Romans 17: Did Christ Become Sin?

[Rebbe]

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMAN CHRISTIANS [13]

Analytical Commentary on Romans

DID CHRIST BECOME SIN?

Copyright © BRI 2016 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling,
Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)

CAUTION: BRI Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI Yeshiva lecture.

“The great Rabbi Gamaliel had among his disciples one who, according to a passage in the Talmud, gave his master a good deal of trouble, manifesting 'impudence in matters of learning.' But his name is not given; he is remembered simply as 'that pupil'” (F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame, 1958, 81. See also J. Klausner, From Jesus to Paul, 1944, 310f; Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 30b).

“God speaks first in one way, and then in another, but not one notices. He speaks by dreams, and visions that come in the night, when slumber comes on humankind, and men are all asleep in bed. Then it is he whispers in the ear of man, or may frighten him with fearful sights, to turn him away from evil doing, and make an end of his pride; to save his soul from the pit and his life from the pathway to Sheol” (Job 33.14-18)

“The world is new to us every morning – this is God's gift; and every man should believe he is reborn each day” – R. Yisroel ben Eliezer (The Baal Shem Tov & Founder of Hasidism)

“Being on the right track is not enough; one must be on the train”
– Rabbi Shraga Silverstein

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The startling event that changed history took place in 30 CE. It is written that “God was in Messiah reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor 5.19). The coming of God in Christ, as the great apostle articulated, was for the purpose of conciliation. When the Messiah died a transmogrification – an extreme change – transpired which SAVED you and me. For, after intense time-consuming interrogation at the hands of Jewish priests, ruthless bashing and humiliating rape by Roman thugs, and a terrifying scourging, a beaten and bloodied Nazarene King was taken across the Kidron to the place of the Miphkad Altar, on the Mt Olivet, and there nailed to a tree in an orchard owned by a disciple, surrounded by a number of crucified Zealots. There, struggling for his every breath in excruciating pain Yeshua was further subjected to mocking and ridicule and horrendous assaults from the flint-throwing “super-righteous.” The Torah prescribed death by stoning as the punishment for blasphemy. Crucifixion was Rome's choice for revolutionaries and others who had committed treason.

The plan, intention and purpose of God was finally launched after untold aeons of scrupulous and assiduous preparation. But with his final forgiving breath EVERYTHING changed.

THE UTTER LOSTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE
Howard Snyder served as distinguished professor and chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario, from 2007 to 2012. Prior to that he was professor of history and theology of mission in the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky from 1996 to 2006. In his thought-provoking book Wineskins: Church Structure in a Technological Age (1975) he penned the following....

“In contrast to traditional views, the Bible describes the church in the midst of culture, struggling to maintain its fidelity while tainted by the corrosive acids of paganism [on the one hand] and Jewish legalism [on the other]. This view is sharply relevant for the modern age... The Bible sees the church in cosmic-historical perspective. Scripture places the church at the very centre of God's cosmic purpose. This is seen most clearly in Paul's writings, and particularly in the [letter to the] Ephesians. Paul was concerned to speak of the church as the result of, and within the context of, the plan of God for His whole creation (Eph 1.9,10, 20-23; 3.10; 6.12). What is this cosmic plan? Based on the first three chapters of Ephesians we may say it is that God may glorify Himself by uniting all things in Christ through the Church. The key idea is clearly reconciliation – not only the reconciliation of man to God, but the reconciliation of all things, 'things in heaven and things on earth' (Eph 1.10)” (Howard Snyder, The Problem of Wineskins: Church Structure in a Technological Age, 1975, 154,155).

Snyder continues: “Central to this plan is the reconciliation of man to God through the blood of Jesus Christ... as mind-boggling as the thought is, Scripture teaches that this reconciliation even includes the redemption of the physical universe from the effects of sin as everything is brought under proper headship in Jesus Christ” (Snyder, ibid).

Again, “Paul emphasises the fact of individual and corporate salvation through Christ, and from this goes on to place personal salvation in cosmic perspective. The redemption of persons is the centre of God's plan, but it is not the circumference of that plan. Paul alternates between a close-up of personal redemption, but periodically switching to a long-distance wide-angle view that takes in “all things – things visible and invisible; things past, present and future; things in heaven and things on earth; all the principalities and powers – the whole cosmic-historical scene” (ibid, 155 emphasis his).

