05/02/23 BELIEVE THE PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE

05/02/23 BELIEVE THE PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE

I know that the "sovereignty" of sinning religion (supposed Christianity, which denies that God saves believers from the power and pollution of sin in this world), is not the sovereignty of the Bible or the sovereignty of the God of the Bible because the true God of sovereignty is righteous, just, loving, patient, kind, forbearing, long-suffering (slow to anger), full of mercy (delaying judgment and eager to forgive) and Christ provides salvation and cleansing from ALL SIN to WHOSOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM.

The God of the Bible is different from the god's of this world because He is both JUST and THE JUSTIFIER of those who believe (as an act of the free will, not the imposed act of God, irrespective of God given, free human choice).
The sovereignty of a false god is eager to execute judgment, mete out wrath, take pleasure in the death of those who die eternally, denies the wicked opportunity to turn from their evil ways, and he intentionally created people for the express purpose to sin and be punished, by which he claims to get pleasure and glory.

Though the true God is righteous and just and He does exercise wrath, this does not preclude the redemptive nature and work of God. He not only exercises love, HE IS love. He reveals Himself as merciful (delaying judgment and eager to forgive), loving, kind, forbearing, patient, longsuffering (slow to anger).

God reveals Himself as both redemptive and punitive, but He is only punitive when His free gift of love and redemption has been resisted and rejected. God is eager to provide, enable and reward righteousness, but He will also reveal and judge unrighteousness in those who turn from Him. God is not driven by anger, wrath, vengeance, merciless sovereignty. He is driven by His Love, His redemptive nature, His eagerness to reconcile the lost and restore the fallen. Otherwise He would not have made the Sacrifice for us on Calvary.

As the heat from the sun hardens clay and softens wax, so the sovereignty of God redeems the repentant and condemns the rebellious. God enables people to repent, God calls people to repentance; God blesses people (in order to draw them to Himself), and God afflicts people (in order to drive them to Himself), then God judges people according to their response, whether clay or wax.

God is not eager to show His wrath. God is eager to show His love, mercy, redemption, reconciliation. God has taken steps to deliver sinners, all of us, from His justified wrath.

God did not pour out His wrath on the cross, God lovingly sacrificed His Son on the cross to deliver us from His wrath; He satisfied the demand for wrath against our sins, for those who believe that Jesus takes away our sins .
The cross is a demonstration of God's love for us, not an act of wrath against His Son.

Jesus suffered for us, as a Sacrifice, to save us from the wrath of God. Jesus died for us, that is, He died as a Sacrifice, not as a sinner. He paid the price of death as a sacrifice, not as a victim or perpetrator.

He was our substitute as a sacrifice, not as an actual malefactor (criminal, evil doer, one who harms another), though men saw Him as being stricken, smitten of God, afflicted and though He was numbered with the transgressors, He was sacrificed for our sins, an offering for our transgressions. He took upon Himself our sins, as a scapegoat, on which the priests symbolically placed the sins of Israel to be carried away. Jesus is the Lamb of God that died for the sins of the world and He is the scapegoat Who takes away our sin. When the Bible says that He, Who knew no sin, became sin, it should be understood that He became our SIN SACRIFICE (as the term and phrase is actually used in the Old Testament). He did not become adultery, deception, murder, perversion. He became the sacrifice, the atonement, the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sins. This is what is meant by Jesus bearing our sins and taking them away.

God's justice (which is certain) is satisfied through God's mercy (which delays and even removes judgment for sin). If we do not accept God's merciful sacrifice by faith, we will be required to face God's vengeance and justice and punishment for our own sins. 

Romans 1:1-11
1 Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.
2 But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.
3 And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?
4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
5 But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
6 who "will render to each one according to his deeds":
7 eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality;
8 but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness--indignation and wrath,
9 tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek;
10 but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
11 For there is no partiality with God.