Latest / Reformed Thinking / Could God Forgive Sin Without Satisfaction? Owen Answers Twisse | John Owen

Transcript

Could God Forgive Sin Without Satisfaction? Owen Answers Twisse | John Owen · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed thinking. I'm so glad you could join us
• 0:02
  today, because we are zeroing in on a well, a highly specific,
• 0:07
  historically monumental theological text.
• 0:11
  Yeah, we really are. It's a weighty one, it is.
• 0:13
  We are looking at an excerpt from Chapter 13 of John Owens, a
• 0:16
  Dissertation on Divine Justice and the Mission for our
• 0:20
  conversation today. Our deep dive is to answer one
• 0:23
  massive question, right? Can the Almighty forgive sins by
• 0:27
  His sheer omnipotence without requiring a satisfaction?
• 0:30
  Which is a huge question. Huge meaning.
• 0:33
  Could the creator of the universe simply wave his hand,
• 0:36
  bypass any penalty or atonement, and just let sin slide?
• 0:40
  Yeah. So we've got a heavyweight
• 0:41
  theological bout here. On one side is a scholar named
• 0:44
  Twist, and he's drawing heavily on the medieval arguments of
• 0:47
  Done SCOTUS. Right, SCOTUS is a big influence
• 0:49
  there. And Twist argues that God,
• 0:51
  possessing absolute capability and might, could theoretically
• 0:54
  dismiss sin if you wanted to. There's nothing stopping him
• 0:57
  from doing so. That's his claim, yeah.
• 0:59
  And then on the other side, we had John Owen mounting A
• 1:01
  relentless defense of the strict necessity of divine justice.
• 1:05
  And I think you really need to set the stakes for you here,
• 1:08
  because the stakes are as high as they get.
• 1:11
  This isn't, it's not academic hair splitting or, you know,
• 1:15
  hypothetical philosophizing. If God has the capacity to let
• 1:19
  sin slide by sheer choice, then the entire basis of the moral
• 1:24
  universe shifts. Yeah, it really does.
• 1:27
  The absolute necessity of the cross comes into question.
• 1:31
  I mean, if the Almighty could have pardoned sin by a Fiat of
• 1:34
  His will, then the agonizing death of the Son wasn't strictly
• 1:37
  required. It becomes an option.
• 1:38
  Yes, a choice among many rather than the singular, unavoidable
• 1:42
  meeting place of His holy nature and the salvation of the elect.
• 1:46
  John Oman's goal is to prove that justice is as essential to
• 1:48
  the nature of God as is a very existence.
• 1:51
  It isn't a coat he puts on and takes off, it's who he is.
• 1:54
  So to understand why God can't just wave away sin, we have to
• 1:57
  look at how Twist tries to trap Owen using God's own attributes.
• 2:00
  Oh. It's such a clever trap too.
• 2:01
  It is Twist sets up this dilemma.
• 2:03
  He says if God cannot forgive without a satisfaction, it must
• 2:07
  be either because his justice prevents it or his omnipotence
• 2:10
  prevents it, right. And then Twist claims neither
• 2:15
  can be proven. So he's trying to corner Owen by
• 2:18
  dividing God's characteristics. Yeah.
• 2:20
  Pulling them apart. But separating God's attributes
• 2:23
  like this, it feels like asking if water is wet because of its
• 2:27
  hydrogen or its oxygen. That is a great way to put it.
• 2:31
  It's a false division. You know you can't pull the
• 2:33
  molecule apart and still have the substance of water.
• 2:36
  When Twist pits the Almighty's capability against his justice,
• 2:40
  he's playing a philosophical shell game.
• 2:42
  He absolutely is is, and Owen looks at Twist's argument and
• 2:46
  dismisses it as a trifling view. Trifling.
• 2:48
  I love that. Word.
• 2:49
  Yeah, he's calling it a trifling view of the divine attributes
• 2:53
  because it completely misunderstands divine
• 2:55
  simplicity. OK, unpack that for us.
• 2:57
  Well, God is the collection of parts.
• 2:58
  He doesn't have a Justice Department that argues with an
• 3:01
  omnipotence department in some heavenly boardroom, right?
