The verse [Isa 53:6] says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord [Yahweh] has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Now, I checked through every translation of that verse I could find, and it is translated that way consistently. But let me tell you what the literal Hebrew is for that last sentence in the verse. It says, “Yahweh has caused to meet in him the iniquity of us all.” For me, “to cause to meet in him” gives a totally different picture than “to lay on him.” When I think about “laid on him,” I see a judgment in a courtroom. The legal obligation of one person is “laid” on another person. But the word
iniquity used here is the strongest word in the Old Testament for the evil that is within us, the wrong that is within us, the depths and the great extent of our wrongness before God. So the picture here is of all our wrongness before coming into this Mediator in whom is all the goodness of God and meeting that goodness there.—
Lectures in Old Testament Theology, page 404
<idle musing>
Can you tell he studied theology under Torrence? Shows, doesn't it? As I read that, I felt my brain doing a rewire—in a good way.
Kind of puts the popular versions of atonement in the trashcan (which is where they belong, anyway!)...
</idle musing>
1 comment:
I was talking to Melissa last night, about Jesus prayer from the cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Jesus, at this point knows us, and he knows how utterly ugly and and horribly sinful we are, yet he will not pronounce what is rightfully deserved: condemnation. Jesus doesn't just take our sin to death, condemnation as well.
Like you I believe in Hell. Any who reject so great a love have certainly given themselves over to Hell! But I must also wonder about the religious who offer, instead of this great love of God,in Christ, condemnation. If Father is conforming us to the image of Jesus, then isn't this place, where Jesus refuses to condemn the irrefutably guilty, the place God must also conform us to? Where then shall the condemning end up? Is Hell any less assured for those who take the good news and use it in condemnation?
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