The universe (all that is contained therein) is in need of salvation because it is as lost as man is lost.

MAN, TOO, IS LOST
In his early writing of Romans Paul pens explicitly that there were, in his day, none righteous (Rom 3.10,11,12). Today we can more than echo his particular grief for humanity.

“What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all; for we have already charged that ALL, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin... ALL have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows habitual kindness, there is not even one...  Now we know that whatever the Torah says, it speaks to those who are under the Torah, so that every mouth may be silenced, and ALL the world may be held accountable to God” (Rom 3.9,12,19).

As I pointed out in our last lecture, three times Paul resorts to the inclusive “ALL.” None appears in Romans 3.10,11,12 four times, all three times. Add these numerals together and we have the numeral which designates completeness. God's indictment is a wholehearted complete one. Its sevenfold. As Alva McClain sums it up – “Paul brings the whole world to the judgment bar of God and leaves them standing there – trembling and silent” (Romans: The Gospel of God's Grace, 92).

The Lord Yeshua had made the way of salvation perfectly clear. To be saved one had to “keep the commandments” perfectly.

“Become you therefore perfect [spiritually mature] even as your Father in the heavens is perfect [spiritually mature]” (Mt 5.48).

“If you will enter into life keep the commandments” (Mt 19.17).

“Except your righteousness shall greatly exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall in no case enter the Kingdom of the heavens” (Mt 5.20).

On the one hand, then, man is lost as the fractured Image of his Creator God. He is lost because of sin and the sinful nature. Not just sin. Recall please, that man is motivated by the yetzer ha'ra – the unconscious evil intention. As Yeshua made it plain: “Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts (and acts)” (Mt 15.19 cf Mk 7.21).

It seems then utterly impossible that man can in any way save himself. Yet we see Our Lord Yeshua demanding that our righteousness exceed that of the Jewish religious leaders of his day and age. It takes little acumen to perceive that Yeshua was posturing himself in these encounters as the ONLY answer available to a suffering humanity, and the only option, to solve the grave crisis of humankind. It is a spiritual crisis in the final analysis. A man of war, General Douglas MacArthur knew the solution to humankind's problem, for he noted in his acute perception that “It must be of the Spirit if we are to save the flesh.” Yeshua, as the Messiah, was in effect offering Himself to personally solve humankind's dilemma. Yeshua, whose very Name means (self-emptying) salvation, can in no way deny his creations for that would intend a denying of himself in the final analysis (2 Tim 2.13). In sacrificially giving of himself, in our place as our perfect Substitute and Representative Man, Our Lord Yeshua became for us “Christ OUR Righteousness” (1 Cor 1.30).

Did not the prophet portend in his grasp of God's intention for the salvific survival of the human race, that God Himself would enter into the human masses as a man? More than a mere mortal THE MESSIAH WAS TO BE GOD IN HUMAN FLESH, despite what Christ-denying rabbis would today admit! (Rabbis are well-acquainted with the role of Mashiach in the end of days and they agree that Jeremiah 23 speaks of the coming of the Messiah.) Note now what the prophet Jeremiah called the Messiah, and read the text in context with Jer 23.1-8.

“This is his name” – the Name of the Messiah – “whereby he shall be called, Yehoveh Tsidkenu [The Lord Our Righteousness]” (Jer 23.6).

A SERMON EXTRACT FROM 1861
It is quite a rare thing that in any way I would venture to quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) but in this instance I will not hesitate to so do. This is frankly because Spurgeon (in such an instance at this) says it better than I could even attempt to articulate. I have made emphasis in bold italics to ennoble some main points.

