Topic Split from "Penal Substitution & Universalism"
The reality of the situation is that nothing is being held against anyone by God. If anyone spends even 5 seconds in God’s actual presence they will know this. Well, maybe 10 seconds for hard headed people.
Religion always has a formula you must follow to be made ‘right’.
Hi Byron,
I want to make sure I understand you. Are you imply that God would never judge and punish any human for evil actions? And that everybody would understand that if they spent ten seconds in the actual presence of God?
No, I’m not implying it - I’m stating it flat out. 
The carnal nature is already in it’s state of death/anguish and cannot be reformed (it is not and cannot be subject to God’s laws) and so the death sentence abides upon the egoic self. Religion seeks to reform the egoic man through reward/punishment. I’m not saying that it is not a useful tool to change behavior on some level, but it has nothing to do with living as one with God. Nothing - as in ‘zero’.
Freedom from the blindness of the carnal nature through rebirth is not a reward for being good or for being sorry about being spiritually dead 
. It is the result of being raised (waking up) from among the dead.
Religion serves to try and keep us with at least one foot in the grave.
Jesus’ perfect righteousness is 100% applied to us, that’s why we are BLAMELESS in God’s presence. “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love”. If we continue to live under reward/punishment it is only because we don’t see or accept things as they really are and are still living under a false identity and believe we are still expelled from paradise. That explains why some (most?) are not experiencing blamelessness in God’s presence in Christ.
That which is born of God cannot sin - you know this. 
Now, if you are missing the mark and walking under the curse of spiritual death then yes, it will appear that the ‘wrath of God’ is abiding on ‘you’. But the reality is that you are just continuing to live under a system of death which is already condemned (by God).
Jesus (on the cross) is a picture (symbol) of the Son of Man/Son of God entrapped in a state of death - the crown of thorns = mental anguish, the nails in the hands = evil works, pierced heart = broken relationships, nails in feet = evil ‘walk’ (lifestyle) ect ect. Resurrection = being raised up from that death.
And isn’t it in Ephesians that we’re told that alienation from God is in our minds? This is why repentance is necessary; a changing/ renewing of the mind, yes?
Hi Byron,
I first compare all views of divine punishment and redemption to all of the relevant teachings in the New Testament (NT). And I’m not sure if you feel that your views [on divine punishment and redemption] are superior to various views of the NT writers or if your views work within doctrinal innerancy. And I suppose this could diverge enough from the original topic to get its own topic.
Thanks (as always) for your patient and kind spirit!
Only in the last year or so have I ever tried to articulate my views on this. Christian’s I’ve known and worked with have such a wide range of views as to how God deals with them and others (real world and afterlife) and I must say a lot of the views are very disturbing and way outside of what I know to be God’s core character.
I wish I had more time on my hands to develope this but basically most protestant ‘faith alone’ Christians feel that if they could react in perfect repentance after every sin that God would have no choice but to forgive them (because of ‘the atonement’) and if they fail to react in perfect repentance after every sin then God has no choice but to punish them (in spite of ‘the atonement’).
Is this really what having a new nature is about? I don’t think so.
Of course when folks try and take all the new testament and balance all that is said the result is the 30 some odd thousand denominations we have today - so - good luck with that 
. But if that’s the procedure you feel God expects then I understand that you (as an individual) must go with it.
I submit that oneness with God is far different from mainline penal substitution interpretations because there is regeneration involved which in essence is a rebirth of the sinless Son of God within us. At the same time I don’t deny that we suffer tribulation and anguish when we (as total beings) ‘work’ evil and I don’t deny that the tribulation and anguish comes by God’s decree. However, if we can look beyond the surface we’ll see the true dynamic of what’s happening, that is, God Himself emerging in us, and a perfect love against which is no law or condemnation or blame or punishment whatsoever.
Almost all Christians live in a desperate cycle of pleasing God (and feeling great about it) then failing God (and feeling condemned/punished) and I understand that’s all a natural part of the process but at some point I think we must look at the bottom line of what absolute justification is what absolute blamelessness is. We already know what sin and punishment is.
