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Chapter 3
THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD
The Thoroughness of the Thought and
Cordiality of the Heart of the Lord
Acts 20:26-32
News 390, The Advertiser July 5, 2007
Here, Paul lends us his eyepiece, and we see the Massif of Majesty (bold added).
"Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.
For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God."Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock,
among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers,
to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood."For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you,
not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up,
speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves."Therefore watch, and remember that for three years
I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.
So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace,
which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance
among all those who are sanctified."
I THE LOVE AND THE LETTER OF TRUTH
Here is the assurance that God is neither forgetful in mind nor severed in spirit from the children of His life. We have already seen in Ch. 2 above, the strength of His desire for the salvation, the deliverance, the restoration, the rebuilding of those among men who will from the whole spectrum of the race, receive Him, take His peace, acknowledge His pardon and rest in Him.
What then of those who so come ? Does even a patient come to a doctor - excluding those such as the recent Moslem medical batch bound to destroy, pursued in England - and not receive after-care following an operation ? Does any normal mother ever cast away her dependent child ? Does she withhold wisdom if she has it, or does a father fail to counsel his son ?
Therefore God does not give a suggestion box to employes, nor an index of criteria merely, but has declared the way, having prepared the race for the time of His invasive benevolence, by bearing sin on a Cross in the format of man*1 .
Never was such an invasion as this, which invaded the disease of sin and bore it, and provided peace and pardon in His own presence as the triumph of His gracious kindness. Yet it is not like al Qaeda, to devastate. In this divine action, it is the disease, not the diseased which is destroyed; and as for those healed in heart, they are redeemed. Yet even then, it is not as if by forcible compulsion or tyrannical extradition; for with what heart God has cried for the lost we have seen in Ch. 2 above, as in The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 7 and 9, in Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 8 and Outrageous Outrages. Awesome Inputs and the Courage of Christ Ch. 9.
Is not Matthew 23:37, is not Luke 19:42ff. a very panorama of the pity of Christ and a plate of His combined love for the lost and realism for those who refuse salvation! Though it is foreknown to Him, and indeed in that very wisdom, His own seal and stamp of desiring all is immanent, and from this comes predestination, and not vice versa (Romans 8:29ff.): yet has He not sequestered from sin, but dealt with man as in His own image. Though sick, man is still thus formatted, and though wilful in blindness, yet man may still be found where God who knows all, taking advantage of none, gives grace to any.
Thus Christ laments for the recalcitrant lost ones, but having provided, there comes with the same depth of His heart, the security of those who come and will come.
This is it. There is no other salvation, no other Christ, no other love, no other competence, no other Creator, no other consummation, no other knowledge, no other sustained and verified testimony of the ages, and no other Gospel.
Thus Paul declares in Galatians 1:7-9, a word so harsh, that it is clear that this is the very crown of joy and the criterion of life. Another gospel ? by all means, and teach it if you want to be cursed. God conserves on the other hand, what He has given, and its inimitable place of pardon comes from His very own power and prerogatives as God.
"I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel,
which is not another;
but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ."But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you
than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed."As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
For do I now persuade men, or God?
Or do I seek to please men?
For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ."
Am I, asks Paul, to be understood in my actions, as seeking men, to persuade them to finding God WHERE in Christ, He may be found, or putting forth some species of propaganda on man's behalf, as if to persuade God, perhaps as a human agent for a compromise, a deal! If he says, I were interested in doing deals for men, pleasing them, I would not EVEN BE the bonded servant of Jesus Christ. That is not even an option. Is this Gospel a site for study groups, an arena for contest ? If the world were written in purple ink on a cabbage leaf, perhaps; but in fact, scarcely could anything more ludicrous be imagined. The Gospel is given, eternal (Revelation 14:6) and immiscible, un-negotiable and necessary.
It would not be possible to be clearer, as indeed is the case in Acts 4:11-12, where Peter, speaking of Christ declares this:
"This is the ‘stone which was rejected by you builders,
which has become the chief cornerstone.’
"Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
Such is the love of God, such is its expression and such is its royal law, for there is no other name, no other Saviour, and none but Jesus the Christ has paid.