“Man sinned; he was therefore no longer innocent of transgression. Man did not keep the command; he therefore was guilty of the sin of omission. In that which he committed, and in that which he omitted, his original character for uprightness was completely wrecked. [The Messiah] came to undo the mischief of the fall for his people. So far as their sin concerned their breach of the command, that he has removed by his precious blood. His agony and bloody sweat have for ever taken away the consequences of sin from believers, seeing Christ did by his one sacrifice bear the penalty of that sin in his flesh. He, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree. Still it is not enough for a man to be pardoned. He, of course, is then in the eye of God without sin. But it was required of man that he should actually keep the command. It was not enough that he did not break it, or that he is regarded through the blood as though he did not break it. He must keep it, he must continue in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. How is this necessity supplied? Man must have a righteousness, or God cannot accept him. Man must have a perfect obedience, or else God cannot reward him. Should He give heaven to a soul that has not perfectly kept the law; that were to give the reward where the service is not done, and that before God would be an act which might impeach his justice. Where, then, is the righteousness with which the pardoned man shall be completely covered, so that God can regard him as having kept the law, and reward him for so doing? Surely, my brethren, none of you are so besotted as to think that this righteousness can be wrought out by yourselves. You must despair of ever being able to keep the law perfectly. Each day you sin. Since you have passed from death unto life, the old Adam still struggles for dominion within you. And by the force of the lusts of the flesh you are brought into captivity to the law of sin which is in your members. The good you would do, you do not, and the evil you would not, that you too often do.

“Some have thought the works of the Holy Spirit in us would give us a righteousness in which we might stand. I am sure, my brethren, we would not say a word derogatory to the cork [19th century use of cork as that person or thing which surpasses all else] of the Holy Spirit. It is divine. But we hold it to be a great cardinal point in divinity that the work of the Spirit never meant to supplant the merits of the Son. We could not depreciate the Lord Jesus Christ in order to exalt the office of the Holy Spirit of God. We know that each particular branch of the divine salvation which was espoused by the [Divine] persons... has been carried out by each one to perfection. 

“Now as we are accepted in the Beloved, it must be by a something that the Beloved did; as we are justified in Christ it must be by a something not that the Spirit has done, but which Christ has done. We must believe, then,—for there is no other alternative—that the righteousness in which we must be clothed, and through which we must be accepted, and by which we are made meet to inherit eternal life, can be no other than the work of Jesus Christ. We, therefore, assert, believing that Scripture fully warrants us, that the life of Christ constitutes the righteousness in which his people are to be clothed. His death washed away their sins, his life covered them from head to foot; his death the sneaky [19th century use of sneaky meaning liar or one who is filled with pretense] to God, his life was the gift to man, by which man satisfies the demands of the law. Herein the law is honored and the soul is accepted. I find that many young Christians who are very clear about being saved by the merits of Christ's death, do not seem to understand the merits of his life.

“Remember, young believers, that from the first moment when Christ did lie in the cradle until the time when he ascended up on high, he was at work for his people; and from the moment when he was seen in Mary's arms, till the instant when in the arms of death he “bowed his head and gave up the ghost,” he was at work for your salvation and mine. He completed the work of obedience in his life, and said to his Father, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” Then he completed the work of atonement in his death, and knowing that all things were accomplished, he cried, “It is finished.” He was through his life spinning the web for making the royal garment, and in his death he dipped that garment in his blood. In his life he was gathering together the precious gold, in his death he hammered it out to make for us a garment which is of wrought gold. You have as much to thank Christ for living as for dying, and you should be as reverently and devoutly grateful for his spotless life as for his terrible and fearful death. The text speaking of Christ, the son of David, the branch out of the root of Jesse, styles him THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS...

“Jesus Christ is the Lord our righteousness. There are but three words, “JEHOVAH”—for so it is in the original,—“OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” He is Jehovah. Read that verse, and you will clearly perceive that the Messias of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth the Saviour of the Gentiles, is certainly Jehovah. He hath the incommunicable title of the Most High God. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” 

“Oh, ye [who claim he was merely human] who monstrously deny the Lord who bought you and put him to open shame by denying his divinity, read you that verse and let your blasphemous tongues be silent, and let your obdurate hearts melt in penitence because ye have so foully sinned against him. He is Jehovah, or, mark you, the whole of God's word is false, and there is no noun for a sinner's hope. We know, and this day we testify in his name, that the very Christ who did lie in the manger as an infant was infinite even then; that he who cried, cried for very pain as a child, was nevertheless saluted at that very moment as God by the songs of the creatures that his hands had made. He who walked in pain over the flinty acres of Palestine, was at the same time possessor of heaven and earth. He who had not where to lay his head, and was despised and rejected of men, was at the same instant God over all, blessed for evermore. He that sweat great drops of blood did bear the earth upon his shoulders. He who was flagellated in Pilate's hall was adored by spirits of the just made perfect. He who did hang upon the tree had the oration hanging upon him. He who died on the cross was the ever living, the everlasting One. As a man he died, as God he lives. As Mary's son he bled, as the son of the Eternal God he had the sway and the dominion over all the world. In nature Christ proves himself to be universal God. Without him was not anything made that was made. By him all things consist. Who less than God could make the heavens and the earth? Bow before him, bow before him, for he made you, and should not the creatures acknowledge their Creator?

