Growing in Jesus Christ

A retelling of the Gospel

When God looked down on the earth, he saw humans.

Humans, each with a soul blacker than night, a soul billions, trillions of time more loathsome & horrendous & hateful to Him as the most ugly housefly or vile serpent we could ever meet. Humans, who hated & despised & scorned God, filled with boundless fury & hatred & enmity towards God, wanting nothing more than to dethrone Him & spit on Him & destroy & humiliate Him.

And yet, for the elect, God felt love for them. Make no mistake; He hated their sin, He abhorred & despised their rebellion & hostility towards Him, but He loved their persons. He had such an overwhelmingly vast love for them that He sent His only Son down to earth, in an incarnation of flesh. The Son of God was at the receiving end of the peak of sin; His people ferociously & mercilessly despised & insulted & humiliated without remorse, unleashing the floodgates of their pent-up hatred, blazing rage & enmity towards the Son. And yet the Son, magnanimously forgiving all their offenses against Him, prayed earnestly that they would be forgiven. But that was nothing compared to the wrath that the Father poured out on His only Son.

The entire extent of the punishment for all their people's offenses, all their defiance & blatant hatred & enmity & hot fury towards God was transferred onto the Son. The Son was treated as the one who had offended & rebelled against the Father. It was utterly dark for the Son; as a punishment, His Father manifested & expressed His absolutely immeasurable hatred, contempt & fury, despising His Son, treating His Son as though He were an outsider, drowning & suffocating His Son in the fathomlessly destructive & agonizing & searing blazing furnace of His wrath. The blazing furnace, whose terrifyingly powerful flames of fire were supposed to absolutely extirpate & excruciate the rebellious humans forever was used for the Son instead.

But thankfully, it didn't last forever. Three hours later, the Son had survived the furnace. His soul was charred & deformed beyond all reckoning & comprehension, but He was still alive, and He was also rapidly healing. As He committed His spirit into the hands of His Father (who, once the punishment was over, renewed His loving relationship with His Son), He breathed His last.
Three days later, He rose from the dead, having made the full & totally perfect atonement for all the crimes & offenses of His people. He was exalted as the Supreme Lord & King of His people, with all the boundlessly infinite power & majesty & honour & authority of His Father. And His people had now been reconciled to Him, forever cleared of all their charges against Him. They no longer harboured hatred or enmity against Him, having repented from all that, and now loved & adored & revered Him.