The Spiritual Map of

George Otis Jr., YWAM Tacoma, 1981. 

From his lectures on Moral Government Theology

For the entire transcript go to: The Atonement, by George Otis Jr.

Excerpts from Lecture One

"And again, when we use this phrase winning man back it does, in a very real sense, betray the fact that man is lost property; and while there's no mistaking the fact today that man is indeed a rebel on the rampage, even a rebel belongs to somebody and try as hard as he may man cannot deface or erase or scratch off the unmistakable markings of a being created in the image of God. And I have often thought of this as I have been confronting somebody who is unlovely; whose attitude left a lot to be desired, whose physical appearance left a lot to be desired and sometimes the two go hand in hand. And you meet these people and their personality is just totally unpleasant, and they are rude, and selfish and arrogant. Who wants to be around them? Let them go, let them walk of a cliff, good riddance, you know. We should take all these people...I have often thought we should do that you know; I have often had strong feelings you know that we should put Jane Fonda on Alcatraz and let her spend the rest of her life there. Get all the hippies and all the weirdoes and all the communists and all the murders and rapists -- give them a whole continent and let them fight it out among themselves and leave the rest of us normal people alone. When we confront these people can we remind ourselves that these very people, these ugly, unlovely people, are the very objects of a great and an undying love. Maybe I don't love them but somebody does, somebody really does. There are markings upon them, they are human beings, God created them for a purpose. He created them as a potential bride, He created them for intimacy with Himself; He created them to be the receptacles of the overflow of His love. And if God loves them with that kind of a love, how can I cast them off in my heart?" (words of George Otis Jr.)

 (words of Charles Finney) "Whenever he sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self-evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned; he must incur the penalty of the law of God...If it be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the Christian, the penalty is forever set aside, or abrogated, I reply, that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept; for a precept without penalty is no law. It is only counsel or advice. The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys, and must be condemned when he disobeys; or Antinomianism is true...In these respects, then, the sinning Christian and the unconverted sinner are upon precisely the same ground." (Finney reveals in his statement here that he does not know what Antinomianism is and, therefore, has created his own definition.) (From Finney's Systematic Theology, Bethany Fellowship edition of 1976, p. 46)]

"The best teaching, the most lasting teaching that you're going to get in this class is going to come by the holy spirit. Not by any lecturer that ever comes here and stands before you; not by any staff member; some of you are going to get an education that goes way beyond others of you because you will come here and you will open up your emotional life, your intellectual life and your spirit to the holy spirit of God to bring revelation. And even those of you who have gone through this whole series on the atonement before, even I, need to come before God, today, during this time and say, "new revelation, need to see it deeper". And we will receive that which we want and that which we've come for. And if we are struggling with our attitudes and struggling with our sin I believe it's simply because you and I have not understood how much our sin hurts God."

"And again, God wants us not to just talk about this kind of relationship, not just to talk about a quietness a kind of understanding but to experience it to embrace it. So let's bring our hearts before the Lord in a new and a special way. Let's really prepare ourselves to receive revelation of the holy spirit. And just do me a favor, okay, allow God only to use me in these next few lectures as a vehicle; the best thing for you is when your attention is totally focused on the holy spirit, while you're hearing things from me I'll go and ask the holy spirit to give me the right things to say but then as you listen to these things you hand them to the holy spirit to break them into revelation. What I am giving you are buds and you let the holy spirit turn them into blossoms."

From Lecture 2

"You see, God doesn't want to just forgive us, He wants to transform us. There are people today who want to be forgiven but they don't want to be transformed. The problem is God won't forgive you unless you allow Him to transform you. The church today is split right down the middle on this doctrine. There are many, many denominations and Christians who say you can be forgiven of your sin without being transformed. That it's alright to sin every day in word, thought and deed. That God has positionally sanctified you and that you're standing in Christ is something that is different from your actual state. When you sin, it wasn't the new man who did that, it was the old man. We all have this dirty, old man in us who commits all these sins. You see, we don't do it, the old man does it. Yeah, schizophrenic is right!"

"On the contrary, the person who truly loves their brother or sister in Christ is going to be the one who will confront. Not in a haughty, arrogant manner but in a way that will perhaps prompt them to do some evaluation, to do some auditing, that might put them back on track for eternity. We're not just talking about somebody that might be screwing up here for a couple of months on earth. We're talking about somebody that's playing with fire, that's playing with their eternal existence."