“Providence attests his Godhead. He upholdeth all things by the word of his power Creatures that are animate have their breath from his nostrils; inanimate creatures that are strong and mighty stand only by his strength. He can say concerning the earth, “I bear the pillars thereof.” In the deep foundations of the sea his power is felt, and in the towering arches of the starry heavens his might is recognized to the full. And as for Grace, we claim for Christ that he is Jehovah in the great kingdom of his grace. Who less than God could have carried your sins and mine and cast them all away? Who less than God could have interposed to deliver us from the jaws of hell's lions, and bring us up from the pit, having found a ransom? On whom less than God could we rely to keep us from the innumerable temptations that beset us? How can he be less than God, when he says, “Lo, I am with you always, unto the end of the world?” How could he be omnipresent if he were not God! How could he hear our prayers, the prayers of millions, scattered through the leagues of earth, and attend to them all, and give acceptance to all, if he were not infinite in understanding and infinite in merit? How were this if he were less than God? Let Atheists scoff, let Deists sneer, let the vain Socinian boast, let the Arian lift up his puny voice, but we will glory in this fact, that he that bought us with his blood is Jehovah—very God of very God. At his footstool we bow and pay him the very homage that we pay to his Father and to the Spirit.

“Blessings more than we can give,
Be Lord for ever thine.”

“But the text speaks about righteousness too—“Jehovah our righteousness.” And he is so. Christ in his life was so righteous, that we may say of the life, taken as a vehicle, that it is righteousness itself. Christ is the law incarnate. Understand me. He lived out the law of God to the very full, and while you see God's precepts written in fire on Sinai's brow, you see them written in flesh in the person of Christ.

“My dear Redeemer and my Lord,
I read my duty in thy word,
But in thy life the law appears
Drawn out in living characters.”

“He never offended against the commands of the Just One. From his eye there never flashed the fire of unhallowed anger. On his lip there did never hang the unjust of licentious word. His heart was never stirred by the breath of sin or the taint of iniquity. In the secret of his reins no fault was hidden. In his understanding was no defect; in his judgment no error. In his miracles there was no ostentation. In him there was indeed no guile. His powers being ruled by his understanding, all of them acted and co-acted to perfection's very self, so that never was there any flaw of omission or stain of commission. The law consists in this first, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” He did so. It was his meat and his drink to do the will of him that sent him. Never man spent himself as he did. Hunger and thirst and nakedness were nothing to him, nor death itself if he might so be baptised with the baptism wherewith he must be baptized, and drink the cup which his Father had set before him.

“The law consists also in this, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In all he did, and in all he suffered he more than fulfilled the precept, for “he saved others himself he could not save.” He exhausted the utmost resources of love in the deep devotion and self-sacrifice of loving. He loved man better than his own life. He would sooner be spit upon than that man should be cast into the flames of hell and sooner yield up the ghost in agonies that cannot be described than that the souls his Father gave him should be cast away. He carried out the law, then, I say to the very letter he spelt out its mystic syllables, and verily he magnified it, and made it honorable. He loved the Lord his God, with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and he loved his neighbors as himself. 

