Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel. And as you know, I just wrapped up seven whole episodes on the topic of substitution. I mean, they're not really wrapped up exactly, but that was a lot of episodes.
[00:00:31] And I mentioned last time about Galatians 3 and the curse and how important that is to deal with in the whole conversation. And it is, but I realized that it's not really strictly a substitution topic only. Galatians 3 is really one of those places where people will marry the wrath and the substitutionary aspects to come up with the idea of PSA, or penal substitutionary atonement. And so this is a really good place to kind of sit back and think, "Well, what are we doing in the whole conversation as a whole when it comes to atonement theology and PSA and all of that?"
[00:01:15] So at this point, I think we really need to actually step into the last part of the idea, because we've talked about the wrath. We've talked about the penal aspects. Maybe not as much as people would want me to get into, but we have addressed it. We've gotten very deep into the weeds of the substitutionary aspect. And I have talked about the atonement aspect, but I think it is really worthwhile to take a step back and ask, what is this all about? What is an atonement theory anyway? And that's not really exactly going to be my perspective in framing out various types of atonement theories and things.
[00:01:57] But an atonement theory is something very particular. It's very particular to Christianity. And it's a very difficult topic because atonement as a word actually attaches itself to technical things in the Bible. But when we're talking about an atonement theory, we're not just talking about those technical pieces of the sacrificial system in Leviticus and whatnot. We can bring those into the conversation certainly, but part of the confusion in the whole idea of atonement is that we have particular words that mean particular things. But when it comes to an atonement theory, we are not just talking about particular technical matters. What we're actually doing is thinking about atonement in the sense of the root of that actual English word.
[00:02:55] And this is not just one of those little fun pastoral ideas that you'll hear in perhaps a sermon where atonement means at-one-ment. No, that is really what the word atonement is calling to, the reconciliation of things, becoming at one again with God. That is the idea of atonement. And it does not attach itself to one single concept in Scripture. It does not just attach itself to making atonement in Leviticus. It is a far bigger frame than that. And that is really one of the biggest difficulties that we have to wrestle with in English and in theology, that we have particular words, but we also have this really, really broad theological concept. And I don't want to discount that broad theological concept, but it is so much more than the word atonement.
[00:03:57] And so today, I really want to talk about the broad theological context. And I wanna do it in a way that we see the New Testament authors doing, and we see Scripture doing as a whole. And that's going to get us into the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, or the Divine Council worldview. But we're gonna do it in a way where we are not focused on the spiritual beings of the Divine Council. Instead, we are going to focus on the ultimate purpose or the ultimate end goal of it. That really is what we're gonna talk about today, and I think that's what atonement actually is.
And I think it's going to be very, very helpful to the conversation of the Divine Council worldview at large, because really, the story that centers on the spiritual beings in that worldview, in the divine council, the spiritual beings are kind of the mid-story. And really what we want to know about is the end story. That is what the story is leading up to. And so I think Galatians is actually going to be really helpful to that.
[00:05:12] But we're gonna put the question specifically for Galatians to the side for today anyway, because before we can talk about the curse of the law, we really need to understand the story that Paul is telling. Abraham is promised blessing for the nations. Israel is the chosen covenant people through whom that blessing is supposed to come. The whole of Torah defines Israel's covenant life, but it and Israel's history exposes the slavery and the captivity that is also a danger of this. And then Christ comes as the faithful seed, the faithful Son, the faithful Israelite, the faithful Son of Man. And in him, the nations receive the blessing, the Holy Spirit, and the inheritance.
[00:06:07] But this is not a way that we usually are talking about atonement, is it? At least not in your usual evangelical Protestant church. But I think it's the way we should be talking about atonement. Now, it is important to ask what Christ saves us from. But atonement theory, even when we're using a mosaic of atonement idea, we tend to come at this with an incomplete atonement theology because we also need to ask what Christ saves us for.
[00:06:40] The goal is Christ. The goal is the incarnate Son. The goal is a new humanity in Him. It is Abraham's family, drawn from Israel and the nations filled with the Spirit, made sons of God, heirs of the promise, and destined for resurrection glory. So today I want to talk about the divine council without the gods.
[00:07:06] And to be honest, I think looking at it from this framework is actually going to give us one of the strongest reasons to see that language as heavenly and spiritual in the Old Testament. It's pointing to spiritual sons of God, and I think the New Testament shows us why. Even so, the biblical story does not end with the gods. It ends with humanity in Christ being brought into the covenant, the glory, and the inheritance of the Son.
[00:07:38] Now I need to give some clarification because I'm not backing away from Dr. Heiser's framework and the spiritual gods of the nations and anything like that. So when I'm talking about the divine council without the gods, I'm not talking about no spiritual beings or divine council or cosmic geography. But I am saying that the gods of the nations are not the end goal here. And the divine council worldview is not finally about cataloging spiritual beings, but it is a story that is moving toward Christ and glorified humanity in him. And I think this, as I've said before, begins in Genesis 1.