"When the Bible speaks of the wrath of God to what does it refer? Everywhere, that's right, everywhere the object of God's wrath is described as sin and unrighteousness, not people. [emphasis added] God has a hatred and a fierce wrath for sin and for unrighteousness. But not for you or for me or for anybody else. If God started hating other moral beings it would pollute His character and He certainly wouldn't be a Being possessing agape love. How would the universe survive if God should one day cease to hate sin? So, God never hated us and He was never filled with wrath toward us. If that's not why Jesus died, to replace that wrath with love, and if, the death of Christ did not appease the wrath of God towards sin, then what was the nature of His death and His sufferings. Fortunately, it, the Atonement, didn't take away the wrath of God towards sin. Can you imagine that? The day after Jesus died, God no longer hates sin? That would be something wouldn't it. So it wasn't the wrath of God; it wasn't the wrath of God's heart or desire to be paid back or vindictiveness that was changed in the Atonement. That has nothing to do with the death of Jesus. But boy, have we been taught that."

Lecture 3

"Have you ever heard the phrase, or the concept, that Jesus paid for our sins? Anybody that hasn't? Let's look into this assertion, this phrase, and let's try to understand what that really means and what it doesn't mean. I believe that this flat out assertion, that Jesus has paid for our sins, has been delivered too glibly, and it's caused a great deal of confusion within the body of Christ as to the true nature of Jesus's actions in the Atonement. It's pretty well accepted today that what took place on Calvary, that our salvation itself, hinges somehow, someway, on a legal transfer of some sort between two members of the Trinity, between Jesus the Son and God the Father. When we ask the question, following the assertion that Jesus has paid for our sins, when we ask the question, whom did He pay? The answer that we receive, more often than not, is that He paid the Father. Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, the second person of the Trinity, paid the first person of the Trinity for sin. Now there's a couple of observations we want to make if that truly is the case. If Jesus, indeed, paid the Father for sin, then it was retributive justice that was served and not public justice. We should remember here, at this point, that under retributive justice, no forgiveness was permissible. There had to be...the penalty had to be executed. This is what most Christians think that Jesus did. God demanded that there be a penalty; there had to be this penalty; there had to be a repayment and then forgiveness could come. There is an element of accuracy in this and there is an element of error. That is why it's been so confusing. Let me give you a definition of forgiveness. A real simple definition for forgiveness. Forgiveness correctly defined is "the relaxation of a legitimate claim". Does that definition make sense to you? Does that go along with your sort of intuitive understanding of what forgiveness really is? Haven't you always thought to yourself that forgiveness was something that you offered without necessarily being paid back for something that was done to you? See, God has put things inside of us. He's made us in many ways like Himself. His truth is deep within us and it will take our own basic understanding of what God is like and what His principles are like. And then we'll go into the Word of God and really search the scriptures, we're going to come up with concepts that are different than what are normally taught today in theological circles. According to this definition of forgiveness, that it is the relaxation of a legitimate claim, then it would impossible for God to have, as one hymn put it, "paid the debt and forgave me all my sins".

"Now one school of thought, theological school of thought that is, states that the Atonement satisfied retributive justice and it's called the satisfaction doctrine. The Atonement consisted in a complete and full satisfaction of retributive justice -- the satisfaction doctrine. In other words, every drop of Jesus's blood that was shed on the cross paid for 'X' number of sins that were committed. And, of course, since it was Divine blood we're told that it counted for more and all this weird abstract business. So there's a little pool of blood down underneath Jesus's cross and that represents payment for say, 13,500,000,000 sins; the blood up on the crossbeam, there wasn't that much there so it only paid for 3,000,000,000 sins; the blood on Jesus's arms, there was quite a bit there so that paid for maybe 4,500,000,000 sins; the suffering of Jesus, that paid for some sins. And God added up all the sins that were ever committed or that ever would be committed and somehow that was factored into all the blood that Jesus shed and all the suffering that He went through. And that suffering, and that blood, and that pain paid God back for this large debt of sin that mankind owed Him. It's called the satisfaction doctrine."

"So again we're saying, the death and the sufferings of Christ were not meant to buy God over to mercy and forgiveness but were rather an expression of mercy and forgiveness. There's another implication of this total satisfaction or payment theory, that's even more scary, if it's true. If God demands repayment for what sin has done to Him; if He requires full vindictive satisfaction before releasing His claim, then we find ourselves facing the conclusion that there is no truly loving, moral being in the universe, as far as agape love is concerned. There is no being who loves with no strings attached. Whose love is really unconditional. So if the payment theory; if the satisfaction theory as it relates to God's personal feelings is true, then He is not what He says He is. This fortunately is not the case."