• 3:03
  Right. Owen argues that what God cannot
• 3:05
  do in respect to one essential property, he cannot do in
• 3:09
  respect to any The attributes of God are perfectly unified.
• 3:13
  They're all one. Yes, they are identical with His
• 3:16
  essence. If something violates His
• 3:19
  justice, His omnipotence won't override that justice to
• 3:22
  accomplish it. The divine attributes don't
• 3:25
  compete. They operate in perfect harmony
• 3:28
  because they are the singular nature of the One true God.
• 3:30
  And Owen used the example of truth to illustrate this unified
• 3:34
  nature. Like we all agree, it
• 3:35
  contradicts God's nature to lie, right?
• 3:37
  God's truth. So Owen says if there is
• 3:40
  anything which God cannot do in respect of truth, he cannot do
• 3:44
  that in any manner whatsoever. He can't use his immense
• 3:48
  capability to tell a lie. His might doesn't give him the
• 3:52
  ability to act against his own truth, truthfulness.
• 3:54
  That's a perfect parallel. So this is attempt to say, well,
• 3:57
  maybe God's might allows him to bypass his justice.
• 4:00
  It falls completely flat. If it violates justice, it
• 4:03
  violates God, and therefore God cannot do it.
• 4:05
  Period. Which brings us to a really
• 4:07
  crucial theological distinction Owen makes regarding how we
• 4:10
  understand the capabilities of the Almighty.
• 4:12
  OK, Owen introduces the concept of the divided sense.
• 4:16
  The divided sense. Right.
• 4:17
  In the acts of the divine will that are purely free, God has
• 4:21
  infinite capability. So in a divided sense, meaning
• 4:24
  looking at his capability in the abstract, apart from any
• 4:27
  specific decrees he has made, God possesses the sheer
• 4:31
  capability to create 1000 new worlds.
• 4:35
  Yeah, abstractly speaking. Right.
• 4:37
  He could have made a universe with entirely different physical
• 4:40
  laws, or he could have chosen not to create anything at all.
• 4:44
  That's his absolute capability in the abstract.
• 4:46
  OK, I follow you. But once he makes a decree like
• 4:48
  creating this specific world with rational creatures subject
• 4:52
  to his moral law, he operates within the absolute necessity of
• 4:56
  his own established order. Oh, that makes sense.
• 4:59
  He can't contradict the order he is decreed because that would
• 5:01
  contradict his own wisdom and truth.
• 5:03
  So when you, the listener, think about the capabilities of the
• 5:05
  Creator, you can't pit his omnipotence against his justice.
• 5:09
  No, you can't. They are a perfectly unified
• 5:11
  whole. You can't imagine a scenario
• 5:13
  where God flexes his muscles to overpower his own moral
• 5:16
  standards. Yeah, that would be absurd.
• 5:18
  If he established a universe where rational creatures owe him
• 5:21
  perfect obedience, and those creatures fall into utter ruin
• 5:25
  and rebellion, his justice demands a response.
• 5:28
  The necessary response. Right.
• 5:30
  His omnipotence won't be used to smuggle those rebels out the
• 5:33
  back door of the courtroom without the demands of justice
• 5:35
  being fully met. Precisely, and because Owen
• 5:38
  thoroughly demolishes that first trap regarding the unity of the
• 5:42
  attributes, Twis has to pivot. He's got to try a new angle.
• 5:46
  Yeah, he realizes he can't divide the attributes, so he
• 5:49
  attacks the idea of omnipotence directly.
• 5:52
  Twist argues that if God has absolute might, saying he can't
• 5:56
  pardon sin is a literal contradiction in terms.
• 5:59
  Right, because absolute might should mean you can do anything
• 6:02
  according to Twist. That's his logic.
• 6:04
  He tries to argue that a truly supreme being must have the
• 6:07
  prerogative to let things go. And to prove his point, Twist
• 6:11
  points to human behavior. The human analogy.
• 6:14
  He says we humans pardon our enemies all the time.
• 6:17
  It's our moral duty to forgive those who wrong us.
• 6:20
  Why can't the Creator of the universe do what we do on a
• 6:22
  daily basis? And this objection resonates
• 6:25
  with so many people today. I hear this all the time.