[00:08:25] The key distinction I'm trying to bring out in this episode is that the way that we talk about the divine council, we often are really in mid-story reality, where we're talking about the heavenly beings and rebellious powers and allotted nations and corrupted rule. And we kind of miss the end reality of the whole thing, which really isn't about the spiritual beings at all, but it is about heaven and earth uniting in Christ. And humans being the sons of God. Hum— And there is a new humanity that is formed by the Spirit, and it includes resurrection glory and saints sharing in Christ's reign.
[00:09:07] That's really the gold in the DCW. It is not really about the spiritual beings at all, even though they are, again, that mid-story reality that we have to deal with. And that's something that is the boots-on-the-ground reality, perhaps, but it is overshadowed by the glory that we should be seeing in what Paul and the New Testament is telling us.
[00:09:33] So I'm not trying to minimize the Old Testament context of the sons of God as spirit beings, because I actually think that this whole idea is going to strengthen that reading. Because the Old Testament sons of God language has a heavenly council resonance. And the New Testament sonship language for believers is rather astonishingly precise because it brings humanity into that heavenly destiny, the heavenly glory. Whatever term you wanna use, whether it's glorification or theosis, we're not erasing the heavenly category of the DCW, but rather the whole divine council worldview shows us where humanity in Christ is headed.
[00:10:22] Please don't hear me say that we are becoming gods as independent divine beings. But this really should not be controversial in Christian speak. We are participating. We are in union with Christ. We are being conformed to his image. We are sharing by grace what belongs to the Son by nature. And we become a glorified humanity. We're not converting into a different species, okay?
[00:10:50] So the gods are part of the conflict and the scenery of the biblical drama, but they're not the end of the story. They're not even really the end result of the revelation. That is the incarnate Son and resurrected humanity united to Him. So when we bring all of this into atonement theology, atonement isn't just solving a problem. But it is genuinely the purpose and intent of the whole creative project of God.
[00:11:24] And so the DCW question becomes also: How are heaven and earth brought together? How are the nations reclaimed? How is humanity restored to its original vocation and its original glory perhaps? How does Christ bring people into sonship, inheritance, and glory? And what do those things actually mean?
[00:11:49] Now, I won't press this point too much today because I know I've talked about it many times, but I think that the Bible truly does begin in Genesis 1 and not Genesis 3. Humans are made as the image of God, both male and female. We are called to rule. We are called to multiply and fill the earth. We're called to subdue and not exploit. We have a heavenly vocation because of the image that we have.
[00:12:18] Genesis 2 shows us that humans are formed from dust, placed in a garden or a sacred space. They are called to serve and guard, and this is a priestly and royal vocation. It mirrors Genesis 1 really well, right? On this earthly location, we are to reflect God. It doesn't mean we are God Himself or we are divine. We're certainly not angelic. We're not gonna become gods by nature again. But this whole setup for the entire Bible and the entire course of human history is that humanity is made to represent God's heavenly rule within earthly creation.
[00:13:00] Now that does raise some questions about our relationship with spiritual beings and what spiritual beings are doing. Are they not also reflecting God's glory into creation with us? But they're doing it from the heavenly realm, and we're doing it in the earthly realm. And I would say that this whole structure shows that humans were always earth creatures with a heaven-facing vocation. And in Christ, the incarnate Son of God, those two things are brought together in full reality.
[00:13:33] So again, I think that begins in Genesis 1. What we have happen in Genesis 3 is a failure of the image to do what it was supposed to do. And that sets up a whole pattern through the rest of Scripture where people and groups continually fail, but God continues to reach out and to work through those things nonetheless.
[00:13:57] Within the first few chapters of Genesis, we have the three falls, Genesis 3, Genesis 6, Genesis 11. And all of these show that heaven and earth are out of alignment. They're not really doing what God wants them to do because we're doing weird things like boundary crossing in ways that are unauthorized and they are not in alignment with how God wants that to happen.
[00:14:25] So the crisis is not merely that humanity disobeyed a rule that God put into place, but our whole human vocation was ruptured. We were cast out of sacred space in the garden. And rather than a fall, I like to think of it more as a loss of the access to glory. It's not that we lost it entirely because we certainly did not. But if you think of holy sacred space as concentric rings, you want to get to the middle because that is where you are closest to God and most in alignment with Him. But we have been cast out and we get further away from that. And the goal would be to get back into realignment, right?
[00:15:13] I like to think of these things as corrupted boundaries. It's what we get with the serpent in Genesis 3, which results in humanity being cast out of the garden. And the same thing happens in Genesis 6, where the sons of God transgress their proper boundaries and human life becomes entangled with rebellious heavenly powers. All of that causes violence to fill the earth. And it is rectified partially with the flood, but not wholly. We still have things happen, and we still have the disorder. We still have the boundary crossing.
