April 20, 2013 - Church at Worship

Sermon: "The Scandal of the Cross :The New Testament and the Atonement"- Jon Paulien

Pastoral Welcome: Genevieve Koh Isidro

Alumni Welcome: Craig Jackson

Meditation:

“God is little more than a cosmic thug whose specialty is ritualized human sacrifice and whose preferred method of redemption is public torture of dissenters. If you do not ‘accept’ this distasteful belief because you do not accept that torture can be redemptive, you yourself will go to hell and be tortured for all eternity.” – Leonard Swaim
 
 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness. . . . The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. – 1 Cor 1:23, 25, KJV
 
 “Christ did not yield up His life till He had accomplished the work which He came to do, and with His parting breath He exclaimed, “It is finished.” John 19:30. The battle had been won. His right hand and His holy arm had gotten Him the victory. . . . Satan was defeated, and knew that his kingdom was lost. . . . Not until the death of Christ was the character of Satan clearly revealed to the angels or to the unfallen worlds. The archapostate had so clothed himself with deception that even holy beings had not understood his principles. They had not clearly seen the nature of his rebellion.
           
God could have destroyed Satan and his sympathizers as easily as one can cast a pebble to the earth; but He did not do this. Rebellion was not to be overcome by force. Compelling power is found only under Satan’s government. The Lord’s principles are not of this order. His authority rests upon goodness, mercy, and love; and the presentation of these principles is the means to be used. God’s government is moral, and truth and love are to be the prevailing power. – Desire of Ages, 758-759

Scripture Reading: Romans 5:8, 10, TNIV- Howard Sulzle, SAHP ’63- 1st service
 Ghina Katrib, SAHP ’03 -2nd service

Sermon Notes: 

In my daily experience, and that of the people I know and love, life often becomes overwhelming and depressing. Were we left to ourselves, self-medication might seem the only
way out. In the words of a young person I know, “Life stinks.” It is filled with tragedy, pain, suffering, and rejection. Into this mess God Himself came down and tasted a depth of tragedy,
pain, suffering, and rejection that exceeds any we have known. And however we describe
what happened on the cross, it makes all the difference. Because we have been saved, redeemed, expiated, acquitted, rescued, taught, and brought into a new covenant with God, we
can begin to see the good, the true, the beautiful, and the just, that God has poured into this
world. And in seeing a down payment on all these things, we also have hope in the greater
glories yet to come.

The Apostle Paul loved the cross of Jesus Christ even more than I know how to. Yet it was
in secular, indulgent, self-absorbed Corinth that he discovered the cross was also the most
controversial of all Christian doctrines. A literalistic translation of 1 Corinthians 1:23 reads:
“Christ crucified is to the Jews a scandalous thing and to the Greeks the stuff of morons.” Not
much has changed since Paul’s day. Recently, a self-professed “heretical, progressive Christian” proclaimed, “God is little more than a cosmic thug whose specialty is ritualized human
sacrifice and whose preferred method of redemption is public torture of dissenters. If you do
not ‘accept’ this distasteful belief because you do not accept that torture can be redemptive,
you yourself will go to hell and be tortured for all eternity.” Such an assessment is shocking to
old-timers like me, yet it is more and more typical of the culture in which our youth are being
raised.

So it is high time that we explore once again what the Bible has to say about the atonement
that took place on the cross. What is atonement? Was the cross absolutely necessary? What
really happened at the cross, and why? These questions find even the authors of the Bible
searching for human words adequate to describe this amazing event, where “God was in
Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” 2 Cor 5:19, NASB.

Jon Paulien, Dean
School of Religion
Loma Linda University