So what is the sin that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70? Obviously, the rejection by the Jews of Jesus as Messiah. Right?
Well, to get the full historical implications, we need to turn to (believe it or not) Deu 28-30, a passage we rarely study in Sunday school class — but it is a major underlying theme of the NT — frequently alluded to by Paul especially. The First Century Jews believed that they were living in days of Exile predicted in these chapters. So to read the NT as a First Century Jew would have read it, you have to be familiar with these chapters.
Recall that Deu is written in the form of an Ancient Near East treaty. And these treaties concluded with a list of blessings and curses — blessings for obedience by the subservient party and curses for disobedience.
The first 14 verses speak of the blessings of obedience.
(Deu 28:1-14 ESV) “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
7 “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 9 The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, 14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
Obviously, a nation under the totalitarian rule of a Roman dictatorship is not enjoying all these blessings.
The primary sin in mind is idolatry, although obedience to “the commandments” stated in general terms is also required.
The curses for disobedience are, in part, the blessings stated negatively — but there are far more curses than blessings.
(Deu 28:15-35 ESV) “But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. 16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
20 “The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. 21 The LORD will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. 23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. 24 The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
25 “The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. 27 The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. 28 The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, 29 and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. 30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. 33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see. 35 The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
(Deu 28:36-68 ESV) 36 “The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. 37 And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away. 38 You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. 39 You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. 40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. 41 You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity. 42 The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground. 43 The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. 44 He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.
45 “All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. 46 They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. 51 It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish.
52 “They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you. 53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. 54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, 55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns.
58 “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. 60 And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. 61 Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed. 62 Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. 63 And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
64 “And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. 66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. 67 In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and at evening you shall say, ‘If only it were morning!’ because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see. 68 And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”
These curses came true when the Northern Kingdom was taken into Assyrian Captivity, and true again when Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. And yet again when the Romans besieged several Judean cities, most especially Jerusalem.
And the penalties remained true throughout that intertestamental period. The Jews enjoyed a few decades of political independence following the Maccabean revolt against the Greek Seleucids, but they were soon taken over by the Romans. And even while independent, the nation was ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty — Levites and so certainly not descendants of David.
As a result, Judea came to be ruled by the high priest, who was a descendant of the Maccabees and a Levite, but not in the line of Zadok, as the scriptures required after David. The Essenes found this intolerable and so set up an alternative community near the Dead Sea to await the Kingdom. The Sadducees were part of the priestly class and largely Hellenized — meaning that they adopted much of the surrounding culture because they ruled Judea for the benefit of Rome. (It’s quite possible that they rejected the scriptures other than the Torah because the later scriptures would require other Levites to be high priests.) The Pharisees thought that the Kingdom would come if the Jews would just be pure enough — so much so that, based on Exo 19:6 , they imposed the purity requirements for priests on all Jews — hoping that God would overthrow the Romans in response to their extreme purity.
(Sorry getting off subject a little, but these things do matter.)
and SO.
1:3 Grace and peace to you2 from God the Father and our3 Lord Jesus Christ, 1:4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, 1:5 to whom be glory forever and ever! Amen.
who gave himself for our sins to rescue us
3:12 But the law is not based on faith,23 but the one who does the works of the law24 will live by them.25 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming26 a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)27
Deuteronomy 1
The Covenant Setting
1:1 This is what1 Moses said to the assembly of Israel2 in the Transjordanian3 wastelands, the arid country opposite4 Suph,5 between6 Paran7 and Tophel,8 Laban,9 Hazeroth,10 and Di Zahab11 1:2 Now it is ordinarily an eleven-day journey12 from Horeb13 to Kadesh Barnea14 by way of Mount Seir.15 1:3 However, it was not until16 the first day of the eleventh month17 of the fortieth year18 that Moses addressed the Israelites just as19 the Lord had instructed him to do. 1:4 This took place after the defeat20 of King Sihon21 of the Amorites, whose capital was22 in Heshbon,23 and King Og of Bashan, whose capital was24 in Ashtaroth,25 specifically in Edrei.26 1:5 So it was in the Transjordan, in Moab, that Moses began to deliver these words:27
Deuteronomy 27
The Assembly at Shechem
27:1 Then Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Pay attention to all the commandments1 I am giving2 you today. 27:2 When you cross the Jordan River3 to the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must erect great stones and cover4 them with plaster. 27:3 Then you must inscribe on them all the words of this law when you cross over, so that you may enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors,5 said to you. 27:4 So when you cross the Jordan you must erect on Mount Ebal6 these stones about which I am commanding you today, and you must cover them with plaster. 27:5 Then you must build an altar there to the Lord your God, an altar of stones – do not use an iron tool on them. 27:6 You must build the altar of the Lord your God with whole stones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. 27:7 Also you must offer fellowship offerings and eat them there, rejoicing before the Lord your God. 27:8 You must inscribe on the stones all the words of this law, making them clear.”