[00:15:49] And whatever else you think about what happened at the Tower of Babel and what it was and what the real problem might have been, we have continued disorder, continued movement away from God. So we have the fracturing of the nations. We have the powers that corrupt heavenly and earthly order. And so when we're talking again about atonement, it's more than a legal reality. It has to be something that is going to address each one of these things that is going wrong.
[00:16:21] And so immediately after the tower, we have a really interesting thing that happens, right? This is where we're going to enter into the conversation today. Really, the Divine Council worldview helps us to see the scale of the problem. Humanity has failed. Again, the nations are fractured. Heavenly powers are part of the disorder. The answer to that begins with God calling Abraham. One family through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed.
[00:16:53] So let's talk about Abraham's offspring and the stars. The promise of Abraham is really, it's very practical. We have offspring, we have land, we have inheritance, we have blessing and nations. And even though we may not have it directly and really firmly in the passage here in Genesis, all of this is going to lead to resurrection glory. And I want to show you how that is.
[00:17:23] At the surface level, to become like the stars certainly has to mean innumerable offspring. So I don't wanna discount that, but Scripture keeps using heavenly and star language in ways that invite us to see more than just a head count of all of his offspring. The stars are associated with glory, with heavenly rule, and with resurrection. So Abraham's offspring are not just: there's a whole bunch of them. But in Christ they are destined for heavenly glory.
[00:17:58] So let's have a look at Genesis 12. Prior to this passage, we have the tower, we have Shem's descendants, we have the introduction of Terah's family, and we have the call of Abraham. Starting in Genesis 12 verse 1, it says, quote, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
[00:18:26] And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" End quote.
[00:18:45] Couple of things I want to point out here is that, you know, it's not like Abram didn't have an inheritance already. He already had an inheritance and land, presumably, because he belonged to somebody who actually lived in a land. And if that's what you're doing, you probably already have some form of holdings or inheritance there. Because it doesn't say that that's not the case, right? So we're presuming that this is a pretty normal situation, but the family of Terah leaves where they are, and we're not given a whole lot of detail. You can go to some extra biblical literature for ideas there, but let's just stick with the text for now. But God tells Abram that he's to go from his country and his kindred and his father's house to the land that I will show you. So he's going from one inheritance to another.
[00:19:42] And there's certainly nothing that would suggest that Abram couldn't have had offspring where he lived before. But the framing here is that he's going to be made a great nation, and his name is going to become great. This is as opposed directly to what was happening at the tower. You know, I know we tend to focus a lot on the question of worship and the tower because it's been brought out by many scholars that probably the tower was a ziggurat, and so it had something to do with worship and all of that. But that doesn't actually seem to be the key framing in Genesis 11. The key framing is for them to make their name great, and God is contrasting that with making Abraham great, and that is directly connected to Abraham being a blessing to the nations. So this is very clearly a reversal of what's going on in the tower. And there's blessing and there's cursing.
[00:20:42] Okay, now let's look at Genesis chapter 15, starting in verse five. It says, quote, "And he brought him outside and said, 'Look toward heaven and number the stars if you were able to number them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness." End quote.
[00:21:05] Again, I'm not discounting the fact that it is about numbers because literally the verb here is to number the stars. So that is certainly the framing and the backing of what we have going on. But as Scripture goes, and as we have the image of stars and glory embedded into the text, and very clearly, when Paul brings this up in Galatians and in Romans, there is a context of promise and heavenly imagery. It is about more than quantity. It is also about quality.
[00:21:43] Let's put that to the side for a moment and move to Genesis twenty-two. The context, of course, is the near sacrifice of Isaac. And we've talked about this recently. God proved to Abraham who He was, and through Abraham's obedience, he learned about God and his relationship to God. Genesis twenty-two, verses seventeen and eighteen say, quote, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.
[00:22:17] And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." End quote. Again, we have offspring that is multiplied as the stars of heaven and as the sand on a seashore. Both of those images are going to be important.
[00:22:39] We certainly do have something about quantity. But there also is a vocation. It's related to the defeat of enemies. And it is related to the nations being blessed. Two things going on there. Now let's look a little bit more closely at this star language.
[00:22:58] I think we have to admit that Genesis 15 and 22 are plainly promising Abraham actual descendants, especially when we started out with no child, no offspring who was going to be his inheritor. When we get Abraham's first child, his body is as good as dead, and Sarah's womb is barren, and the promise is going to depend on God's power, not Abraham's capacity. So the first meaning we have is very simple and straightforward. Abraham will have offspring, Abraham's family will be beyond counting, and Israel exists because God keeps impossible promises.
[00:23:40] But we should ask why this imagery? Why stars? Why even sand? It's a secondary question, but also important. Now, for the ancient world, stars were not merely the lights in the sky, but they belong to the heavenly realm. So they are associated with heavenly order, heavenly beings, divine council imagery, and rule. And so Dr. Heiser's broader divine council work emphasizes that the heavenly host language overlaps with the council of created heavenly beings who administer the cosmos.
