Time Out

Although I've made today another "time out" from the "Why Did Jesus Die?" series, I've nevertheless stumbled upon a quote (here) from St. Cyril of Alexandra that is highly pertinent to some of what has already been discussed there.

In manifold ways is the Emmanuel depicted to you by the shadowing of Moses. You saw Him there sacrificed as a lamb, yet vanquishing the destroyer, and abolishing death by His blood. You saw Him in the arrangement of the ark, in which was deposited the divine law: for He was in His holy flesh like as in an ark, being the Word of the Father, the Son that was fathered of Him by nature. You saw Him as the mercy-seat in the holy tabernacle, around which stood the Seraphim [Cherubim]: for He is our mercy-seat for pardon of our sins. Yes! and just like man, He is glorified by the Seraphim, who are the intelligent and holy powers above; for they stand around His divine and exalted throne. You saw Him as the candlestick with seven lamps in the Holy of Holies: for abundant is the Saviour's light to those who hurry into the inner tabernacle. You saw Him as the bread placed upon the table: for He is the living bread, that came down from heaven, and gives life to the world. You saw Him as the brazen serpent that was raised on high as a sign, and being looked upon healed the bites of the serpents: for though He was like us, in the form therefore of that which is evil, as being in our form, nevertheless He is by nature good, and continues to be that which He was. For the serpent is the type of wickedness; but yet, by being lifted up, and enduring the cross for us, He rendered powerless the bites of those rational serpents, who are no other than Satan, and the wicked powers under his command. (Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Sermon LXVIII)

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Why Did Jesus Die? (09) To Ransom and Redeem Us

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45)

“Ransom” language about the crucifixion emphasizes both our captivity to the devil and the great price Christ paid to set us free.

There is a right way and a very popular but wrong way to think of how He ransomed us. The wrong way is pointed out by St. Gregory Nazianzus:

To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and glorious blood of God, the blood of the High Priest and of the Sacrifice. We were in bondage to the devil and sold under sin, having become corrupt through our concupiscence. Now, since a ransom is paid to him who holds us in his power, I ask to whom such a price was offered and why? If to the devil, it is outrageous! The robber receives the ransom, not only from God, but a ransom consisting of God himself. He demands so exorbitant a payment for his tyranny that it would have been right for him to have freed us altogether. But if the price is offered to the Father, I ask first of all, how? For it was not the Father who held us captive. Why then should be blood of His only begotten Son please the Father, who would not even receive Isaac when he was offered as a whole burnt offering by Abraham, but replaced the human sacrifice with a ram? Is it not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice not because he demanded it or because He felt any need for it, but on account of economy: because man must be sanctified by the humanity of God, and God Himself must deliver us by overcoming the tyrant through His own power, and drawing us to Himself by the mediation of the Son who effects this all for the honor of God, to whom He was obedient in everything... What remains to be said shall be covered with a reverent silence… (In sanctum Pascha, or. XLV, 22’, P.G., t 36, 653 AB, quoted in Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 153.)

The wrong way to understand Christ's having ransomed and redeemed us, then, is the overly literal way.

In Orthodox understanding, Christ “paid the price” for our redemption in much the same way a soldier might pay a heavy price, might even “pay the ultimate price”, his life, to free his country. Or when we look at the body of a victorious athlete, sweaty, dehydrated, exhausted, aching, when we consider how much of his life he had to give up for training, and when we say what a stiff price he paid for his victory, we do not mean he bribed the judges or referee or paid off his opponent. We mean he endured a severe ordeal. That is how we mean it when we speak of Christ having ransomed us or having bought us with a price.

We do not mean that God exacted any price, but that the circumstances did. We have seen some of those circumstances in previous posts in this series. One of them was that the Old Covenant remained unfulfilled; and if it was not to have existed all those millennia for nothing, it must be fulfilled, by a sacrifice of perfect obedience, before the New Covenant was instituted. Another circumstance was that the divine, immortality-bearing blood was needed for giving us life. Death must be defeated, satan must be deprived of his subjects, ultimate love and forgiveness must be openly revealed, and so forth. Such tasks, exacting a stiff "price," were left for Jesus to do if we were to be saved. God the Father did not require to be paid off in exchange for being merciful, though; such a notion leaves no room for forgiveness.

Truly, there are whole theologies (almost all heterodox theologies, in fact) that leave no room for actual forgiveness, in fact deny it, and can only offer us the shabby and gloomy alternative of displaced punishment. That is because there are people who think it would be morally wrong for God simply to forgive outright, without taking "just retribution", on the theory that to to so would undermine the moral foundations of the world. To fail to punish, to offer "bare amnesty" would be, they think, conniving in the evil.

But for the Orthodox, the foundation of the world is not a moral code, but a Person, Jesus Christ. And it is perfectly just for Him to do whatever He wants with what is His own. (Matthew 20:15) He is allowed to have mercy, true, free mercy, upon whom He will have mercy. (Exodus 33:19, Romans 9:15,18) He is not required to strike some legal bargain. The law is not the be-all and end-all, Alpha and Omega; Jesus Christ Himself is. (Revelation 1:8, 11; 21:6; 22:13) Nor does forgiving a sin equate to conniving in it. Much to the contrary, forgiveness, bare amnesty, is a major component of how God eradicates sin. Forgiveness is a principal weapon in the arsenal of arms against the devil. And as far as I know or can think, Orthodox Christianity is the only faith that genuinely offers it.

When we speak of Christ having ransomed us or redeemed us, then, we refer to our slavery to satan and how much He gave to liberate us from it. We mean that to get us back from sin and death cost Him a great deal - a price He gladly paid, for love of you and me, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)

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Why Did Jesus Die? (08) To be our High Priest

In the Old Testament, priests had to be the descendants of Levi. There was only one exception, a mysterious figure named Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18) who brought bread and wine to Abraham, or Abram as he was still known then. Melchizedek was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God...” (Hebrews 7:3) “Melchizedek” translates to, “King of Righteousness.” Besides being a priest, he was the king of Salem, which means “Peace”. He was therefore the “King of Righteousness” and the “King of Peace.” For all these reasons (and more), he is a type of the Christ. Hence, David, in prophecy, calls Messiah a priest forever according to the order Melchizedek (that is, a non-levitical priest). The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes the verse.

The Lord has sworn
And will not relent,
"You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek."
(Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, 7:17,21))

Christ is a better high priest than those of the Old Testament, Hebrews argues. He is a better priest because he is a better person, in fact, a perfect man. (5:9) He does not need to offer any sacrifices for sins of his own. (7:27) God himself ordains him. (7:21) He brings a better sacrifice: himself. He comes not offering "the blood of goats and calves, but ... his own blood." (9:12) He only needs to make the sacrifice once for all, and does not have to repeat it over and over. (9:25, 10:12) He offers it not in a man-made temple, but in heaven. (4:14, 8:2, 9:11) He “ever lives to make intercession” for us. (7:25) He is the guarantor of a better covenant. (7:22)

Christ died to become our High Priest forever in a new order of worship, spiritual worship, of a higher order than that prescribed in the Law of Moses. “God [is] a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship [him] in spirit and in truth”. (John 4:24)



Christ Died to Fulfill His Office as Mediator Between God and Man.

Christ is the Mediator between God and Man in more than one sense. He is the Mediator first of all by His incarnation, because in His one Person He united human and divine natures. Next, He is the Mediator because He brings to us the gift from God, the divine, immortal body and blood, and He brings to God the gift from us, perfect obedience, faith, and love. At His crucifixion, He is the Mediator because His death fulfills all the obligations of the Old Covenant, closes the book on it, and ushers in the new covenant. “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.” (Hebrews 8:6) The Old Covenant was not to be ended until it had first been fulfilled (Matthew 5:18); else God would have instituted it for nothing.

