The Majesty of Righteousness Part V : The Crucifixion

Gents, this will likely be our final meeting and closure of Ironmen in its current format.

Today we are finishing off the series "The Majesty of Righteousness".

Basically, if you read Romans Ch 3, then today's discussion can be summed up in that chapter.

Let's recount what we have covered so far:

1. The Moral Argument - you can not have evil and suffering without a moral law and the moral law needs to transcend mankind.

2. The definition of evil - in order to have a moral law, we need to define what then is evil - it is the aberration of purpose. Purpose requires a pre-requisite of an intention and design

3. Justice needs to occur for a moral law, otherwise it is useless

4. Sacredness of sin - in order for justice to exist, it needs a judge and it needs to treat sin, irrespective of how big or small we might think it is, with the weight and punishment it deserves.

So today, it all comes down to the Crucifixion and what it represents, what it symbolises, what it demonstrates of God's character, how He views sin, why He did it, what it reflects back to mankind and what's in our hearts and what power it has out of such weakness.

If we come back to the original accusation about God:
"If God exists, how can there be so much suffering and evil in the world? How can He allow it to exist.  I don't believe in God because there is so much evil in the world"

Let me remind us of what Muggeridge once said:

"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, yet it is the most intellectually resistant fact".

Reinhold Niebhour said:

"No amount of evidence to the contrary seems to shake man's grand opinion of himself".

Let's take a look at the Crucifixion:

Jesus was "scourged" - 39 lashings (1 less than 40 in case they miscounted) with a whip with bone and rock in the leather strands Designed to rip the flesh from your body so that you would be almost dead, passed out from pain and or loss of blood.

Crown of thorns was placed on his head, with thick strong thorns pressed down deep into his cranium

Bashed and punched while in a state of indescribable pain by soldiers

Spat at, ridiculed, hit and whacked with weapons, taunted, degraded.

Whipped and shoved while having to carry his own death trap through a crowd jeering at him, coming to watch the spectacle.

7 inch nails hammered into his palms, between bones to ensure the weight of his body would not rip his hands off the crossbeam.

Nails driven into his feet smashing through bone to ensure he could no come off.

Naked, scourged, dripping with blood, jeered at and mocked, spat at, hit, demeaned, no single minuscule treatment, word or act of dignity usually afforded a human being.

Given a death process that ensures maximum pain over the longest and most painful period possible - death by asphyxiation. Every breath more painful and slightly shorter than the one before as your lungs collapse because you can not push your body back up, your internal organs slowly sag, unable to breath over many hours or up to days.

And this done to a man in a kangaroo court in front of what was to become the forbearer or the Western world.
A death process so bad, that it was banned in the 2nd Century.
No cross examination, no jury, no counter perspective, instead a political outcome that ensures Pilot keeps his reign and the Religious leaders get their outcome. The person trampled underfoot for the opposing sides gains. And we say politics is a dirty game. Add religion into it and it becomes deadly.

What does it reflect ?

What do you think God is trying to reflect back you and me? He's holding up a mirror to mankind and the content of his heart.

And if you or I or anyone thinks that "that was then, but we are civilised now", then take a look at the first 5 pages of todays newspaper. Read modern history of the 20th century. Watch documentaries on Slavery, Sex trafficking, read books about the GFC, corporations that have raped and pillaged the countryside or communities like James Hardy, Erin Brokovich....

In the 19 and 20th centuries the "rationalists" and "positivists" philosophies came to the fore, that out of rational thought and the empirical verifiable scientific mechanisms, these would solve and address our problems. It only gave rise to the bloodiest century ever known to mankind - 230Million people murdered or killed on wars. More than all put together in the previous 19 centuries.

You know it's fascinating and rightly so, that the media caught wind of the degradation of the Iraqi soldiers by the US troops and that torture was condemned as a mechanism to extract information.
Why - because it meant that the dignity of a human being was trampled on and that was sacred territory. A human being has some intrinsic rights the world recognised and what the US did was in breach of that.

And then we have Jesus's story.

It doesn't matter any way you want to slice and dice his experience up, it is depravity so deep at so many levels, that its difficult to comprehend.

I get so much that God is holding a mirror to mankind saying: see how much I love you, that I will take the worst possible process and form of execution and still triumph with love.

