It’s amazing how a “framework” can constrain how you understand a piece of text.
For example, 2×4 is either 8 or a piece of lumber depending on whether you are a mathematician or a carpenter.
The “juridical/accounting/transactional” framework always told me that “Jesus paid the debt to God for our sins”.
The AHA! moment for me was that SIN pays the wage of death, not God. God doesn’t kill us because we sin. Sin alienates us from God who is Life.
God offers a free gift, not “wages” and a transaction in which we earned something or owe Him something for what we “worked”. Jesus accepted sin’s “wage” even though He didn’t earn it. God didn’t kill Jesus (pay the wage of sin He exacts to His Son in our stead). God accepted the wages from sin on our behalf and nailed the W-2 to the cross (Colossians 2:14).
In all the Parables, the Master, Lord, King, Landowner forgave the debts of his crappy householders and subjects with a word. He NEVER extracted the due debt from an innocent third party. God absorbs death, the wages of sin, into Himself because God is life and not even death can prevail before God. As Solomon said, “Love is stronger than death…”
Wages, books to be balanced, or penalties to be paid to a God who pays Himself off via His Son to satisfy His need for a balanced ledger or justice served, or a benevolent King who just forgives and takes all the crap and debt and death we can deal out into Himself for our sake’s just because He loves us are two different things.
I once held the former thing as “Gospel”, and it made sense to me. Then I heard the latter thing. The longer I live the latter thing makes more and more sense to me.
As if we can make sense of the horror of the Cross.
As if we can make sense of human, much less, divine Love.
(On the Feast of the Cross, Sept. 14).
Painting by Nicholas Ge
Just a curious question…I came across Colossians 2:14 “He destroyed the record of debt owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He canceled it by nailing it to the cross.” (CEB)
I no longer believe in PSA after some AHA! moments, but when I come to verses like this that gets into sort of a “payment” and “debt” theology, it is a bit confusing. Can you explain the 1st part of this verse? Also, Colossians 1:20, the “He brought peace through the blood of his cross”…and 1:21…did we just “think” we were enemies with God (I heard this from a Danielle Strickland podcast) or were we actually enemies in our minds? I lean toward what Danielle shared, but I could see how this verse could be read the other way as well. Thanks!