< Parenting in the Name of God, Part 4

The Atonement of Christ: Cat’s Concerns

It’s normative in healthy, doctrinally solid Bible-preaching churches to regularly hear the Cross mentioned, and not just mentioned, but exposited. So I felt that before I could go any further, I would need to listen to some of Pearl’s actual Bible teachings on the Atonement. Perhaps I was missing something. Perhaps the man is simply a poor presenter of information — a critique he’s received before, whether rightly or wrongly — and some areas of his teaching don’t flow well with others. Perhaps it’s possible to make too much of too few words, even working from four NGJ books (TTUAC 2008, NGJ 1,2,3) and the ministry’s web archives.

It’s important to recognize that when a person is teaching on parenting, their emphasis and flow of thought will be different than when teaching on something like the Cross. Perhaps, in the structure of NGJ materials, the two things function somewhat separately. Perhaps I’ve been missing the greater picture. Perhaps I haven’t been fair, and haven’t really listened to what NGJ teaches. So, I decided to check.

Ears to Hear: What I Heard

I looked for audio messages, since these are NGJ’s main preaching materials, which focus on the Atonement. I found several on the topic.

The title of this message is “The Man Christ Jesus. Not the Son of God, but the man Christ Jesus. The Bible emphasizes Jesus’ manhood throughout. In fact, one of the marks of Antichrist is that he will deny that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Now why would that be significant? We would expect the Antichrist to be denying that Jesus is God. But no, he comes denying that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Why? Because Jesus Christ coming in the flesh is absolutely essential for him to obtain our eternal salvation… (“The Man Christ Jesus,” beginning at 1:14 [bold emphasis mine for clarity, underline indicates vocal emphasis in recording])

In this sermon, Pearl goes to great lengths to emphasize the term “Son of Man” in a variety of passages. He states that the important thing about Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father is that Jesus is the Son of Man, the son of Adam. Let me point back into the written materials for a moment, because what he’s saying sounds merely confused if not taken in the ministry’s greater context. However, within that context, Pearl is remarkably clear and understandable.

Obtained Human Righteousness

God created Adam and Eve to be righteous, but he did not create them righteous. They were created right, innocent, but with no knowledge of good or evil. Character cannot be created. It comes out of choice. (Insulate Your Children from Within)

No human (apart from Jesus) has ever kept the commandments of God and maintained a character sufficient to merit him a place in God’s presence.The Son of God came to the earth as a human being and succeeded where the first Adam failed. By his faithfulness and good works, he became the first man since Adam to live his life in a way that merited favor with God. So God gave him authority over the human race. He became the legitimate and legal representative of the entire race… (Living Parallel Lives)

A child is born with no knowledge of good and evil, just as Adam and Eve were created with no knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:22). Even Jesus was born thus… (The Salvation of Children)

Returning to the audio track, at 21:16 Pearl states,

But we see Jesus. Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, see Him crowned with glory and honor. You see, the same thing that God placed on Adam — a crown of glory and honor — along comes — the word ‘Jesus’ is a human word — down in Mexico, every third person is named Jesus [Spanish pronunciation] or somethin’. Naw, they’re called Jesus. [Anglicized pronunciation] Why? it’s just a human name, like George or Bob.

At this point, I digress to the concordance for a bit of Berean-style discernment on wording. I learn that Jesus, Yeshua, has a much more specific meaning in the Hebrew of His time than George or Bob does in modern English. It means, “God saves.” As in Matthew 1:21 — “Thou shalt call His name Jesus: [God saves] for He shall save His people from their sins.”

Obtained Human Righteousness Imputed

Pearl strongly divides the saving and judging humanity of Christ from the resurrecting power of the Son of God, and yet in the Scripture (including many places in the Old Testament which speak of Yeshua/Jesus prophetically), I see Christ’s divinity firmly linked to the points which Pearl insists on attributing strictly to His humanity. Why does he do this?

The term “imputed” does appear to have different connotations in NGJ doctrine than the standard biblical meaning. What sticks out is the use of the word “sinless” and its relationship to Pearl’s doctrine of “righteousness” and “moral accountability.” In a “Mike Answers” column, Pearl asserts,

The one belief that is most popular—believed by 99% of Christianity—is that the grace of God works in our hearts to bring us to repentance of sin and faith in his son, Jesus, transforming us into obedient children, thereby making us acceptable to God. This we can call Imparted Righteousness…This is the Roman Catholic position as well as what most Protestants believe in practice…

Imparted righteousness changes the individual so as to make him righteous. Imputed righteousness just changes the man’s legal standing with God.

Again, have I really listened? I turned to NGJ’s Isaiah 53 sermon, since if anything, it should define the atonement in the clearest terms.

