Chapter Ten

Extra-Dimensionality, the Incarnation, and the Atonement

Far beyond those costs and motivations is the Incarnation. We humans have barely begun to appreciate the gift of the Incarnation in which Jesus chose to put aside, with rare exceptions, not one, but many dimensions or their equivalent. As our appreciation of His choice grows, so will our comprehension of what His love means.

Who Exactly Is the Incarnate Christ?
The Incarnation-coming in the flesh¹-refers to God's entering human life in a human body. Jesus Christ, the second person of the triune God, the Creator of all angels and of the entire universe, actually became a man. He did this of His own free will, without external compulsion. The Incarnation is possible-God on Earth, God with and among us and God in heaven-because of God's extra-dimensional capacities.

Jesus' divine identity as God, His character, wisdom, purity, and motives, remained perfectly intact,^2-3 but He voluntarily relinquished with only occasional exceptions the independent use of His divine powers and His extra-dimensional capacities. He accepted all the functional limitations of a human brain and body, all the needs, weaknesses, desires, sufferings, and trials of human life apart from sin (or sinning).⁴

Many distinguished theologians have devoted their careers to exploring and expounding the mysteries of the Incarnation, delineating what it means and what it does not mean. For example, some describe how Christ became fully human without inheriting or committing any sin. They cite Scripture passages indicating that He did not inherit His humanity from either Adam or Joseph. Scripture tells us that God supernaturally entered the womb of a virgin (Mary).^5-6 How He interacted with or modified Mary's egg is not made clear in Scripture, but He became a flesh and blood embryo. At that point, Christ received the physical and spiritual aspects of a human being. But as God's Son, He was free, and could be kept free, from the pollution of sin. We have much more to learn from discussions of a doctrine so central to the Christian faith, and I defer to the expertise of biblical expositors.

What we can achieve by an extra-dimensional physics'-eye-view of the Incarnation is a more complete understanding of what Christ willingly endured on behalf of those who would believe His message. And we can gain a new perspective on how He could be at once both God and man, in heaven and on earth, omnipotent and weary, working miracles and praying for miracles, fully God, yet acknowledging God the Father as greater.

Both God and Man
We human beings have no control over the four dimensions we experience; we can neither gain a dimension nor lose one. But God's control and mastery is complete. He created our four dimensions, and several more. Obviously, if God can create and enter dimensions, He can remove and leave them. With such capacities, He has free reign in choosing which ones He will use to interact with us. Further, He can choose to be bound to or use one set of dimensions for certain contexts while choosing other sets of dimensions or even realms of existence beyond dimensions for other contexts.

Examples of Jesus' control over dimensionality while He was with us in human form may be found throughout the four Gospels. One appears in the accounts of the temptation by Satan. Jesus, near death from starvation, was reminded of His supernatural capabilities. All Jesus had to do, Satan goaded, was to turn the stones scattered about Him into bread.⁷ Such a proposal would pose no temptation for any of us for the simple reason that we would be unable to act on it. The temptation might sharpen our hunger pangs when we heard mention of bread. It might tempt us to hurl some of those stones at our tempter. But to transform the stones into food would be impossible for us. Satan's approach in this temptation suggests that though Jesus had imposed on Himself the limitations common to humanity, He retained the capacity to deliver Himself from those limitations at any time and any place He chose.

A more explicit demonstration of Jesus' total, uninterrupted (but not independent) authority over the dimensions and components of His creation may be seen in the story of the stormy Sea of Galilee crossing. While Jesus slept in the stern of the boat, a squall came up, threatening to capsize the vessel. Fearing for their lives, the disciples awakened Jesus. When He saw the men's panic, Jesus at once rebuked the wind and told the waves, "Be still!"⁸ Immediately, the wind died down and the surface of the water became completely calm.

This incident shows Jesus' capacity to transition between contexts. First we see Jesus submitting to the wind and waves He created. In the next moment, however, Jesus exercises control and authority, as God the Father's agent, over the elements. In the first context, we see Jesus' humanity. In the second, we see His divinity. Jesus can be both God and man because He alone can choose when and where and with what part of His being and essence to operate in whatever form and over whatever dimensions He pleases.