A covenant, in Hebrew history, is sealed with blood. The covenant with Abraham was sealed with the blood of circumcision; the covenant given through Moses was sealed with the blood of animals. The covenant in Christ is sealed in His own blood. “This is My blood of the new covenant,” He says. (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24) In this sense, too, He is the Mediator of the new covenant.

We note in passing the vast difference between making intercession for others and being the Mediator. There is, and can only ever be, one Mediator, but there are as many intercessors as Christians. When we, with and in Christ, converse with "dead" saints, (Matthew 17:3, Mark 9:4, Luke 9:30), we are not mistaking them for The Mediator.

(Neither are we, in asking them to pray for us, engaging in necromancy, which is a form of fortune-telling, conjuring of the spirits of the dead to reveal the future – a practice very strictly forbidden among us as being the equivalent of apostasy, forsaking trust in Christ.)

The saints are intercessors. Christ is the “one Mediator between God and Man” (I Timothy 2:5-6), because of the mighty, fearsome, mysterious, cosmic deeds He alone has worked for our salvation.

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Blog Notes

Today I'm taking time off from the "Why Did Jesus Die?" series. My brain could use a rest and who knows, maybe yours could, too. Besides I'm busy today with Bun-Bun, the bunny I wrote about a couple of days ago, and another, nearly grown bunny, cat attack victim, who is close to death but so far keeps hanging on, and a fledgling Cedar Waxwing, to be taken to Amber and put in her flight cage, as it is already attempting to fly. I'm also taking some Greek visitors to a museum this morning and going to visit my parents this evening, God willing.

As of this writing, my best estimate on the total number of installments on why Jesus died is 16, maybe 17, which is considerably more than I had at first expected.

Thanks to Emily, I have discovered a new feature of Blogger I like very much. It's the automated "My Blog List". It's extremely easy to set up, and the cool thing about it is, it shows every blog's latest post and how long ago that post appeared. You also have the option of displaying a little opening snippet from each latest post. What I like about this is that it saves me the time of checking all the blogs, when I can see that only 2 of them have posts I have not yet read.

One other feature you may or may not like is that the list doesn't "stay put", that is, remain in any constant order. Instead, blogs are juggled in (more or less) real time according to the most recent posts, the blogs with the newest posts appearing at the top of the list. That's somebody's idea of convenience, although I rather like lists to hold still!

P.S.) Bun-Bun is named after an Easter bunny given to my niece Madison when she was only a little over a year old, her faithful companion and inseparable bed mate for many years, through many launderings and repairs with needle and thread. I believe Bun-Bun may be retired by now, but he (she?) is certainly still around.

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Why Did Jesus Die? (07) To Justify us - (Not)

Actually, our justification was accomplished by His resurrection, not His death (Romans 4:25) and this point is important. Nevertheless, I am going to include our justification under the reasons Christ died, since His death and resurrection cannot rightly be discussed apart from each other anyway, and since, after all, you can’t be resurrected unless you have first died.

One effect of Jesus’ death was that He thereby escaped from the jurisdiction of the Law. For the Law only “has dominion over a man as long as he lives.” (Romans 7:1) But Christ died. And then He rose again, but what does the Law know of that?

And the extra wonderful thing for us is that in Holy Baptism, Christ permits us to follow Him through that freeing death and into a whole new realm, His resurrection Life, the Kingdom of God, the realm of the Holy Spirit, heaven.

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:3-11)

Death has no more dominion over Christ, and no more dominion over us who dwell safely in His bosom. And if death has no more dominion over us, what can the Law do to us? And if we are members, even, of the all-righteous Christ, "of His flesh and of His bones" (Ephesians 5:30), what charge can the Law even bring?

Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another--to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:1-6)

We are sinners; but Christ shares with us His own, righteous Life and the Law cannot even charge us. We deserve to die; but Christ has already given us His own, eternal life and death cannot touch us. This is how Christ justifies us: by giving us Life, by being our Life.

By being the Life of our Life and the righteous Heart of our hearts, He justifies us, at the same time both fulfilling the Law in us and *making it all moot.*

Christ “wiped out the indictment that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:14) He simply took it out of the way. He cancelled it.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the *Spirit of life* in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)

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Two Little Miracles

The first is the Evening Primrose. My backyard neighbor gave one to my next door neighbor three years ago, and this year, she gave me one that grew from the seed of hers. We were told it was a "moon flower," because it only blooms at night, but it turns out to be an Evening Primrose. It's remarkable! It's SO much fun! That's because the buds open and bloom right in front of your eyes. A bud such as the ones pictured here begins to tremble, then bursts open to look like the bloom on the left. Give it 30 seconds, it looks like the larger bloom.



In another 30 seconds, it is fully open, as shown here.



Each plant, each season, seems to have its favorite time to open. Ours begin around 8:45, and the show lasts perhaps half an hour, until each bud is open. The blooms stay pretty and fresh all night, but close up and wilt before mid-morning, when new buds begin to form, so the performance can be repeated when evening comes again.

We've all gotten enormous joy, hours of joy, literally just standing around watching the roses bloom!

Another joy for Demetrios and me lately has been the little cottontail bunny we've had for about two weeks now. He looks like this picture (from the Internet).



Cottontails are very difficult to raise in captivity, so I am thrilled that he has made it, so far. He (or she?) ought to be weaned, but he won't drink water out of a bowl yet, only formula. He loves clover, dandelion leaves, wild violets (leaves and blooms), spinach, broccoli, carrots, kale, and many other veggies, plus apples.

These animals are considered very skittish, high stress creatures who very frequently die from sheer fright. The conventional wisdom, therefore, is to leave them alone as much as possible. Feed them, change their bedding every couple of days, and leave them alone, dark, warm, and quiet. Barb, the Bunny Queen, has even taken to tube feeding them (inserting a rubber tube directly into their stomachs and feeding them through that) as it is quicker, hence, in theory, less stressful for both animal and rehabber, than nursing, which with bunnies takes forever.

But I once read an article by a rehabber who has had phenomenal success with her bunnies by taming them! She says once they are tame, they don't stress out anymore. So this time, I tried her method. (Bunny had nothing to lose, as my success rate with such young bunnies as this is ZERO.) And guess what? It has worked! Bunny, so far, has survived longer by far than any other I've ever tried to raise. And he doesn't at all mind being handled; in fact, he seems to love it.

There's a drawback, though. This bunny is TOO tame. He thinks the best place to be is in my lap. When I take him outside to nibble on weeds, if I walk three steps away from him, he comes hopping toward me. I don't know if he will be releaseable.

The woman who wrote the article has a huge back yard all set up for bunnies, complete with housing she has constructed for them. I don't. She releases them in her back yard. I can't. Besides, that seems rather to defeat the purpose of rehabbing them, which is to keep up the wild population...

Well, if he lives, which I'm still having trouble believing will happen, he may have to be somebody's pet. Fortunately, I know just the person for him; Linda will adore him and will spoil him rotten.

P.S.) You know how long a cottontail lives in the wild? Less than a year, due to predation. Bottom of the food chain and all that. Hardly seems worth all the effort of raising them. I'll bet the average captive-raised bunny survives less than a week. So I'm not really sure this is a good use of my time. Except that it is such a joy.

