The All-Sufficient Cross of the Lamb of God: An Exhortation on 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 in light of the Orthodox Interpretation of the Atonement

The apostle Paul preached the very Cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  He proclaimed that the Cross was a stumblingblock to the Jewish people and it was foolishness to the Greeks.  However, God calls both Jew and Gentile from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.  The Cross of Jesus Christ is the very power of God and the very wisdom of God.  No mere human being could invent the Cross of the Lamb.  We see that Islam through man-made tradition rejects the crucified Christ.  But it is surely not the teaching of the Quran that rejects the Cross.  It is the teaching of mere men.  I would like to point out that how can Rome say she worships the same God as Islam (RC 841) when Muslims reject the very Cross itself.  The wisdom of the world adds to the Cross.  The wisdom of the world takes away from the Cross.  It either adds or subtracts from the Cross.  God has given us His sinless and perfect wisdom from heaven.  That is, it is the very Cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Human minds see the Cross as nothing.  Human minds see the Cross as a romantic or tragic hero.  Human minds see the Cross as a made-man invention.  The bodily resurrection of Jesus proves the redemptive value of the Cross.  Spiritual salvation is not through mere repentance to Allah or to a false Trinity.  Rather repentance is through the crucified Savior!  Sinners boast of wisdom, but it is devoid of the Cross.  Rome says to look to the Cross as an example of suffering, but she adds a plethora of man-made traditions like "indulgences."  Many fall for the worldly wisdom of something that is not the Cross of Jesus.  Orthodoxy links the atonement to deification.  I would like to kindly point out that the Bible never makes such a cosmic or spiritual leap!  An Orthodox author wrote,

As a result of the Orthodox emphasis on the idea of victory over death, evangelicals are likely to be critical of the Orthodox understanding of the atonement, since it seems to ignore the substitutionary, juridical elements which we believe are central to the work of Christ. However, it is not completely accurate to assert that the Orthodox ignore these elements. Orthodox theology does recognize the substitutionary aspects of the atonement which are so critical to evangelical thought, although it does not strongly emphasize them. The major difference between evangelical and Orthodox atonement theory lies not in the exclusive adherence to a single view, but in the way Eastern Christendom links the atonement to humanity's purpose of deification (Don Fairbairn, Partakers of the Divine Nature, p. 50).

The purpose of the Cross is not to be a god.  The Bible says "Thou shalt have no other gods besides Me" in the first of the Ten Commandments.  Why would that be different in heaven?  The Bible forbids the deification of sinners.  There was an ancient king in the Old Testament who exalted himself to godhood.  God crushed his attempts to rise up as God.  God's written Word says to man "you are not god, but you are a mere man!"  The all-sufficient atonement is not meant to be a theory of godhood.  I have researched the teaching or theory for many years of the teaching of "godhood."  I suggest to you that it is biblically impossible to rightly advocate man as a god whether at conception or at glorification.  Rome exalts man and says by nature he is good in some way.  Man either exalts man at conception or at glorification.  Glorification is not a pathway to godhood.  Rather it is the pathway to sinlessness as a true creature of God.  We will not be worshiped as a god in heaven.  The only theologically and doctrinally proper teaching of God is that He is self-existent.  That is, God always existed as God.  Therefore, as creatures we had a beginning but if God is God He cannot have a beginning.  Jesus Christ was conceived in His mother's womb by the power of the overshadowedness of God's Spirit.  That is touching His humanity but not His deity.  Touching His deity, Jesus always was God the Son.  God the Son became man in Jesus Christ our Friend and Bishop!   The only incarnation of God is Jesus Christ and that will never change.  To make a theory of the atonement to defy man is purely man-made.  I suggest to you that there is no biblical support for such a view!  The atonement of Jesus is meant to take away sin and provide us with His righteousness imputed to a regenerate sinner through apprehending Christ by faith alone.  Why does Orthodoxy need to defy mere man when we will simply be glorified sinners?  The spiritual reward of the atonement in the end is not godhood.   Rather it is the worship and honor and magnification and glorification of the Triune Jehovah!  I suggest to you that this is also where Mormonism has gone wrong in some sense.  The Mormon church defies her members, but the Bible says that man by nature is a creature.  No mere human being could possess the self-existent nature of God, because God alone is eternally self-existent.  Many say that Satan is a god.  I beg to differ!  God is the God of this Age that blinds the minds of men!  There are no gods.  Rather the gods in the Old Testament refer to demonic idols of graven images.  We will always be sinners saved by grace until we are transformed into sinless saints to worship God forever, because He alone is God.  Therefore let God be God!  I will never worship a god besides the Triune Lord of the Bible alone (Matthew 28ff).  Amen.