LENT: FORGIVENESS, NOT JUSTICE, IS OUR CALLING

In response to the previous post on forgiveness, I received the following question that would not post.

Question: “Part of what makes this sort of forgiveness (lifting the other person's load of injustice) so difficult is that it seems to let the injustice and the unjust person eternally off the hook. Can you comment sometime about whether the forgiven person really does "get away with it"?”

My understanding of biblical teaching:
1) In terms of the human-divine relationship as represented in the atonement system, “Yes.”  Forgiveness is not at all just; it is mercy.  That is difficult.  It is not natural to me to be merciful; I want justice.  However, the Israelite atonement system is not about justice.  (The sacrificial animals were not put to death as a substitute penalty for the one seeking forgiveness.)  Assuming that the Israelites understood the seriousness of the symbolic ritual and their confession was sincere, God allowed the blood of the sacrificial animal to cover/remove the symbolic miasma of sin and restore unimpeded relationship with God.  That is the mercy of forgiveness that we are to show toward others.  (In a sense, asking for forgiveness is asking for justice to be set aside for mercy.  Example: Although Joseph’s brothers are duplicitous when they ask for forgiveness, he does not execute justice in Gen 50:15 – 21.) 

2) Those who remain in a state of rebellion/defiance toward God will not be forgiven – they do not really seek it.  However, their state is not for me to determine. 

3) There are occasions, for example, in which Moses intercedes for the people for breaking covenant, God accedes and maintains God’s faithfulness to the covenant in response to Moses, but there are still consequences for the rebellious people (Exod 32:31 – 38 or Num 14:17 – 25 in which the word “forgive” is salach and probably here has the nuance of “forebear”).  In cases like this “justice” serves its appropriate role for maintaining social order and discipline within the human community – here, the covenant community.

4) Related to #3): Today, within our criminal justice system, we sometimes hear of victims who have forgiven their transgressor but the person still is held societally accountable.  Judges have some, but little, latitude to forgive.  Justice is necessary to maintain social order in a world of chaos.  In that sense, God as a good King (one of many biblical metaphorical titles of attributes), does intervene as Judge for justice on earth, and in eternal matters will always divide good from evil.  However, in our descriptive metaphors of God as a good King, Judge is not the overruling attribute.  That leads to my last thought. 

5)  Well prior to the knowledge gained about the Israelite atonement system through the rediscovery of the ancient Near East in the last 100 years or so, Christians in some theological traditions developed a model of Jesus’ atonement based on a substitutionary, penal, criminal-justice model.  (This has been a successful communicative model since people understand justice so well.)  In this system, there is no mercy analogous to a subject appealing to a gracious king and receiving not justice but forgiveness.  Rather, in this system, Jesus is put to death so that God may be viewed as the just Judge.  The obvious deficit of this model is that it would like a king forgiving his repentant subject only on the grounds of then killing an innocent person (even a self-Triune representative), and all because the king is somehow bound to carry out an abstract model of “justice” and has no freedom to forgive.  More importantly, this is not the model of the Israelite atonement system that expresses God’s nature.  God is not bound by an overruling abstraction of justice.  In the New Testament, in terms of atonement language proper – and not the many metaphors for the salvific work of Christ – Jesus, the Perfect sacrifice, provides the cleansing blood of atonement, expressing once for all divine mercy and establishing “righteousness” (right-relating).  Yes, Jesus dies for all,# just as the Israelite sacrifice was killed for its blood of atonement, but not in terms of some penal, substitutionary “justice.”*

Father, once again, the bottom line is your unfathomable mercy, by which you “cleanse,” “bear,” etc. (the many other biblical expressions) my sins in Jesus in order to restore me back to Life with you.  Help me to show such mercy to others.  Amen.

#If interested, I examine the "died-for-us" texts in “Gathercole’s, Defending Substitution: Why I Am Unconvinced and Concerned,” The Expository Times 129.10 (2018) 458-465.
*Note: NT atonement models should be brought into alignment with the biblical atonement system as we now understand it better; however, this is rather like asking people to exchange their KJV Bibles for ones that communicate in contemporary English.