Hi Byron,
I’ll get to this more on another day. And I’ve seen a similar problem with some people telling me that they had times in their life when they got saved every Sunday for months on end.
Yes, our soul-ish consciousness is where alignment is needed and also where our perceptions of reality are filtered. The soul/mind is also (generally) very confident as to the correctness of what is perceived and programmed to react in particular ways. Supernatural revelation of God breaks the ‘fallen’ programming (ie: skewed perceptions).
I loved when someone reacted to the educational ads “The mind is a terrible thing to waste” and shortened it to “The mind is a terrible thing”. 
This is like Sweet Sweet music to my ears Firstborn!!!
Like cool water from a deep well in a parched desert…
It seems the need for punitive punishment from God is very deeply ingrained in us. As if there is a vast and free floating pool of “guilt” which can be eradicated by killing the Son of God. The fact of Jesus death, and the way He died, does nothing whatsoever to change the fact that it is me who really really IS guilty. NO amount of substitution changes that FACT.
So, it must mean something else…
Again,
Which fits so perfectly with the character of God as seen by UR…
TotalVictory
Bobx3
I’ve seen that too. It’s very sad and also evidence of a lack of understanding about the nature of God and rebirth.
What I’ve run into is folks thinking they get sick because they have offended God or lost their jobs because God was angry with them and punishing them, that sort of thing.
At the root of it all is a belief that we are NOT really ‘of God’ and are separated from Him and still fighting for approval and acceptance. If we could understand that God and us are fighting a common enemy and that He is 100% for us just as He is 100% for righteousness and 100% for Jesus etc - it’s a huge help. In fact - it’s God who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. And the glory then goes to God, even for our obedience.
Passing through; but I’m wondering if you understood what James was asking. Because you went on to affirm several times that God does in fact judge and punish humans for evil. Including in your very next sentence: “the death sentence abides upon the egoic self”.
Again, “If we continue to live under reward/punishment” (like, um, God/Jesus keeps telling us about all through the Bible, including the final chapter of RevJohn where Jesus/God is coming quickly to reward every man according to his works… a different but related criticism of mine) this is only because we “believe we are still expelled from paradise.” Which implies that at one time we were expelled from paradise. Because of sin, or for some amoral reason on God’s part? I can hardly imagine you are saying the latter (and it wouldn’t be any kind of comfort if you were!); the former though is judgment and punishment of some kind for sin by someone.
Again, “liv[ing] under a system of death which is already condemned by God” “missing the mark and walking under the curse of spiritual death” (especially in our “egoism”) would seem to be more than merely “appear[ing] that the ‘wrath of God’ is abiding on ‘you’”. Wouldn’t for consistency it be better to say that if we are missing the mark and appearing to walk under the apparent ‘curse’ of spiritual death, then of course it will appear that the ‘wrath of God’ is abiding on ‘us’, but the reality is that we are just continuing to live under a system of death which is only apparently already ‘condemned’ by God?
I don’t disagree with much of the other things you wrote. But I think there are better ways to account for the wrath of God. Insofar as we insist on clinging to our sin, we share in the wrath of God against that sin. The wrath isn’t ultimately against us, personally; but it’s contingently against us, personally. (Contingent on God’s love, which must reject our sins. As God puts it, through Isaiah, it is not that God has wrath against us; there is no wrath in Him. But if we insist on going out against Him with thorns and thistles, then He will burn up those thorns and thistles by going to war against us. But the aim is not to hopelessly destroy us. The final aim is that we shall cling to Him instead of to the thorns and thistles.)
Which may have been what you were trying to say all along.
It was like cool water to me as well
And I was always taught that God was just the opposite - keeping record of every infraction and only forgiving if we came to our senses and cried “sorry!”.
God’s perfect unconditional love is what leads us to great depths of repentance and humility. It is so humbling to be loved like that (once we are able to understand what is really happening there) and it will make you want to give up everything to be like Him.
So Byron and Bobx3 would you say that your view is encapsulated in 2 Corinthians 5:19 ?
This verse surely refers to a time before anyone had repented and believed. so by extension then God at this moment isn’t counting mens sins against them (believers and non-believers alike). 