[00:24:20] Now I'm going to bring in some of the work from David Burnett. This is especially helpful because he argues that Paul's use of Genesis fifteen five in Romans four should be read against early Jewish traditions where Abraham's seed becoming as the stars is not only, again, quantitative, but it's also qualitative. So I will go ahead and link some of this information to you in the show notes because the Deuteronomic background connects celestial bodies with the gods or the angels of the nations, members of Yahweh's divine council.
[00:24:59] This also connects really deeply into some intertestamental literature. Because again, Abraham's offspring are likened to dust in Genesis 13. I didn't read that passage. Stars in Genesis 15 and 22, and sand in Genesis 22, and I think also Genesis 32. So we have really interesting parallels here, stars and dust or sand.
[00:25:28] Now here I'm going to read you a passage from Sirach. Sirach chapter 44, verse 21, which says, quote, "Therefore, the Lord certified for Abraham with a solemn pledge that he would bless nations through his descendants, that he would make him increase like the dust of the earth, exalt his descendants like the stars, and give them an inheritance from sea to sea and from the river to the end of the earth." End quote.
[00:26:00] So here we can see that ancient Jewish readers could hear the dust and sand language as number language and stars as exaltation language. So at one level, all three of these images, the offspring, the dust, the sand, and the stars, they all say the same thing. Abraham's family will be beyond counting. But we have different symbolic weight to the dust and the sand as being earthly images of multitude, whereas the stars are heavenly images of multitude. And that really is important because Scripture also uses star-like brightness for resurrection glory.
[00:26:42] Philo also reads it like this, where the promise has both quantity as well as quality. It's not just about the numbers. It is also about the nations. It is about inheritance, enemies, lands, and nation people groups. So we really need to read the Abrahamic promise in Paul as one complex picture.
[00:27:06] So how does all of this connect with the Divine Council? Well, I hope it's starting to make a lot of sense here. Because the nations were associated with the sons of God and a heavenly administration. Abraham's offspring are compared to the stars of heaven, and then God's redeemed people in the New Testament are called sons of God. The righteous are said to shine like stars. So the story is moving from heavenly beings ruling badly to the promise of Abraham being fulfilled. And that is fulfilled as humans in Christ becoming glorified sons of God.
[00:27:47] One of the key pieces to see this within in the Old Testament is in Daniel 12, which I think is one of the few passages in the Old Testament that talk directly about resurrection hope. Daniel 12, verses 2 and 3 say, quote, "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever." End quote.
[00:28:26] So couple of things to note here. Many who sleep in the dust awake, some to everlasting life. The wise shine like brightness of the sky. Those who turn many to righteousness shine like stars forever and ever. So we are linking resurrection, righteousness, wisdom, heavenly brightness, and star-like glory. This isn't even just about resurrection, but it is about righteousness as well, which is such a key piece. And it's really hard for us to kind of wrap our minds around this, especially at this point in time, because we have kind of regulated it to Christianese and Sunday school answers.
[00:29:12] And trying not to do that, but it's hard to not talk about this in ways that really seem fuzzy or really just overly hopeful or something like that. But genuinely, what is going on here is not just some sort of legal status that is being changed in us, but we are becoming something glorious. And that involves the resurrection, but it's not relegated to that fully because we are in Christ in a reality that is today, but also future forward-facing.
[00:29:49] Now let's connect Daniel 12 to Matthew 13. This is the parable of the weeds, and I won't read the whole thing, but we have the seed being sown, right? And the world is a field, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. Then we have reapers. What are they? They're angels. The Son of Man will send his angels. Remember, they are heavenly. They are glorious. They gather out of his kingdom all who are the causes of sin, the lawbreakers. They throw them into the fiery furnace.
[00:30:29] This is the place where people will point to and say, "Well, if you sin, you're just cast into hell, and how is that fair?" And you know, all of that. But let's focus on where the passage is ending in verse 43, which says, quote, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear." End quote.
[00:30:53] So again, we're calling back to this resurrection and kingdom glory logic. And I really want you to see this reality. It is not simply about, oh, I made a bad choice, but it is about growing and being planted in something real, right? This isn't just about simple choices. It is about an embedded reality that you're living in, right? And you have to bring Matthew 13 into conversation with the rest of the Old Testament because again, this is just a parable. A parable is something that's pointing to the right ideas, but it's not to be used in some dogmatic form where, oh, look, you sin, therefore you're gonna be cast into hell.
[00:31:42] We can't just do that because that goes against many other witnesses in the New Testament, right? And we're not gonna make Scripture to be contradictory. We have to see it as a cohesive whole. And this isn't just a matter also of the destiny of the righteous being, oh, we barely made it. But really there is an embedded radiant kingdom glory associated with these people, the kingdom of the Father.
[00:32:08] I could read the whole chapter of 1 Corinthians 15, but I'm not gonna do that. I will point you to it though. Really want you to read the whole thing. I want you to notice things about resurrection body, the glory of heavenly bodies, the glory of stars that differ from other stars, the earthly Adam compared to the heavenly Christ, bearing the image of the heavenly one.
