Does God Punish or Discipline?

Posted 26 March, 2009 - 20:30 by John Ridley

This is a response to Alario’s questions on the Origins of Morality topic, as there seems to be a lot of conversation going on there already without diving into Penal Substitution!

Alario wrote:

Discpline vs Retribution:

1. Is there a clear distinction between the two in the scriptures?

2. Does “discipline” in the sense it is used in John Ridley’s post include the aspects of restoration and correction and exclude “punishment” of the wrongdoer? Are not some wrongdoers punished and corrected and restored while others are punished, remain unrepentant and are destroyed? Not just in the scriptures only. Do we not see this played out day after day in our own lives and the lives of others in varying degrees of severity?

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” “As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest…”

…all were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, all drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them and the Rock was Christ. Neverthless, with most of them God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters, eschew sexual immorality, do not put Christ to the test, don’t gripe. These things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of ages has come If you think you are standing strong, be cautious lest you fall.

Alario wrote:

Penal Substitution:

In several translations the term propitiation is used of Christ’s actions on behalf of the people of God. Propitiation by His blood; for the sins of the people; for our sins; for our sins and not only ours but also for the whole world. Use mercy seat if you wish, or seat of atonement or whatever. The contextual imagery is almost certainly of the blood splattered Ark of the Covenant containing the images of the authority of God, His loving care and provisions and His holy character which cried out against the sins of the people and which cries were silenced by blood for a year. A yearly day of atonement.

Now, if the soul that sins, dies and all are sinners and have missed God’s standards (we lie, St. John reminds us if we say we have no sin) then the consequences of sin without propitiation may be quite dreadful.

If it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, the very sacrifice God stipulated for the people’s sin(s) and those sacrifices were but a shadow of good things to come-what did they foreshadow if not Christ’s perfect, once for all oblation and satisfaction of sin. What was the death and blood of bulls and goats if not penal substitution? What is the death and blood of Christ if not penal substitution?

It was expedient that one man should die for the people. Was it not?

(The below is just my thoughts, I don’t mean to assert them too strongly, but it’s aesthetically displeasing to keep putting “I think” in front of every statement)

The Old Testament talks much of God punishing Israel because of her sins. But looking at the context, God always seems to be doing so with a purpose to restore her and bring her back to himself. He causes suffering, not as a payment for sin, but in the hope that Israel will discover it can’t live without him. This is, in fact, a logical consequence of trying to live without God. God is the source of all good, so to pursue any good other than God is to pursue that which does not exist. Israel would have found this out eventually. But left to the natural workings of the Universe, such consequences would take too long to work themselves out, and might come too late to save them. God treated Israel like we treat a little child, imposing extra ‘punishments’ and ‘rewards’ on their actions to train them into holiness, knowing that their own maturity was not yet sufficient to see the natural consequences of their actions.

God also placed a restriction on Israel’s thirst for vengeance, with the dictum “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Human nature, when angered, will seek revenge greater than the wrong inflicted. The blows increase and increase, until they spiral out of control and become all-out war and utter destruction. This is because of human pride, the desire to have more or better than others. But God knew that Israel was not mature enough to see the fullness of his heart. So he taught them justice, as we might teach the alphabet to a kindergartener. He taught them “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” not because it is an ultimate principle, but because it restricts human beings from completely destroying one another.

Fast-forward fifteen hundred years. Jesus came to reveal the totality of God’s heart. He came to fulfil the law, not to abolish it. But what he says often looks like the abolishment of the law:

“You have heard it was said, love your friends and hate your enemies. But I say to you, love your enemies”
“You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person.”
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses gave you this law [of divorce]. But I say unto you that the original intention of God was one man and one woman united for life”

Anyone who truly understood the heart of Moses’ law would see that these things did not contradict it. They were a greater level of maturity. We are past kindergarten now. The justice that God instantiated was really driven by love. The law that God laid down was that we might love him and one another. Love is the summary, the consummation, the maturity, of the law.

We have sinned, which is bad. We are sinful at heart, which is far worse. But God forgives, God loves, God redeems, without needing satisfaction according to the “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” model of justice. He doesn’t want us to live like that because he’s not like that.

So why did Jesus die? He died for us, doubtless. He died that we might live, agreed. The punishment (i.e. discipline) that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. But our punishment was not upon him. How could it be? It wouldn’t be our punishment anymore if it was. God punished Jesus because Jesus represented humanity, and represented Israel. Jesus started a new type of humanity.

We have sinned under Adam, and as long as we are connected to Adam by nature, we remain sinful and separated from God. Why? Not because God rejects us, but because we reject him. Jesus died and rose again so that our hearts could be changed, so that we could see the error of our ways and repent. If we connect ourselves to Jesus, by living according to his teachings - if we join ourselves to his nature by becoming like him, then we will die to our sinful natures and rise again into His nature. We shall be ‘in Christ’ instead of ‘in Adam’.

This is a very rapid overview of a complex topic. What do you think? Anything you disagree with or that needs clarifying?

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Comments

Re: Does God Punish or Discipline?

by Alario - 29/04/2009 - 02:45

Sorry John for getting back to this after such a long time. My apologies.

You ended your post with the question did anything need clarifying or did I disagree with anything?

Honestly, I have nothing so strong as disagreement with any one point or passage. However, the sum of the parts left me where I started.

Let me make a few specific comments excerpting some parts of your post.

“The Old Testament talks much of God punishing Israel because of her sins. But looking at the context, God always seems to be doing so with a purpose to restore her and bring her back to himself. He causes suffering, not as a payment for sin, but in the hope that Israel will discover it can’t live without him.

We do see God using corrective punishment or discipline with the purpose of restoration to bring Israel to her senses. Israel sins as a nation and suffers as a nation. But, during the times she was relatively faithful to God, priests, for themselves and for families offered blood sacrifices to propitiate God for their offenses against a holy God’s holy laws precisely according to those laws.

Hence not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you.”

And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these.

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.

And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach.

Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.”

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).

When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.

And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

I think the long passage from Hebrews is critical and conclusive. Perhaps too much is made of terms like penal substitution which bring unecessary baggage into a conversation so I will not worry with such terms. In fact these limiting terms may detract from the majesy and power of Jesus’s sacrifice as though it conformed to only one of many competing theories. It may very well be all of them and more.

That being the case I argue, at least, that the blood sacrifices offered contained the following elements.

1. Originated and commanded by God.

2. Turned away, for a short, fixed period of time, God’s wrath away from the priest and a man and his family.

3. A wrath directed towards an individual and/or family because of their sins against God and His commands-not the sins of another or Israel’s sins as a nation.

4. Required the death/punishment of an “innocent” animal in lieu of the death/punishment of the actual offender.

It is this appreciation of the old covenant sacrifices that makes it impossible for me not to believe that Jesus took upon Himself the punishment for my sins as well as the sins of the world.

 

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