If so - what is being punished both now or post mortem?
As much as I dearly love that quote, too, and its universalistic surrounding contexts, I also note that back up in verses 9-11 of the same chapter, Paul exhorts: “This is why we are also ambitious, whether at home or away from home *, to be well pleasing to [the Lord]. For all of us must appear in front of the dais of Christ, that each should be repaid toward that which he practices through the body, whether good or bad.”
There’s that whole “the Lord is coming to pay back those according to their works” theme again. And not just good works either.*
“If I do that which I don’t want to do - it is no longer I who does it but sin which dwells in me”. My splitting hairs has to do with separating soul and spirit, joint and marrow, that sort of thing.
There is a HUGE difference between: seeing ourselves as separate from God and fighting to rid ourselves of sin lest terrible things happen to us (wrath/judgement) from an external angry Creator and: understanding that the hidden man of the heart - the reborn Christ in us (who actually IS us the real us) is in a process toward experientially achieving spiritual maturity.
If you identify ‘yourself’ AS the egoic self (which is a lie) then you will live under the first assumption, that you are not forgiven and that God is seething with wrath towards you and ready to whack you .
If you identify ‘yourself’ as the new man seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, made perfect and complete then you can escape the vicious cycle of reward/punishment (good and evil) into the Christ life (tree of life - oneness with God).
You describe an aspect of what I’m saying, but really with the “that we shall cling to Him instead of to the thorns and thistles” we are back to a concept of a “free moral agent” floating around in free-will land and trying to learn to make good and right choices so that things can be right between us and God so that all the wrath and tribulation and anguish will stop being administered to us. I don’t think that is the gospel, at all, and in fact denies the foundation rebirth (CREATED in righteousness and true holiness) and of Christ in us.
Here is a sum of some of my ideas on what I’ll call the effects of the atonement. The New Testament (NT) teaches about a new covenant while faith in Jesus Christ is the condition for the covenant. The NT teaches this in several places such as John 3:16-18:
[16] For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18 TNIV)
Life in the new covenant needs to avoid both condemnation and unbridled sin.
Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 7:10 (TNIV), “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
New covenant believers might never reach moral perfection in earthly life, and when they sin, they need to repent with godly sorrow that leaves no regret/condemnation.
I also like Romans 5:8-9:
[8] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [9] Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! (Romans 5:8-9 TNIV)
There’s categorical difference between life inside the new covenant versus life outside the covenant. And as an Evangelical Universalist, I believe that everybody will eventually experience life inside the covenant.
The NT teaches about God’s wrath against and unbelievers and God’s discipline of believers. Both are ultimately discipline leading to salvation while there’s a categorical difference between the wrath against unbelievers and the discipline of believers. Also, inside or outside the new covenant, perception of condemnation may come from evil spirits.
“needs to avoid” ???
The verse you quoted says whoever believes is not condemned.
Is the spirit man reborn within you (who is the “son of God”) going to stop believing in the Son of God? That doesn’t make any sense. That which is born of God cannot sin. Please think this through. 
Paul is speaking to babes who have proven they don’t understand anything beyond the surface. Just like in Galations “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”. Try and imagine what Paul would write to you personally if he were inspired to do so. Don’t read every letter as if it were to you (it’s not - you’ve been reading someone else’s mail" 
) So - if it speaks to you then that’s where you are at, no problem. This does not mean it is ‘absolute truth’ .
Yikes!!! “God’s wrath” isn’t in the original text!!! (theologians at work here ) Try "saved from ‘agitation of the soul’ though Him. Orge = anger, the natural disposition, temper, character
Either God is not imputing sin (as Jeff quoted) or He is. I think the case is “perception of condemnation may come from evil spirits”.
Yes.
Hi Byron,
I’ve thoroughly thought this through, but I have yet to write a thorough book to explain it. I never said anything close to saying that a reborn spirit man would stop believing in the Son of God. But the Bible clearly teaches that born-again believers still struggle with a sin nature while that sin nature along with evil spirits make us fell that we’re condemned along with unbelievers.