“Jesus Christ was righteousness impersonated. “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” he might well say. One thousand eight hundred years have passed since then, and blasphemy itself has not been able to charge him with a fault. Strange as it may appear, the most perverted judges have nevertheless acknowledged the awful dignity of his character. They have railed at his miracles; they have denied his Godhead; but his righteous character I know not that they have dared to impugn. They have hatched jokes about his generation; they have made his poverty a jest, and his death has been the theme of ribald song; but his life has staggered even the most unbelieving, and made the careless wonder how such a character could have been conceived even if it be a fiction, and much more, how it could have been executed if it be a fact. No one that I know of has dared to charge Christ with unrighteousness to man, or with a want of devotedness to God. See then, it is so. We do not stay to prove his righteousness any more than we did to prove his Godhead. The day is coming when men shall acknowledge him to be Jehovah, and when looking upon all his life while he was incarnate here, they shall be compelled to say that his life was righteousness itself. The pith, however, of the title, lies in the little word “our,”—“Jehovah our righteousness.” This is the grappling iron with which we get a hold on him—this is the anchor which dives into the bottom of this great deep of his immaculate righteousness. This is the saved rivet by which our souls are joined to him. This is the blessed hand with which our soul toucheth him, and he becometh to us all in all, “Jehovah our Righteousness.”  (Extract from a sermon delivered on Sunday morning 2nd June 1861 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.)

Spurgeon recognised that the coming of actual God in actual flesh to humanity was essential for our SALVATION and, indeed, for that same actual Creator God to take into His flesh the sins of human beings – even to become SIN itself.

Oh! The horror of such an outstanding but terrible truth!!!

There was no way Yeshua's flesh could take our sins into himself without becoming in that act filled with our sins.  There is no way the pure sinless Yeshua could not have been (become) a SINNER at that juncture, which is why God the Father severed Himself from His Son for a brief period of time. The most perfect human being on the face of the earth had become an obnoxious transgressor of God's law and the embodiment of sin itself. Yeshua had to be cut off from His Father. Can we now grasp the meaning of that awful cry into the darkness, and into the utter void of God? “Eli! Eli! La'ma sabach'thani?” Our salvation, and the salvation of the entirety of the universe, came into a reality as a consequence of it.

And so to this end – to be the Lord Our Righteousness – Christ had to take our personal sins upon himself, and the sins of the entirety of the world from the dawn of time in order to truly be humankind's Substitute. Not only so, but I repeat HE HAD TO BECOME ACTUAL SIN ITSELF. The PERFECT and the RIGHTEOUS had to take upon itself the darkness fully. The great Carl Gustav Jung referred often to “the dark [side of] God” (C.G. Jung, Answer to Job, para. 746). Yeshua embraced it all lovingly.

There are those in the Christian Community who cannot accept such a doctrine as this. Their reasoning is very simple to understand but I cannot find myself in agreement over this issue. Here's why. But first...

APOSTOLIC RIVALRY BETWEEN PETER, JAMES AND PAUL
One of the first principles of our (IMCF) Messianic Faith is one that acknowledges that originally there was no one united front in the primitive Messianic Movement when it came to understanding the plan of God for the human race and most certainly there was no general, let alone specific, agreement among bishops (overseers) concerning centralised formulation of doctrine even up to the fourth century. As I have written in my short series on Matthew, “one of the great myths of the Christian Church involves the altogether spurious notion that the original Messianic Community (or “church” if you will) was united on all fronts as [the old hymn Onward Christian Soldiers implies] “one in Faith and Doctrine, and one in charity.”

“In this view of a unified collective there were very few disagreements amongst the various cells of faith-obedience and there was certainly complete unison in the universal church's submission to the established Apostolic Authority initially headquartered at Jerusalem.

“This is not a considered view limited to... notorious sects... It's presupposed in the theologies supported by historic mainstream denominations and churches, and also by a myriad of Pentecostal assemblies. Such organic unity lasted essentially until the Reformation was ignited and launched by Luther.

“The truth of the matter is (as it invariably is when dealing with religious assumptions and presumptions) the exact opposite. This becomes more than apparent when we grasp that the original Jewish converts to Yeshua as the Messiah were extracted from a wide variety of religious backgrounds – from sects within the existing Judaisms of the Second Temple Period which were already in serious conflict with each other over a plethora of issues ranging from deportment to the calendar. Obviously, when they aligned with the Messianic Movement they brought their issues and conflicts and disagreements with them. It could hardly be otherwise.”