27:9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel: “Be quiet and pay attention, Israel. Today you have become the people of the Lord your God. 27:10 You must obey him7 and keep his commandments and statutes that I am giving you today.” 27:11 Moreover, Moses commanded the people that day: 27:12 “The following tribes8 must stand to bless the people on Mount Gerizim when you cross the Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. 27:13 And these other tribes must stand for the curse on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
Joshua 5
A New Generation is Circumcised
5:2 At that time the Lord told Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites once again.”3 5:3 So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites on the Hill of the Foreskins.4 5:4 This is why Joshua had to circumcise them: All the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt died on the journey through the desert after they left Egypt.5 5:5 Now6 all the men7 who left were circumcised, but all the sons8 born on the journey through the desert after they left Egypt were uncircumcised. 5:6 Indeed, for forty years the Israelites traveled through the desert until all the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt, the ones who had disobeyed the Lord, died off.9 For the Lord had sworn a solemn oath to them that he would not let them see the land he had sworn on oath to give them,10 a land rich in11 milk and honey. 5:7 He replaced them with their sons,12 whom Joshua circumcised. They were uncircumcised; their fathers had not circumcised them along the way. 5:8 When all the men13 had been circumcised, they stayed there in the camp until they had healed. 5:9 The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have taken away14 the disgrace15 of Egypt from you.” So that place is called Gilgal16 even to this day.
5:10 So the Israelites camped in Gilgal and celebrated the Passover in the evening of the fourteenth day of the month on the plains of Jericho.17 5:11 They ate some of the produce of the land the day after the Passover, including unleavened bread and roasted grain.18 5:12 The manna stopped appearing the day they ate19 some of the produce of the land; the Israelites never ate manna again.20
Joshua 8
Covenant Renewal
8:30 Then Joshua built an altar for the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal, 8:31 just as Moses the Lord’s servant had commanded the Israelites. As described in the law scroll of Moses, it was made with uncut stones untouched by an iron tool.50 They offered burnt sacrifices on it and sacrificed tokens of peace.51 8:32 There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua inscribed on the stones a duplicate of the law written by Moses.52 8:33 All the people,53 rulers,54 leaders, and judges were standing on either side of the ark, in front of the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Both resident foreigners and native Israelites were there.55 Half the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and the other half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the Lord’s servant had previously instructed to them to do for the formal blessing ceremony.56 8:34 Then57 Joshua read aloud all the words of the law, including the blessings and the curses, just as they are written in the law scroll. 8:35 Joshua read aloud every commandment Moses had given58 before the whole assembly of Israel, including the women, children, and resident foreigners who lived among them.59
n.t. Wright
puts the queston and answers this way THE CURSE
The second great narrative which Paul has in mind throughout his writing is the story of Israel. This is more complicated, because Israel is the people called to bear God’s solution to the problem of the world and yet now ensnared, themselves, within the same problem. Paul shows dozens of signs that he is following through the Israel-story in the same way as many other second Temple writers: the Abrahamic promises as God’s solution to the problem of the world, the Exodus as [85] the first great fulfilment of those promises, the Torah as God’s good gift to his redeemed people, designed to stop them going to the bad until the final fulfilment… and then the catastrophe of exile, with Torah itself turning against Israel and condemning it. What can God do now about the promises? What will happen to the divine plan to bless the whole world through Israel?
