Originally posted by twhitehead
I still claim that the analogy does [b]not demonstrate your stated aims and thus as an analogy is totally useless. Or possibly worse than useless as it highlights the problem even further rather than explaining it.
I still do not understand how you translate my sin into a debt owed. I did not buy nor steal the sin. If I am to be punished for my sin layers of poor analogy and loosely defined words rather than trying to actually answer them?[/b]
"I still do not understand how you translate my sin into a debt owed. I did not buy nor steal the sin. If I am to be punished for my sin then it makes no sense for someone else to be punished on my behalf." --WHITEY---
I take full responsibility . The problem is that we have missed first base. If you do not see your spiritual/moral poverty before God then the cross is meaningless to you. You are currently surfing the wave of your own perceived righteousness. The point where the cross kicks in is when you realise that you have the potential within you to be a Hitler , a Choi , a murderer but for the grace of God. At the moment you probably think that your goodness is weighed relative to others depending on what "works" you have done or how "good" you perceive yourself to be. Once the Holy Spirit convicts you then see how your righteousness is as rags compared to God's Holiness. You don't understand this position and so you see no need for a debt to be paid or any bridge to be built between your sin nature and God's holiness. The cross can't be fully explained because you perceive yourself as having no need of it.
Why make it so complicated, why don't Christians just say up-front that Jesus was crucified to show us how seriously he takes it? ---WHITEY----
Because there is more to it than that. The cross works on different levels. Victory over death , cleansing of sins , entering into suffering , demonstartion of God's love,...I was just pointing out one aspect.
"Is it that most Christians are intentionally deceptive or is it that the do not understand the real reasons? And why did it take you (who does understand it) so long to explain?" ---WHITEY---
To be honest I don't fully understand it all myself. I am still learning. It's naive to think any christian would have all the answers. In any case huge libraries of books have been written on this and you think I was taking a long time (how does that work?)!
The explanation of the cross (in terms of sin) is really to do with the bridging of a gulf between God and man. To you it makes no sense for Jesus to bridge this gulf with his sacrifice ( " If I am to be punished for my sin then it makes no sense for someone else to be punished on my behalf " ). The way this makes sense is this. If God placed the burden of your sin on you , you would have the full holiness of God bearing down on your shoulders. This is something you could not bear. Like radiation it would frazzle you. The gulf cannot be bridged by you or your righteousness because whatever you "do" or however good you think you are , you cannot reach God's purity or holiness. This is where Christ comes in. However , since you have little or no sense of the gulf in front of you and believe that if you ever met God he would think you worthy enough without being clothed in Christ's righteousness , then we won't be able to get past first base will we?
Abba not Father....
08 Oct '07 13:292 edits
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