An Atoning God
God's purpose in the Incarnation goes far beyond breaking through the dimensional barrier to communicate with us face-to-face, to help us understand and believe His message, to show us His love, and to give us hope. He came to break the sin barrier, to repair the damage done in the Garden of Eden. Christ came in human flesh to be the second Adam, the Man who would resist the temptation to "do his own thing." In perfectly obeying the Father, even to the point of death, He would finalize God's victory over the original and most powerful insurrectionist, Satan. The author of Hebrews explains at length why our Redeemer, the mediator between God and humankind, had to share in our humanity,⁹ to be made like us in every way,¹⁰ tempted in every way as we are,¹¹ and yet without any sin.^11-13

The cornerstone of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the Atonement: We human beings, all born with a propensity to serve ourselves rather than God,¹⁴ what the Bible calls sin, can be "acquitted" because Christ stepped in and paid sin's full penalty. Jesus' perfect life and substitutionary death restores to humanity the possibility of a personal, loving, shameless, never-ending relationship with our Creator. This relationship is available to anyone for the asking-an asking that paradoxically costs us both nothing¹⁵ and everything.¹⁶

Christ's death to save "whosoever believes in Him"¹⁷ is a doctrine on which Christians generally agree. Disagreements typically arise over other Atonement-related doctrinal issues, such as the meaning of "believe in," the requirements for receiving and keeping God's gift of salvation, and the freedom or pre-determination of our decision to accept that gift. These topics will be discussed in later chapters. For the moment we will focus on other Atonement perplexities: How could God be dead and alive at the same time? Does Christ's death pay for all people's sin or just the sin of those who accept His pardon? How could one man's suffering for several hours cover all the wickedness of all the people who have ever lived or will live?

These questions, among many others, reflect our three-dimensional (plus time) thinking about Christ's Atonement. They cannot be answered self-consistently within the confines of that perspective. But answers can be found if we look beyond our earthly context and consider what is possible in God's extra-dimensional existence.

Simultaneous Death and Life?
When Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, much more happened than a physical death. The book of Romans reminds us that sin entered the world through one human's decision to disregard God's way and to act on his own authority.¹⁸ This first expression of sin did not cause Adam and Eve to immediately drop dead physically. Physical death came to them some time later.¹⁹ Neither did they lose their capacity to hear God's voice. But sin's consequences were indeed profound. Humanity tasted autonomy, a separation of self from the Source of all life, goodness, truth, and love. The branch disconnected itself from the vine and sought sustenance elsewhere. The evils, pains, and sufferings that followed in Adam and Eve's lives and in the lives of all their progeny demonstrate the devastating results of that initial separation.

Adam and Eve were not the first creatures ever to taste autonomy. But they were the first human beings to taste it, and in doing so they placed themselves, their family, and all their descendants in the camp of God's enemy, the instigator of all insubordination and evil: Satan. Who could repair such damage? Adam was helpless to do so, however remorseful he may have been. No human after him could accomplish the repair, for each was born of that separated branch. The angels, however magnificent and obedient, lacked the capacity to carry it out.²⁰

Only God Himself could make the mend. He alone could survive the journey across the gap and make possible the restoration. The Restorer had to be able to enter not just some, but all the dimensions and realms occupied by both man and God. Angels could be sent into contact with humanity's dimensions. But the sin gap could not be closed by them, for they could not enter all of man's dimensions and realms and all of God's. Neither did they possess the attributes, resources, and extra-dimensional capacities to pay sin's penalty. One might also point out that the gap was closely guarded by Satan, whom no other angelic being could overpower.

In one moment-for Him, what could be an eternal moment and more because of His access to the equivalent of extra dimension(s) of time-Christ crossed the divide caused by sin. The Bible says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,"²¹ taking into Himself the wound of separation, the enmity or wrath of God against sin. In a human body, He proved His perfect obedience, His wisdom, and His power to live-and die-with the capacity for autonomy and yet wholly ("holy") attuned to the Father's will. He lived up to God's perfection and qualified Himself to pay the ransom price, namely His own death, for the penalty incurred by humanity's sin.

His death in the physical dimensions of time and space was real, not feigned, an experience He chose to undergo on our behalf. But He also experienced the indescribable spiritual torment of hell, of being shut out in some way we cannot picture, from His Father's approbation.