[00:32:32] And here we have this context of obviously very clearly a focus on Jesus and who He is. But we should keep in mind that there are other beings who are described in glorious terms. That is not to say that the sons of God or the angels are just like Christ, because they're not. But we have to look at the whole New Testament. It is not just this piece that gives us the resurrection concept and what resurrection is and how it connects with our daily life today as well as glorified human believers who are being conformed to the image of Christ.
[00:33:14] This involves the entire reality of the spirit realm that is described in the Old Testament. And we have a contrast between dust and glory, Adam and Christ, earthly and heavenly, image-bearing, restored, and escalated into something better. While resurrection is our glorified destiny, this reality also shows up in our daily lives as glorified believers on the earth.
[00:33:44] And this is not about resurrection and salvation as not being embodied. Resurrection is embodied humanity glorified. We are becoming a new creation. Because God Himself came down in the Incarnation, united heaven and earth, and now we are part of that.
[00:34:04] Okay, let's go back to the offspring language as well, which is not just many, but who or what. Abraham's offspring begins with Isaac, Jacob, Israel. So Israel is the central part of the offspring of Abraham, right? That's not to say Israel's the only offspring that Abraham has, but this is the line of promise. So Israel then receives Torah and vocation. And this is a really crucial piece, I think, to see what Paul is doing in Galatians and elsewhere.
[00:34:40] Because the promise always has the nations in view, even when it narrows down into Israel. And eventually, Paul will say that the offspring is focused in Christ and extended to all who belong to Christ, and this is not just an Israelite reality, but it's an Abrahamic reality. It's a promise that connects back earlier, before Sinai, to Abraham.
[00:35:10] So again, we are talking about atonement, at-one-ment reconciliation. If the crisis is communion rupture and cosmic disorder, then the promise of Abraham is the beginning of restored communion. And so it is humanity restored, the nations blessed, inheritance promised, enemies overcome, heaven and earth vocation recovered fully and extended in a way that makes us actually capable of it. And this anticipates the resurrection glory. All of this is connected. Atonement is not just about a legal clearing of guilt.
[00:35:52] It is about restoration of humanity in God's promise to Abraham, and bringing creation to its intended glory. So all of this is what salvation and the whole idea is aiming at. The star-like offspring is part of the answer to the fracture of heaven and earth. It is the covenant family drawn from the nations destined not only to multiply into the earth, but also to share in a quality that we have because of the unification of heaven and earth in Christ. It's not just about Israel, it's not just about Torah. It is about the wider story beyond the single nation of Israel.
[00:36:38] One of the things I've noticed in divine council conversations is that it can be really hard to kind of understand what's going on after we have the tower, then we have Abraham, then we have Israel. And in some conversations, I've seen people jump back and forth from Abraham's promise to Israel and almost treat it like it's the same thing. And that's not necessarily wrong, but we do have to notice that Abraham and the promise to him is about a fully restored humanity, even though some of the problems kind of exist within a localized area because of the breaking of the covenant with Israel. Right? Okay. So we have the New Testament, and we have the Jew-Gentile distinction, right?
[00:37:28] And that is kind of a problem for the church. It's a problem because a lot of people don't seem to understand what the Old Testament is leading up towards. People want Israel to continue to have separation from the nations. We have the story of Israel, and they forget that really there is a deeper promise. Because Israel is not chosen as an end in itself, but it's chosen as the means through whom the nations will be blessed. That directly connects back to Abraham. There is a through line there. When Israel forgets that through line, then they're making the specific promise to be the thing, where really it's the broad promises of God that they have forgotten about.
[00:38:17] So Torah is given within the context of Israel being the chosen one through whom the nations will be blessed. Torah was never meant to be simply a set of rules to keep Israel separate from the nations. But it is covenant wisdom instruction for life with God. And yes, that is specifically for Israel. But Torah was meant to pattern earthly life according to God's heavenly order, which certainly that is for everyone.
[00:38:49] We have worship, justice, holiness, mercy, time, land, food and table, priesthood, sacred space, loving one's neighbor, and allegiance to Yahweh alone. All of that is wrapped up in what the Torah is offering them. That was not simply for the Israelites, even though Torah was still kind of seen as this distinctive thing that kept them separate. And I think that is kind of the core of what Paul is trying to address in a lot of ways.
[00:39:22] Torah was a covenant shape of life with God, a God who had redeemed the people. That was never meant to be a separation for the people, but it was a way to shine a light to the nations to bring them back to God.
[00:39:38] I've had several episodes before where I've talked about Torah and trying to realign our idea of Torah with the ancient world instead of seeing Torah observance as a legal lawkeeping thing, following a law code. Torah is far bigger than that. It is covenant instruction. It's a way of life. It's a way of wisdom. And yes, it does order Israel-specific worship and all kinds of things there. But when you see it as a way to shine out to the nations, then Torah does not form guardrails that separate. It is supposed to welcome people into it as a heaven on earth pattern.
