The Goodness of the Good News

It has been my impression, and my experience personally, that evangelism leaves many Christians with a sense of being the bearers of bad news rather than good, especially when the audience to our gospel is not receptive and asks us those troubling questions like, ‘so what happens to me if I say “no” and don’t believe this?’ (Of course they know, and we know, that the answer is probably going to be, ‘You will eventually face God’s wrath for rejecting him’—a claim which I regard as true, however uncomfortable it may make me or anyone else feel to say it.) If people face condemnation for not choosing (or perhaps, though this is another debate of its own, for never having the opportunity to choose) the gospel, we wonder, how on earth can the gospel really be good news? Rob Bell in particular has articulated this sentiment, and has concluded in several of his books and public statements, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

The ‘gospel’ we are talking about, in my experience, is put something like this: ‘You are sinful, but God loves you very deeply, so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for you, and now he invites you to receive that deep love through forgiveness and the joy of eternal life with him.’ To distill it into something shorter, ‘God loves you; you can be saved.’ Then, we turn right around and say, ‘But if you don’t accept this, he’s going to condemn you to hell.’ Rob Bell is simply one of many to point out that this seems inconsistent with everything prior to that warning. And here’s the thing: Rob Bell’s intuition is exactly right. The claims we tend to make in our proclamation of ‘the gospel’ are inconsistent with our subsequent claim that rejecting it leads to damnation.

The problem, however, is not with the warning of the eternal consequences of rejecting God. This is what Rob Bell fails to understand. Rather, the problem is with our way of understanding and articulating the gospel itself. The gospel, simply put, is not that God loves you and wants to save you. Are you shocked to hear me say it? Don’t misunderstand me—this truth may very well follow from the proclamation of the gospel (and the best evidence of its veracity will be whether or not the person eventually embraces the gospel during his or her lifetime), but it is not the gospel itself. It is not what the apostles and the first Christians went around proclaiming as of first importance to all who would listen; it is not an invitation to a new kind of religious experience; it is not an offering of ‘your best life now’ or ‘be sure you’re going to heaven.’ Read through the preaching of the “gospel” in any of the evangelists’ accounts of Jesus’ life, or in Acts, and you’ll see that their way of doing it differed considerably from ours. Their gospel was much fuller, much better, and much more powerful—indeed, “God’s power, unto [i.e., leading to, but not synonymous with] the salvation of all the faithful” (Rom. 1:16).

For the apostles, the proclamation of the gospel, the good news, the evangelion, was this: an invitation to bend the knee to Jesus the Messiah, who is the risen, reigning Lord and redeemer of the cosmos, through whom God’s kingdom has decisively broken into creation and defeated the powers of darkness, sin, death, and hell. It is not, in other words, primarily soteriological (I re-emphasize the ‘primarily,’ for salvation is indeed fundamental to the gospel’s meaning and importance); rather, the gospel is primarily, to coin a new term, kyriological. It is focused on the lordship of the risen and reigning Christ, with the salvation of individual sinners comprising an outworking of that reality of Christ’s lordship based on their responsiveness to hearing that lordship announced.

Our whole problem arises, I think, from the fact that we have traditionally behaved (at the popular level at least) as though God’s salvation of individual sinners is the whole purpose for which he created this universe, and the only way in which his goodness and love can be expressed toward us. The simple fact is, our salvation is not the point of history, however wonderful salvation may be (and, oh, how it is!). Rather, God created the universe to display his glory, power, and wise rule within it—in other words, he created this universe to serve as the stage on which the great drama of the kingdom of God would be enacted. The universe rebelled against this script, and God has brought it about nonetheless, over and against all creaturely rejection of his purposes; those who reject him are in turn rejected, and this in no way compromises God because God’s sole objective is not their salvation—it is first and foremost to enact the in-breaking and final establishment of his kingdom, and to accomplish the defeat of all evil and sin that would otherwise thwart this.

Salvation is part of this grander purpose. Salvation is not the good news itself, but follows from an acceptance of the good news—the news that this kingdom has, in fact, come near in Jesus Christ. The goodness of the good news, then, is only tasted by those for whom it is seen as true; it simply is not good news to everybody, contrary to what Rob Bell thinks: it is terrible news for any who would ridicule it, resist it, and persistently live an unjust and unrepentant lifestyle that perpetuates the Adamic existence of humanity and the cosmic state of affairs that necessitated the good news in the first place. That which is good news for the poor in spirit and the meek of the earth, for the mourners and the repentant thieves of this world, is bad news for the proud and boastful, for the self-righteous and self-saviors; that which is good news for the captives and the weak is, at the same time, bad news for the oppressive and the strong—for the gospel says with the utmost clarity, ‘Time’s up! The old order has done its worst at the cross of Christ and even so has lost, and all of it is destined to perish—along with all who go on obstinately serving as its agents. Our only hope, then, is to cling with Jesus to that cross (or rather cling to Jesus on it) and to share in his mysterious and shocking victory.’ If the world will not be a victim with Christ, it will not be a victor with him either—it will ultimately be vanquished.