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Why Did Jesus Die? (06) To Become our True Mercy Seat

In the Temple Solomon built was an enormous bronze bowl, sitting on twelve bronze bulls. It was 45 feet in circumference. It had a name; it was called “The Sea.” (II Chronicles 4:2, I Kings 7:33)

Also in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies, was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a wooden chest plated with pure gold and it contained holy relics. The lid, also of wood covered with pure gold, had a statue of a cherub on either end of it. (A cherub is a glorious rank of angel, not one of those cute, winged, Valentine babies.) The space on the Ark’s lid between the cherubim was the Mercy Seat. It was where God’s mercy was to be met. It was where, once a year, the high priest sprinkled animal blood. You’ll recall from previous posts in this series that in Hebrew thought, where blood is, there is life. Mercy was given from the top of the Ark of the Covenant because the life-giving blood was sprinkled there.

The Mercy Seat, then, is the place of God’s favor and mercy. (And this, regardless of how the ancient Israelites may have understood it.) The Mercy Seat is neither where God’s changeless favor and mercy are won nor where His free gift is bought, but where His mercy and favor appear, in the form of the blood. That blood is the token of our life offered back to God together with the animal's, and life from an animal (typifying Life from Christ) being offered to the sinner.

The Glory of God shone above the Mercy Seat, and it was the place where God promised to dwell and to “meet with thee.” (Exodus 25:17-22)

The Mercy Seat is described in Hebrews. “…above [the Ark] were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat.” (Hebrews 9:5)

The word “mercy seat” in the this verse as well as in the Old Testament (Septuagint Bible) is, in Greek, hilasterion (“hee-la-STARE-ee-own” if you use the Erasmian pronunciation). The word also means “propitiation,” in reference to the Mercy Seat, for the Mercy Seat, like the giant bronze bowl, had a name. It was called “The Propitiation.” Thus, the verse in Hebrews could have been translated, “…above [the Ark] were the cherubim of glory overshadowing The Propitiation.” Bear in mind that propitiation, for the Christian, has no implication of changing the unchanging God. (And this, regardless of how the ancient Israelites may have understood it.)

St. Paul tells us that Christ is our new and true hilasterion:

“… whom God set forth as a hilasterion through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because of the paresis of the sins that were previously committed, by God’s forbearance.” (Romans 3:25)

The Greek word, paresis (“PAR-eh-seess”) is related to paralysis and means weakness or numbing effect. God had up to now left us in this semi-paralyzed state inflicted upon us by our sins; but now, to demonstrate His righteousness, He comes to free us, providing us a new Mercy Seat, “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (v. 26)

Here is what St. John Chrysostom had to say about this passage, Romans 3:25-26:

For he does not say “for the sins,” but, “for the relaxing,” that is, the deadness. For there was no longer any hope of recovering health, but as the paralyzed body needed the hand from above, so doth the soul which hath been deadened. And what is indeed worse, a thing which he sets down as a charge, and points out that it is a greater accusation. Now what is this? That the last state was incurred in the forbearance of God. For you cannot plead, he means, that you have not enjoyed much forbearance and goodness. But the words “at this time” are those of one who is pointing out the greatness of the power and love toward man. For after we had given all over, (he would say,) and it were time to sentence us, and the evils were waxed great and the sins were in their full, then He displayed His own power, that you might learn how great is the abundance of righteousness with Him. For this, had it taken place at the beginning, would not have had so wonderful and unusual an appearance as now, when every sort of cure was found unavailing. (St. John Chrysostom, Commentary on Romans, Homily VII.)

While we were sinning, the Saint says, God was being kind and indulgent. As a result, our affliction grew worse. God let it, because had He healed us right away, the wonder would not have appeared as great. If God were to cure you of typhoid the first time you coughed, would you even know He had done it? But if He were to wait until you were nearly dead, and then raise you from your sickbed in perfect health...!

God forbore to wreak vengeance upon us. That doesn't mean He is about to change course now! No, now His righteousness is going to be demonostrated a different, new, better way: by rescuing us from our sin. He rescues us from it by destroying it, as we've seen. Revenge, in comparison with this, would be a crude and childish justice. It would be the "eye for an eye" kind of justice Christ used to contrast with the kind He wanted us to practice in order to be like our heavenly Father: turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give your cloak to the man who stole your coat. Such "justice" would be merely retaliation by a petty god instead of correction by the True God.

The true justice of the true and living God is to make things just; that is, to set things back to rights, to make things as they were intended to be, to make the story end as it should. (Yes, I know; there are quite a few people who think the story ought to end with certain people frying in hell, but of course such an attitude is hardly loving, hardly Christian! And it remains to be seen what ending our gracious, kind, compassionate, good God will bestow, perhaps one far beyond our ability to imagine.)

Paresis can also be translated “passing over, letting pass, neglecting, disregarding”. That would render the verse: “… whom God set forth as The Propitiation [Mercy Seat] through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because of the passing by of the sins that were previously committed, by God’s forbearance.”

If we use "passing by" to translate paresis, we must be careful not to accuse God, or attribute to St. Paul an accusation against God, of having failed to supply chastisement in appropriate measure! This He certainly did all along, as the Holy Scriptures abundantly attest.

What He had not provided for us until “the present time” was a definitive escape from sin and death. God, by waiting until the time was right to send the Son into the world, had appeared to be neglecting the catastrophe of sin and simply allowing His handiwork (us) to die! What kind of a supposedly all-powerful and loving God would do that? Now He comes to demonstrate that He does not overlook our plight. Now He shows His supreme righteousness (justice), exceeding any we had ever imagined, by justifying those who live by faith in Christ – which justifying, in New Testament usage, is the same as giving us life.

In the words of St. Irenaeus,

For if man, who had been created by God that he might live, after losing life, through being injured by the serpent that had corrupted him, should not any more return to life, but should be utterly [and for ever] abandoned to death, God would [in that case] have been conquered, and the wickedness of the serpent would have prevailed over the will of God. But inasmuch as God is invincible and long-suffering, He did indeed show Himself to be long-suffering in the matter of the correction of man and the probation of all, as I have already observed; and by means of the second man [Christ] did He bind the strong man [satan], and spoiled his goods, (Matthew 11:29) and abolished death, vivifying that man who had been in a state of death. (St. Ireneaus, Against Heretics, 3, XXIII, 1.)

Christ, then, died to be our new Mercy Seat, the place where God meets us, where His own Life-bearing blood is sacrificed to bring us Divine Life, and God is pleased to display His righteousness by justifying (vivifying) us.

We will have more to ponder concerning justification in the next post in this series.

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I love It!

This caper originated back in 1982, and I saved two newspaper clippings about it in my “Humor” file for years and years. Now it has been repeated, much to my delight.

(I don't know why the caption says 1983!)

Truck driver in California named Larry Walters strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which he had attached 45 helium-filled weather balloons. He had his girlfriend cut the tether, and immediately shot three miles into the air.

Three miles! It’s cold up there, folks! Mighty cold. As in about 2 degrees, Fahrenheit. And the air pressure is getting down toward half of what it is at sea level.

To make things worse, Larry soon found himself in the main approach corridor of the Long Beach Airport. Two different jet planes reported sighting him. (Can you imagine? “Tower, this is Delta One-Seven-Three-Niner. We have a, er, a lawn chair at approximately 1,000 feet off our starboard wing…”)

I’ll let Wikipedia recount the rest of Larry’s tale:

After spending about 45 minutes in the sky, he figured he would have to shoot a few balloons after all; doing so caused him to descend slowly again, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line, causing blackout in a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes, but also allowing Walters to climb down to the ground again.