When one examines early Christian literature (i.e., Mt 16.18 and the very early chapters of the Lukan Acts) we find the apostle Peter ordained by Christ to shepherd the ekklesia which he most assuredly fulfilled – until the rivalry and ascendancy of James the brother of the Lord. Acts has an account of Peter's turbulent rule of the Messianic Assembly in Jerusalem at the beginning and then suddenly switches that role to James, and it does so without any account or explanation for the interposition of Yeshua's brother into the Lukan composition. Was this silence purposed by Luke or was there very early manuscript interference of which we have no actual record? While Matthew speaks loudly and forcefully for the role of Simon Peter in the Messianic Assembly, the Gospel of Thomas paints another picture entirely in its endorsement of James.
“The disciples said to Yeshua, We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader? Yeshua said to him, No matter where you come it is to James the Just that you shall go, for whose sake heaven and earth have come to exist” (Gospel of Thomas Saying 12).

Notes Christian scholar, Anglican priest, archaeologist and ecclesiastical historian W.H.C. Frend, “(Peter) was... no longer leader of the Christian community. For the next eighteen years, until 62, this office was the prerogative of Jesus' brother, James, and Jerusalem was the centre and directing arm of the Christian mission” (W.H.C. Frend, The Early Church, 1965, 37).

So there developed quite early in the congregations of God specific “circles of faith” or spiritual “cells” (or Christian synagogues, if you wish) which oriented around the teachings of individual apostles. There was a circle that constellated around Peter, another around James, another around Apollos and one about Paul (1 Cor 1.12). There may yet have been others.

With the advent of the Herodian Sha'ul to the Christian Community the Apostolic Council “wisely agreed that there should be two missions, one for the Jews under Peter and the other for the Gentiles under Paul” (Frend., ibid, 38).

That the Jerusalem Apostolic Council gave Peter the fundamental right to pursue converts among the Jewish people with the Gospel, and acquiesced to Paul with the same mission but to the Gentiles cannot be argued against. Paul's intelligent view had the Lord Yeshua himself create ONE evangelical MISSION with two racial/nationalistic programs. It's stated clearly in the composite letter of Paul to the Galatian assemblies.

“... When they [the Jerusalem Council] saw that the Gospel of the uncircumcision [the Gentiles] was committed unto me [by Christ], as the Gospel of the circumcision [the Jews] was unto Peter (for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles) and when James, Cephas and John who seemed to be pillars, perceived the Grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go to the heathen, and they unto the circumcision...” (Gal 2.7-9).

Peter was adequately gifted to reach the Roman-hating Jews by virtue of his childhood and youthful background in the very hotbed of revolutionary subversive movements, namely “Galilee of the Gentiles.” He was most certainly associated with “Sh'mon the Zealot” and “Yehuda the Sicarii” and other revolutionaries who were called to be disciples of the Messiah. But Sha'ul had been called directly by Yeshua outside of the land of the Jewish Commonwealth which gave him his sphere of service among the Gentiles. Says Knoch, “He was not seeking God, but [rather] was His most implacable human enemy. He is saved by a display of Grace which had hitherto been unknown. Hence his evangel is the exponent of the unadulterated Grace of God. His first meeting with Christ was after His ascension and glorification. Hence he is concerned, not with his earthly life, but with His heavenly position” (A.E Knoch, Concordant Commentary on the New Testament, 196, 280).

[I have mentioned previously that it would be of benefit for all our IMCF students to obtain their personal copies of the Clementine Recognitions and the Clementine Homilies which are surviving contemporary Nazarene documents to read side-by-side (as it were) with the Lukan Acts in order to gain a more appreciable wider vision of the historical events that were taking place during the later Second Temple Period. One can “read between the lines” when it comes to disagreements between Luke's account and Clement's narrative as to the truth of certain matters obtaining to Paul and the other apostles – particularly James.]

The picture painted by Luke in Acts concerning the rise and influence of Paul on the Messianic Movement along with the musings of the author of the composite Letter to the Galatians shows Paul to be a headstrong rabbi unable to work in team situations and who has a definite choleric personality. Paul was an extroverted alpha but who at times bordered on sheer melancholia. While Luke, and even Paul himself in his letters, shows this to be the case, the Clementine literature – as biased as Luke's – reveal that James and Paul had previous violent clashes which were swept under the carpet by Luke as never having taken place. A balanced presentation is the order of the day when we compare the two narratives.

