve a task which the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, but which he in the likeness of sinful flesh undertook to accomplish.
Moreover, the life of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth condemned sin. You can often condemn an evil best by putting side by side with it the palpable contrast, the purity to which it is so thoroughly alien, so totally opposite. So blameless was the conduct of this most blessed Man of Nazareth throughout his entire career, that even those who accept not his deity, do homage to his integrity.
We have had in our own day, and in our midst, we grieve to say, some who have blasphemed our faith with bitterest words, but even they have paused as if they stood abashed when they came to survey the character of him whose divinity and mission they refused to acknowledge.
They have seen about his life a something that they saw nowhere else, and if they have not adored they have admired. There was a condemnation of sin in his very look. The Pharisees felt it. They could not meet or encounter him without discovering and exposing what hypocrites they were. All sorts of men felt it. They could not fail to see through the purity of his life what crooked, ugly, deformed lives their own were in comparison with his, and thus the very existence of Christ, and the example of Christ, condemned sin.
But what shall we who are his disciples say to that assemblage of graces found only in him, each sparkling with peerless lustre, and all blending with such exquisite gracefulness that we are at once moved with awe and touched with love as we contemplate him? Such majesty yet such meekness in his mien; such solemnity yet such tenderness in his speech; so impartial in judgment yet so forgiving in temper; so full of zeal yet so equally full of patience; so keen to detect malice yet so slow to resent it; such a wise Mentor in the inner circle of his followers yet such a gentle sympathising friend.
Say, my brethren— why I think some of us never commit a trespass or betray an infirmity, but we say, and say it to ourselves, Would Christ have done this? And the remembrance of his holy harmless life condemns sin in our conscience.
God condemned sin still further, by allowing it to condemn itself. All his words were love; all his actions were kindness. He raised the dead; he healed the sick; he spake nothing but peace and goodwill towards men. And what did sin do? It convicted itself. Ferocious as a wild beast, it is always to be feared and hated, for it never can be tamed or trusted. That Man came into this world on an errand, and that errand was one of disinterested mercy and pure affection.
He need not have come; he had nothing to gain by it; he never did gain anything while here. They would have made him a king, but he would not be a king. His was all disinterested kindness, benevolence to his bitterest foes. Now, surely sin will not touch such a blessed Being as this! As we hold and believe, this Man was no other than God, God' s Son. You know how the wilfulness and atrocity of this sin against Christ is represented to us in the parable of a certain man that had let out his vineyard unto husbandmen.
He sent unto them his servant that at the time of the crops they should pay a portion of the produce, but they treated him despitefully, and when he sent another they beat him, and stoned another. It would wreak its vengeance on him that inhabiteth eternity if it could, and hurl destruction at the lawgiver, to secure a triumph for its own lawlessness.
To the one true and glorious God men will not pay any allegiance. If sin had power equivalent to its purpose, had it means to accomplish its menace, it would cast down the throne of the Most High, and assail Jehovah himself in the heaven of his dwelling. Oh, thou abominable thing, sin! Thou standest convicted. God shall smite thee, thou accursed thing. Thou hast condemned thyself by thine own act and deed, even where thy craftiness has been foiled and thy desperate prowess has issued in defeat.
But here comes the peculiar doctrine of our faith. He had never offended, and the Father loved him. Will he not spare him? Oh, there was an inner sweat, of which those outward drops were but the faint types!
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