• 6:28
  Oh, constantly. Let's look at an everyday
• 6:30
  scenario to strengthen Twist's premise before we dismantle it,
• 6:34
  because we need to be fair to the argument.
• 6:35
  Sure, if someone borrows my car and while perking it they scrape
• 6:39
  the side against a concrete pillar, it's a nasty scratch.
• 6:42
  Ouch. Yeah.
• 6:44
  They return the keys, apologize profusely and confess what they
• 6:48
  did. Now as the owner of the car, I
• 6:50
  have the right to demand they pay for The Body Shop repairs,
• 6:54
  but I also have the capacity to just look at them and say don't
• 6:57
  worry about it, I forgive you, I'll absorb the cost myself, I
• 7:00
  can just let it go. You have that personal right.
• 7:02
  Exactly. I mean, that's spot on.
• 7:05
  So Twist is asking why can't the sovereign of the universe absorb
• 7:08
  the cost of sin? Why can't he look at our
• 7:11
  rebellion and say don't worry about it, I'll just let it go?
• 7:13
  It sounds appealing on the surface, it really does.
• 7:16
  But Owen mounts A devastating counter offensive against this
• 7:20
  human analogy, and he breaks it down into four distinct areas
• 7:23
  where human forgiveness and divine forgiveness are entirely
• 7:28
  different categories. OK, let's go through those.
• 7:30
  First, he points out the difference between hurt and
• 7:32
  guilt. Human forgiveness only deals
• 7:35
  with personal hurt or injury. Like my car?
• 7:38
  Yes, like the car. If someone scratches your car or
• 7:41
  insults you or wrongs you personally, you can forgive that
• 7:44
  specific injury. But divine forgiveness deals
• 7:47
  with guilt on a cosmic scale. Wow, cosmic scale.
• 7:51
  Because sin isn't just a personal slight against God's
• 7:54
  feelings. It's an injury to the good of
• 7:56
  the entire universe. It's a violation of the
• 7:58
  fundamental moral order. You can forgive a personal herd,
• 8:02
  but you can't absolve universal guilt simply by brushing it off.
• 8:06
  And we also have to look at the difference between a private
• 8:09
  citizen and a public official. Like in my car analogy.
• 8:13
  I'm a private citizen, right? I can drop a grudge out of
• 8:16
  charity. But think about a judge sitting
• 8:18
  on the bench in a courtroom. A convicted bank robber is
• 8:21
  standing before him. Yeah, totally different
• 8:23
  situation. The judge might be a very kind,
• 8:25
  charitable person in his private life, but in his capacity as a
• 8:29
  judge, he can't legally look at the bank robber and say, you
• 8:32
  know what, I'm feeling generous today.
• 8:34
  I forgive you. You're free to go.
• 8:35
  He'd be removed from the bench. Absolutely.
• 8:37
  The judge has a right of government that he cannot
• 8:40
  renounce without hurting the public.
• 8:42
  If he lets criminals go, the law loses all meaning and society
• 8:46
  collapses. That is such a crucial point.
• 8:49
  A public person cannot renounce a right of government if doing
• 8:52
  so harms the public good. And this points to Owens third
• 8:56
  distinction, indispensable dominion.
• 8:59
  Indispensable dominion? Yes.
• 9:01
  Human judges derive their authority from a higher source.
• 9:04
  But God's right to rule is natural, supreme, and
• 9:08
  indispensable. He is the ultimate public
• 9:10
  official, the supreme judge of all the earth.
• 9:12
  He can't renounce his right of dominion because doing so would
• 9:15
  mean denying himself. He can't step down from being
• 9:18
  God. He can't pretend that his moral
• 9:20
  law doesn't matter, because his moral law is an expression of
• 9:22
  his own perfect character. For him to ignore sin would be
• 9:26
  for him to act as though he is not the holy Sovereign.
• 9:28
  And the fourth point Owen makes is that impunity is an affront
• 9:31
  to the divine glory. If sin goes completely
• 9:35
  unpunished, the glory of divine justice is insulted with
• 9:39
  impunity. It sends a message to the entire
• 9:42
  cosmos that rebellion against the Creator carries no real
• 9:45
  weight. It's a terrifying thought.