GOD IS NOT JUST: ATONEMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT*

If by “just” one means a forensic, abstraction in which every crime/sin must receive appropriate punishment, then God is not just.  [This post follows up on my post of 8/25/23 in which I looked at some of the justice vocabulary in the Bible.]  Moreover, much of what people presume is atonement language about Jesus in the NT, particularly in Paul’s writings, is not atonement language.  It is not drawing on the atonement language and concepts used by ancient Israel in the OT, but on later foreign concepts (e.g. by Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Bede.)  And, it matters.  What is often lost as people conflate God’s gracious offer of salvation with the more specific category of atonement is the order, the sequence, of God’s outreach of reconciliation.

The sequence in the OT is this.  First, God condescends in grace and mercy to offer relationship to Abraham, to Moses, to the people of Israel.  There is nothing said about those people being righteously qualified, and there is no atonement for their previous sin/s.#  In fact, Moses tells the people that they were chosen NOT because they were more righteous or powerful or numerous – in fact, they are “stiff-necked” (Deut 9:1-6).  God offered a covenant relationship with them simply because God was faithful to the promise he made to Abraham.

Second, when Abraham entrusted himself to God, God reckoned that response as righteousness (Gen 16:5); that is, a right relationship.  There is absolutely nothing in God’s dealings with Abraham, Moses, or Israel in which God responds as a courtroom judge who must first exact punishment for sin in order to make things “just.”#  That forensic concept is not there and should not be projected into the NT!

The third step takes us into atonement language proper.  As people in relationship with the Holy God, they are called to be holy as well, but they, like us all, fail.  So, God established the symbolic atonement system.  This system was basically adopted from the sacrificial symbolism of the surrounding cultures, BUT was changed to remove polytheistic, magical, and nature-god elements.  In brief, the atonement system attempted to convey the seriousness of intangible realities such as sin and forgiveness through dramatic rituals.  The seriousness of sin, disobedience to God, was portrayed as a kind of miasma that polluted God’s dwelling place, the temple, and was such an impediment, if not removed, that God’s Presence would depart.  Blood, represented life and was manipulated around altars to symbolically overcome and remove the filth of sin.  This system symbolized God’s mercy and grace to forgive and to reconcile.  Of course, those making sin offerings were to be repentant, to desire reconciliation, and to want to be obedient in the future.
Here are a couple of key corrective thoughts about the sin offerings and scapegoat rituals for atonement:

·        Sins were not transferred or “imputed” from the person to the animal; that would involve forbidden magical thinking.  [To follow in a later post: This is why, for example, Paul does not say that Jesus became sin, but rather that Jesus became the “sin offering” in 2Cor 5:21 (see Rom 8:3) and why a common assumption that our sin could be imputed onto Jesus would be a foreign concept to Paul and other Jews.]

·        The death of the sin-offering animal is not key; the blood is.  The “life” in the blood (see Lev17:11) was greater than the deadly effects of sin.  Jesus provided the blood of a spotlessly pure sacrifice.  [Again, for a later post:  The actual death of Jesus is key symbolically for other reasons, but not as being punished for our sins to satisfy a god who is bound to an abstract system of forensic justice.]

Note: In Rom 4:18-25, Paul includes Gentiles in the “hope” of Abraham (18) and applies atonement language to all “who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered over on account of our sins [understood as the sin offering] and was raised for the sake of our righteousness/justification” (24-25).

Application: The order, the sequence, of God’s outreach of reconciliation always demonstrates the grace and mercy of God who does NOT execute abstract justice on people (or on Jesus) but, rather, who lifts/cleanses/buries/casts into the sea, etc. the sin of those who entrust themselves, who repent and seek forgiveness, who walk in obedience with God.

Lord, help me to always cherish your unfathomable mercy and grace such that you would allow me to abide in your Presence.  Help me to show that mercy to others.  Amen.

#Some interpreters and translators misunderstand a reference in Rom 3:25 to God “passing over” sins of the past as leaving “unpunished” (see NIV Original, but rendered better in the later version).  The term paresin used here is about remitting a debt rather than negligently forgetting it.  It is another image of God’s offer of forgiveness.  Actually, anyone who has really forgiven another person knows what it is like not to exact punishment, but to “pass over” the transgression.

