Epiphany Part Five -- Sin Was/Is Conquered, Once and For All -- We Are Aquitted Gratis, Sola Gracia, By God's Own Entering In For Us!

Karl Barth, whom I have read and studied a great deal, has many wonderful revelations in his writings that need to be remembered and considered today.  Like Calvin, and Luther, and Wesley, before him, God showed Barth some things that must not be thrown into the garbage heap of time, but rather must be treasured as beautiful jewels that belong to the entire Christian family.

Here are some amazing quotations from the great professor/theologian for us to reflect upon:

Our Sin, Conquered in Christ

"He has made an end of us as sinners and therefore of sin itself by going to death as the One who took our places as sinners. In His person He has delivered up us sinners and sin itself to destruction. He has removed us sinners and sin, negated us, cancelled us out: ourselves, our sin, and the accusation, condemnation and perdition which has overtaken us.... The man of sin, the first Adam, the cosmos alienated from God, the 'present evil age' (GAL 1:4), was taken and killed and buried in and with Him on the cross." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, V/I, pp. 253-254).

 [Man's] legal status as a sinner is rejected in every form. Man is no longer seriously regarded by God as a sinner. Whatever he may be, whatever there is to be said of him, whatever he has to reproach himself with, God no longer takes him seriously as a sinner. He has died to sin; there on the Cross of Golgotha...We are no longer addressed and regarded by God as sinners...We are acquitted gratis, sola gratia, by God's own entering in for us.
-Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Philosophical Library), 1949, p. 121; 120.

When He took our place as man, the man of sin, the first Adam, the cosmos alienated from God, the "present evil world" (Gal. 4), was taken and killed and buried in and with Him on the cross...Jesus Christ, who willed to make Himself the bearer and representative of sin, caused sin to be taken and killed on the cross in His own person (as that great sinner). And in that way, not by suffering our punishment as such, but in the deliverance of sinful man and sin itself to destruction,...He has on the other side blocked the source of our destruction.
-Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV:1 (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark), 1956, p. 254.

Our Union with Christ

"What the Christian as a man called by Christ may believe, and in faith recognise, acknowledge, experience, understand and grasp, is finally and decisively this union of Christ with him and himself with Christ." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4/3/2, p. 651).

"But this union, preceding and superior to his faith, knowledge and experience, by which it is not bound but of which it is the basis, is the being of Christ with and in him and his own being with and in Christ." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4/3/2, p. 651).

Barth on Sin & Grace

“Grace digs sin up by its roots, for it questions the validity of our present existence and status. It takes away our breath, ignores us as we are, and treats us as what we are not-as new men. To be in grace means that we are no longer treated by God as sinners. For those who have been known by God, sin, instead of determining of necessity our will and intelligence, becomes a withered, defeated, and finished thing.”“
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 190-191.

The saving of anyone is something which is not in the power of man, but only of God. No one can be saved — in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved — in virtue of what God can do. The divine claim takes the form that it puts both the obedient and the disobedient together and compels them to realise this, to recognise their common status in face of the commanding God. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2:2

Epiphany, Part Five of Six, S. Glenn Wilson, 2011