He was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department; when asked by a reporter why he had done it, Walters replied, "A man can't just sit around."

Regional safety inspector Neal Savoy was reported to have said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that. But he doesn't.”

…

Walters commented, "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk.”

Now this stunt has been repeated, by one Ken Couch, who drew his inspiration from our Larry. Except Ken has refined the art. He uses giant party balloons, 150 of them. He doesn’t ride three miles high, only 30 meters, enough to clear treetops and power lines. He also has some flying experience with glider planes. He has corporate sponsors, even.




Saturday he made his third flight in it, traveling 239 miles in nine hours, from Oregon over the desert (!!!) into Idaho, where he landed gently in a pasture.

"If I had the time and money and people, I'd do this every weekend," Couch said before getting into the chair. "Things just look different from up there. You've moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.

"Originally, I wanted to do it because of boyhood dreams. I don't know about girls, but I think most guys look up in the sky and wish they could ride on a cloud."

Couch's wife, Susan, called him crazy: "It's never been a dull moment since I married him."

--Associated Press

Oh, yes, girls have such dreams, too.

So do grown women. I've been asking, every Christmas of my adult life, for a solar-powered helicopter. But has anybody ever given me one? No.

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Why Did Jesus Die? (Part 05) To Release us From Guilt

Jesus Died to be Our Sin Offering, Releasing us From Guilt

In the previous post, we saw how the main idea behind a sin offering in the Old Testament was not to punish an animal in the place of a sinner (although killing it certainly had the same effect!) but to offer it to God and to obtain its blood, the seat of its life, and to shed that blood so as to release the life in it.

Similarly, there is no idea in Christ’s death of God displacing our punishment onto Him, although His dying had the same effect. That is why we do sometimes speak of His death as punishment, metaphorically. We mean that the Crucifixion had the appearance and the effect of punishment although that was not its purpose.

In fact, a sin offering, in the Old Testament, didn’t even have to be an animal. If you couldn’t afford a bullock or goat, or even two doves or pigeons, a measure of the finest flour would suffice. (Leviticus 5:11-13) Flour cannot be punished, cannot suffer, cannot die, from which observation alone we ought to learn that punishment, suffering, and death were not the point of a sin offering.

Even if you only offered God that measure of flour, He would still forgive, because the offering was never the price of His forgiveness in the first place. His forgiveness has no price. It’s absolutely free, a notion that only bothers the devil, or only bothers us when we are considering others (not ourselves) receiving God's mercy for free.

So if a sin offering to God is not an exchange for His forgiveness, what is it for? It’s for just that: an offering! When we have offended someone, and we go to that person for forgiveness, the gracious thing to do is not to show up empty-handed! A sin offering is something you give to God as a gift, like the flowers a man brings his wife after a quarrel. The calf or birds or handful of flour or flowers are a token of your offering of yourself. That's what is needed if the relationship is to be restored.

And just such an offering, Christ made on the Cross on behalf of all of us. He offered God His body and blood, His life and His death, His faith and loyalty, His love, His obedience, His all, holding back nothing.

Now when we speak of perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience, we need to notice that perfection in these virtues requires extreme circumstances not merely to demonstrate the perfection, but first of all to elicit it. Easier circumstances summon easier forms of courage, easier degrees of faith and love and obedience. Harder circumstances call us to exert a more difficult faith, love, and obedience. Only the most extreme circumstances allow us to exert perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience. That necessary, most extreme circumstance, for Jesus, was the Cross. That is why the author of Hebrews says, “...though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (Hebrews 5:8-9)

His dying was necessary in order to exercise obedience and love and faith to the point of perfection. That is to say, He never backed away from truth though the cost were death; He never acted out of anything but faith and love, never abandoned God or cursed Him, and above all, He did not refuse us His life-giving body and blood when called upon to donate them. In short, He died to defeat satan by love and faith and obedience, because satan is not utterly defeated until you have let him throw his worst weapons at you.

This, then, is another sense in which Christ died to be a sin offering, for obedience, made possible by faith and flowing from love, is the perfect sacrifice. "Has the LORD [as great] delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey [is] better than sacrifice, [and] to hearken than the fat of rams." (I Samuel 15:22. See also Isaiah 1:10-20, Jeremiah 7:22-23, Hosea 6:6.)

In Hebrews, we read:

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:

"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
Then I said, 'Behold, I have come--
In the volume of the book it is written of Me--
To do Your will, O God.'"

Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second.

By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:4-9)

Christ “takes away the first”, that is, Old Testament kinds of sacrifice, and comes with a body (i.e., as a human being) to enable Him to practice obedience; He thereby establishes “the second”, that is, the sacrifice of obedience to the Will of God.

And God was pleased with this offering. Or, we can say, God was propitiated, for it means the same thing. “Propitiated” does not here imply soothing God’s ruffled feathers, calming His temper tantrum, or appeasing His wrath. It simply means pleased.

And this perfect obedience (a work of perfect love premised upon perfect faith), due the Creator from all men, Christ offered on behalf of us all, and God accepted it as being from all of us. St. Paul writes, “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Romans 5:19)

God having accepted the offering of perfection on behalf of us all, there remains nothing to punish, no place for punishment, no application for it. For Him to require both perfection and punishment would have been not only unjust and immoral, but also illegal.

Not that any amount of suffering by anybody could ever offset guilt, anyway; only repentance can. Only faith cures faithlessness; only love heals lovelessness; only obedience corrects disobedience. Suffering merely punishes guilt (and momentarily, it's true, fends off guilt feelings) without addressing its causes or providing any genuine relief.

Christ deals with its causes. He not only offers His perfection to God on our behalf, but also offers it to us, that we may partake of it as branches partake of the Vine’s sap. When we are grafted into Him in Holy Baptism and when the Holy Spirit comes to reside in us in Holy Chrismation, immediately the seeds of righteousness are planted in us; already we partake of Christ's righteous, holy, never-ending Life.

This is how Christ, on the Cross, deals with our guilt. His Life-bearing Blood is shed upon the world. His Body is offered for our spiritual food. His offering to the Father of perfect faith and love and obedience reverses, remediates, replaces, and legally more than offsets our own faithlessness, lovelessness, and disobedience. Thus, at the cross, "justice and mercy kiss," as indeed they always had.

But God does not work such miracles for people He has not forgiven. It is impossible He could have done all this for us and yet be holding a grudge against us. Therefore, this sacrifice, upon the Cross displayed, from the Cross offered to God as a pleasing (propitiatory) sacrifice, from the Cross given to us as new possibilities of which we may partake, shows us God’s forgiveness streaming down upon the world. The Cross is not some basis for God's forgiveness, as if a basis were needed; neither is it only a revelation of His forgiveness. Instead, the Cross is the ultimate form God’s forgiveness takes. **The Cross cleanses our conscience, persuading us that God loves us, has always loved us and ever shall love us; and that God forgives us, always has forgiven us and ever shall forgive us - period, no matter what.

God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)



**If this sentence alarms you, see my earlier post on what God's eternal, never-changing love for us does and does not mean.)

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Anaphora of St. Basil the Great

This sublime prayer, encompassing all of salvation history, is said by the priest at the consecration in the Divine Liturgy of St Basil the Great.

The people's responses are in italics.

