This morning my study/devotion was particularly enlightening. The author expressed his devotional thoughts under the title “Penitence, Not Penance.” Here’s what he wrote (from the standpoint of one speaking to God): “You have taken my iniquity, so willingly, so completely. Why do I try to take it back and carry it myself? Why do I insist on paying a debt that is no longer there? What you really want is for me to let go of it, to let you have it forever. Penitence, not payment – that is what you want.” One of the passages referenced was Is. 53:6, which supports his thoughts so well (BTW, I’m happy to cite the author at anyone’s request).

The more I pondered these thoughts in light of Scripture, I found myself asking a simple question: Why has God given us the Holy Scriptures? Isn’t it because through them he had something he wished to reveal to man, something that man could not know on his own? If that is the case, then how would we sum up what God wants to reveal to us through Scripture?

Is it that I need to do something to get right with him? If that were so, then I would not need the Holy Scriptures to tell me that, for my own guilty conscience, without ever hearing one word of Scripture, will tell me that I’ve done wrong and somehow need to make up for it. Surely the Holy Scriptures seek to tell me something more, something that I cannot know by nature.

They do just that. They tell me that Jesus has done it all, not some, not part, but all of it. That needs to be revealed to me, for I cannot know that by nature.

To make the message of Scripture say anything less than that Christ has done EVERYTHING for me is to render it unnecessary, because anything else I could figure out on my own. At the very least, I could draw the conclusion (as many have) that God expects something from me, and so long as I try really hard he’ll throw me a bone to make up for wherever I fall short. Is that all Jesus is, the “bone” God threw us to make up for what we couldn’t achieve on our own? If so, I don’t need the Holy Scriptures to tell me that. Multitudes of people already believe that God will “grade on a curve” and don’t need a Bible to tell them that. Sadly, they will find out one day how mistaken they were.

God gave us the Holy Scriptures to reveal something foreign to us, something we could not otherwise know. That message is that Jesus did it all for us, and God wanted me to have 100% confidence that because Jesus did it all, I WILL be in heaven. I couldn’t know that unless God revealed it to me so clearly through the Bible.

Yet, his death on the cross was not the end-all-be all event. Lest we forget, Christ rose the third day with a glorified resurrected body of flesh and bone. He appeared before Mary, His Disciples. He ministered unto them for forty more days and then ascended into heaven with his glorified resurrected body. What was finished? The answer is not Christ’s death on the cross to redeem mankind, but Christ accomplishing the will of the father and doing that which he was sent to do. It was Christ’s accomplishment of his Fathers will that was finished.

Therefore, your assertion that Christ’s statement is essentially saying that the sinners debt is paid in full is to negate the full aspect of the nature of God’s plan of Salvation, in that not only to redeem mankind from their fallen state but to bring to pass man’s immortality and eternal life. Much like Christ was risen from the dead, so also will every person be risen from the dead. Their spirit and physical bodies will be reunited and they will stand before God to give an account of their mortal life. Those who have rebelled and sinned against God, having died in their transgressions, rejecting the gospel message will receive a lesser reward than those who have embraced the powerful truth of God’s true gospel.

The Bible is not inerrant. It has been translated countless times and mistakes have crept in and some things were purposely left out. That doesn’t mean it is wrong though. It is accurate where it has been translated correctly. But no one has the original copies to reference. The earliest texts, the Latin Vulgate, were compiled by Jerome in the late fourth century. But the manuscripts used by the editors of the current KGV used only the Latin version, not the Greek which is the laguage the original writers used. Jerome translated the Greek to Latin and the KGV editors translated the Latin to English. Bart Ehrman writes about the process in his book “Misquoting Jesus”. It is widely available in book stores. He is a professor at U of No Carolina Chapel Hill religion department. He got his PhD in Theology from Princeton and is a legitimate scholar. He also attended Moody Bible Institute, and Wheaton College where he became well grounded in Evangelical theology. One more thing – you won’t see him hawking “Bible Retreat” timeshares on religious TV which means he isn’t trying to “sell” his religion for profit.

JLFuller
http://mormonthing.wordpress.com/

Think of it like a marathon that you know you cannot finish on your own. Jesus does not carry you all the way else you have not gained anything from it. No you must do all you can to finish and then he picks you up and helps you to the finish line. this way you have gained from the experience.