This discussion guide is intended to help individuals and small

groups press a bit deeper into the issues addressed in the

animation, Felix Culpa. My hope is that the comments and
questions in this guide will help you understand how the imagery
in this animation and the teaching of scripture intersect to
highlight the soul-satisfying beauty of God in the crucified and
risen Son.

Do not feel that you need to discuss every question or each

point; they are simply intended to be springboards and
suggestions for further thought. May this animation and guide be
a means for you to more truly know, love, and be conformed to
the glory of God in Jesus Christ.
 I. Felix Culpa?
Read – Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 5:12-14; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
“Felix Culpa” is a Latin phrase that might roughly be translated as “Happy Fault.” In
Christian history, this phrase refers to how the original sin of Adam and Eve (the “Fall” or,
in this case, “Fault”) ultimately results in a greater good than could have been otherwise. Of
course, the Fall itself is not “good” or “happy” in any way, however, what God sovereignly
intends in and will finally achieve through the Fall is so good that it’s glory will reach back and
transfigure even then horrors of the Fall into beauty (a bit like how a happy ending in a story
can reach back throughout the entire tale and cause even the darkest moments to be woven
into an overarching tapestry of joy). This may sound like a preposterous suggestion, but I
hope that this animation—and discussion guide—can help make a bit more sense of it.

Questions
1. After reading the passages above, what would you say are some of the effects of
the sin of Adam and Eve?

2. How are the passages you read above reflected in this image?
3. Why do you think there is an empty throne? Can you see anything in this
image that anticipates redemption?
 II. The Lance of Sin
Read – Isaiah 53:4-5
As Paul tells us in Romans 5:12 sin—which is to say, opposition to God—entered the world
through the Fall. But Sin does not remain alone, it is like a captain that leads an army of
horrors into the human story: Death, sorrow, suffering, fear, loss, sickness, anger, hatred,
abuse, addiction, damnation—the list could go on an on. All the agonies of the human race
flow from the single, poisoned well of the Sin—the opposition to God—introduced into the
world by the Fall.

Because of this, when the Bible talks about Jesus “bearing” sin, it means more than that He
represents sinners before God (though that is true). It also means that He in some sense
endures all the effects of sin in His own experience.

Questions
1. How does Isaiah 53:4-5 show that what Jesus endured in His suffering
included not just “sin” but also the effects of sin?
2. When Isaiah says that Jesus bore our “griefs…sorrows…[and] chastisement,” he is
including the full range of human suffering in Jesus’ own sufferings on the cross.
Especially important to note is that word “chastisement.” This can also mean
“punishment,” and it points to the fact that, when Jesus was crucified, He died as one
under the punishment of God. In His death, Jesus endured the full punishment due to sin; He
endured Hell itself.

We might summarize this by saying that, on the cross, Jesus is pierced through by
human sin and all of its effects.

Now, with all of this in mind, what do you think is the significance of the
progression of the scenes pictured below?

In this animation, the actual, historic moment in which Christ’s side is pierced by the
lance of a Roman soldier (John 19:34) becomes a symbolic moment in which human sin
and all of its effects—in this age and the next—are borne in the human experience of the
incarnate God.

It is as though all the suffering, sorrow, shame, loss, agony, and madness of sin—
everything sin has or will or can bring about in the world—it is as if it all crystalized into
the soldier’s spear on that day and pierced to the very heart of God on the cross. Yes, in
this moment, in this death, in the slaying of God, everything sin has, will, or can achieve is
expressed and embodied before our eyes. This moment is the full fruition of the seed that
was planted at the Fall. And it certainly does not seem “Happy.”
 III. The Beauty of the Lord
Read – Psalm 27:4; 2 Corinthians 4:6
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ cannot be understood apart from the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Only once Jesus is raised from the dead and has given the illumination of the Spirit
(John 20:22) can what happened on Calvary rightly be understood. Why is that? Because
only in the light of the Risen Jesus and through the perception granted by the Spirit can we
see that the one hanging on the cross is our Lord and God (John 20:28). The Crucified Jesus
is like a painting that is wrinkled up so tightly we cannot see it. Only when this painting is
displayed in the frame of the Risen Jesus can we perceive it for what it is, the self-portrait of
our God.

Now, once we have perceived that the crucified one is, in fact, our God, the crucifixion
becomes both the most horrific and the most beautiful of all realities.

It becomes the most horrific of all realities because it is revealed as the moment in which all
the fullness of sin and its effects culminate in the gruesome public execution of the Holy,
Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty; and our own hands are red with His blood.
However, it becomes the most beautiful of all realities because we come to realize that here,
in this act of infinite self-giving—through which all the agonies of the Fall are redemptively
endured in love by our God, and by which we ourselves are substitutionally represented
before and incinerated within the fires of pure holiness—because we come to realize that in
this act of infinite self-giving, we see and know God Himself.

At the resurrection-illumined, Spirit-perceived cross of Jesus Christ, we see the fully unveiled
beauty of the one true God (John 17:5). Or, said another way, at the resurrection-illumined,
Spirit-perceived cross of Jesus Christ, we see the totality of sin and all of its effects turned to
the service of—and made the context for—the revelation of the beauty for which all things
exist.