*I have a detailed exegetical treatment of some of the key statements of Romans 3 in Part 2 of “Hope for the Future of New Testament Theology,” in Religions 2021, 12(11), 975; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110975

RIGHTLY UNDERSTANDING: JUSTICE, JUDGMENT, RIGHTEOUSNESS, LAW

The biblical word groups involving justice, judgment, righteousness, law, etc. are frequently misunderstood.*  Pop-Christianity influenced by Reformed theology and Western individualism have led readers, including NT theologians, to view these word groups from a limited forensic and individualized perspective.  What is typically lost is the broader context of relational order.  Examples:

The Hebrew word mishpat, “justice,” can be used narrowly in the sense of criminal justice, but more broadly, it is about equitable and harmonious social order.  Justice is ultimately about creating an orderly societal relationships.

The Greek word krino, “to judge” is broadly about distinguishing between order and chaos, right and wrong, etc. although it can be used specifically about a court-setting decision.  A person must understand the context in order to understand when one not to judge (condemn) (Matt 7:1) and when one is to judge (discern/distinguish) (1Cor 2:15; Luke 12:57).

The Hebrew word tzedakah and the Greek word dikaiosune, both usually translated “righteousness” (or poorly, “justified”) are not foremost a forensic evaluation of a person’s abstract legal status.  These are relational, behavioral terms.  The “righteousness of God” refers to the integrity of God in God’s dealings with people.  When Abraham entrusts himself to God, and God considers/reckons his commitment as “righteousness,” the point is that Abraham’s faith (entrustment) is judged by God as establishing a “right” relationship (Gen 15:6).  Paul relies heavily on this model in Romans 4 to explain the nature of faith and being declared righteous by the righteous God (see, too 3:26).

The Hebrew torah, “law,” (translated in Greek by nomos), again, is not narrowly forensic.  “Torah” (etymologically having the sense of propelling something in a direction) is used throughout the OT wisdom literature for directional guidance, teaching, but it also can be applied to genres of history, regulations, and exhortations.
When the people of Israel entrusted themselves to God in a covenant relationship, the Torah/Law that was given to them was primarily to guide them to righteous behavior.#  It is vital to note that covenant (relational commitment) precedes law!  For Paul, the Torah/Law was never bad.  However, by pointing to righteous practices, Torah also reveals what is sin (Rom 3:20).  For example, Jesus’ parable-like story of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46; see Isaiah 58:6-10) makes it clear that the failure to practice righteous behavior is a sinful rejection of the Lord.  Still, true righteous behavior is a reflection of the heart.  Even Gentiles, who do not have the Law, may have it on their hearts (Rom 2:14-15; see, too 28-29).  Obviously, of course, simply outwardly doing right things (works of the Law) does not mean that a person has entrusted themselves to God.  No, covenantal commitment/entrusting/faith comes before law! Moreover, for Paul, “believing into” (pisteo eis) Christ" establishes a relationship that empowers a person by the Spirit to desire and practice righteousness.  The Law itself cannot so empower a person.  First, is the restored relationship by the grace of God through faith/entrustment.

(I would encourage people to read passages such as Roman 1-4 with these broader definitions in mind.)

Application: Good Israelite/Jewish religion starts with a heart that entrusts itself to God and desires to walk in righteousness, to which the Law in part guided them.  “Fruits of righteous” were/are expected from such a person.  A person was not “declared righteous” (in right relationship with God) by going through the motions of the Law.  This relational understanding of justice, righteousness, and law applies to the extension of the divine promises to Gentiles, to all those “believing into” Christ.  Popular Bible interpretations of “getting saved” by some outward act (coming to the altar, saying “the” prayer, being baptized, etc.) so that forensically one’s sins are “imputed” onto Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness is “imputed” onto the person, resulting in a “get-out-of-jail/hell card” are terribly shallow and misleading.  Through Christ, we are called into a restored, right, relationship with our Creator.

Lord, as I seek to entrust myself to you, purify my heart and lead me in righteousness for your glory.  Amen.

*My devotional studies got me sidetracked from Psalm 24.  I will come back to it sometime as well as with follow-up posts to this one.
#Of course the Law does much more.  For example, the dress and eating codes were primarily ways of reminding Israelites of their call to by holy (set apart) as God’s people.  Much of the symbolism behind those laws involved cultural symbols of chaos vs. order.  They had many daily reminders that they were called to align themselves with order, God’s order.