This is exactly the way Paul sets up the problem in two classic passages, Romans 2: 17-3: 9 and Galatians 3: 6-12. The answer, in both cases, is the death of Jesus, bursting through the blockage in the historical fulfilment of the divine purposes. In Romans, Jesus appears as the Messiah, the faithful Israelite, whose redeeming death (3: 24- 6) is the means of God’s now declaring that all who share this faith are righteous’, that is, members of the sin-forgiven family (3: 27-31), and that this is how God has fulfilled the Abrahamic promises (4: 1-25). In Galatians, more specifically, the curse of exile which had bottled up the promises and prevented them getting through to the Gentiles, leaving Israel itself under condemnation, is dealt with by the death of Jesus: he takes Israel’s curse on himself (and thus, at one remove, the world’s curse, though this is not what is in view in this passage, despite efforts to employ it as a generalized statement of ‘atonement theology’), making it possible at last for ‘the blessing of Abraham to come on the Gentiles’ and also that ‘we’ (in other words, Jews who had been under the very specific ‘curse’ of Deuteronomy) might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. In other words, the covenant has been renewed at last—through the death of Jesus as Israel’s representative Messiah.
In other words, I do not think that Paul’s train of thought ran, as so many have suggested: (a) Jesus was crucified, therefore he was under God’s curse, therefore he cannot have been the Messiah; and then (b) God raised him from the dead, therefore he cannot have been cursed, therefore his death must have been redemptive. Paul is quite clear that Jesus did bear the curse, not that he didn’t.
This explains, among many other things, why Paul says at the start of Galatians (the point in the letter when we might expect a thematic statement) that ‘our Lord Jesus the Messiah gave himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God our Father’ (1: 3-4). And this in turn brings into view the central statement of the common early creed quoted by Paul in I Corinthians 15: 3: the Messiah ‘died for our sins according to the scriptures’. Galatians 1:4 shows very clearly what this means, [86] offering once more a historical understanding rather than a dehistoricized atonement-theory. For a second Temple Jew, soaked in passages like Daniel 9, the present parlous state of Israel, which (following Daniel and many other writers) I have characterized as ‘continuing exile’, was the result of Israel’s sins. The ancient Israelites had sinned, and had gone into exile; now their successors, even those living back in the land, had continued to sin, and as a result the final redemption, the real ‘return from exile’, was delayed. (Think, for instance, of Malachi.) The problem of sin is thus not simply that it separates the individual from God in his or her existential spirituality (true though that is as well). The problem is that Israel’s sins are keeping Israel in exile. Conversely, if somehow Israel’s sins were to be dealt with, finished with, and blotted out, then exile could be undone and the people could go free—and with them the whole world, waiting for Israel to be redeemed (as in e.g. Isa. 55, not by coincidence as we shall see). Thus, for the moment, Israel languishes in ‘the present evil age’, waiting for ‘the age to come’ to arrive, the time of redemption and forgiveness. And this forgiveness will not mean simply that individuals can now enter into a happy and intimate relationship with their heavenly Father, true again though that is. The point is that, if sins are forgiven, exile will be over, the rule of the evil powers will be broken, and Israel—and the rest of the world—will be summoned to enjoy, and take part in, God’s renewed world. This is what Paul believes has happened with the death of Jesus. In neither passage does he explain how it is that the death of Jesus delivers us from the evil age; the equation depends on two other things, which he supplies plentifully elsewhere, not least in I Corinthians 15 itself: (a) Jesus was and is Israel’s representative Messiah; (b) God raised him from the dead (note I Cor. 15:17: if the Messiah isn’t raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins; in other words, the new age has not begun).