I’m unsure what you’re teaching. Are you saying that some Christians have reached moral perfection before they died?
Why are you saying ‘“God’s wrath” isn’t in the original text’? I have no idea what you’re referencing.
I have no idea what you mean by God is not imputing sin or God is imputing sin. Anyway, believers who struggle with condemnation struggle with a false perception of condemnation while unbelievers actually stand condemned before God until they genuinely believe.
Jim, you have a gift with practicality (as did Rabbi Shaul) but you are not looking at roots (AKA: causes). Behind all the give and take, the bend and break their are spiritual bottom lines which go beyond “We need to live right - amen?!!” (and everybody agrees with a shout of “amen!”). That is one level of reality which, as I said, is fine if that’s where you are at. But at that stage you are not really discerning good and evil or separating the knowledge of good and evil from the tree of life.
“You are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ - who is your life shall appear, then you will also appear with Him in glory”.
“for we know that the Messiah, who was raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has mastery over him. When He died, He died once and for all to sin’s power. But now He lives, and He lives for God”.
"In the same way, you too must continually consider yourselves dead as far as sin is concerned, but living for God through the Messiah Jesus".
One Corinthian ‘believer’ was sleeping with his stepmom. Again - to be practical - obviously people like that ‘need’ to repent - have a change of heart. But a change of heart requires an understanding, not that we need to try and feel sorry and do better - but that we consider ourselves dead as far as sin is concerned not to say “Oh dang - I really screwed up - I need to feel sorry and do better so I won’t be condemned and get a spanking and have everybody mad and hurt and lives destroyed and have me displeasing God” etc etc.
“You are dead”
The ‘truth’ is we are dead and our life is hidden with Christ in God. If you are not able or comfortable with acknowledging that Jesus’ perfection is 100% applied to you right now and you are complete in Him then I understand that. Jesus said “BE YE PERFECT” not “one day when you die you will be perfect like me”. If we don’t believe that we are dead and your life is (right now) hidden with Christ in God then we are living under an illusion of imperfection which can manifest and cause major shipwrecks - no doubt. But our perfection in Christ is still true. Understanding this will cause ‘about faces’ and ‘changes of heart’ galore. Godly sorry is that God REVEALS the truth of the matter to our hearts (that we are absolutely 100% forgiven and that He is holding absolutely nothing against us) and that’s what allows the supernatural changes needed (ie: so our own hearts will stop condemn us and we will no longer be alienated in our minds)
I am referencing the Greek text “pollw oun mallon dikaiwqentev nun en tw aimati autou swqhsomeqa di’ autou apo thv orghv”. No mention of God’s wrath, just that we are saved from wrath (Greek: Orge = anger, the natural disposition, temper, character- movement or agitation of the soul, impulse, desire, any violent emotion, anger)
Then they will die to the egoic self and no longer identify with the lie and illusion that that is who they are.
James, I have a only fourth grade education (no joke - long story). But i did learn to read and when I received the knowledge of salvation (once I knew Jesus had already rescued me) I studied like a maniac. My retention of specific words though is not great and that’s why I have to look up things over and over and I still CANNOT remember addresses (chapter and verse) but the concepts of the gospel were written by God into my heart and I (later) found them in scripture as confirmation but I read them differently than most because I see a different layer (mostly root spiritual activity). I’m not claiming to be special, just ‘different’.
Since you guys here are so educated I assume you would know what imputed means in the Greek. I don’t (and need to get back to work) but I do know that if you believe that God holds nothing against you (not easy!) then you are completely blameless because you are no longer alienated by the lie that God is somehow separate from you. That takes a BUNCH of faith and is a gift from God AND it transforms you because it is SO humbling as we are so helpless in our own strength. I am doing my part to plant seeds of faith concerning this so more people can be free through the knowledge of the good news, ie: We have a savior who saved us. We are saved (made whole). All else is superficial and a lie.
I have heard the traditional view a zillion times, and that’s fine it has it’s place. Does anything I’m sharing ring a bell with you? Or anyone (please chime in 
). If not I will accept that maybe a seed or two will germinate someday. I certainly don’t want to waste my time and other’s time.