That is as foretold precisely, for example, in Isaiah 49-55, Psalm 2 and Zechariah 11-12, and wrought in public testimony of power and patience before all who were reminded of these things at Pentecost, and none could deny what had been done. Therefore thousands immediately joined the church, and the spread did not stop until it had conquered the seat of power in Rome itself.
It is shown in power, but also in pity.
So great is this love that Paul, the apostle, night and day with tears, we read, warned them in the church at Ephesus, visiting, pleading, presenting, like a nurse (cf. I Thessalonians 2:7). Who would NOT warn with such a message from the God of creation: one not for mere information, but for rescue of the lost, as those who are swiftly being swept in the rivers of cultures to the seas of judgment! If the danger was strong then, however, it is mounting now!
Thus in The Advertiser, July 5, there appears a heading, "Pick your religion from a la carte menu". It speaks of religion in America.
The point made from a recent study, with statistical findings, is this. Around 2/3 of Americans are found to believe in God as the all-powerful, knowing, perfect Creator of the universe. 83 per cent of these declared themselves to be in the Christian category. Yet only 48% were 'absolutely committed to Christianity.' This same newspaper article proceeds to cite from the President of the Christian research company, one David Kinnaman. "There is," he states, "increasing pressure on Christians to bend and shape their views into something that's popular, something that fits the pop culture's view of what spirituality ought to be."
Why do so many show so little evidence of commitment in their lives ? the question is asked.
Part of it, he holds is a failure in church teaching, and that many put their so-called faith (consider James in this! 'faith without works is dead') on the shelf. This would fit precisely that bogus faith which OF COURSE does not have works, to which James, who makes every good and perfect gift, including faith of course, from God, makes such blistering reference. People, the critique proceeds, are increasingly eclectic about their faith, picking and choosing beliefs according to their needs and preferences. Some say, adds David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 'Yes, I'm Christian, but I don't think Chrisianity is the only path.' They are not going to 'die for it,' this 'faith' of theirs, such say.
What then of those who want to make their own Gospel, their own law, their own ideas and put them, as some might stuff cream-cakes into their fat-feeding mouths, into the mouth of what they take to be God or whatever it is, if they give it any thought at all! Would they like to groom a god to their pleasure ? (cf. Isaiah 30:10). Would they like 'smooth things' as did Israel of old to its destruction ?
What of the new gospellers of whom there are myriads, using the name of God or something else variously as it pleases them ? Is it not like the children of wealthy tourists who take for granted that they be on board every pleasure cruise, every train of breath-taking wonder, and do not even have hearts to express thanks, nor bother to enter unless taken, merely following their parents, so that if they were consulted, their wills and lives would be other! There they go, merely passively accepting pleasure. Is this to be the theological 'insightful' situation ? For many, it is.
This is delusion, it is fatness instead of faith, fatuity instead of wisdom and licence instead of truth!
Paul foretold this too! (Acts 20:29-30). Indeed, JEREMIAH, centuries beforehand, predicted that the whole phenomenon of 'false prophets', people who run without being sent by God, would reach its consummate state, its most highly developed, in the last times (Jeremiah 23:16-20).
II THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD AND THE WOLVES
That is precisely why this verse 27 of Acts 20, this declaration of Paul, parallel entirely to his epistle to the Galatians in Chapter 1, constitutes such a massif in the Celestial Range of the Mountains of God, the alpine glory of the faith.
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"I have not shunned to declare to you the
whole counsel of God." |
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There is not only nothing else, but no more. It is as if a child, having had three full courses of delightful food, ending with a sweet, is told this: there is nothing more, there is nothing else. |
The WHOLE COUNSEL of God is displayed. It is not misted over, as if unclear and smitten with fog. To be sure, in due course, we who love God will indeed see Him face to face (Revelation 22:3); but in the interim we have a precise parchment, the very word of God, and what is more, the entire Gospel, the exact panorama of truth is what is displayed, under no less authority than that of God Himself. We see this in such scriptures as Matthew 5:17-20, where breaking the least commandment and keeping the same, become indications of great import in the kingdom of heaven. Teaching and doing the least commandment is a matter of relish from the Royal King of the Kingdom of heaven, we there learn.