O You Who Are, O Master, Lord, God, Father Almighty and Adorable! It is truly proper and just and befitting the majesty of your holiness that we should exalt You, praise You, bless You, worship You, give thanks to You and glorify You, the God Who alone exists, and that we should offer to You this our spiritual worship with a contrite heart and humble spirit; for it is You Who have graciously bestowed upon us the knowledge of your truth.

Who can speak of all your mighty works and make all your praises heard? Who can tell of your miracles at all times?

O Master of All, Lord of heaven and earth and of all created beings both visible and invisible! You sit on the throne of glory and look upon the depths; You are invisible, unknowable, indescribable, without beginning and without change, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior. He is our Hope, the Image of your goodness, the Seal of your Likeness, Who reveals You, the Father, in Himself. He is the living Word, true God, Wisdom that existed before time began, Life, Sanctification, Power, the true Light, through Whom also the Holy Spirit was revealed. The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, the Gift of filial adoption, the Pledge of an inheritance to come, the Beginning of eternal good things, the Life-giving Power and the Fountain of Holiness, through Whom every rational and intelligent creature is given the power to worship You and to send up to You unending glory, for all things are your servants. The Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Authorities, Powers and the many-eyed Cherubim praise You. Standing circled before You are the Seraphim, each having six wings: with two wings they cover their faces, with two their feet and with two they fly as they call to one another with unceasing and incessant hymns of praise as they sing, cry out and proclaim the triumphant hymn, saying:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts! Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

With these blessed powers, O Master and Lover of Mankind, we sinners also cry out and say: "Holy are You, truly all-holy!" There is no limit to the majesty of your holiness. You are revered in all your works, for in righteousness and true judgment You have ordered all things for us. When You created man and had fashioned him from the dust of the earth and had honored him as your own image, O God, You set him in the midst of a bountiful paradise, promising him life eternal and the enjoyment of everlasting good things by keeping your commandments.

But when he disobeyed You, the true God Who had created him, and was led astray by the deceit of the serpent, he was made subject to death through his own transgressions. In your righteous judgment, O God, You exiled him from paradise into this world and returned him to the earth from which he had been taken. But You provided for him the salvation of rebirth which is in your Christ Himself.

For You did not turn Yourself away forever from your creation whom You had made, O Good One, nor did You forget the work of your hands, but You visited him in different ways. Through the tender compassion of your mercy, You sent forth prophets. You performed great works by the Saints who in every generation were well-pleasing to You. You spoke to us through the mouths of your servants the Prophets who foretold to us the salvation which was to come. You gave us the Law to aid us. You appointed angels to guard us. And when the fullness of time had come, You spoke to us through your Son Himself, through whom You had created time.

Being the Brightness of your Glory and the Stamp of your Person, and upholding all things by the power of his Word, your Son did not think of equality with You, Who alone are God and Father, as something to be grasped. And so, although He was God before time began, He appeared on earth and dwelt among us. He was incarnate of a holy virgin and emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant and being conformed to the body of our lowliness so that He might conform us to the image of his glory. Since sin entered the world through a man and death through sin, so your Only-begotten Son, Who is in your bosom, our God and Father, was well- pleased to be born of a woman, the holy Birth-giver of God and ever- virgin Mary. He was born under the Law, so that He might condemn sin in his own flesh, so that those who died in Adam might be made alive in Him, your Christ.

He lived in this world and gave us commandments for salvation. He released us from the delusions of idolatry and brought us to the knowledge of You, true God and Father. He procured us for Himself as a chosen people, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. Having purified us with water, He sanctified us with the Holy Spirit. He gave Himself as a ransom to death by which we were held captive, having been sold into slavery by sin. He descended into the realm of death through the Cross, that He might fill all things with Himself. He loosed the sorrow of death and rose again from the dead on the third day, for it was not possible that the Author of Life should be conquered by corruption. In this way He made a way to the resurrection of the dead for all flesh. Thus, He became the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first-born of the dead, that He might be first in all ways among all things. Ascending into heaven, He sat at the right hand of your Majesty on High, and He shall come again to reward each person according to his deeds.

He left us memorials of his saving passion, these which we have set forth according to his command. For when He was about to go to his voluntary and ever-memorable and life-giving death, on the night when He gave Himself for the life of the world, He took bread into his holy and most pure hands and presented it to You, God and Father, and He gave thanks and blessed it and sanctified it and broke it and He gave it to his holy disciples and apostles, saying: "Take and eat, This is my Body which is broken for you for the remission of sins."

Amen.

In like manner, having taken the cup of the fruit of the vine and mixed it, He gave thanks, blessed it, sanctified it and He gave it to his holy disciples and apostles, saying: "All of you drink of this, This is my Blood of the New Testament, Which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins."

Amen.

"Do this in remembrance of Me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim my death and confess my resurrection." Therefore, Master, remembering his redeeming Passion and his life-giving Cross, his three-day Burial, his Resurrection from the dead, his Ascension into heaven, his sitting at your right hand, God and Father, and his glorious and awesome Second Coming, we offer to You Yours of your Own, in behalf of all and for all.

We praise You, we bless You, we give thanks unto You, O Lord, and we pray to You, O our God.

O All-holy Master, since You have enabled us, your sinful and unworthy servants, to minister at your holy Altar, not through our own righteousness, for we have done nothing good upon the earth, but because of your mercies and bounties which You have richly poured out upon us, we now have the courage to draw near to this your holy Altar. Presenting to You the Antitypes of the sacred Body and Blood of your Christ, we pray and beseech You, O Holy of Holies, that by the pleasure of your goodness your Holy Spirit may descend upon us and upon these gifts lying here before You and bless and sanctify them and reveal this bread to be the precious Body of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and that which is in this chalice to be the precious Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, poured forth for the life of the world.

Unite all of us who partake of this one bread and cup to one another in the communion of the one Holy Spirit. Grant that none of us partake of the holy Body and Blood of your Christ for judgment or condemnation; rather, grant that we may find mercy and grace together with all the saints that have been pleasing to You throughout all time: with our fore-fathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, teachers, and with all the righteous made perfect in the faith, especially with our ever-holy, ever-pure, ever-blessed and glorious Lady, the Birth-giver of God and ever-Virgin Mary.

(The people now sing a Hymn to the Most Holy Theotokos.)

With the holy prophet, forerunner and Baptist, John, the holy, glorious and praiseworthy apostles, Saint N., whose memory we celebrate today, and all your saints, through whose prayers visit us, O God. Remember also, O Lord, the souls of your departed, all those who have fallen asleep in the hope of resurrection unto eternal life. O our God, we pray for the forgiveness and the repose of the souls of your departed servants, Nn., in a place of light, where there is no sorrow nor mourning. Grant them rest where the light of your face shines.

Furthermore, we entreat You: remember, O Lord, your holy, catholic and apostolic Church, which is from one end of the universe to the other; give peace to Her whom You have obtained with the precious Blood of your Christ, and preserve this holy house until the end of the world. Remember, O Lord, those who offered You these gifts, and those for whom and through whom they were offered, and the intentions for which they were offered.

Remember, O Lord, those who bring offerings and do good works in your holy churches, and those who remember the poor; reward them with your rich and heavenly gifts. For their earthly, temporal and corruptible gifts, grant them your heavenly ones, which are eternal and incorruptible.

Remember, O Lord, those who are in the deserts, mountains, caverns and pits of the earth. Remember, O Lord, those who live in chastity and godliness, in austerity and holiness of life. Remember, O Lord, this nation and her civil authorities, those who serve in the government and the armed forces. Grant them a secure and lasting peace; speak good things in their hearts concerning your Church and all your people, so that we, in their tranquility, may lead a calm and peaceful life in all godliness and sanctity. In your goodness guard those who are good, and in your Loving-kindness make those who are evil good.