• 9:47
  It would be a catastrophic injury to the moral fabric of
• 9:50
  reality. Owen says that letting sin pass
• 9:53
  unpunished implies a virtual contradiction.
• 9:55
  A virtual contradiction. Right.
• 9:57
  It might not be a formal contradiction in a strict
• 10:00
  grammatical sense, like saying a square is a circle, but in the
• 10:03
  reality of who God is, it's contradictory.
• 10:06
  God is the Supreme Lord. Humans are the subjects.
• 10:09
  Sin violently cuts off this necessary dependence that a
• 10:12
  rational creature owes its creator.
• 10:15
  To restore that balance, to repair that cosmic breach, there
• 10:18
  must be either perfect obedience or punishment.
• 10:20
  There's no third option of just ignoring it.
• 10:23
  This concept of the virtual contradiction is vital for you
• 10:26
  to grasp. The dependence of the creature
• 10:28
  on the creator isn't just a physical reality, it's a moral
• 10:31
  reality. When a creature sins, they're
• 10:34
  attempting to sever that moral dependence.
• 10:37
  They're declaring themselves an independent authority.
• 10:40
  If God were to simply wave that away, He would be validating
• 10:43
  their false independence. He'd be agreeing with them.
• 10:46
  Yes, he would be saying that their rebellion is acceptable or
• 10:49
  at least tolerable. That contradicts his nature as
• 10:53
  the sole supreme authority. To ignore sin is to agree with
• 10:58
  the sinner's premise that God's law isn't absolute.
• 11:01
  You know, there's something truly shocking and Twist's
• 11:04
  argument relying on SCOTUS, they suggest that because God's will
• 11:07
  is free, he could theoretically love sin.
• 11:10
  I know it's jarring. They argue that if he hates sin
• 11:13
  purely by a free choice of his will, he could just as easily
• 11:16
  choose the opposite and love it. When I read that in the sources,
• 11:19
  it honestly stopped me in my tracks.
• 11:20
  Oh. Owen treats that speculation
• 11:22
  with absolute theological horror.
• 11:24
  He points out the massive flaw in SCOTUS and twist his logic.
• 11:28
  They're assuming God's hatred of sin is just an arbitrary choice.
• 11:31
  It's like. Picking a favorite color.
• 11:32
  Exactly. I mean, yes, like choosing to
• 11:34
  paint a room blue instead of red.
• 11:37
  But Owen argues that hating sin is as natural to God as being
• 11:40
  himself. To will good and to love justice
• 11:44
  are identical to his very being. God can't love sin any more than
• 11:48
  he can cease to exist. His nature is perfectly holy,
• 11:52
  which means his reaction to unholiness is a necessary
• 11:56
  natural hatred. It isn't an arbitrary decision.
• 11:59
  Asserting that God could absolutely forgive sin without
• 12:02
  satisfaction inherently contains a double contradiction.
• 12:06
  It assumes God can renounce his indispensable lordship, and it
• 12:10
  assumes he can act against his own holy nature by failing to
• 12:13
  hate that which is evil. But Twist doesn't get up easily.
• 12:16
  He realizes that if God must punish sin, if it's a necessary
• 12:19
  outflow of his nature, then it sounds like God is forced into
• 12:22
  action. That's where he goes next.
• 12:24
  Yeah, this leads to his next attack, which we'll call the
• 12:26
  mindless force Objection. Twist argues that if God can't
• 12:29
  let sin pass, then he punishes from a blind absolute necessity.
• 12:33
  And if he's acting out of absolute necessity, he's robbed
• 12:36
  of his free will. He loses his sovereignty in
• 12:39
  twist his mind. Right.
• 12:40
  He becomes like a machine that dispenses punishment
• 12:42
  automatically the very moment a sin occurs.
• 12:45
  Priss is trying to make Owen's view look ridiculous by reducing
• 12:49
  the Almighty to a mere force of nature.
• 12:52
  If justice demands punishment so rigidly, Twist asks, where is
• 12:56
  God's sovereignty? Where is his free choice?
