Hi Jeff,
I guess that as a full preterist and a universalist, I have found that to come to these conclusions I have had to unlearn many assumptions I have had over the years.
I am not sure why most all Christians believe that Christ came to earth, born of a virgin, did many miracles, taught of many incredible truths, was put to death, died, was buried, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven… We believe all these things (and I may add none of us has seen with our own eyes) and yet many will not believe that he came for all, to reconcile humanity to the Father, that he bore the sin of all the world, that he came to completely fulfil the covenantal requirements to the house of Israel, that through a partial hardening of heart, ALL have been Included… in short, Christ has done everything he said he would do.
As to sins, pains, sufferings, glorification etc… I will quote George McDonald:
God does not, by the instant gift of his Spirit, make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after him and his will. Therefore either he will not, or he cannot. If he will not, it must be because it would not be well to do so. If he cannot, then he would not if he could; else a better condition than God’s is conceivable to the mind of God-a condition in which he could save the creatures whom he has made, better than he can save them. The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. How should he effect this if he were always moving us from within, as he does at divine intervals, towards the beauty of holiness? God gives us room to be; does not oppress us with his will; “stands away from us,” that we may act from ourselves, that we may exercise the pure will for good. Do not, therefore, imagine me to mean that we can do anything of ourselves without God. If we choose the right at last, it is all God’s doing, and only the more his that it is ours, only in a far more marvellous way his than if he had kept us filled with all holy impulses precluding the need of choice. For up to this very point, for this very point, he has been educating us, leading us, pushing us, driving us, enticing us, that we may choose him and his will, and so be tenfold more his children, of his own best making, in the freedom of the will found our own first in its loving sacrifice to him, for which in his grand fatherhood he has been thus working from the foundations of the earth, than we could be in the most ecstatic worship flowing from the divinest impulse, without this willing sacrifice. For God made our individuality as well as, and a greater marvel than, our dependence; made our apartness from himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to himself, with a new and inscrutable marvel of love; for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of our individuality, and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to him who made his freedom. He made our wills, and is striving to make them free; for only in the perfection of our individuality and the freedom of our wills call we be altogether his children. This is full of mystery, but can we not see enough in it to make us very glad and very peaceful?
Macdonald, George . Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III (p. 75).
I kind of like how he puts this. Having pasted the above, I have no problem with the notion that Christ did all he said he would do. And we are exactly where the Father wants us.
qaz
1Co 15:19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
1Co 15:20 But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.
1Co 15:21 For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
1Co 15:23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming,
1Co 15:24 then comes the end,
(if we consider the end, what is talked about here, is the ending of the age Christ spoke of=70AD destruction of the Temple)
1Co 15:24 (continued) when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
1Co 15:25 For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.
1Co 15:26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
1Co 15:27 For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him.
1Co 15:28 When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
Once again, I have no problem with believing Paul saying that Christ is doing (has done in our time) everything he said he would do. The above has everything to do with God’s covenant with Israel. We keep trying to make it into a personal evangelical revelation.
Wright puts it like this:
Paul’s understanding of God’s accomplishment in the Messiah is that this single purpose, this plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, this reason-God-called-Abraham (you can see why I prefer the shorthand “covenant”; this is going to be a very long book if I have to use multihyphenated phrases all the time), finally came to fruition with Jesus Christ. Here is the point which has so puzzled John Piper that he thinks a “covenantal” reading would be a belittling of Paul’s meaning. The single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world was called into being by God as the means of addressing and solving the plight of the whole world. The “covenant,” in my shorthand, is not something other than God’s determination to deal with evil once and for all and so put the whole creation (and humankind with it) right at last. When will it become clear to the geocentrists? Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification—all this was the purpose of the single covenant from the beginning, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Wright, N. T. (2009-09-25). Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (pp. 94-95). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
Just my opinion.
Thanks
Chad