Restorative Justice
I don't embrace an eternal hell for the same reason that many uphold it. Isn't that the way many things in the Bible can be posited? Almost everyone I know believes in a hell, among other reasons, because God is JUST! God is inded JUST and for that reason ther can be no eternal hell, which is the epitome of UNJUSTICE.
But let me apply this JUSTICE principle to the atonement.
I have to agree with Tom Smail whem he writes, "God's justice is concerned less with punishing wrong relationships than with restoring right ones." Why is that so hard to get other than the whole concept of GRACE is so scandalous and unfair from our vantage point.
Colin Gunton said it this way, "The cross is transformational rather than punitive: a transformation in which the reconciliation of persons enables the acknowledged evil of the past to become the basis for present and future good."
P. T. Forsyth asked the nagging question that I did for so much of my life until I saw that God didn't, douldn't demand the death of Jesus FOR our sin. He put it this way, "It is an enirely unthinkable thing that God could punish Jesus, in whom He (God) was well pleased". Hey, to punish someone you're well pleased with is some sort of wild perversion- like an eternal hell would be.
The key is not that Jesus died FOR our sins, but that He died TO sin! That's probably why Romans 6:10 says TO and not FOR. Hint, hint. :-)
Finally, this from John McIntyre, "I cannot find ONE New testament statement which outrightly affirms that the death of Christ was a PUNISHMENT visited upon Jesus, rather than upon the mass of sinful mankind." My God is a loving God. God is love! And therefore He is in to restoration, not retribution.
Restroration- not Retribution!
Related Tags: jesus, god, restoration, punishment, retribution, god is love- hell is not, restorative justice
As a spiritual-futurist my commentaries and articles deal primarily with an interpretation of current events in light of macro-universal forces at play.
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