"And today, we're taught from the very, very beginning that Christianity is really something that is supposed to be for our benefit and to serve us ultimately. Healing, salvation, blessings, revelation -- all for us. So many evangelists today, pastors and other Christian workers are highlighting in their messages everything that appeals to man's self interests when they're presenting their messages. God is presented to us as our servant. He'll do this for you, He'll do this for you, He'll do this for you... When you add up all the benefits there are to becoming a Christian, you've got to be crazy for not to become one. He's going to take care of your grades, your business, provide this for you, healing for your body, salvation, peace...don't we all want those things? All that appeals to our self-interest is highlighted so that our reaction to salvation becomes merely in effect nothing less than a purely selfish exercise. Nothing less than a humanistic invasion of Christianity. So when all of our thoughts of salvation center on the question, "How do I come out? What's in it for me?" is it surprising that we view God's attitudes and intentions and actions in the same light? Here is God in the Atonement thinking to Himself, " How do I come out? What will I get out of this?". This is where this whole attitude of repayment comes in. We take our concepts and we apply them to the character of God and we make God in our own image."

"How can God relate to man in intimate fellowship when man thinks he's something more than he is? Can reconciliation occur while man is preoccupied with the false opinions that he has created? The answer is obvious."

"He'll overlook the past. We've been committing spiritual adultery, been involved with all kinds of other idols in our lives. God can handle that, He can overlook that, He can forgive that as long as now we will be real. So, if God and man are going to get together again then something must humble man so that he's willing to dispense with his hypocritical facades. Before reconciliation can occur, we must come to the place where we see ourselves for what we really are."

Lecture 4

"Then there are others who believe that the essence of Christ's Atonement existed in His obedience to the moral law on behalf of sinners. Christ obeyed during his life the moral law for us and that's really the essence of the Atonement. This is also questionable for several reasons. First of all, the moral law required the obedience of Christ Himself. Had He not obeyed the moral law then He would have disqualified Himself as an affective substitute. Secondly, if Christ had obeyed the law as our substitute then why should we be required to obey it if it's already been obeyed for us? Thirdly, had Christ obeyed the law for us then why would God require Him to die also, as if there had been no obedience, and then go on further to require us to repent and obey as well? I think the person who wrote the song, Amazing Grace, must have been thinking about this because it's certainly amazing grace that requires a debt to be repaid repeatedly before an obligation is discharged."

"Now, I'd like to take a minute, a couple minutes actually, if you don't mind, and give some thought to this concept of payment. Where do we get the idea, the concept, that Jesus paid for our sins? .................... [somebody must have quoted from the Bible, but the words were not recorded] That's pretty good right there. We pick up on phrases and words like this and it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that the Atonement or the the work of Christ on Calvary was some sort of a payment, some sort of a legal business. It's very easy to come to that conclusion. The important thing when we confront these kind of words, phrases and passages in the Bible, and it's not just on this issue with regards to these words and phrases but with any subject, we would want to interpret these words and phrases and passages in light of the overall teaching of the Word, in this case on the subject of salvation. What does the whole council, the whole Word of God, teach on the subject of salvation? Then its easy for us to see how these words and phrases fit in to the overall teaching of the Bible on the subject of salvation. The payment theory, which is also sometimes referred to as the satisfaction theory, originated with a man by the name of Anselm of Canterbury. He became a major Catholic theologian. And he taught what was called, and still is, an objective Atonement. An objective Atonement is a theory of the Atonement that's very widely held today, that God is the object of Christ's work on the cross. That the Atonement, that the death of Jesus Christ was for God's benefit, that He was the object of the Atonement. Jesus dies on the cross for the benefit of His Father in heaven and God is the object of the Atonement and God is reconciled through the satisfaction made to His justice. He's reconciled to us, poor sinners, through a satisfaction that is made to His justice."

"Let me give you another metaphor. You are bought with a price. That is a biblical metaphor that is very often interpreted as an allegory. Another thing that you might find interesting, is that in that scripture where we are told that we are bought with a price, the word price can be translated to read honor. Now there's a concept here, there's a cost factor that God is trying to convey. He's trying to say, "now listen, it cost a great deal to bring you back to Myself, it wasn't cheap, it cost a lot". But He is not trying to convey some exact literal transfer, some legal transfer again where 'X' number drops of blood paid literally for 'X' number of sins."

"I'd like you to write this next statement down. Christ has not redeemed us by giving His life as a ransom for our sins in order that He might release us. Put a big dash now. For God never kept man captive in sin. On the contrary it was He who wanted to make us free. Christ has not redeemed us by giving His life as a ransom for our sins in order that He might release us -- for God never kept man captive in sin."