The Chastisement of Our Peace

I just want to note that the idea of chastisement is reflected in NGJ’s two main articles on spanking, “In Defense of Biblical Chastisement,” Part 1 and Part 2, in which they exhort parents not to use the rod in anger, not to use chastisement as the primary means of training (note that they differentiate “chastisement” and “training with the rod” in their books), and that the rod should not be used for anything but the good of the child. [1]

17:22 Yes, He was stricken by God, yes, Jesus was smitten by God, yes, He was wounded by God, but it was for our transgressions that he was wounded, He was bruised for our iniquites. So here’s the prophecy: that the Messiah will be struck, and He will be bruised. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. That is, he’s telling us, the purpose, the nature of this bruising, this beating He was receiving, it was not on His behalf. It was the punishment, the chastisement that you and I deserve for our sin…

21:22 …some of the Christian religions deny that, the idea that Christ could die for us, on our behalf. It just, it seems so preposterous. It said, God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. [quotes Isa. 53:6] So God put our iniquity on Jesus, so that God in the New Testament made Him to be sin for us…so Messiah’s going to be oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth…

24:54 Now here’s an astounding response in all of this: yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. That God the Father — see, if you were hearing this for the first time, you’d start to get angry and irritated. How dare they do that to Messiah? How dare they? Why is He so weak? Why is He letting this happen to Himself? Why is He suffering so? It’s not right, somebody’s got to stop it. Then all of a sudden it says, ‘Yet, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.’ In other words, the Father was satisfied to have His son bruised. You see, it could be said of Abraham, it pleased Abraham to kill his son. Now, Abraham found no personal pleasure in the act of his son dying, or in what suffering might have been inflicted, but Abraham chose to do it because of his love for God. And so the Father was pleased that His Son should die on our behalf.

28:01 And it says, look, by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many. So now, He’s gone from His priestly ministry now to his prophetic ministry. As a priest, He died, but as a prophet — with knowledge — He justifies many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

With knowledge? It appears this again refers to the obtained, learned righteousness which Jesus the man acquired in His incarnation.

In the web article “Imputed Righteousness,” Pearl writes:

What did Christ do to have our sin imputed to him? He, kneeling in the garden, believed and received the weight of sin. God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin…” – 2 Cor. 5:21. Jesus became what we are, a sinner—no, more than that, He became sin itself, “…that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” God was willing to see Jesus as a sinner, so He could see us as righteousness. Jesus became what we are, so we can become what he is. He became a sinful son of man, so we could become sinless sons of God. It was a trade. He traded his righteousness to us for our sin. He then carried the consequences of our sin before God, so we can carry the consequences of Christ’s righteousness before God. He walked to Calvary, so we could ascend to heaven. The God who “calleth those things which be not as though they were” called His Son something He wasn’t—a sinner, so he could call us something we are not—righteous. “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” – Rom. 4:8.

When I look at the term “imputed righteousness,” I realize it must be understood in the context of NGJ’s idea of “righteousness.” (So must the idea of imputed sin, dealt with greatly by NGJ as a key factor in child training.) It doesn’t mean the inherent righteousness of God. It means the obtained, learned, acquired righteousness that Christ developed over the course of His humanity. Whether or not the nuances of imputation are used correctly by NGJ thus becomes orders of magnitude less relevant on the whole, since what is being imputed is not biblically accurate, either in terms of sin or in terms of righteousness.

Concluding Thoughts

In speaking of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and the hope of salvation, Pearl’s concept of “overcoming” rules his choice of supporting verses in his doctrinal statement. (Compare verses to statements for clarity.) When he speaks of “hope of salvation” through “Christ’s substitutionary atonement,” his choice of verses illuminates his context: he has his particular view of “the overcoming life” in mind — one where the Christian remains “able to sin,” but “sins no more.”

The atonement of Christ is reduced to a legal transaction of debt reconciliation which neither produces nor truly imputes righteousness.

In his article on imputation, Pearl writes that Christ became sinful so that we could become sinless. I have yet to see Pearl use the word “sinless” directly of Christ — he seems to greatly prefer “righteous,” which goes back to his claim that “Adam and Eve were created to be righteous, but they were not righteous…Character cannot be created. It comes out of choice,” and “even Jesus was born thus.”

The implications are mind-boggling.

This man has a different Jesus than I do; a different Jesus than the Bible does; and a substantially different atonement theology than that of Scripture. It’s here that we see the threads of moral government theology woven in — not necessarily because Pearl intends it so, but because due to his concept of morality, his core understanding of the person of Christ renders it the nearest recognized theology.

And there are other threads with it, all of which revolve around this foundational idea of character development — and thus, deeply interlinked with the parenting methods put forward by the ministry.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

~2 Corinthians 11:3-4

[1] Please see this review, which gives direct quotes from To Train Up a Child on NGJ’s view of chastisement. The book expresses the idea that God chastises his true children for their good. Thus, in the Biblical Chastisement articles, when the Pearls admonish parents to use the rod only for the child’s good, they are not de facto ruling out extreme corporal methods described elsewhere in the book, merely speaking to parental attitudes in dealing out such methods. It’s for this reason that their rebuttals to cases like Sean Paddock and Lydia Schatz focus on parental failure of attitude.