Remember, O Lord, the people here present as well as those who are absent for honorable reasons. Have mercy on them and on us according to the multitude of your mercies. Fill their cupboards with every good thing. Preserve their marriages in peace and harmony, raise the infants, guide the young, support the aged, encourage the faint-hearted, reunite the separated. Lead back those who are in error and join them to your holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Free those who are held captive by unclean spirits. Sail with those who sail, travel with those who travel by land and by air. Defend the widows, protect the orphans, free the captives and heal the sick.

Remember, O God, those who are being judged, those who are in prison, in exile, at hard labor and those in any kind of affliction, necessity or distress.

Remember, O Lord our God, all those who entreat your great Loving- kindness, and those who love us and those who hate us, and those who have asked us to pray for them, unworthy though we be. Remember all your people, O Lord our God. Pour out your rich mercy upon all of them, granting them all the petitions which are for their salvation.

You Yourself remember, O God, all those whom we have not remembered through ignorance, forgetfulness or the multitude of names, since You know the name and age of each, even from his mother's womb. You, O Lord, are the Help of the helpless, the Hope of the hopeless, the Savior of the bestormed, the Haven of the voyager, the Physician of the sick. Be all things to all mankind, for You know everyone and their request, every home and its needs. Deliver this [city, village, habitation, monastery], O Lord, and every city and countryside from famine, plague, earthquake, flood, fire, sword, foreign invasion and civil war.

Remember among the first, O Lord, our [Patriarch and/or Metropolitan, Archbishop or Bishop], preserve them for your holy churches in peace, in safety, in honor and in health for many years, so that they may faithfully dispense the word of your truth.

And all mankind.

Remember, O Lord, the servants of God, Nn., and grant them salvation, visitation and the forgiveness of their sins.

Remember, O Lord, every Orthodox hierarch who rightly dispenses the Word of your truth. Remember, O Lord, according to the multitude of your mercies, my own unworthiness. Pardon my every offense both voluntary and involuntary, and do not withhold the grace of your Holy Spirit from these Gifts here set forth because of my sins.

Remember, O Lord, the priesthood, the diaconate in Christ and every clerical order. Let none of us who stand about your holy Altar be put to shame. Visit us with your Loving-kindness, O Lord; manifest Yourself to us through your rich compassions.

Grant us seasonable and healthful weather. Send gentle showers upon the earth so that it may bear fruit. Bless the crown of the year with your Loving-kindness. Stop schisms among the churches, pacify the ragings of the pagans and quickly destroy the uprisings of heresy by the power of your Holy Spirit. Receive us all into your Kingdom, showing us to be children of the light and children of the day. Grant us your peace and love, a Lord our God, for You have given all things to us.

And grant that with one voice and one heart we may glorify and praise your most honorable and sublime Name, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and forever.

Amen.


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God’s Wrath vs. Satan’s Wrath

People routinely confuse the two, which is alarming in its implications. It’s a very serious thing, I mean, if we can’t distinguish God from the devil. So how do we tell the difference between divine wrath and diabolical wrath? It’s actually easy. God’s Wrath is always benevolent and satan’s isn’t. God always works for our wholeness, sanctification, glorification, and deification. Satan always tries to destroy us in every conceivable way. God’s holy, good, righteous wrath works for us; satan’s works against us.

Let’s say I am jealous of a co-worker and tell lies about him, hoping he will be fired, but I am caught in my own lies. What has happened? What rôle has each played: God, the devil, and I?

*The devil, in his own, insatiable envy, provoked the evil in me.

*I consented to it.

*Then, because a bargain with the devil is never an honest bargain, satan duped me and I lost my job.

*God let it happen.

*God protected my co-worker from my evil designs.

*God also, in His infinite kindness, turned the evil to good for me by using the fleshly misfortune to teach me not to do that, to bring me to repentance, all for my spiritual and eternal profit.

So who showed wrath?

Satan worked his wrath against me, personally. Satan’s wrath would have destroyed me. God showed His wrath against the evil plot. God’s wrath saved both me (ultimately) and my colleague.

See what I mean? God’s wrath is our champion against evil. We do not want it appeased! We want it to continue until every last vestige of evil is wiped from the face of the earth.

Let’s apply the same sort of analysis to what happened in Eden. What part did each actor in this drama play?

*God allowed the serpent to be in the Garden, giving Adam and Eve a challenge to help them mature spiritually. (For they were spiritual infants.) They had only one commandment to keep, so the test was an easy one, a first, baby step toward deification.

*The serpent provoked Eve to sin, and through her, Adam.

*Adam and Eve consented to the evil, thereby renouncing the God of Life and selling themselves into the service and power of the murderous serpent.

*The serpent immediately made them afraid of God and ashamed to be naked. He double-crossed them, as always happens, for the difference between good and evil was a piece of knowledge they didn’t need anyway at that stage of their existence, but now they had acquired this knowledge in a disastrous way: by committing the evil! By committing suicide, that is, much to the devil’s delight.

*God, in His wrath, curses the serpent, chastises Adam and Eve, and promises to deliver them some day. (Genesis 3:15)

*God, in His wrath, drives them from the Garden before they can multiply the tragedy by eating from the Tree of Life, rendering themselves immortal sinners, making sin live forever in their bodies.

*God allows them to die and be separated from slavery to their bodies, intending eventually to raise them in their bodies, but glorified bodies. Take that, serpent!

*God, in His wrath against satan, slows down the death process, else Adam and Eve would have dropped dead –childless! – on the spot. This way, at least their souls will survive in Hades until the Savior comes, in due course.

*God, in His wrath against the serpent, makes Adam and Eve some decent clothing to cover the nakedness of which they are now ashamed.

Again we see the pattern: satan’s wrath destroys, God’s wrath destroys him and his works and rescues us. Toward us, in fact, His wrath is indistinguishable from His mercy.

Now let’s have a look at the Cross in this same manner.

*Satan, in His wrath, provokes the leaders of the synagogue to put Jesus to death.

*They obey satan’s promptings; according to St. Peter, Christ was crucified by “wicked hands.”

*God lets it happen. He has delivered Christ to these people precisely that He might enter this arena of combat and emerge the Victor.

*Christ, exercising His wrath against satan doesn’t give an inch or a millimeter. He endures His fearsome ordeal without making a single concession to the devil. He never gives up His faith. He never compromises the truth. He never stops loving and forgiving. He never curses God. He never descends from the cross or summons those legions of angels to His aid; He is determined to die to rescue us from death. And every moment He remains steadfast, He, in His wrath, is rubbing satan’s nose in the muck. NO, serpent, I will not give in to you!

*Death, in its wrath, swallows a man, but with the man, in the same person, God enters Hades.

*And there, in His wrath, Christ shines His Glory where the devil wanted only darkness, shines His love where satan wanted only hatred. Then He preaches to the satan’s subjects, and then, smashing hell’s gates in His wrath, He leads all of satan’s captives out by the hand.

Did all of the subjects of Hades like being removed from there, prefer the Light to the darkness? Did they all want, were they all even able, to participate in any love-fest? Possibly not. Possibly some had internalized satan’s wrath.

And possibly the same thing may happen to others of us on the Last Day, when we are all brought to stand before the Glory of God. It may be that some will find it sickening, unbearable, excruciating.