The story of the crucified Messiah is thus at the heart of Paul’s way of telling the story of how Israel has been brought to the very depth of exile and has now been rescued to live as God’s new creation. The sharpest statement of this comes at the end of Galatians 2:
I through the Torah died to Torah, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with the Messiah; however, I am alive, yet it is not me, but the Messiah lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify God’s [87] grace; for if covenant membership came by Torah, then the Messiah died for no reason. (Gal. 2:19-21)
This spills over into the next story (and all these stories are in any case interlocked); yet I cannot resist putting it here. The point of all that Paul is saying, to Peter at Antioch and, through the telling of that incident, to the Galatians as they ‘overhear’ the Paul/Peter debate, or at least Paul’s side of it, is not that he, Paul, has had a particular spiritual experience or that he now enjoys a particular kind of spiritual life. The point of it all is that Paul is here standing, as in one or two other places, as the typical Israelite. He has stated the general principle in Galatians 2:15-16: though we are by birth Jews, not ‘Gentile sinners’, we know that God declares ‘righteous’ not those who rely on ‘works of Torah’, but those whose status depends on the faithfulness of the Messiah. Paul’s point, in other words, is that through the faithful death of the Messiah God has acted to transform the category of ‘the righteous’, so that it now denotes not those who are defined by Torah but those who are defined by the Messiah. And ‘those who are defined by the Messiah’ means those who have died and come to life in and with him; those, in other words, who have been co-crucified with him (v. 19). Here the cross determines the death of the old identity: the Messiah, Israel’s representative, dies, therefore Israel dies according to the flesh. And, by implication, the resurrection determines the new life of the new identity: the Messiah, Israel’s representative, ‘lives to God’ (Gal. 2: 19, cf. Rom. 6: l0), and those who are ‘in him’ possess this same new life. That which was said in the plural in Gal. 1: 3-4 is now brought into the sharp singular, not (once again) because Paul is special but because he is paradigmatic: ‘the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2: 20). The final verse sums up the effect of the cross on the story of Israel: if Torah could have defined covenant membership, the Messiah would not have needed to die, but (so Paul clearly implies) the fact that the Messiah did need to die indicates that Israel, as defined by Torah, needed to die and to come through to a new sort of life, a life in which the promises would at last be fulfilled.
ALTHOUGH…..
THERE IS THIS.part of the work of the cross
romans
5:12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people13 because14 all sinned – 5:13 for before the law was given,15 sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin16 when there is no law. 5:14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type17 of the coming one) transgressed.18
and this
Genesis 3
3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent,36
“Because you have done this,
cursed37 are you above all the wild beasts
and all the living creatures of the field!
On your belly you will crawl38
and dust you will eat39 all the days of your life.
3:15 And I will put hostility40 between you and the woman
and between your offspring and her offspring;41
her offspring will attack42 your head,
and43 you44 will attack her offspring’s heel.”45
i exactly mean by this is
So it was necessary for the sketches25 of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices,26 but the heavenly things themselves required27 better sacrifices than these.
8:5 The place where they serve is4 a sketch5 and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, just as Moses was warned by God as he was about to complete the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the design6 shown to you on the mountain.”7 8:6 But8 now Jesus9 has obtained a superior ministry, since10 the covenant that he mediates is also better and is enacted11 on better promises.12
8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, no one would have looked for a second one.13 8:8 But14 showing its fault,15 God16 says to them,17
“Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
8:9 “It will not be like the covenant18 that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.
9:22 Indeed according to the law almost everything was purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. 9:23 So it was necessary for the sketches25 of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices,26 but the heavenly things themselves required27 better sacrifices than these. 9:24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands – the representation28 of the true sanctuary29 – but into heaven itself, and he appears now in God’s presence for us.
10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters,21 since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 10:20 by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us22 through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,23 10:21 and since we have a great priest24 over the house of God,
i think you call this process restoration or a new covenant based on the faith of the trinity. atonement
2 Corinthians 5
5:14 For the love of Christ26 controls us, since we have concluded this, that Christ27 died for all; therefore all have died. 5:15 And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised.28 5:16 So then from now on we acknowledge29 no one from an outward human point of view.30 Even though we have known Christ from such a human point of view,31 now we do not know him in that way any longer. 5:17 So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away32 – look, what is new33 has come!34 5:18 And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 5:19 In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us35 the message of reconciliation. 5:20 Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His plea36 through us. We plead with you37 on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!” 5:21 God38 made the one who did not know sin39 to be sin for us, so that in him40 we would become the righteousness of God.
sure hope this brings up a few questions