Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: excerpt redux

[knpraise]

 

 

Great post.   I would include David's response but I am still working on his comments.

 

Perhaps only the definition of sin exists in the abstract.   We I speak of "hating the sin" I only mean that I am displeased with the effects sin is having on his person.    I think it a perversion to hate the abstract or non-personal.  I don't really hate my computer  -   I hate that it performs in a particular way  --  it's ontology, if you will. 

 

As far as Christ the sinner   --  wasn't sin already in grand disfavor with God?   In Christ there is no death  -- it has been defeated.  And death is punishment handed out ONLY to persons.   Christ became like us in all respects  --  only as a sinner can He accept death deserving for us all.  He did not die unjustly !!   What is "unjust" is the fact that he actually became what He was not  --   a sinner without [personal] sin !!

 

We seem to all agree on this, no?

 

jd

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Lance Muir" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Debbie Sawczak

To: 'Lance Muir'

Sent: March 14, 2006 22:04

Subject: excerpt redux

Lance, I was just printing out the next raw chapter (on "Two Kinds of Righteousness" and "A Meditation on Christ's Passion") in preparation for editing, and my eye lit on this portion at the end. I'm sending it to you raw, because being at the end of a 24-page chapter it'll be a while till I get to it in the editing. It's Q&A, and the point I was noticing was that sin has no existence apart from sinners, two interesting ramifications of which are (a) that Christ, in becoming sin, became sinner, and (b) that the aphorism, "hate the sin but love the sinner" is problematic. I think of both of these in relation to recent (well, not so recent anymore, perhaps) threads on TT.

 

Any thoughts? What do you do with this hatred thingy?

 

D

 

[Question: I was just thinking about Christ being sinner or sin. And just, without having thought about it too much, it makes sense that he would have to be a sinner if he was being punished in proxy for humanity, because God was punishing – or God needed to punish – humanity, because they, as a collective whole, were sinners, so God was punishing sinners. So unless Christ became a sinner, then it wouldn't be a perfect substitution. If God was never interested in punishing sin …]

 

That's exactly right.

 

[… he was punishing sinners. So if all of a sudden you're just punishing sin, it would be different. It wouldn't be the same.]

 

You can't punish sin. You can only punish sinners, because sin has no existence apart from sinners. Sin doesn't exist apart from sinners. Therefore to me, to say that Christ became sin but not sinner makes the same mistake, it falls into the same error. In the same way, when we speak of the love of God, what we really mean is God himself loving us at this moment. The love of God is God himself loving us. It isn’t that God is here, and he visits us with his love, you know, his love is detachable from him. That's not what we mean. Calvin will say, the person of God is found in all the acts of God. That's right: the person of God is found in all the acts of God. That's just another way of saying, God's judgement is God judging us. God's love is God himself loving us. Well then to say, to relate all of this to sin, is to say that we always live at the realm of the person and personhood. It's rather that what we call sin is highly abstract. The person of the sinner and the person of God are highly concrete. And it's at the level of the concrete that redemption always has to occur, not the level of the abstract.

 

Clay?

 

[Question: So that when people are discussing homosexuality, abortion, whatever the case may be, to take the line that, well, you know, we hate the sin but we love the sinner, that's sort of, off target?]

 

Yes, it is. I've always said, in my first-year systematic theology class, that the old Christian aphorism, we have to love the sinner but hate the sin, is logically impossible. Sin has no existence apart from sinners. You can't hate sin, love sinners. You can only love and hate the sinner himself at the same time. I recognise the danger, oh, man, I recognise the danger, because if we ever legitimate the church's hatred of sinners, can you imagine what's going to happen tomorrow? But logically, you can't love sinners and hate sin, sin has no existence. This is safe in the hands of God, not safe in our hands, because Scripture, if you read Scripture with one eye open, what you find that God is a terrific hater, terrific hater. And at the same time, the hatred of God is always a manifestation of the love of God. And that's where it's safe in God but not safe in us, because Stephen's hatred here, Stephen's hatred of the homosexual isn't a manifestation of his love for him. It's just hatred, unqualified hatred. And that's why, on the one hand logically I want to say, you can't love sinners and hate sin, but on the other hand I'm so reluctant to say, we have to love and hate the sinner at the same time (as God does), because in our depravity, we don't do it as God does. God's love for the sinner will always be greater than his hatred for the sinner, but ours might not be, because his hatred only seeks to bring the sinner to the end of herself. But it won't always be the case with us. It's like saying, I hate adultery, but I can still find it in my heart to love people who commit adultery. Adultery has no existence apart from the person who does it. Strictly speaking, there's no such thing as adultery, there's simply a person who does it. And that's what we're always dealing with.

 

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