ALL that God says matters, because it is the truth: thus Christ told them that they did not well to seek to kill Him, "a man who told you the truth," John 8:40. Indeed, it came as what His Father commanded (John 12:48-50).
"For I have not spoken on My own authority;
but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command,
what I should say and what I should speak.
And I know that His command is everlasting life.
Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak."
BECAUSE it is eternal truth, it cannot fail, and THEREFORE every jot and tittle of it (Matthew 5:17-20) will hold up and be fulfilled in the practical, time-space realm of this earth. It could not be more stringent; and this we have investigated in detail in its biblical base, in Communication and Consummation. Moreover, the prophets spoke by the thrust and command of the Holy Spirit Himself. This, indeed, is as shown in II Peter 1:19-21, where what came into being was by the moving of the Spirit of God, so that the result was not something individual in its perception, but as granted by divine fiat. The identical message is that of Paul in I Corinthians 2:9-13, and the divine control and precision is seen likewise in I Peter 1:25, II Peter 3:2,16 (cf. the exposition in SMR Appendix D).
Old or New Testament, it is the same. Thus Isaiah 34:16, having specified a lot of specific detail concerning a divine judgment, right down to the physical aspects of various creatures to be in the area detailed for ruin, declares this of the specifications of the Book of the Lord. None of these shall fail, none shall lack its mate. Every last composition of the depiction, phase of the picture, fact of the forecast, it will be there. The words that speak, the things they depict: ALL stand. Nothing is riven, nothing is reduced. What it says, this it will be.
In similar vein, but this time of things just past, the apostles spoke. It was actual, factual, incontestable, whether the sight was of things to come, or of things that had happened in their midst. God deals with facts, is friend to them, and makes them happen (cf. Isaiah 14:27, Lamentations 3:37, Acts 2:23,29ff.). We cannot, said Peter and John, but speak the things we have seen and heard (cf. Acts 4-5). None could deny what they asserted, just days after the years of Christ's actions, which Peter depicted; for it had happened in that very same Jerusalem which had killed Him, centre of the nation where many had flocked, throughout the land, to be healed, to hear, to marvel and be astounded as His wisdom and witty answers to the seemingly witless and certainly wily words of his highly trained religious enemies.
What then ?
While God makes His mind plain to man, it is HIS MIND which He makes plain, and not something else. He who IS the truth does not lie, and indeed CANNOT (Titus 1:1-3, cf. Barbs ... 6-7). This is His own dictum. Trying then to evacuate from the Bible what it says is not merely playing with atomic hardware, but toying with the immutable beautiful glory of God (Psalm 102, II Corinthians 4:2-6). It is like throwing acid into a lady's face, scum into the mouth of majesty.
What is truth ? "They word is truth," declares Christ (John 17:17), and word by word (the Greek remata as in Matthew 4:4), it is sustained because He sent it, impelling the very words by His Holy Spirit. It is not a question of His using this or that psychic method in so doing. It is not of this that He speaks. It is of the RESULT of His action. As with the healing of the body, we are not a party to the method of performance which the Creator exercises when a billion cells in the body are all instantaneously altered by divine healing (cf. Things Old and New Ch. 3, Endnote 1A ). What we DO see and find is this: the RESULT.
So it is with that other expression of divine power: the downloading of His words so that He might speak through prophet and apostle of old. Thus we read in Ephesians 2:20-22 that the foundation has been laid, and thus is the church in Paul's day, seen likewise as already not only on its foundation, but excluded from any other, whoever might like to act otherwise, and build (cf. I Corinthians 3:11). The word is given, immutable. The basis is built. The affair is settled. The God who gave it cannot be unsettled.
The Lord, the living word has come, indestructible, resurrected after death. This thing also, it is sure, certain and DONE. It is neither equivocal nor parabolic. How does God proceed ? It happens, it is there, what is said would be the case. It is as when Christ Himself healed, or for that matter raised from the dead (John 11). One failure would have ruined His testimony, shown Him an impostor, not the truth; but this is precisely what did not happen, because it could not happen, in word or deed. When God acts, He never has stage-fright or impotence.
