by Adam » May 17th, 2006, 5:11 pm
::The problem is that we're not talking about the sort of test where students learn enough to pass through their own effort. If the analogy is to a test, then it's a test where the teacher has slipped the correct answers to all the students beforehand. If the teacher does that, then it's not really a test. No one is tested.
Then the test is truly whether or not you accept the correct answers.
::If we're to obtain righteousness, it will not be through our own efforts. Even the best of us cannot "study enough" to pass the test, to make ourselves righteous (as compared to God's standard of righteousness). Christ essentially gives us amnesty from judgment. If Christ is to give everyone amnesty from judgment, then there is no judgment.
Again, grace is not cheating on the test; accepting it is the test. Christ doesn't give amnesty from judgment, He transforms us so that we are not guilty.
The question is, does Christ get rid of the consequence of sin, or of sin itself? Does he declare us not guilty, or mak us not guilty? I would say the latter; thus there is true judgment, and we are subject to it, but we are found not guilty by it.
::You might answer that talking about the test, or about judgment, at least makes everyone try to study, or try to make themselves righteous. That, perhaps, is true (though a bit of a dirty trick). But that doesn't work when you've already communicated beforehand that the test isn't really a test, that you're going to get the answers beforehand, that grace will save you. If my mission only is to avoid the eternal flames of hell, and I know that I can avoid those flames not by trying to be righteous but simply by "accepting Christ," then that's all I'm going to do. I'm not going to study for the test of the teacher gives away before her plan not to make it a true test. In other words, if God were holding out judgment and hell for the sole purpose of motivating us toward righteousness, he should never have communicated Christ, or even the possibility of grace. On the other hand, if there is a real judgment and people will go to a real place called hell, then God would communicate Christ and grace beforehand in order to give his people the opportunity to be saved. The object from that point does not become, "pass the test." I know that I'm exempt from that test. The object becomes, "dwell in the righteousness of this Teacher who has saved my soul."
Again, I think this concern for the means of grace is confusing the matter. Accepting grace is what must be done. I think that everyone shall do it. Grace doesn't merely give you a free pass, it's not cheating or a trick, it really does transform you and make you worthy of blessing and not wrath. Christ gains your pardon by transforming you.
::I do not believe that Judaism had a concept of eternal judgment until the age of the prophets. They did believe in justice, but it was an earthly justice. The Jews sought for God to restore justice by crushing their enemies. With the periods of Jewish captivity and persecution, particularly at the hands of the Babylonians, came the desire for a more eternal form of justice, and the writings of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah regarding eternal judgments and a day of reckoning resulted. Even in those images, though, justice comes through the eternal destruction of the enemies of God. God would restore order by crushing the chaos-makers in Jewish theology.
Destroying chaos AND blessing order. There is need for justice even if there is no one to punish, even if it's only activity is to finally bless those who are holy and yet have suffered in a chaotic world.
Last edited by
Adam on May 17th, 2006, 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Love is the only art that poorly imitates nature."