[00:40:22] These are wisdom patterns. The tabernacle and the temple were meant to be earthly sacred spaces that corresponded to God's heavenly presence. The priesthood was meant to be Israel's worship ordered around approach to God in that appropriate way. And Sabbath and the calendar was Israel's time that was ordered around God's rhythm. And we could go down the whole list of a whole bunch of other things, right? These are supposed to be heavenly realities. So it's not just, again, about checking off the list and making it a set of law codes.
[00:41:01] This is a really difficult thing to talk about because you can really speak past each other really easily. Like, oh, are you actually saying that somebody needs to be in accordance with Torah and follow all of the rules in order to have a Torah-shaped life? And in response to that, I would say, "Well, not really, but kind of yes." I'm not trying to go down a road that leads to something like Hebrew roots, okay? Torah is not the way that people stay in covenant with God. Living a life with God is the way to stay in a life with God. And Torah shows us that, and we need to understand Torah through the lens of that wisdom. I guess I would boil it down to a difference between Torah being seen as a way to separate versus a way to invite into the knowledge and understanding and relationship and experience of God.
[00:42:01] Because think about it. Think about the state of Israel. They are surrounded by nations. The nations are disordered because they are associated with other powers. But Israel belongs to Yahweh. Israel's life is to be a counter witness amongst the nations. They're not just a nation with better rules. They're the covenant people where Yahweh's rule is displayed on Earth. So in a world where nations are disordered under other powers, Israel is called to be the earthly people of Yahweh's heavenly court. How does that not make Torah really important to understand?
[00:42:43] It's a really not great thing to see it as Torah bad, Christ good. The issue is that Torah's covenant reality reaches its intended goal in Christ. So now, the way to be Torah observant now, if you wanna call it that, is not through everybody follows Israel's laws. Because again, they were given to Israel to make Israel a light for the nations and to bring them in.
[00:43:15] It is not about Torah being a set of boundary markers. The way to be Torah observant now is to be in Christ. That does include things like obedience and understanding the story of Israel and living into it in the ways that fit within being in Christ. Torah is not fake or bad or legalistic. But it is aimed at Christ. It is aimed at the life of the church.
[00:43:45] Again, the question is not whether God's people should live in faithfulness to God's instruction. Of course they should. The question is where Torah reaches its goal, and Paul shows us that the answer is in Christ. The pattern of Torah in history was never the final union of heaven and earth. That union of heaven and earth comes personally in Christ, the faithful Son, the true Israelite, the one in whom Torah's goal arrives, and from whom the new humanity is formed.
[00:44:22] So the center of atonement, the center of what Torah was pointing toward, what we have from Abraham to Israel through into Christ. The center of all that has to be seen as the Incarnation. Okay, so this is the primary at-one-ment atonement event. The Son becoming human, heaven and earth united personally in him, not just symbolically or ritually or however else, like metaphorically. This is a literal reality. The eternal Son assumes human nature. The Creator is entering creation. The divine Word becomes flesh. There's so many different ways to say it.
[00:45:11] And so when we're talking about atonement, if we relegate that to what Jesus did at the cross, we're missing the whole entire reality. And the Incarnation does include everything that Jesus is doing, right? From His coming in, to His life, to His preaching, to His suffering and His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and then also living into the reality of the church age with all of that, the bringing of the Spirit and the making of the body of Christ in the church.
[00:45:47] Again, this is from Genesis 1 forward. Because Adam was made as God's image. He was called to rule under God. He was called to serve and guard sacred space. But that didn't happen. But in Christ, the new Adam, the last Adam, the true image and the faithful human appears. This is the picture of atonement. I think the reality was that Christ was always going to come because this is the fulfillment of the whole creation project.
[00:46:21] Colossians 1:15 tells us that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. That is not to say that He was actually a creature. But this is calling to the actual reality of Genesis 1. This is deeply embedded in the whole chapter on resurrection glory of 1 Corinthians 15. We can go into Hebrews 2, Christ as the faithful human, especially echoing humanity's vocation from Psalm 8. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, quote, "In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." End quote.
[00:47:10] This is one of the things that I find difficult. We tend to use similar images, right? We use metaphors. We use Christianese to try and get across the point, and sometimes it just ends up in this center of our brain where this is what we say to answer questions in church. But this is the literal answer to the divine council disorder.
[00:47:35] So the Incarnation of God Himself leads to humans leading faithful lives. This is the whole package not only of problems solved that occur in history, but also just the ultimate purpose of creation. And as central as the Incarnation is, things still don't end there because we have to move into the idea of Christ forming a people who share in the union that he created. And that union is formed by the Spirit.