• 12:59
  How does Owen get out of that? Well, Owen's rebuttal introduces
• 13:03
  a brilliant distinction between two kinds of necessity.
• 13:06
  First, there is absolute necessity.
• 13:08
  This is a necessity of nature that is eternal and non
• 13:11
  contingent. OK, give me an example.
• 13:13
  For example, the Father begetting the Son is an absolute
• 13:16
  necessity of the divine nature. It's eternal.
• 13:18
  It doesn't depend on any outside condition.
• 13:20
  OK, that makes perfect sense. And the second kind of necessity
• 13:23
  Owen introduces is conditional necessity.
• 13:26
  God didn't have to create the world.
• 13:27
  He wasn't lonely or lacking anything.
• 13:30
  He chose to create the universe entirely freely, right?
• 13:33
  But upon the supposition that He chose to create rational beings,
• 13:36
  and upon the supposition that He permitted those rational beings
• 13:39
  to transgress the law of their creation, then it becomes
• 13:42
  conditionally necessary that he punish them.
• 13:44
  Exactly. The punishment is necessary, but
• 13:47
  it's based on a condition that God freely established in the
• 13:50
  first place. He freely chose to speak, speak
• 13:52
  creation into existence. Having chosen to speak, it's
• 13:56
  impossible for Him not to speak truthfully.
• 13:59
  His truthfulness is absolutely necessary, but it's exercised
• 14:03
  upon the condition of His free choice to speak.
• 14:06
  Oh, that's a great parallel. In the same way, he freely chose
• 14:09
  to create moral agents once they send, his justice necessitates
• 14:14
  punishment. He doesn't punish from a blind
• 14:17
  absolute necessity that overrides his will, but from a
• 14:20
  necessity that arises because of the conditions he freely
• 14:23
  decreed. But hold on, you're losing me
• 14:25
  just a bit. I can hear a listener pushing
• 14:27
  back on this asking doesn't that still mean God is reacting on
• 14:30
  autopilot when a sin happens, even if it's a conditional
• 14:33
  necessity? Once the condition is met, isn't
• 14:36
  he just reacting mechanically? It's a fair question.
• 14:38
  Because if the condition triggers the response
• 14:40
  automatically, I don't see where his free will factors into the
• 14:44
  actual act of punishment. And one answers that exact
• 14:47
  concern with the concept of concomitant liberty.
• 14:50
  Concomitant liberty, right? Concomitant liberty means that
• 14:52
  while God punishes necessarily because His holy nature requires
• 14:57
  it, he does so freely, by his own volition and with complete
• 15:00
  understanding. OK, so he's not just a reflex.
• 15:04
  Not at all. He isn't a robot running a
• 15:06
  software program. He acts according to what his
• 15:09
  most holy nature requires, but he does so with total awareness,
• 15:13
  absolute freedom of will, and perfect intention.
• 15:17
  He is entirely engaged in the act of justice.
• 15:19
  The necessity of His nature and the freedom of His will operate
• 15:23
  simultaneously without contradicting each other.
• 15:25
  But then Twist brings up a follow up argument.
• 15:27
  He says, well, if it's a natural necessity to punish, God must
• 15:31
  punish to the maximum extent of his capability.
• 15:33
  Which is a wild jump in logic. It really is.
• 15:35
  The idea is that natural forces expand until they run out of
• 15:38
  energy. A fire burns everything it can
• 15:40
  reach. A flood destroys everything in
• 15:42
  its path until the water recedes.
• 15:44
  Twist argues that if God's justice is a natural necessity,
• 15:48
  he would obliterate everything with maximum force.
• 15:51
  And to answer this, Owen sites the defense made by Macovius.
• 15:55
  Macovius and Owen agree with him, points out that Twist is
• 15:58
  building on a false supposition. He's treating God like a
• 16:02
  senseless, inanimate agent, right?
• 16:04
  The defense is that God punishes as far as his, just not as far
• 16:07
  as he is capable. His omnipotence is infinite, but
• 16:10
  His exercise of punishment is regulated by His perfect
• 16:14
  justice. Wow, that's a beautiful
• 16:16
  distinction. It really is.