God Both Dead and Alive
Jesus Christ's paying for all of our sin through His death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection from the dead ranks as the most dramatic expression given to us of His control over all dimensional realms. Because He died, remained dead for "three days and three nights,"^22-23 and arose bodily from death to life, exactly as He predicted, proves that He has the power to limit any portion of His capacities and powers to any degree He chooses, whenever and wherever He chooses, and along whatever space-time dimensions (or super- or supra-dimensions) He chooses. The converse is also true. Jesus can expand any portion of His capacities and powers to any degree He chooses, whenever and wherever He chooses, and along whatever space-time dimensions (or super- or supra-dimensions) He chooses.

Some skeptics and atheists have argued that if Jesus were God, He could not have died; and if He died, He could not have been God. They recognize, of course, the contradiction in saying that Jesus is both really dead and really alive. Several famous nonbelievers have used this line of reasoning to conclude that the Christian faith is irrational and, therefore, unworthy of consideration.

The simultaneity of Jesus' death and immortality would only be a contradiction, however, if the time, place, and context of His death were identical to the time, place, and dimensional context of His being alive (see the discussion of contradictions and paradoxes in chapter 6 on pages 64-65). Even with respect to human death, we recognize the role of an extra-dimensional realm, though we may not use those words. Death, for us, refers to a change, a transition, a cessation of some kind, but it is not an annihilation (see chapter 16). While our physical death involves a definite and significant loss, that loss does not negate the possibility of a far greater extra-dimensional gain. Ultimately, we know our existence continues when our physical bodies can no longer sustain us.

The apostle John implies that the Holy Spirit communicates this fact to all;²⁴ though, of course, some in their rebellion against or practiced ignoring of God work very hard to deny it.²⁵ When we leave our familiar time and space abode and the physical bodies in which we were born, we enter some other realm or dimension(s), because our life extends beyond mere physical reality. While our physical body dies, our spirit continues to live. As the book of Ecclesiastes explains, eternity is somehow written on our hearts.²⁶

Because of Christ's identity as God and His access to all the dimensions or super- or supra-dimensions God encompasses, He could experience suffering and death in all the human-occupied dimensions and then transition into any of His other dimensions or realms once the atonement price had been paid. Evidencing His divine nature, Jesus resisted the temptation to escape from the agonies of a torturous death and finalized the payment for all our sin.

Limited or Unlimited Payment
The debate over whether Christ's atonement was "limited" or "unlimited" arises from two misperceptions. One equates sin (singular, universal) with sins (plural, individual) and thus quantifies that something for which atonement is required. The other, connected with it, applies God's foreknowledge to that quantitative assumption. The Bible declares God knows even before we are conceived or the universe was created whether we will reject His offer of forgiveness for our sin(s).^27-28 According to one line of reasoning, the penalty for which payment is needed must be the penalty for the sin of those and only those whom He knows will accept His payment made on their behalf. The rationale here is that for Christ to pay for all the offenses for all humanity, and yet have only some humans receive the benefit of the payment, is tantamount to saying that Christ's payment is at least partially without effect. And for Christ to be in any way ineffective would mean He is less than omnipotent.

This argument correctly affirms Christ's omnipotence but stumbles into contradiction with many other passages of Scripture. These three are typical:
Christ died for the ungodly.²⁹ He [Jesus] suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.³⁰ Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.³¹

The debate can be resolved, at least to some degree of satisfaction, by reconsidering the logic or validity of labeling "unaccepted pardon" as "ineffectual payment." To use a human example, if the court accepts my offer to pay the traffic fines for four of my friends, knowing that I can cover the maximum amount charged for their violations, my bank account and generosity are not limited nor adjudged insufficient should any of my friends refuse to accept my offer to pay their fines.

A complete resolution may be had if we accept that God had an important purpose in dying for everyone regardless of anyone's decision to receive or reject His offer of forgiveness. Christ may have died and paid the penalty for all so that no one could ever, at any future point, rightly conclude that God did not express His love toward that person. In a later chapter on hell's torment, we will look at the proposition that God continuously expresses His perfect love to all for the rest of eternity.

Resolving the deeper issue of humans' free will and how it can operate without contradicting God's sovereign will, and vice versa, would offer a much more deeply satisfactory answer. This resolution, which can be accomplished in extra-dimensional reality, will be addressed in a later chapter.