[00:48:08] I don't want to just create a new Christianese reality for you here, but I'm trying to set the stage for reading Paul in Ephesians and Galatians and Romans to show what the actual story that he's talking about is. What is the actual atonement? Because if atonement is simply about legal status, then we have a lot of passages in Paul that aren't really gonna make a whole lot of sense.
[00:48:35] But really, we have a structure of new humanity being created. It is created on account of the ruptures that have happened in the past, where Gentiles were once alienated. They were strangers to the covenants of promise. They were far off, but they're brought near in Christ. The dividing wall is broken down, and a new humanity is created. There's reconciliation. There is access to the Father in the Spirit. And this is all Ephesians 2 stuff.
[00:49:06] You don't really get any more atonement, at-one-ment than this. Because reconciliation is not just vertical and individual, but it is vertical, it is horizontal with each other, it is covenantal, and it is very, very cosmic. We have access to the Father in one Spirit through Christ as one new humanity.
[00:49:32] And that reality has to sit within the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Not because the Deuteronomy 32 worldview is all about spiritual beings, but because it is about the reality of the heavenly and the earthly mirroring each other and needing to come into union because otherwise it keeps getting disordered, disrupted, and we have all of this unfaithful boundary crossing. What we need is faithful boundary crossing that actually keeps things in alignment with each other.
[00:50:07] So Abraham was promised blessing for the nations. Israel was the single covenant family through whom the blessing would come. In Christ, the nations are brought near. They become fellow heirs. They share in the promise. They're incorporated into the people of God without becoming Torah-bound, without becoming slaves again, but maintaining the freedom that God wants us to have, because we are now no longer slaves, but we are free in Christ. Gentile inclusion was never plan B, but it's the Abrahamic promise coming into fulfillment. You can bring all of this back into Ephesians 3 with the mystery that the Gentiles are also fellow heirs, members of the same body, sharers in the promise of Christ. And this is made known not only on earth, but also to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
[00:51:05] The church is God's answer displayed before the powers. The nations are reclaimed. Jew and Gentile are united, and humanity is restored in Christ.
[00:51:18] Atonement, at-one-ment, does have at its heart the idea of God dwelling amongst His people. And you don't get that any better than with the Incarnation and with the establishment of the church. So atonement cannot just be a legal status. It cannot be. It has to be a reality that is actively being lived out. Because God's not just gonna live amongst us if we are only living a facade. But we truly have to be the body of Christ.
[00:51:51] Now, something I have noticed before that has really captivated me is that we actually have three types of body of Christ. We have the incarnate body, which is the primary instance of the body of Christ. We also have the Eucharistic body that we participate in Christ's self-giving life when we partake of the table. But we also have the church, the ecclesial body, and we are the people formed in union with him because he was incarnate and because we participate in the life with him.
[00:52:28] It's not just a metaphor for belonging in a social group, but it's a participation category. The Incarnate Son is forming an active people who share in His life by the Spirit. I'm gonna keep saying this, but it's not just a legal status. It's not just an imputation. It can't be because the Spirit is the agent of the new humanity who actively does things in us. We are actively formed by the Spirit. We are joined to Christ through the Spirit. The Spirit makes us sons in the Son. He writes God's ways on the tablets of our heart. He gives us access to the Father, and He makes the people of God an actual temple, individually and collectively.
[00:53:15] The Spirit is the first fruits or the down payment of our resurrection inheritance. This is a full-on lived-in reality. I'm bringing all of this up because I think it's really very foundational to understand Galatians three and other passages that the PSA defender is going to bring up.
[00:53:37] Because if atonement is framed as penalty removal, then the new humanity becomes secondary to that. In fact, I'm not really sure how it connects to that at all. These are very distinct things. The righteousness of Christ is supposedly imputed to us, and then somehow or other we become the new humanity that is glorified and transformed.
[00:54:02] But I don't see a direct connection there within the framing of PSA. But what we see in Scripture is that Christ's work is creating a people, and the goal is not just to declare us not guilty, but to provide us with communion and inheritance and the Spirit and resurrection, and we literally become a new creation. And so the penal framework may try to explain how guilt is dealt with. But in reality, the guilt is dealt with because we become righteous. We become something. We're not just acquitted, but we become in union with God because of our change of reality.
[00:54:44] Okay, so let's bring all of this back together as best I can. I know that I've hit on a lot of things in this episode. But everything I'm trying to do is moving towards this idea that humanity is made for a heavenly-earthly vocation, that there has been a crisis of heaven and earth that has been out of alignment. And Abraham's offspring point toward fixing that. Israel and Torah are the earthly covenant life that are patterned after the heavenly order. Then we get Christ who comes and unites heaven and earth in himself, and this is the way that the new humanity is formed in Christ by the Spirit.
[00:55:30] Atonement is resurrected humanity, sons of God in the Son, shining with borrowed glory, sharing in Christ's inheritance and reign. That is the divine council in a nutshell. That is what it has always meant to be. The biblical story doesn't just end with forgiven humanity. And it doesn't even end with humans restored to Eden. But we become glorified and unified in Christ. We participate in God's life by grace, in union with Christ. We're not becoming divine by nature, but we are being conformed to him, and that is a real reality.