• 16:17
  He doesn't blindly unleash infinite destruction just
• 16:20
  because he can. He measures the punishment
• 16:23
  precisely according to the strict demands of justice.
• 16:26
  He does all things freely, with understanding, even when acting
• 16:30
  upon a conditional necessity. He isn't a blind force.
• 16:33
  He is the perfectly wise, perfectly just sovereign.
• 16:36
  You know, this idea of God acting naturally but freely
• 16:39
  brings up another major objection, this time from a
• 16:41
  scholar named Vasius. And this objection brings us
• 16:44
  right to the very heart of the Gospel.
• 16:46
  It really does. It deals with how punishment is
• 16:48
  applied. Vasius argues that natural
• 16:51
  agents act on naturally receptive objects.
• 16:54
  Fire burns. Whatever is closest to it
• 16:56
  doesn't choose what to burn, it just burns.
• 16:58
  That's his claim. So, Vasius says, if God
• 17:01
  punishing sin is a natural necessity, the punishment
• 17:03
  absolutely must fall on the actual individual Sinner.
• 17:07
  It can't be transferred to someone else.
• 17:09
  The fire must consume the specific object that is near it.
• 17:13
  And Owen agrees with Voshias on one point.
• 17:15
  God is indeed a consuming fire, as the scriptures declare.
• 17:19
  But Owen clarifies that he is an intellectual consuming fire.
• 17:23
  An intellectual fire. Yes.
• 17:25
  He isn't a senseless, inanimate force of nature that blindly
• 17:29
  incinerates whatever is in front of it.
• 17:31
  Because he possesses infinite wisdom and concomitant liberty,
• 17:34
  he has the capacity to direct that fire.
• 17:36
  And this is where we see the role of the surety.
• 17:38
  This is the pivotal theological climax of the text.
• 17:41
  It gives me chills every time I think about it.
• 17:43
  Me too. Owen explains that antecedent to
• 17:46
  the actual act of vindicatory justice against the elect, God
• 17:49
  appointed A surety, a substitute.
• 17:51
  He freely chose to appoint someone to stand in the place of
• 17:54
  the guilty. The necessity of the punishment
• 17:57
  is absolute. Yeah, the violated right of God
• 17:59
  must be recovered. The guilt must be dealt with.
• 18:03
  But because God is an intellectual consuming fire, He
• 18:06
  can ordain a specific mechanism for that justice to be
• 18:09
  satisfied. He appointed the surety, and all
• 18:12
  the sins of the elect were laid upon him by that appointment.
• 18:16
  The surety actually becomes the proper object of vindicatory
• 18:19
  justice. The fire of God's wrath doesn't
• 18:22
  fall in the substitute arbitrarily.
• 18:24
  It falls on Him because by divine appointment he has taken
• 18:28
  the Guilk upon himself. And the text references Second
• 18:31
  Corinthians 521 which says He hath made him to be sin for us,
• 18:35
  who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
• 18:38
  in him. Because the surety was appointed
• 18:41
  and the sins were laid upon him, He becomes the proper target for
• 18:43
  the demands of justice. Let's slow down here to make
• 18:46
  sure you, the listener, grasp the immense weight of this.
• 18:49
  It's vital. God's justice absolutely had to
• 18:52
  be satisfied. There was no bypassing it.
• 18:54
  His intellectual liberty, His supreme wisdom, allowed him to
• 18:58
  appoint a substitute to absorb the blow meant for the Sinner.
• 19:01
  The wrath was necessary, but the substitution was the deliberate
• 19:05
  provision of a free and merciful God.
• 19:07
  His justice remains utterly uncompromised and his mercy is
• 19:11
  brilliantly displayed. If Twist were right and God
• 19:15
  could forgive without a satisfaction, then the cross
• 19:17
  becomes a tragic, unnecessary event.
• 19:20
  Just a horrific accident. Yes, but because Owen is right.
• 19:24
  The cross is the supreme demonstration of both the
• 19:26
  unavoidable necessity of justice and the breathtaking depth of
• 19:30
  divine love. The Shuri takes the full measure
• 19:33
  of what is just, perfectly satisfying the conditional
• 19:36
  necessity of punishment. So Twist has one final,
• 19:39
  incredibly intricate trap to spring regarding the rules of
• 19:41
  punishment and reward. It's a double edged sword
• 19:44
  concerning what creatures actually.