Adding Up the Price
The quantitative perspective on our atonement price and a four-dimensional view of what Christ endured on the cross have raised a target for secular skepticism and ridicule. The idea that one man's suffering for one afternoon on a Roman cross-a painful execution that many other men endured-could even approach equivalence to the eternal torment and suffering of the billions who have rejected or will reject His offer of redemption, seems absurd. Jesus' suffering on the cross lasted but six hours.³² (The emotional and spiritual pain of knowing what He would endure began much earlier, of course, perhaps even before the angels and the universe were created. In this sense the agony of the Atonement began much before the Incarnation.) His suffering on the cross, though greater than what any other being has ever endured,³³ may at first glance seem finite and imaginable. How, then, could one imaginable experience of torment of apparently limited duration be equivalent to hell's unimaginable torment visited for an unimaginable duration on vast numbers of people?

Such reasoning overlooks the implications of Christ's simultaneous deity and humanity. His payment of our ransom price must be accounted for in a perspective that goes beyond our physical realm. The book of Hebrews offers this insight:
He [Christ] went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation.³⁴
Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, . . . Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.³⁵

A significant part of what transpired in Christ's payment of all that our death warrants took place in God's extra-dimensional realm. While Scripture is clear that all of our sins have been completely atoned for by Christ's one sacrifice,³⁶ it does not explain every detail of how the atonement price was accounted. What matters is that Jesus Christ has the capacity to make full payment. Our confidence rests in His adequacy.

Given even a limited understanding of Christ's extra-dimensional characteristics and powers, however, we can suggest some possible approaches to that accounting. Perhaps the easiest for us to comprehend would be reckoning Jesus' payment of our atonement price in two extra dimensions of time.

The penalty for one person's sin-unimaginably painful torment and isolation from God and everything and everyone good and righteous forever-would require that individual's existence (after physical death on earth) on at least one infinitely long time line. If some twenty billion people incur sin's penalty, twenty billion infinite time lines would represent the cumulative total of sin's penalty. With a second time dimension, God could move along, that is, experience, these twenty billion lines. He would possess a plane of time that could encompass all of them. Thus, while Jesus suffered on the cross for six hours on our time line, He could have experienced the suffering of twenty billion infinite timelines in two other dimensions of time.

There are countless other ways, of course, that Jesus could have experienced the fullness of hell's torment. Jesus could have used His superior capacities to experience intensified torment on a limited time scale. In other words, He could choose to suffer to an infinite degree for a finite time rather than to suffer a finite degree for infinite time. Either way, the sum total remains the same.

This minimal comprehension of what Christ endured to cover the consequences of all our sin can be numbingly overwhelming. But as we allow time for this numbness to wear off, we can experience anew, perhaps much more deeply than ever, gratitude and amazement at the magnitude of His love. And we may better understand the basis for this question in Hebrews: "How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?"³⁷

Does the Atonement Demote Christ?
Some Christians also express concern that the notion of Christ's infinitely intense or infinitely enduring payment for sin's penalty somehow diminishes Him in relation to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Their concern arises, perhaps, from our familiar, finite perspective. A finite supply of anything can be diminished by withdrawals or expenditures from that supply. However, even if the supply of some particular resource is limited, an expenditure of it in any amount, even the total, does nothing to demote or diminish the one who makes that expenditure. That individual's attributes and identity remain intact regardless of the generosity he or she might display.

God's relinquishing of time dimensions (or the equivalent) to atone for sin, if He actually did do so, would be incomparable to our giving up a dimension. For us humans to lose the capacity to operate in one of our four dimensions would be catastrophic. It would limit our functionality and either tremendously diminish the meaning of our personhood or eradicate it altogether. But, for God, the case is radically different. He can, as He has already demonstrated, create dimensions of time and space at will. While humanity is subject to whatever time and space dimensions He places us in, time and space are subject to Him. Although Christ did make an enormous expenditure of His resources in atoning for our sins, He could do so without depleting or diminishing His supply of power and resources and without altering His identity.

A brief review of the concept of infinity may help clarify this point. Infinity minus one still equals infinity. The psalmist declares that God owns "the cattle on a thousand hills."³⁸ Making a gift of all those cattle does not make God poor or poorer. His resources are infinite. Infinite wealth minus the cattle on a thousand hills still adds up to infinite wealth.