Consider if Jesus the Christ had NOT healed in Mark 2, or raised from the dead in John 11, in view of His precise prediction in Mark 2, and His command to Lazarus to 'come forth' from the tomb in John 11! No one would have considered Him further. On the other hand, the relentless parade of the impossible never ceased, till jealous ecclesiastical functionaries and hypnotised followers of their trade, sought death for the One whom they could not control. Otherwise, ridicule would have ruined Him, and the unmet bar would have shown by failed jumps, the ludicrous character of claiming to be God (John 10:30).
In this business, there is no room for error; it is more precise than any experiment, since this subject talks Himself, and then does it, also ... Himself. It is self-interpreting and self-verifying.
The marvel then is this, that the God whose word made DNA, cognitive consequences of controlled symbolic systematics, using matter as a tool, who made His written word to guide man, who sent His living word to bring salvation for man (cf. Titus 2-3, John 8:58), has not failed to tell us the works. It is not that it is staggering that He spoke, but it regales the heart to see that He so cared as both to speak, portray the way and His concern, and act to enable restoration by redemption. It is all there, written, wrought and taught. It does not change. Because God has acted, it is free.
The COMPLETE WORKS of William Shakespeare may be purchased for a relatively small price; but the writing of them was costly.
The complete word of God to man, this too may be purchased relatively cheaply in the Bible, but the deeds to which it refers were not cheaply wrought, nor were the lives of the prophets cut-price, but they endured as they were used to bring in written form, the preliminaries which were to come before the Christ and in His day on earth. It was then at the foretold time (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), that in His own predicted self, He brought the culmination and the consummation.
Not only, then, was THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD given to man, so that no Gospel is even conceivable apart from the word of God, even as preached by Paul in the day of his epistle to the Galatians, but its necessity is so great that Paul did not cease, night and day for three years to declare it. He knew too, that after him there would come fierce wolves, using the image of shepherd and flock, who would take the sheep with bloodthirsty lupine lust!
Be warned, he said, for the whole counsel of God is by no means acceptable to the devil who lusts for another way, another will, another word and another game altogether (cf. Ephesians 6). CHANGE is his evil desire, to change the gospel, the word of God, the way of truth (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, Dastardly Dynamics and ... Immovable Faith Ch. 6). As to God by contrast, His ways do not change (Malachi 3:6, Psalm 102, Hebrews 1:12, Habakkuk 3:6, I Peter 1:24-25, Psalm 119:89,111,140-142, Isaiah 8:20, Revelation 22:18-20, Deuteronomy 4, 12). His word stays, to be fulfilled, or to function as before, inveterate, unvanquished, the testimony of the living God to the time-space medium of man, to his mentality, to his spirit, for his future, his destiny, his life.
Rebellion thinks otherwise, as it always has strangely imagined , from the refusal to enter the GIVEN LAND in place and time as specified by God, of Canaan (Numbers 14), as if history were too much; and this, even when God has shown in detail and dynamic such a control of it as to vanquish through the word of a slave, the imperial potency of Egypt!
Then as now, this variability, equals assault on divine integrity, equals by implication, departure from this same Bible, the Book of the Lord. This litany of rebellion, this byway of religious lust has been noted frequently in our own generation (cf. News 121, 122 for example), and some would seek to hold hostage to their will, the very word of God.
In this very article from the Advertiser, mentioned above, we see statistical evidence of the present spread of just such intolerance of stable, divine truth (cf. Isaiah 33:6), even in that heartland of concentrated Christian belief, the USA. To be sure, it is often astray, it has much froth, but it is indubitable that there is much emphasis on biblical things, at many realms in public life, beyond what is readily found in nearly all other countries; and this is a huge country.