But if so, it will be because of their own wrath; it will be because they have internalized satan’s wrath, which cannot tolerate proximity to God. His Presence will torment them. God Himself, however, the unchanging One, will remain kind, compassionate, loving and good to them, forever and ever.

Alexandre Kalomiros explained their mind-boggling perversity, I think, very well in his lecture, "The River of Fire":

Now if anyone is perplexed and does not understand how it is possible for God’s love to render anyone pitifully wretched and miserable and even burning as it were in flames, let him consider the elder brother of the prodigal son. Was he not in his father’s estate? Did not everything in it belong to him? Did he not have his father’s love? Did his father not come himself to entreat and beseech him to come and take part in the joyous banquet? What rendered him miserable and burned him with inner bitterness and hate? Who refused him anything? Why was he not joyous at his brother’s return? Why did he not have love either toward his father or toward his brother? Was it not because of his wicked, inner disposition? Did he not remain in hell because of that? And what was this hell? Was it any separate place? Were there any instruments of torture? Did he not continue to live in his father’s house? What separated him from all the joyous people in the house if not his own hate and his own bitterness? Did his father, or even his brother, stop loving him? Was it not precisely this very love which hardened his heart more and more? Was it not the joy that made him sad? Was not hatred burning in his heart, hatred for his father and his brother, hatred for the love of his father toward his brother and for the love of his brother toward his father?

This is hell: the negation of love; the return of hate for love; bitterness at seeing innocent joy; to be surrounded by love and to have hate in one’s heart. This is the eternal condition of all the damned. They are all dearly loved. They are all invited to the joyous banquet. They are all living in God’s Kingdom, in the New Earth and the New Heavens. No one expels them. Even if they wanted to go away they could not flee from God’s New Creation, nor hide from God’s tenderly loving omnipresence. Their only alternative would be, perhaps, to go away from their brothers and search for a bitter isolation from them, but they could never depart from God and His love. And what is more terrible is that in this eternal life, in this New Creation, God is everything to His creatures.

As Saint Gregory of Nyssa says,

In the present life the things we have relations with are numerous, for instance: time, air, locality, food and drink, clothing, sunlight, lamplight, and other necessities of life, none of which, many though they be, are God; that blessed state which we hope for is in need of none of these things, but the Divine Being will become all, and in the stead of all to us, distributing Himself proportionately to every need of that existence. It is plain, too, from the Holy Scriptures that God becomes to those who deserve it, locality and home and clothing and food and drink and light and riches and kingdom, and everything that can be thought of and named that goes to make our life happy. (On the Soul and the Resurrection). (46)46

In the new eternal life, God will be everything to His creatures, not only to the good but also to the wicked, not only to those who love Him, but likewise to those who hate Him. But how will those who hate Him endure to have everything from the hands of Him Whom they detest? Oh, what an eternal torment is this, what an eternal fire, what a gnashing of teeth!

Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the everlasting inner fire of hatred,’ saith the Lord, because I was thirsty for your love and you did not give it to Me, I was hungry for your blessedness and you did not offer it to Me, I was imprisoned in My human nature and you did not come to visit Me in My church; you are free to go where your wicked desire wishes, away from Me, in the torturing hatred of your hearts which is foreign to My loving heart which knows no hatred for anyone. Depart freely from love to the everlasting torture of hate, unknown and foreign to Me and to those who are with Me, but prepared by freedom for the devil, from the days I created My free, rational creatures. But wherever you go in the darkness of your hating hearts, My love will follow you like a river of fire, because no matter what your heart has chosen, you are and you will eternally continue to be, My children.'

"If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou [art there]." (Psalm 139:8)

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Why Did Jesus Die? (04) To Release us From Death

To be our Sin Offering, Releasing us From Death

Sin wears two masks; sin is death and sin is guilt. In the West, people tend to emphasize the deeds of sin, making it virtually synonymous with guilt. In the East, we tend to emphasize the condition of sin, making it virtually synonymous with death. Both points of view are valid, although only when held together. To undo sin, both guilt and death must be overcome. The next post in this series will discuss how Christ’s death deals with our guilt. In this post, let’s examine how the flesh and blood of the new Passover Lamb take away the sin of the world viewed as death. We’ve already mentioned how Christ’s dying itself undoes death, simply by bringing Life to the death's nothingness; but how is it His Body takes away the deadly effect of sin, and His Blood infuses immortal life into us?

There are numerous places in the Old Testament in which God teaches Israel that the life of a person or an animal is in its blood. (And of course in a way, that’s literally true, since blood cells, like any of our cells, carry DNA; yet it is not the literal, but the typological meaning of blood that interests us for purposes of this discussion.) That is why animals had to be butchered, not strangled: because their blood, being the seat of life, was sacred to God. If you killed an animal, you must pour out its blood onto the ground and cover it up, and not eat or drink it; or if it were a sacrificial animal, you must consecrate its blood to the Lord.

And what did the Lord want with it? Does He delight in blood? Does blood give Him any kind of satisfaction, whether emotional or legal or moral? That is not what the Lord Himself says. Listen:

And whatever man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell among you, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, 'No one among you shall eat blood, nor shall any stranger who dwells among you eat blood.' (Leviticus 17:10-12)

“And I have given it to you upon the altar,” says God, “to make atonement for your souls.” The Hebrew word we translate “souls” is nephesh, which means soul or self or life. The blood atones for, makes up for, the sinner’s lack of life. It gives life. Ultimately, the blood is God’s offering to us. He has no other use for it. He is not bloodthirsty. He is not some Jewish variant of the volcano god. Blood is not the prerequisite for His forgiveness, as if divine forgiveness had a price; instead, blood, like the bronze serpent, or as with the healing of the paralytic, is the form His forgiveness takes: giving us healing and Life. Wherever in the Bible you see "blood," think, "Life."

This is why the animals were sacrificed, not to punish them (although they themselves might disagree!) but to offer their flesh to God and to obtain their life-giving blood for us; and blood's life-giving property is why it was used in the Old Testament for ritual purification of all sorts of things:

19. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20. saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you." 21. Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. 22. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. (Hebrews 9:19-22)

The Greek word should be translated "remission" here, not "forgiveness," since books, tabernacles, and vessels of ministry do not have guilt and need no forgiveness -- although it is also true that God's forgiveness comes in and through blood, as we shall see. Yet these inanimate things, too, although having no sin or guilt, needed to be purified with blood. In Exodus 29:36-27, atonement is even made for the altar. They are sprinkled with blood to purify them from the taint of death because they are all part of the fallen world, part of the order of sin and death. They must be purified to be fit for use in the Lord’s worship. We, too, must be purified of the death in us to be compatible with the immortal God.

What? Isn’t all this more than a litle superstitious? Can animal blood really cure death?

No, of course not. We must constantly remember that all these things are types, that is teaching tools, of the reality to come. They only receive their full truth in Christ. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4) These sacrifices only made one ritually clean. (Hebrews 9:13) They did not give eternal life. They didn’t particularly please God, either, even though He had ordained them. “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.” That’s Psalm 40:6, and quoting it, Hebrews 10:6: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.”

“It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” This was not because the price was too low, as most of the non-Orthodox preach (a mere irrational animal in exchange for a reason-endowed human being). Neither does it mean God’s promise to forgive in these rituals was false. Instead, it means that God forgave without the need of any compensation or payback or punishment! God's forgiveness is pure gift; it cannot be bought - for any price, by anyone, not even by Jesus. This is what true forgiveness is, of course: to revoke the penalty, cancel the debt, give up the right to be compensated, to decide not to take revenge. Anything involving payback is not forgiveness at all, but the opposite. Forgiveness and payback are mutually exclusive. So God did not require any price for His forgiveness. Or rather, the price He required, blood, was not for Himself, but strictly as a teaching device for us.