[00:56:14] All right. There are quite a few other places we could go to for looking at this. We have, of course, Romans eight with the sons and the heirs and the glory. We have 1 John 3, where we shall be like Him. And I know that's a really difficult passage. Because how do we understand this idea that whoever practices righteousness is righteous, and whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil? How do we understand that? Because if we sin, then does that make us a son of the devil?
[00:56:48] We can go back to that passage in Matthew. It is not just about breaking a commandment. It is not just about committing a sin. It is about growing in that. And John also tells us that we lie if we say that we have no sin in us. A better framing for this is that those born of God do not belong to sin as their source, their master, their pattern, or their destiny. Because we have been rescued, we have been delivered, we are in Christ, and so we are saved by Him. We are God's children now. What we are has not yet appeared, but we are being conformed like Him.
[00:57:33] A passage like 1 John 3 is really easy to misread because we have to read it within the whole context of the letter. Surprisingly, right? 1 John 1 tells us if we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. 1 John 2 tells us that if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father. But 1 John 3 gives us the other side. Those born of God cannot make peace with sin as their way of life. Okay, so there's a pattern that we are to live in. I keep saying this, but it is a real reality. And I think that ideas like PSA kind of sideline that.
[00:58:13] Couple of more passages that I will just mention for you to look at yourself. 2 Peter 1, where we have the participation in the divine nature. And of course, we have pretty much the full Book of Revelation where the saints are reigning. We have heaven and Earth united. And the story doesn't end with us just floating away into heaven.
[00:58:36] All right, so next time we are going to get into Galatians 3, and I really hope that the framing of this episode is going to make that episode a little bit easier to understand, because we're gonna have to get into Torah, we're gonna have to get into curse, we're gonna have to get into what Paul is saying in Galatians at large. So there is a lot of ground to cover in that.
[00:59:00] But PSA advocates are very right to see this as a crucial piece of what we should understand atonement being. And what it is is not what they say it is, because again, there is an actual reality that is lived out within the church, and it connects to the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. And so atonement theory is not just a side issue of the Divine Council worldview. It is very crucial. It is a very core part of what we need to understand within it.
[00:59:34] Now, I'm gonna end here for a moment with just a few reflection points about spiritual warfare within the framing that I've just presented. Because if the nations were disordered at Babel, then the regathering of the nations in Christ is not just sending out missions. It's not just about bringing people into membership books of a church. It is about a real transformation and glorification of people. So spiritual warfare is not really mainly even about chasing demons or decoding the powers. It is legitimately about allegiance being transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Son, not just legally, but truly.
[01:00:21] You have become new. You have been made new. That is spiritual warfare. The formation of one new humanity in Christ is itself an act of warfare against the powers. Jew and Gentile being reconciled, enemies being made family, nations brought into Abraham's blessing, that is God's wisdom displayed to the rulers and authorities. That is spiritual warfare.
[01:00:49] And the church's unity here is not just a side issue as well. In a divine council frame, unity across people and groups is a sign that the powers have been defeated and the nations are being regathered. And I would say that's an intra-denominational task. I would say we are called to that today.
[01:01:10] I would also say holiness is warfare because it is allegiance embodied. Torah fulfilled in Christ, walked out by the Spirit, is not just about morality or law keeping, but it is a life ordered under the true King instead of the powers. I also want to say that worship is warfare because it recenters human and national allegiance around Yahweh and the Lamb. Resurrection is the final defeat of the powers because death is the last weapon of the old order.
[01:01:45] The sons of God revealed in glory means the rulers of this age do not get the last word. Becoming sons of God is not a passive status only. And this is crucial. It is restored vocation and active living. So spiritual warfare is, again, not about figuring out who's who on the bad guy list. It is about living a real reality within God's love and life in covenant worship. And that includes a vertical aspect, but also a horizontal aspect. So in that sense, the deepest spiritual warfare is not our fascination with the powers, but it is God's formation of sons and daughters in Christ.
[01:02:32] A spirit-filled people, drawn from the nations, loyal to the true king, shining with resurrection hope, and bearing witness that the old rulers are losing their world.
[01:02:45] All right. I am gonna go ahead and end with that today. That is what I want you to bring to the conversation when we come to Galatians 3. As always, I thank you guys for listening. I really deeply appreciate all of you who share the episodes, who participate in the various ways that you do, and especially to those of you who financially support me in small ways through being part of my community at On This Rock or through Patreon or PayPal.
[01:03:17] You guys have kept me going. I'm not even kidding. You guys have done so much for me, even though it is small. It's not large. It's not like I'm able to live on just doing the podcast because I can't. But you guys do help me deeply, and I want to acknowledge that and thank you for it. But at any rate, I will go ahead and close today's episode and wish you all a blessed week. And we will see you later.
