Stephen Jones — Hamartology
b4 — The Laws of the Second Coming
Sin as Debt
Jones centers a juridical concept of sin in chapter 3, in which sin is equated with debt in the biblical sense:
“The Jubilee is all about forgiveness. The law itself speaks of the cancellation and forgiveness of DEBTS on this day, but in the Bible, all sin is reckoned as a debt.”
Source reference: Stephen Jones, The Laws of the Second Coming, chap. 3 (The Day of Atonement and Jubilee).
“Those who sin against their neighbors are considered debtors to their victims in the eyes of God and His law.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 3.
Jones concretizes this with an example from biblical law:
“If a man stole a thousand dollars, the thief normally owed his victim two thousand dollars (Ex. 22:4). His sin was reckoned as a debt, according to biblical justice.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 3.
Interpretation: Sin creates a measurable, quantifiable obligation toward the victim and toward God. Forgiveness is therefore the juridical cancellation of a real debt, not merely a moral gesture.
Sin and the Fall of Adam — Mortality as Consequence
In chapter 10, Jones connects the inheritance of Adam’s sin directly to universal mortality, using leprosy as an Old Testament type:
“As we will show, leprosy depicts our mortality, which we inherited from Adam, even as Paul says in Rom. 5:12, ‘and so death spread to all men.‘”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10 (The Two Works of Christ).
Interpretation: Leprosy functions as a visible, physical metaphor for the invisible, spiritual condition of inherited mortality after the Fall. The two-birds cleansing ritual (Lev. 14) thereby becomes a Christological type for the two-stage redemption of that inheritance.
Leprosy as Image of Sin and Mortality
Jones develops the leprosy typology as a hermeneutical key concept:
“The two birds were used to cleanse lepers — that is, the two birds depict the two stages by which we are cleansed of mortality.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
“The first bird was killed to provide a blood covering for the second bird. The first bird’s death imputed life to us, while the second bird, when released into the ‘field’ (i.e., the world), will infuse us with inherent immortality and life.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
Interpretation: The two-birds ritual types the Two Works of Christ as answer to the mortality problem that arose from Adam’s sin. Neither work alone is sufficient.
The Two Works of Christ in Relation to Sin
The core of chapter 10 is the exposition of the two goats (Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) as a parallel typology, now specifically focused on sin rather than mortality:
“As for the two goats in the ritual of the Day of Atonement, these deal not with the death question, but rather the sin question. Again, there are two stages by which our sin is eradicated. The first goat covered our sin; the second will remove it.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
“The blood of the first goat covered sin (death work). The second goat (living work) removed all sin (Lev. 16:21-22 and Heb. 9:28).”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
Jones draws a sharp distinction between imputed righteousness (first work) and actual righteousness (second work):
“Our sins have been covered by Jesus’ blood, whereby God imputes righteousness to us, calling what is not as though it were (Rom. 4:17). Though we are unrighteous in ourselves, God has made provision by His first work on the Cross to cover our unrighteousness by His blood, so that legally speaking God could call us righteous.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
“There is, however, a second work to come, wherein Christ is sent into the world to remove sin from us, making us actually righteous. This will be the fulfillment of the prophetic law where the second goat was led into the wilderness to remove all sin.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
“The first goat had the power to impute righteousness to us, making us perfect in the eyes of God even though we are still afflicted by mortality and its effect, sin. The second goat, however, actually makes us righteous before God, because it removes sin.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
Interpretation: [TENSION with earlier source b3] In b3 (Secrets of Time) Jones develops the 414-year judgment cycle as a juridical consequence of sin. Here he deepens that with a distinction between covering (imputed, first work) and removal (actual, second work). Imputed righteousness leaves the actual sin-condition intact; actual transformation awaits the second work.
Eschatological Tension: Believers Still Die
Jones pastorally addresses the problem that believers still die after Christ’s first work:
“The life that we have been given is at present imputed to us. Perhaps millions of Christians in the past 2,000 years have sought immortality through the first work of Christ. Many have sincerely believed that they would never die. They have confessed it and laid claim to it, proclaimed it by faith, and prophesied life repeatedly, but they have all died not having received the promise. Why? Because the time of the second work of Christ has not yet fully arrived.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 10.
Interpretation: The continuing mortality of believers is not a failure of faith or conversion, but an eschatological matter: the second work, which actually removes mortality and sin, is still future.
Sin and Forgiveness — The Conquering Power of Forgiving
In chapter 3 Jones places forgiveness metaphysically above sin:
“The power of forgiveness will always transcend the power of the grudge. The power of love will always transcend the power of sin. Good and evil are not of equal power. God and Satan are not two equal gods in the universe.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 3.
Interpretation: Forgiveness is not a neutral juridical mechanism but an expression of superior divine power. This rejects any dualistic framework in which sin and grace are equal cosmic powers.
Day of Atonement as Basis for the Forgiveness of Sin
Jones structurally connects the Day of Atonement to the Jubilee and establishes that forgiveness is a necessary phase prior to eschatological fulfillment:
“One cannot come to Tabernacles without first going through the Jubilee. That is the order of the feast days, and this process cannot be circumvented.”
Source reference: ibid., chap. 3.
Interpretation: Forgiveness of sin (Day of Atonement/Jubilee) is not an optional phase but a mandatory passage: sin must be addressed (through the first work) before eschatological restoration (Feast of Tabernacles) can be attained.