Yet all those whom God truly forgave in the sacrificial rituals died, went to Hades. God’s forgiveness alone, although sufficient to remove guilt, does not remove death. This is because guilt is an interpersonal affair or else a legal one; therefore personal forgiveness or a legal declaration is enough to remit it. Death, however, is far more than an interpersonal or legal matter. It is a state of being, or rather, lack of being. It can be removed neither by forgiveness alone, nor by the blood of animals.

Rather, the removal, indeed, the reversal of death must await the coming of Him, of whom these sacrifices are the foreshadowings. In Christ, human flesh and blood are united to divinity. In His flesh and blood He grappled with death and conquered it ("bore our sins on the tree"). In His flesh and blood He rose from the grave, was glorified, and was taken up into heaven; and in His flesh and blood He sits upon His heavenly throne. Christ’s flesh and blood, unlike those of animals, really are immortal. His flesh nourishes a whole new order of life in us, namely, His very own, divine, eternal life; and His blood is our true Fountain of Immortality. That is why Jesus offered up His flesh and blood, and how by feeding us upon these medicines, He takes away the sin of the world, considered as death. This is one sense in which Jesus died to be our sin offering, and also how He can be our Passover Lamb, whose flesh nourished Israel for the journey to freedom and whose blood fended off the Angel of Death.

Jesus said, “Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53)

You have redeemed us from the curse of the Law by Your precious Blood. By being nailed to the Cross and pierced with the Spear, You have poured forth immortality on mankind. O our Saviour, glory to You.

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Well, now, isn't that INTERESTING!

In working on one of the upcoming posts in the series, “Why Did Jesus Die?” I was starting to write something about the death penalty for sin prescribed by the Law [of Moses] when suddenly, I realized I didn’t know where to find this in Scripture.

Guess what? It doesn't appear to be there. Or if it is, I can't find it. Can you?

The Law prescribes death as the penalty for certain, particular sins, yes, but not for every sin. Also, for rejecting the Lord and His Law altogether there are abundant threats and curses, ranging from incurable itches to being taken into slavery but no one will even buy you. Several of these horrible fates will end in death. But these are for the nation, should it abandon God’s Law. It’s not for people who try and fail.

Moreover, those things which the Israelites could only understand as curses we, after the coming of Christ and “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:5) ought to understand as warnings. For we know that whoever rejects or abandons God removes himself from any special protection of God, inviting disaster, and also that God chastises whom He loves.

In short, so far as I can discover, there just is no death penalty for each and every sin anybody ever commits!

At least, there’s no legal death penalty for any and all sin. That’s only important when theologizing. Practically speaking, there may as well be, because any and all sin separates us from God Who Is our only Life, meaning sin already is death.

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Terrors of Conscience

When I was growing up, the most terrifying thing that could happen was for my father to say, at breakfast, “When you get home from school today, you will go straight to your room and wait for me there.”

It ruined the whole day. You had this knot in your stomach whenever you thought about it, which was about a hundred times a minute. You knew what was coming. He would sit down on your bed, heave a deep sigh, and say, “I’m so disappointed.” It was as if your whole world were caving in.

But that was only the beginning. It would shortly be followed by the dreaded Why Question: Why did you [or didn’t you] do that? What could you say? Because I wanted to? Because I was stupid? irresponsible? lazy? There was no good answer. You just shrugged and looked into your lap and said, “I don’t know…” and that would only provoke the Next Dread Question: “Where have I gone wrong as a father?” or “What can I do differently, so this never happens again?” or “How can I help you so you’ll start doing what you’re supposed to do from now on?” And of course, the answer to the What and the How was always the same as the answer to the Why: “I don’t know.”

Then would follow a statement of his expectations, too obviously right, reasonable, and necessary for dispute, plus some admonitions. You’d say you were sorry and promise to do better and then he would leave your room. And you’d sit there gulping, blinking back the tears, and would resolve – well, to do better, to do at least the minimum needed to satisfy his requirements. You were genuinely sorry you had hurt him. You’d make a special point to get your homework done from now on so he and your conscience wouldn’t be hurt - although there was no way were you going to aspire to an “A” in chemistry. Henceforth, you’d mop the floor and fulfill that duty; yes definitely! For sure. (It wouldn't be your problem if it didn't necessarily come clean.) You'd say that cuss word under yout breath next time. With such compromises, you’d make some sort of peace with yourself.

You’d repent with your mind, in other words, cognitively. But not with your heart. To repent from the heart means to give up the evil desire, to strive for the "A" instead of just doing your homework, to desire a spic-and-span floor instead of just being able to say you mopped it, to purge unkindly attitudes toward a person, not settling for swearing at him silently. To repent from the heart means to take your stand against not only the evil deed but also the evil desire, to declare all-out war upon it. True repentance is not merely to cease and desist from what you had done, not even to hate and loathe it, but to take up arms against it. True repentance isn’t just putting forth some reasonable effort, but putting your whole self into the effort; it’s whole-heartedly changing course.

And true repentance isn't being ashamed, either. The time to be ashamed is while we are committing the sin, not when we are renouncing it.

True repentance is difficult. People will do almost anything to avoid it, even construct whole theologies that make it unnecessary. True repentance probably cannot be accomplished without tears. It certainly cannot be accomplished without Grace, but neither does God ever withhold the Grace necessary to do it.

True repentance is still difficult, but exponentially easier, if you understand that God is always good to you, always kind, infinitely loving, compassionate, never hateful or retaliatory. His disposition toward you never varies; He is constant, true, faithful, gracious. It is impossible to repent without loving God. It is extremely hard to love God as He is too often portrayed in heterodox teaching.

But when we do repent from the heart, reciprocating God’s love to us (not meaning that ours can compare with His), then as surely as day follows night, comes peace, deep peace. Our hearts tell us all is well, because the Holy Spirit is informing our hearts of it. God’s forgiveness overwhelms our sorrow. The gates of Paradise open to us.

Just apologizing to God won’t do it. Just trusting He will forgive and save won’t do it. Just theologizing about our status before Him won’t do it. Just repenting in our minds won’t do it. All of these together will still not do it. If we employ these methods we shall find our “peace” is only intellectual; we shall have to keep theologizing (“clinging to the promises”) to maintain such peace. Our hearts, not participating, won’t be fooled even if our minds are, and conscience will still always try to goad us. We will be told not to “go by our feelings,” so we will try to disregard our heart, to our peril.

But true repentance, with love for God and unreserved change of heart and mind, definitely, absolutely, categorically, unfailingly does provide complete relief from the shame and terrors of the conscience. And it does so with rapid, deep, overwhelming, wordless joy to our broken heart, and peace beyond comprehension.

Open to me the doors of repentance, O Giver of Life!

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Terrors of Conscience, Postcript

When my turn had come to be a parent, I called up my father one day, distraught. "You raised four teeenagers," I said, "so I desperately need to know how you did it."

"Well, there are two basic approaches I know of," he replied. "There's the old Army way: hit 'em hard and fast, where it hurts the most."

"Ye-essss..."

"And then then there's the sit-down-and-reason-with-them method, which you may recall I used."

"Oh, yes, I do recall!" I exclaimed, gratitude filling my heart, tears filling my eyes. "Of course, of course! That's how you did it..."

"Bad mistake!"

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