"When the scriptures tell us that Christ hath purchased the church or that believers are bought with a price, they do not intend to teach us that salvation of sinners through Atonement is a pecuniary transaction, regulated according to the principles of debit and credit, but that their salvation was effected in the moral government of God by nothing less than the consideration, the stipulated consideration, of the death of His beloved Son. To these figurative expressions are super added others of human origin, such as Christ has paid our debt, has answered the demands of the law and satisfied the justice of God in our behalf." The Bible doesn't say that. "If we say that Christ has paid our debt, it is true only in a figurative sense and can be no more nor less than this; that the sufferings of Christ accomplished the same purpose in the divine administration which would have been accomplished by our rejection and punishment. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." We need no other proof than that suggested in this passage that Christ did not pay the debt or literally suffer the penalty of the law for His people. He prepared the way for our debt to be remitted. Or in plain language, dispensing with all metaphor, He made it consistent and proper and honorable for sin to be forgiven according to the prescribed terms of the Gospel. The truth is Christ paid no man's debt."

"The only way that we can get this exact, literal, commercial transaction theory is to divide the Trinity. We have to divide the Trinity. One member of the Trinity paying back another member of the Trinity . God paying Himself. But we have to see that Jesus and the Father are one; their thoughts, their intents, their purposes are always one they're not divided. Jesus on the cross was only an extension of the Father on the cross. Jesus is the heart of God hanging on the cross."

"The danger lies in this matter of discussing payment and so forth, in the redefining of God's personal effort and sacrifice in the Atonement to indicate some type of commercial transaction. There was a cost; there was a payment; but we're talking about God's personal effort, His personal sacrifice, when we're talking about payment and cost and so forth. We're not talking about some kind of a commercial transaction between two members of the Godhead. If we accept the premise that Jesus literally purchased, that He literally purchased our salvation with his blood...and He paid the Father...then this approach, first of all portrays God the Father as being vindictive and blood thirsty and totally incompatible with biblical forgiveness. It also presents another grave difficulty. If Jesus literally paid for our sins with His blood, and a paid debt is no longer a debt, and He died for the sins of the whole world, then we can only come to one conclusion and the theological word for it is Universalism. Which means that everybody will be saved. That means you'd be saved as soon as you were born. That's right. Every man woman or child has had their debts paid. Jesus literally purchased our salvation with his blood. It is done. He's paid God the Father back. God has that $100.00 in his hand again. We don't owe Him anything, it's done, it's taken care of. And whether we know that or not is irrelevant, it is done and we've all had our way paid. Everybody _ there are people who believe this _ there are whole denominations and cults based on Universalism. If salvation is basically a legal transaction, a legal transfer, then I have no debt or obligation remaining. It's been done and my ignorance of the situation would not alter the fact. So, you know, some people look at the situation, they believe in a legal exact literal payment, but they look at this situation and say, " well yeah, there's a problem there." And so they offer an alternative, it's called a the limited Atonement; the doctrine of limited Atonement. And it's part of the main five points of Calvinistic theology. And this view holds the same premise as the Universalists; that the Atonement was an exact, literal payment for sin but the limited Atonement adherence differ with the Universalist, in that they are willing to concede that not all are being saved in the world. Therefore, according to them, the Atonement was not made for all but was limited to the elect. The elect is a neat group of people. One day, God didn't have anything better to do in Heaven so He just sort of arbitrarily started pointing out people that He was going to save and they were called the elect. You understand? Jesus blood that was shed on the cross literally paid for 'X' number of sins and a paid debt is no longer a debt. If Jesus then died for the sins of the whole world then everybody's going to be saved. The limited Atonement people look at the world and say "Hey, everybody's not being saved but we still believe that Jesus' Atonement was an exact literal payment for sin therefore He must not have died for everybody. He only died for the elect", the limited Atonement -- it's what all Calvinists believe. But since the concept of a limited Atonement is conspicuously absent from the scriptures then we can only conclude that this the is the result of man's presumption."

Lecture 5

"The real issue and question that has been debated by theologians and has been debated even more so in recent years as a result of very extraordinary and unusual piece of cloth in the city of Turin, Italy , called the shroud of Turin, which many people have come to believe is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. I think there's a good chance that it is. I started a research project, it was assigned to me, it wasn't something I would have ever chosen to do several years ago on this thing that to me seemed to be almost bordering on the occult. I spent a couple of years researching it and gathering research and data and have continued to gather information and data. I first thought it was one of those weird Catholic relics."