See how much I love you I will provide the justice for all the sin in the world, from the smallest to the biggest by imputing your innocence through my Son's guilt payment.

no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Romans 3:20

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens amongst many others have lambasted the fictional God and his Son's death as wicked, evil, that a father would sacrifice his own son, that a scapegoat is morally reprehensible.
"How could a father willingly sacrifice his son so that others can get off scot free?"
Let me rephrase it:
"How could a God allow so much suffering in the world and let the perpetrators get away with it?"

Can you see the irony, the self destruction creeping in.

You see the Crucifixion is so much more than just a process of death and resurrection. It is a clear representation of man's propensity for evil and God's triumph over evil through love.
The mere fact that he treats our sin with the sacredness it deserves and provides a way out of my malady is breathtaking.

The majestic nature of being made right before the holy and righteous God, in love and truth with true justice, and true redemption of my heart.

NEVER EVER EVER FORGET WHAT THE CROSS REPRESENTS.

The Majesty of Righteousness Part 4: Sacredness of my sin

Part 1: The moral argument
Part 2: What is the definition of evil
Part 3: The justice system
Part 4: Sacredness of my sin
next week:
Part 5: The majesty of the crucifixion

Last meet up when we were discussing a Justice and judgement system, we finished by discussing on one hand a person states God is powerless and incompetent because He allows so much evil to occur and then in the same breadth flips back and accuses Him of being a harsh unfair God by damning people to Hell. 

All the time while denying His actual existence and so basing God on a book written by humans, fictitiously made up about an imaginary figure  - which begs the question: who is this powerless harsh God? 

Either He exists or doesn't and if He does then He is either a Holy righteous Judge or not at all? 

The majestic nature of Christ's Righteousness is breath-taking: God creates mankind for relationship in the expression of love and treats your sins and mine as sacred and of the utmost importance by providing a payment for them through the Crucifixion of His Son.  We stand in the dock righteous before God when we shouldn't be. Breath-taking when one thinks of the gravitas of that offer of grace while also treating evil with the weightiness it deserves. 

I guess i would ask the skeptic- Inversely if God ignored the evils committed by mankind then what does it say of His character?  To the raped woman, to the transgressed business partner to the abused child, to the lie that u and i said today...

Have you ever asked yourself: Is sin sacred? That is, DO I afford it the weight it deserves ?  Moreover, does God? 

Wouldn't it be ironic if we were more concerned with our Sin and the Sin of others than God was?  Moreover we were more concerned that we received the appropriate due punishment and "just deserts" of our sin than God was…..

As an aside but analogous  I heard Bill Johsnon recall from a friend of his that said "When we beseech and beg God to heal someone, we're assuming we want them healed more than God does" 

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" [Romans 6:23]

and

"As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" [Ephesians 2:1-10]

What do other world views say of sin?

Buddhism:

From a conversation I had with a Buddhist on grace and forgiveness: 

Ben, I know is once u have bad karma due to bad deeds, it can not be cleared or erased at all. You can only do more good deeds to get good karma, meaning it will make bad karma less in portion. Like a cup of water, once it's dirty u can't just get rid of the dirt. You can only add clean water to dilute the thickness of dirt. Bad karma can not disappear by such things as forgiveness since what is done is already done.

I  think in buddhism we rely on ourselves to do good to fix our bad karma rather than rely on a superior being to erase our bad karma (sins). We are all considered to have our own buddha nature. So there is no need forgiveness by anyone but only to correct ourselves. We are responsible for our own karma not buddha or superior being

Neale Walsch - new age author, states in his conversation with god (God?) about the question of accountability of people like Hitler (because Hitler was REALLY bad, unlike you and me who are just a little bit bad and mostly good) is that there is no "good" or "bad", there "just is" and that Hitler did the Jews a favour by releasing them from life to heaven: "The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon"

Atheist: Sins do not exist - remember Part 1. Rather they may be a preference, but sin is a man made fictions ideology so to Justice. 

Has one ever thought of the fact that the majority of ills today are relationally based or causal from a relationship.  Therefore would it not infer that a requirement of God to "care" about sins would have to be personable, relatable and involved? 

The pantheist, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist have no answer for this.

"How can God exist when there is so much evil in the world…….?"
[implying: what are you doing about it God because I don't see much justice / action going on here…]
Funny: you seem so concerned with the sin "out there" that God isn't doing anything about, what about your own sin? 

John 3;16 speaks afresh...