Yet there in the USA too, there is this declivity as the spiritual sun sets on this world's ways, and the foretold prince of this world (John 14:30), makes his way more conspicuous, more obvious, more tediously pathological (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, Moon Soon, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4). One of the most crucial elements, indeed, in the statistical survey and its delineation, is this, that many do not think Christianity is THE TRUTH, but it is what they have, and they conceive that others may not be wrong in something else. This is anti-faith. It does NOT hold to what it assigns as its base. It is like a little child saying this:
Oh yes, mummy has told me always to obey and to follow her, and I am mummy's boy - she feeds me and dresses me - but if someone else has something else, well that may be fine. I would not suffer pain in order to avoid something else. Mummy is just what I have. It's all right, I guess.
Such a child belongs in name only. It is ready for any lure. Christians however are sure not to shame Christ, in the long run, because those who do are shams (Luke 9:26). Of them will the Son of Man be ashamed at the judgment, Christ declares. Christianity is not an inkling of opinion, but the revelation of God. If you have other irons in the fire, you have a different fire and your iron is mere dust shining. NO ONE, says Christ, comes to the Father but by ME! (John 14:6). That follows since NO ONE ELSE has come from the Father as Saviour, and indeed, it is God who is the ONLY Saviour (Acts 4:11-12, Isaiah 43:10-11), so that the other choice is NOT-GOD!
Of this, Moses' inspired conception of NOT-GOD, that is, the other, the alien, mutable before the face of the immutable, had much to declare (cf. Grand Biblical Perspectives Chs. 3, 4, 5). We see it in summary in Deuteronomy 32, notably verses 15-22. The fury of God is poured out on such subterfuge, inconstancy, presumption and arrogation of His place by changing His words and making your own, and worse, when you use HIS name for your antics.
Such NOT-GOD field, whether using His name or inventing a novelty from the mind of man, what is it ? It becomes spurious, spiritual subterfuge, as if lying to a doctor before a crucial operation, concerning the data! How much worse is this, than betraying a bride by lies, in order to exploit her, or being so addled in approach, that none of it really seems to matter. Her life however does matter. Man's life does matter, and it is readily forfeit in the scrabbling scramble, the ruinous rambling in the name of religions, instead of in the name of the living and eternal God, whose Christ has declared Him.
Apart from His own self-defining, and sent Word (John 1:14, Hebrews 1), there is merely a slide. You then have nattering instead of repenting, pretending instead of receiving, and thus comes like a false bridal party, an ultimate arrogance. It festers like sores deliberately allowed to be surrounded by delighted flies. Such is the imagery; fraud is the fact. It is to come from within churches as well as outside, as Paul makes clear in Acts 20:29 'from within you.'
Such is the identical testimony of Peter, in II Peter 2:1. Paul similarly in I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3 and 3, speaks of the last times, our own, as a summit of this spiritual sloth of mind and pathology of heart! (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
Of this development, then Paul speaks in Acts 20:28-29:
"For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you,
not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up,
speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves."Therefore watch ..."
III THE RESULTS
It is always good to be in the alpine splendours, to see the little things that mean so much when you are near, in distant perspective. It is no different here. In this part of Acts 20, Paul's address to the Ephesians elders, we see the stark wonder that we have the WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD to man, inscribed in the apostolic testimony. In the Lord's action to give this counsel, we find treasures from above, deposits for below and power for living, because God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32), and here is the criterion of life, Christ and His word, the former the save, the latter to guide.
This word of God, the Bible, from the Christ whose coming and speech it records (I Peter 1:11): it is truth in print, power supplied, peace available, Christ incarnate portrayed (cf. I Timothy 3:16, II Timothy 3:16 II Peter 1:12ff.), God expressed for man in words that wilt at nothing, wither not at all, stand fast and constant, are required of every man who hears, as a challenge between destiny defunct and destiny alive.
There is no hidden agenda; there are no notes of incomprehensible additions; there are neither reviews nor revisions. This is the sure testimony of truth. If you love not the truth, this may mean nothing, but as in any law court, whatever your degree of caring about it, the RESULTS are the same (John 3:19). THIS is the condemnation, says John, apostle of love, that light has come into the world, that which as in John 1:14 is God incarnate, and men have preferred darkness to light. As to that light, EVERY JOT and tittle is to be fulfilled, said He, of the Law and the Prophets. God is no casual communicator. He KNOWS not only His own people, but His own mind and minds His own words, that they be both given and a criterion for all (Isaiah 8:20).