What these chronicles also unveil is the lack of unity, doctrine and purpose among the assemblies and congregations of the Lord in the first century Messianic Movement. It is the outstanding situation facing our modern world in relation to the churches of this world, all standing not “one in Christ” but in an alignment in defiance of each others doctrinal and theological assessments. It reminds me of the old joke in the 60s about a Tritheist Anglican (Episcopalian) being confronted by a Unitarian during the “God is Dead” movement that swept the western world during that short but revolutionary period. The Unitarian asks his nemesis, “So, you believe that God is dead?” The Tritheist responds with, “Which one?”

DID CHRIST BECOME SIN ITSELF?
I stated that there are some today, as there were in the late Second Temple Period, who cannot accept that Christ became sin itself. They produce “proof texts” to bolster their position. And, once more, here we have further evidence as to the negative effects of doing so. [If you have not read my thoughts relative to so-called “proof texts” please refer to Repression of the Sublime (Romans Lecture 15.]

And what are these proof-texts in this instance used to reject the fact that Christ became a sinner on the cross and that he underwent a transmogrifying experience?

(1) “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal 3.6). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jam 1.17). “And as a vesture shall you fold them up, and they shall be changed: but you are the same, and your years shall not fail” (Heb 1.12). “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb 13.8]. 

Therefore Christ, as God, is unchanging and unchangeable. He cannot become what He previously wasn't.

(2) “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4.15). Christ was “holy, innocent, [and] undefiled” (Heb 7.26) “who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth” (1 Pet 2.22). Judas cried out, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Mt 27.4). The Roman soldier testified at the cross, “Certainly this man was innocent” (Lk 23.47). Peter affirmed that we are redeemed not “with perishable things like silver or gold…but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1.18–19). John made it plain, “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin” (1 Jn 3.5). The Saviour's’ essential nature could never actually became tainted or corrupted by sin.

Listen, please! Apart from the fact that Our Lord Yeshua possessed two natures – Yeshua was BOTH authentic Humankind and authentic God – Deity is not locked into a little tidy box of our own design and making. We are living with a Wild God who possesses a MIND that is WAY ABOVE our elevated human thoughts of morality and ethics. God is so far above any of us we need Yeshua as the human embodiment of God so that we can even begin to falteringly comprehend Him/Her/It. IF ANYONE WAS TO SAY TO ME THAT HE OR SHE COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDS GOD FORGIVE ME WHEN I LAUGH IN YOUR FACE.

Certainly we are on track in this life to understand God and to grow closer to God in our desire to comprehend Him and all His spiritual attributes. And we Christians love God because He first of all truly loved us. But how many of us have come to the point in our understanding to accept and activate the principle revealed in Job – the world's oldest volume – when the patriarch said, “Why should I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hands? Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless, I will argue my ways before Him. This also will be my salvation. For a godless man may not come before His presence...” (Job 13.14-16).

Students – take a deep breath as I speak with authority in this Place. The early Christians knew of God as “The ALL.” In the spirit of Isaiah 45.7 the prophet grasped that God creates good and God creates evil (Hebrew, ra). Satan is not a Creator and never was a creator. There are decidedly two sides to the Nature and Character of the living God “in whom we live and move and have our being.” And while God IS love we all need to occasionally tremble in our boots when we approach His throne of Grace to communicate with the OMNISCIENT (omni = Latin, meaning all, and science = knowledge. God knows everything), OMNIPRESENT (God is not confined to time and God is not confined to space. God created both. See Psalm 139.7-10; Jer 23.24; I Kings 8.27; Prov 15.3) and OMNIPOTENT (omni = all; and potent = powerful. Can any of us grasp the power that brought the universe into an existence and who in a microsecond can destroy the entire lot? God has done this many times before now. And, remember, omni = all). There is a real and urgent need for Christians of all persuasions – no matter their creed –  to get to the point where they can REALISE the awesome and terrible God they worship and adore. This is a GOD WHO CAN DO ANYTHING HE LIKES. That is what makes God, well... God. God is not bound by proof-texts of any sort. Paul understood that the Word of God cannot be bound (2 Tim 2.9). This is precisely due to the fact that God Himself is not bound.