• 19:45
  Deserve He's throwing everything at the wall.
• 19:47
  He really is. Twist argues that if sin
• 19:49
  deserves punishment naturally, without God simply choosing to
• 19:52
  make it so, then obedience must naturally deserve a reward.
• 19:55
  He tries to force an equivalent right.
• 19:58
  Then Twist claims this equivalence is absurd.
• 20:00
  He points out that even angels don't naturally merit celestial
• 20:03
  glory simply for doing their jobs.
• 20:06
  He concludes neither punishment nor reward are naturally
• 20:09
  necessary. They are just whatever God
• 20:11
  freely decides them to be. Twist is basically saying that
• 20:14
  if you can't obligate God to reward you for obedience, then
• 20:18
  your disobedience can't obligate God to punish you.
• 20:20
  Which sounds logical until you really examine it.
• 20:23
  Exactly. I mean, that's spot on.
• 20:25
  To dismantle this, Owen provides a masterful 2 part, Anatomy of
• 20:29
  Punishment. He breaks punishment down into
• 20:32
  two distinct categories. First, there's the punishment
• 20:34
  itself, the grievous consequence necessary to recover God's
• 20:38
  violated right. This part, Owen insists, is
• 20:41
  strictly necessary. It is due antecedently to any
• 20:45
  free choice. If sin occurs, punishment must
• 20:48
  follow. That is the necessary component.
• 20:50
  And the second category is where the freedom comes in.
• 20:53
  While the punishment itself is necessary, the mode, the time,
• 20:56
  and the degree of that punishment are governed by God's
• 20:58
  free constitution. God freely decides how the
• 21:01
  punishment is administered, when it's poured out, and the
• 21:04
  specific degrees of severity based on His infinite wisdom.
• 21:08
  The demand for justice is inflexible, but the
• 21:11
  administration of that justice is orchestrated by God's
• 21:14
  sovereign will. Yeah, he doesn't lash out in a
• 21:17
  blind rage. He calculates the mode, time and
• 21:19
  degree with absolute perfection. Yeah.
• 21:22
  He determines whether the punishment falls immediately or
• 21:25
  is delayed. He determines whether it falls
• 21:27
  on the individual Sinner or upon the appointed surety.
• 21:30
  At Golgotha, the that of punishment is necessary.
• 21:33
  The how and when are freely constituted by God.
• 21:37
  Let me bring in an analogy to help visualize this distinction
• 21:40
  for you. Think of it like a massive
• 21:41
  financial debt. Knowing that a legitimate debt
• 21:44
  absolutely must be paid. That's the necessary part.
• 21:47
  You can't just ignore the debt. The.
• 21:48
  Bank won't let you. No they won't.
• 21:50
  The creditors right to his money is indispensable, but whether
• 21:54
  that debt is paid in cash by a bank transfer today, tomorrow or
• 21:58
  in installments is decided by the terms set by the creditor.
• 22:02
  The conditions of the payment. Right.
• 22:04
  That represents the mode and time the debt of sin absolutely
• 22:08
  must be paid to satisfy justice, but the Creator freely
• 22:11
  determined the specific mode and time of that payment at the
• 22:15
  cross. And we must address Twist's trap
• 22:17
  about obedience, too. Twist said that if punishment is
• 22:21
  natural, reward must be natural, too.
• 22:24
  Owen cuts right through this by pointing out a fundamental
• 22:26
  asymmetry of merit. Asymmetry of merit.
• 22:29
  Right, the relationship between obedience and reward isn't the
• 22:32
  same as the relationship between disobedience and punishment.
• 22:34
  They aren't 2 equal sides of a scale.
• 22:36
  And this is where we run into the concept of the unprofitable
• 22:39
  servant. Owen's view on human merit is
• 22:42
  crystal clear. There is no natural obligation
• 22:45
  whatsoever for God to reward us for doing what we are already
• 22:48
  created to do. None.