This or that man's response to it, it changes neither darkness nor light, but merely the amount of those who inhabit each realm! (cf. Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6).
With a CONSISTENT THRUST, God intimates that He is love (I John 4:7ff.), that His word is truth (John 17:17), that it does not change, that the Gospel is presented, its peace published (Isaiah 52-53), that it is foretold, that it has come, that it will be savagely attacked, that many will be snatched, that frauds will come in to try to populate the church and depopulate its true and abiding place. It indicates that many will so act, moving with people snatching devices!
In this way, God shown the depth of His concern, culminating in the crucifixion of the Incarnate One; and Paul follows on as an apostle, in his tears and testimony over three years to those of Ephesus, going from house to house, to seek the lost, to sustain the wavering, help the wandering and deliver whom he may.
The word of God is one in consistency, in tenor, in truth. It neither varies, nor does it testimony flutter in the breezes of culture, tradition or contempt; for even if it means (cf. Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14) that people will die in physical torment, yet are their hearts valiant, and if this is required, so by the thousands if not millions, it has come and the blood has spoken. Indeed, even before the fangs of wolves that inhabit churches as their lairs (cf. Revelation 3:18ff., 3:9), many under-shepherds have fallen, knowing that if the world has hated Christ (the actual one, not an effeminate or mutated model for lip service (cf. John 16:2, 15:18, and Sermon: The Just One), it will hate them too.
Beware, said Christ, when all men speak well of you, for what is highly esteemed among men is abomination before God! (Luke 16:15).
The kingdom and the key of the Lord, it brings words, works and a way: it is one of precision in prediction, concerning facts, data, gen, both for its particular paths and of its atmosphere. It is pathologically apt, testimonially true: what is says always happens, and happens in more than accord, in concord with the text given, the word of the Lord, whether written or spoken by the Lord Himself on earth (cf. Lead us Not into Temptation Ch. 4, The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8-9). History leaps to obey; man drives to rebel. The word of God, however, embraces all, the good and the bad, in its purvey, and the devices of the devil versus the clear counsel of God, and moreover, it specifies the outcome. The devil is fiery, but the Lord is a consuming fire. Nothing before Him, test concluded, obtrudes.
The whole counsel of God is the peak, the spectacle and the gift of love. It is not only so, but necessarily so, for when God displays Himself in human form to make atonement, more there is not. It is all given, done in the mercies prodigious of the Lord. To stray from this, is belligerent folly, like a dog bathing in fleas, or a horse walking on spikes. It can be done. It is not wise.
When you walk in darkness, indeed, almost anything can be done.
What God has done, on the other hand, is in the light. It is this gift which requires testimony, is a test: and no doctrine, no dogmatism can alter it. It is the bread from heaven, and its loss is for mere stuff of imagination. Visit the Celestial Alps, and try it.
NOTES
The Trinitarian truth has from the first involved the divine suit for salvation for man (Genesis 3:15), in the case of using the fact that man was made in His own spiritual image (though of course a creation of the Creator), so that God could aptly become man, and the seed of the woman as man bring suit against sin in His own person, not charging fees like a lawyer, but giving blood, experiencing death as the gift, the way of eternal life. Indeed, unpaid except by crucifixion, thus He could and did cancel not only fees, but sin's guilt, and become barrister for pardon in His own person, the fee written on His hands and feet. Thus did He cover justice justly, and bring peace in princely style (cf. Isaiah 9:6, 52-55), freely.
See the following: on the Trinity and this pivot of re-creation towards the entirety of creation, but covering personally its summit man, his sin thus ready to be covered, and in fact covered for all who come to Him in this Proclamation of Pardon called redemption.
Grand Biblical Perspectives Appendix,
Let God be God Ch. 5,
Great Desecrations ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 3,
Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 15,
SMR pp. 532ff.;
A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12.