Questions
1. According to Psalm 27:4, the greatest desire of the human heart is to know and enjoy
God in His beauty (or “glory”). In 2 Corinthians 4:6, where does Paul tell us that
that beauty is ultimately found? How is that reflected in this image?

2. In this scene, the twenty-four thrones, seven flames of fire and four living creatures
that encircle the throne of God in Revelation 4 are pictured orbiting the cross of
Christ. Why do you think this is? How does this conjunction of imagery make
you think differently about the cross? About the throne? About God? Do you
think joining the imagery of Calvary and the heavenly throne room is
legitimate? Why or why not (consider also Rev.4:6, 7:17, and 22:1)?

3. In Ezekiel 47, the prophet sees a river of water flowing out of the eschatological
temple and giving life to the world. In John 2:22, John presents Jesus as the true
eschatological temple, and then in John 19:34, when Jesus is pierced by the spear, we
see water flowing from His side. John seems be telling his readers that the crucified
Jesus is the true Temple—and so the true meeting place of God and humanity—from
whom flows the true Living Water of the Holy Spirit (John 4:14, 7:37-39).

In John’s gospel, the role of the Spirit is to unfold the riches of Christ (which are the
riches of God as revealed in Christ) to the disciples (John 14:16). With this in mind,
how does the imagery of the water flowing from Christ’s side (in this animation
and in John’s Gospel) continue the theme of God-made-known at the cross?
 IV. The Heart of the Triune God
Read – John 1:14-18
When we talk about knowing a person’s “heart” what we usually mean is that we
know the deepest, most intimate, most essential truth about who they are. In that
sense of the word, then, we could truly say that the Triune God reveals His heart on
Calvary.
The Roman spear—which functions in this animation as a symbol for sin and its
effects; the entirety of the Fall—the Roman spear that impales the physical heart of
Christ simultaneously opens the metaphorical heart of the Living God to all the world.
If we would know the heart—the deepest, most intimate, most essential truth—of
God, let us look to the one whose heart is pierced through by our sin on the cross.
Questions
1. In John 1:18, we read that Jesus is “at the Father’s side” or “in closest relationship
with the Father.” The Greek phrase being translated here might also be translated as
the one “in the bosom of the Father.” I think the New Living Translation gets close
 to this idea with its translation of Jesus as the one “near to the Father’s heart.” How
might Jesus—as one who comes from the heart of the Father—be uniquely
equipped to reveal the heart of God to the world? If the culmination of Jesus’
work on earth is His crucifixion (John 12:27-28, 13:31-32, 19:31), what might this
tell us about the role the crucifixion plays in revealing God’s heart?

2. In this image, what role does the Fall play in the revelation of God’s heart? How
is that communicated visually? What is God’s heart revealed to be?
 V. Felix Culpa
Read – Revelation 21:1-4; 22:1-5
The greatest good conceivable for the human soul is to know and enjoy the One True
God even as He knows and enjoys Himself; to be welcomed in and in some sense
become a partaker of the Triune heart of God. It is for this experiential relationship
that all of reality—and the human especially—exists.
And yet, the saving revelation of God to humanity by which they—and all things—are
gathered up into the seeing, savoring, and singing of His beauty happens only in the
crucified and risen Jesus Christ. In other words, apart from lance of sin which entered
the world through the Fall, the supreme, saving, and satisfying revelation of God in
Christ could not have been.
We see this concept visually represented in Revelation 22:1-5. Notice that in these
verses the Lamb (slain for sin) stands in resurrected life in the midst of the throne of
God. In other words, the very center of the everlasting image of God, the place from
which all the light that will illumine the New Heavens and Earth flows (21:23), is the
crucified Jesus who is raised. The crucifixion—that is, the climactic instance of the Fall
and its effects—the crucifixion blazes at the heart of the Beatific Vision in the body of
the Risen Lord. The face of God which to behold will eternally satisfy His people, and
whose light will beautify the cosmos, is the face revealed only in and as the one
pierced through by the Fall and risen again. In this way, then, the Fall and its effects—
as they are borne and so transfigured in the body of the Crucified and Risen Jesus—
become the means by which God articulates His soul-satisfying name to all of
creation.
Though horrific in the moment and in its myriad effects, the Fall is the sovereignly
intended means by which the Name / Identity / Face of God is definitively revealed to
the world, and since all things are created to behold His unveiled face, we can truly say
Felix Culpa, “Happy Fault”.
Questions
1. How are the verses you just read depicted in this image?

2. What similarities do you see between this scene and the very first scene? What
differences?

3. Who do you think the woman in this image is? What do you think the red on
her dress represents (hint, Revelation 7:14, 19:8)?

4. Where do you see the Fall and its effects in this image? How have they been
transfigured through Christ’s death and resurrection into witnesses to the
beauty of God?

5. According to this image, what is the “Good” that God has brought from the Fall?
In other words, what does this image present as the supreme good? Do you
agree? Why or why not? Does this feel like the supreme good to you?