• 22:49
  Even if a human being were to live a life of perfect, flawless
• 22:52
  obedience after doing all that we're supposed to do, we are
• 22:56
  still just unprofitable servants.
• 22:58
  We have only done our duty. Yeah, God owes us absolutely
• 23:00
  nothing. Nothing at all.
• 23:02
  Any reward he gives is a matter of his free, gracious
• 23:05
  constitution, not a natural debt he owes to the creature.
• 23:08
  This asymmetry is so vital to grasp.
• 23:12
  Obedience is simply maintaining the baseline of the
• 23:14
  relationship. It's doing what a dependent
• 23:17
  creature ought to do. It brings no new profit to the
• 23:20
  creator. Disobedience is entirely
• 23:22
  different. Disobedience actively destroys
• 23:25
  the creatures dependence on God. It's an act of violent rebellion
• 23:29
  that violates God's indispensable right of dominion.
• 23:32
  It's. An attack.
• 23:33
  It is, and because it breaks the fundamental order of the
• 23:36
  universe, a recompense of punishment becomes strictly
• 23:40
  naturally necessary to restore that right.
• 23:43
  You can't earn a wage from God by breathing His air and doing
• 23:46
  what He commanded, but you absolutely incur a necessary
• 23:50
  debt of punishment by rebelling against His throne.
• 23:52
  And the sources briefly touch on Vasis's point about mercy versus
• 23:56
  justice, which perfectly highlights this asymmetry.
• 23:59
  Mosis tries to make a comparison, but Owen shows it's
• 24:02
  improperly instituted. Yeah, there are different
• 24:04
  categories. Mercy is natural to God as a
• 24:06
  habit, a characteristic of His being, but the acts of mercy are
• 24:10
  entirely free. Because there is no natural
• 24:12
  obligation between God and the object of mercy, He isn't forced
• 24:15
  to show mercy to a rebel. Justice operates differently.
• 24:19
  While God isn't obligated to the rebel, he is alligated to
• 24:22
  himself. His justice is indispensable
• 24:25
  because to ignore a violation of His law would be to deny his own
• 24:29
  holiness. Mercy is freely given.
• 24:31
  Justice is strictly required. So we started by looking at
• 24:35
  God's attributes not as competing factions, but as an
• 24:37
  indivisible, unified whole. We examined why dismissing sin
• 24:41
  without a satisfaction wood forest God to contradict his
• 24:44
  very nature as the supreme Judge of the universe.
• 24:47
  We analyzed the brilliant distinction between absolute and
• 24:50
  conditional necessity, proving that God acts freely and
• 24:53
  intelligently even when his holy nature requires him to punish.
• 24:57
  Intellectual consuming fire. Exactly.
• 24:59
  Yes, the intellectual consuming fire.
• 25:00
  We saw how that nature allowed for the appointment of a surety,
• 25:04
  a substitute who could bear the strict demands of justice in our
• 25:06
  place. And we looked at the fundamental
• 25:08
  asymmetry between obedience and disobedience, recognizing that
• 25:12
  while we can never obligate God to reward us, our sin makes our
• 25:15
  punishment an indispensable necessity.
• 25:17
  Here's a final thought. Freedom all over.
• 25:19
  As we close today, if God's justice is an absolute,
• 25:23
  unavoidable necessity, and if we as unprofitable servants are
• 25:27
  completely incapable of obligating Him to reward us,
• 25:31
  consider the sheer deliberate intention behind the cross.
• 25:34
  Staggering. The crucifixion wasn't a tragic
• 25:37
  accident. It wasn't a sudden backup plan
• 25:39
  when human history went off the rails.
• 25:41
  It was the only logical, necessary meeting place of
• 25:44
  indispensable justice and free, unmerited mercy.
• 25:48
  How does grasping the mathematical, rigorous, logical
• 25:51
  necessity of the Atonement alter your daily perception of the
• 25:53
  grace you have received? Thank you for joining us on this
• 25:56
  intense, deep dive into the historical theology of John
• 25:59
  Owen. Keep asking the hard questions,
• 26:01
  keep seeking the immense logic behind what you believe, and
• 26:03
  we'll see you next time.