Does God's infinite wealth mean that any gift He gives us counts as nothing to Him? Can He really be considered "generous" if He experiences no depletion? To answer this question requires a contextual shift from the material realm to the nonmaterial. For example, does the giving of love or kindness or compassion deplete our supply of such things? It may deplete our time or energy or other resources, but not these intangibles. Because we still have more to give after we have given, does this eradicate the value of the giving? Hardly. In the same way, no matter how Christ paid for our sins, the gift amounts to more than we can imagine, and it takes nothing away from the equality He shares with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

Does the Atonement Permanently Mar Christ?
When the disciples were visited by the resurrected Christ, they were able to see and feel the wounds of His crucifixion.³⁹ Christ certainly had the power to eradicate these wounds, but He chose to let them remain. One reason may be that these marks were essential to convince the disciples of the reality of Jesus' bodily resurrection. The wounds identified Him as nothing else could have. And no doubt these marks helped remind the disciples of what the Creator willingly endured to atone for their sins and of the permanent effects of that atoning sacrifice. This kind of reminder may be of some benefit to future generations of disciples and even to the hosts of angels and demons.

Whether these marks of the cross will remain for us to see when we enter Christ's presence we do not know. The book of Revelation, which gives more description of the heavenly realm and of our future there than does any other portion of Scripture, gives no clear answer to this question. Yet we can speculate that when the magnificence of the new creation is revealed to us, and when we begin to fathom the loss and the horror that hell represents, we may well be sufficiently reminded of the magnitude of the price Christ paid for our atonement.

Beyond Our Imagining
The Incarnation is described in the second chapter of Philippians as Christ's becoming "nothing." Such a statement does not deny the wonder and worth of human beings, but it does express the magnitude of Christ's divestiture in accepting life as a human. The humility He demonstrated in coming to us and dying for us exemplifies the humility we need in coming to Him. His example of humility, rather than hinting at any weakness or inferiority, indicates just the opposite-the moral perfection of God alone.

The differences made by that one-dimensional gap between the screen people and us, as vast as they are, seem utterly trivial, "nothing," compared with the differences made by the seven- or more-dimensional gap between us and God. What is more, the Incarnation and the Atonement show us God's capacity to operate in any dimensional realm, any combination of space and time dimensions (or super- or supra- dimensions) He chooses. He can also manifest different aspects of Himself in different dimensional realms. The reality in which He can live and move supersedes by far the limits of human imagination. And yet we know He wants us to try to imagine it, to anticipate our future in it, because He gave us sneak previews-in His Word, in His creation, in His Incarnation, and in His Atonement.

References:

1. See Hebrews 2:14-18, 4:15.
2. Matthew 11:27, 12:28, 22:41-46, 28:18-20; Luke 10:22; John 5:17-23, 6:27, 8:58, 10:17-18,30-39, 14:6-11,16-26, 15:26, 16:7-15, 17:1-11,21-24, 20:27-29, The Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV).
3. Of the nine miracles John describes in any detail In his Gospel, all nine are miracles beyond what any prophet had ever performed and all nine were miracles that contemporary rabbis declared could be performed only by God Himself.
4. Hebrews 2:14,4:15, NIV.
5. Matthew 1:18-25, NIV.
6. Luke 1:30-35, NIV.
7. Matthew 4:1-3, NIV.
8. Mark 4:39, NIV.
9. Hebrews 2:14, NIV.
10. Hebrews 2:17, NIV.
11. Hebrews 4:15, NIV.
12. John 8:46, NIV.
13. 1 John 3:5, NIV.
14. Romans 3:9-20, NIV.
15. Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV.
16. Luke 14:25-33, NIV.
17. John 3:16, NIV.
18. Romans 5:12-19, NIV.
19. Genesis 3:7-24, NIV.
20. Hebrews 1:3-14, NIV.
21. 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV.
22. Matthew 12:39-40, NIV.
23. Coulter, Frederick R., A Harmony of the Gospels in Modern English: The Lift of Christ (Los Angeles, Calif.: York, 1974), pp.231-247.
24. John 16:8-11, NIV.
25. Romans 1:18-23, NIV.
26. Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV.
27. Romans 8:29, 9:10-13, NIV.
28. Ephesians 1:4-14, NIV.
29. Romans 5:6, NIV.
30. Hebrews 2:9, NIV.
31. 1 John 2:1-2, NIV.
32. Mark 15:25,34-39, NIV.
33. Metherell, Alex, and Ross, Hugh, Behold the Man, video documentary (Pasadena, Calif.: Reasons To Believe, 1995).
34. Hebrews 9:11, NIV.
35. Hebrews 9:24-25, 28, NIV.
36. Hebrews 9:11-18, NIV.
37. Hebrews 2:3, NIV.
38. Psalm 50:10, NIV.
39. John 20:24-29, 1 John 1:1, NIV.