"The plan of salvation didn't begin at Calvary, it ended there. Where did the plan of salvation begin? In Genesis 3:15. What happened in Genesis 3:15. It's the first time that we know of, that blood had ever been shed in the history of the world, up to that point. That was the first sacrifice, really, to provide a cover for man. So, God began that very moment, the process of salvation, the plan of revelation, of what He thought about sin."

"Now, you stop and meditate on this. This is where the revelation really has to come. To understand what was happening in Jesus. I believe that the Trinity discussed creating man before they created him. They decided what the advantages were and what the dangers and risks were. But they so badly wanted to share of the overflow of their love with somebody else that they decided to create man to serve as further receptacles for the overflow of their love. They're totally giving beings. [emphasis not in original] Those original thoughts that God had about man when He was contemplating man's creation were beautiful, they were wonderful, they were perfect. And God had very high hopes. He had real ambitions for man. To see man flourish and grow under the nurturing and admonition, the tutelage of God the Father. Jesus Himself made the world that we live on. The world was made through Him."

"And so in the universe it is today, that the sight of a nail scarred guide is a far greater moral deterrent than the full punishment of any sinner. In the Atonement, God revealed Himself to man, in the clearest possible terms. The Bible tells us again that Jesus was an exact representation of God's nature. Jesus states "He that has seen me, has seen the Father". It was really the heart of God Himself that was up there on the cross, in front of the eyes of the watching world. And here are all these people saying "God is vindictive. God is blood-thirsty. God has to be paid back Himself" and God is saying, "No, I don't need anything. I'm not going to take anything. I don't need to receive anything. I've come to give life and to give it more abundantly. I've come to give." So we look, the heart of God lifted up on the cross, watch Him suffer, agonize and finally break, under the weight of our sin."

"The power of the cross, today, does not lie in some vague, abstract, ethereal cosmic transaction but rather in the literal subduing of the human heart. Do you understand what the difference is? The power of the cross does not lie in some vague, abstract, ethereal cosmic transaction. The power of the cross, the power of the blood of Christ, lies in its ability to literally, literally, literally, literally subdue the human heart. God's desire was never just to suppress rebels -- he had no problem doing that -- but to subdue their pride and then once again enjoy their fellowship. The exertion of force although generally speaking will result in rapid submission does not subdue the heart. You can force somebody to do what you want but you cannot force them to love you and to respect you. Consequently, true fellowship devolves to respect based on fear whenever we use force to get what we want. God's ultimate goal has never been, as we've said many times before, to save us from hell. He came rather to save us from ourselves and from our sins."

"When we fully understand the cross of Jesus Christ, everything that happened there and all that it means, it provides us with the greatest, the most imposing barrier to the contemplation of future sin. Jesus was able through His suffering to do what the Old Testament sacrifices never could. Provide a lasting moral force to alter our entire outlook on sin."

"You see, there are too many Christian's today who don't have that cross in the road. It's not a road block for them because they don't understand. They don't pursue it. They don't ask God for revelation. They don't meditate on what Christ did for them. So there is no breaking them and they are hard, they're hard people and they love their sin. If that act of love does not subdue our resolve, as Charles Finney says, then our case is hopeless. If that doesn't move you to tears, then ....."

"Jesus didn't pay for our sins, He bore our sins. It's not some kind of slick, little commercial transaction. The heart of God broke over the choices that you and I have made. Let's reverse things and let's tell the Lord Jesus that when He comes to us, when He comes to his own, that we will receive Him, that we will take Him down off that cross. Remember the words, Paul, that if we sin willfully after we come to the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, what we do is we crucify Him afresh. We crucify Him afresh; we put Him through even more grief. I believe that Jesus has suffered enough. The non-Christian world is going to be putting God through grief every day. But you and I have the opportunity to give Him some breathing room. We expect them to put God through grief but let's not us do it. Let's not, members of His own household, crucify Him afresh. After we've received revelation and light and truth. After all that say, no, we chose sin and put Him right back up there again. No, let's not be those kind of people. Let us pray."

"Then one of the elders asked me, 'These in white robes--who are they, and where did they come from?' I answered, 'Sir, you know.' And he said, 'These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'" Revelation 7:13-14

With this in mind, would you be so bold as to come before the holy God, creator of the universe and say, "Thank you for helping me to be righteous, how do you like my homemade robe?!"? Or will you confess with the saints of all the ages, "I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed -- in your mercy and grace, give me the robes you have washed with your own blood!!!"?

Pastor Robertson