I want to take you all back to the very beginning. Back to the Genesis account of the Creation. It is written: “In her head creates God the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and chaotic, and darkness was on the surface of the waters. And the Spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters” (Gen 1.1,2). Brethren, MEDITATE over this revelation. THINK about what it is you have just read. It states that the darkness that moved over the surface of the waters was THE SPIRIT OF GOD. “Darkness” is the Hebrew choshech (koshek) which we are told in the Talmud (Chagiga ch.2) is BLACK FIRE or dark energy. We are discussing, in modern scientific terms, black light. (See my lecture, How Old is the Universe? Part 2).

Darkness and light are all alike to God for He created both. There are some who like to suggest that darkness is merely the absence of light. But this is not a completely accurate assessment as scientists are now realising. Darkness is matter – space is FULL of dark matter, dark energy – koshek, black light. And its highly dangerous, destructive. And why not? Darkness is merely God's depression in manifestation. I have written elsewhere on the issue of God clothing Himself at “times” in a cloak of darkness. Solomon knew it, Paul felt it, and we have all experienced it in our lifetimes in one way or another.

In the very instance when God brought the corporeal creation into an existence, God FELL. This was an experiential grasp of a duality in His Nature that was being expressed. Of course, the absolute truth is that God is ONE. But God is dreaming the universe and HisHer creation of humankind as the MIRRORED IMAGE of Deity. God is dreaming that He has fallen into a duality. We are dreaming God as God is dreaming us. And its all very REAL to us – at least it appears all very real. Yet, scientists have insisted that in a real sense we are not actually here. For, we are trillions of molecules and atoms swirling around an invisible magnetic force granting us an appearance of something extremely tangible! But we are little more than a vibration of “existence.” We are all dream images of God. It's ALL going on in God's head (as it is written “Bereshith bara Elohim et ha-shamayim v'et ha-aretz” and in English “In her head creates God the heavens and the earth”).

This was the original “fall.” It was not an Edenic “fall of man” as much as it was the fall of God through the act (the Dream Image) of creation itself, the Sh'khinah bursting forth “from” God in creative activity as the Singularity imploded...

Paul notes the truth of the matter in the Greek of Rom 11.36: “For out of him, and through him, and toward him, are all things [all things = the universe]: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”

God's birthing of the universe “out of Himself/Herself” will ultimately return to Deity in what scientists refer to as the inevitable “Big Crunch.” In the meantime the entire realm of illusion – that which appears as stark material, concrete, physicality in which WE are all “caught” – is the very opposite of SPIRIT.

It is a realm from which we must extricate ourselves at ALL costs.

This is the why behind the words of Our Lord Yeshua: “Seek you first the kingdom of God [the realm of God] AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS and all these things [material needs] shall be added unto you” (Mt 6.33).

To seek first God's KINGDOM and His RIGHTEOUSNESS involves producing the ability to sacrifice the self with all its inordinate passions and lusts and to creatively visualise through our converted imagination OURSELVES AT ONE WITH GOD in order to gain the true gnosis of – and IN – THE SELF. For, it is through MAN (the Mirrored Image and human heart of God) that God will be brought back into a ONENESS – relieved, healed, from His suffering (Dream)-exile from Himself. God's Sh'khinah – God's holy Queen – will be a fully integrated, intensified glorification yet, in Her return as Light to Him as His Lover. We are nearing a special occasion when the Name of God will again be ONE as it was originally (Zech 14.9). In other words this particular dream of God will be completed and God will “awake” into another of HisHer intentional purposive-driven dream states.

No rabbi would ever DARE to refute me in the mystical Jewish fundamentals of this matter. For, most if not all rabbinic authorities – whether they are Hassidic or not – know that what I am stating is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This is THAT which was intended by the Ba'al Shem Tov when he declared, “Pray continually for God's Glory that it may be redeemed from exile” and added “For man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part [man] is in the whole [God]; and the whole [God] suffers the same want as the part [man]. Therefore, let your prayer be directed to the want of the Whole [and not your own]” (Ba'al Shem Tov, Instruction in Intercourse with God [Maurice Friedman tr.] in Martin Buber's Hasidism and Modern Man, 1958 2016 edition).

In our next lecture in this series we shall identify the depths of Paul's fourteen indictments and discuss why Yeshua necessarily became – HORRIFIC as the thought is – each and every one of those indictments.

THIS CONCLUDES LECTURE SEVENTEEN

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