Our evangelistic task in the present time is not to go around telling people that God loves them and wants to save them if they will but let him. (A million theological and exegetical problems that we don’t have time to uproot here are burrowed deep within this statement.) Our task is, rather, to go around telling people that “the time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk. 1:15). Then we proceed carefully and clearly to articulate how this is so in Jesus the Messiah, while also displaying this reality through the kingdom-shaped life of God's people, the church. The good news, then, goes out to all, but it does not become good news for all. Though it is objectively good without question, it is subjectively experienced as good only by those who accept it; for those who don’t it may become many things—an intriguing notion but ultimately not practical, perhaps, or maybe an impossibility on ‘purely’ empirical grounds, maybe a Nietzschean power-play, or an unreasonable claim about universal truths that don’t and can’t exist—but it won't be good news, whatever it might be, and (so far as we know) it won’t become that in the world to come either. It is good news for a groaning creation and a groaning people of God within it who await the promised renewal, but hateful, abhorrent news to the powers and principalities over this present darkness—and all who serve them—who prefer things just the way they are.

[[An essay concerning this way of defining the gospel is forthcoming (planned for sometime this summer) - I'll keep you posted!]]

"Love Lustres at Calvary"

-From "The Valley of Vision," pp.76-7 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).

Love Lustres at Calvary

My Father,

Enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips,
supply words that proclaim 'Love lustres at Calvary.'
There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son,
made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me;
There the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow;
There thy infinite attributes were magnified,
and infinite atonement was made;
There infinite punishment was due,
and infinite punishment was endured.
Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy,
cast off that I might be brought in,
trodden down as an enemy
that I might be welcomed as a friend,
surrendered to hell's worst
that I might attain heaven's best,
stripped that I might be clothed,
wounded that I might be healed,
athirst that I might drink,
tormented that I might be comforted,
made a shame that I might inherit glory,
entered darkness that I might have eternal light.
My Savior wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes,
groaned that I might have endless song,
endured all pain that I might have unfading health,
bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem,
bowed his head that I might uplift mine,
experienced a reproach that I might receive welcome,
closed his eyes that I might gaze
on unclouded brightness,
expired that I might forever live.
O Father, who spared not thine only Son
that thou mightest spare me,
All this transfer thy love designed and accomplished;
Help me to adore thee by lips and life.
O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise,
my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my enemies crushed,
Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed,
sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood,
hell's gates closed, heaven's portal open.
Go forth, O conquering God, and show me
the cross, mighty to subdue, comfort and save.

Rob Bell's "Love Wins"

It's been a few weeks since I finished Rob Bell's recent book, Love Wins, but I don't think I'm too late to catch the wave of attention this book is getting in the evangelical world - nor would I miss it, I think, if I reviewed it a month from now, six months, or even a year or more. The issues raised by this book aren't going anywhere any time soon, and I expect that in the near future we will see a wealth of literature produced by evangelicals taking every imaginable stance on what Bell has brought to everyone's attention. As I've read some of the reviews that have come out already, I've found myself in agreement with most of their criticisms, but at the same time feeling that some of the critics are leaving out what matters most - not only what Rob Bell is suggesting with respect to the afterlife, but why he is doing so. What assumptions have led him to the view he holds? In this (admittedly too brief) review, I hope to lay out what I think is the deepest problem with Bell's argumentation, centering in on the phrase, popular before he wrote this book, that has become its title: 'love wins.'

First, however, I want to talk about what I think is good in Rob Bell's book. While I disagree with many of his exegetical conclusions, I nonetheless feel that he has a few good points to make, and we evangelicals would do well to listen. The first pertains to what I believe is the thesis of his book - which, it may surprise you, is not that Christian universalism is true (at least, I don't think this is his main point). Rather, I think his clearest theses are as follows, found on pages 115 & 116:

Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices? Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don't need to resolve them or answer them because we can't, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.

And,

Hard and fast, definitive declarations then, about how God will or will not organize the new world must leave plenty of room for all kinds of those possibilities. This doesn't diminish God's justice or take less seriously the very real consequences of sin and rebellion, it simply acknowledges with humility the limits of our powers of speculation.

Especially with the latter statement, I agree completely. The airtight certainty with which many Christians pronounce eternal judgment on others, contrary to clear biblical prohibitions (cf. Matt. 7:1-2), is presumptuous and hypocritical. "For what have I to do with judging outsiders?" writes Paul (despite being an apostle and witness to the resurrected Christ!). "Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside the church" (1 Cor. 5:12-13). It is one thing to be frank with an unbeliever that if he resists the reign of Christ, he will indeed face condemnation in the world to come; it is another thing entirely to tell an unbeliever that he is, unquestionably, at this very moment, destined to be so. Though I believe very firmly that God has fashioned vessels of wrath as well as vessels of mercy (cf. Rom. 9:19-24), who am I, a mere man, to know who belongs in what category, and why? So, insofar as Rob Bell's book is a simple plea for epistemic humility among evangelicals, I agree with him.

Another good feature of Love Wins is its attention to the character of the world to come. Rob Bell is absolutely right to say, "How we think about heaven...directly affects how we understand what we do with our days and energies now, in this age" (p.44), and unfortunately for us evangelicals, heaven and the afterlife is one area in which we have been biblically and theologically impoverished. (Other writers, particularly N.T. Wright, have done an excellent job of pointing this out - cf. Wright, Surprised by Hope; also The Resurrection of the Son of God.) It is profoundly important to the gospel message that God's purposes, revealed in the Messiah, are cosmic in their scope - in other words, that this whole creation will one day be set free from its corruption and decay, and enter into an eternal age of freedom and flourishing administered by the redeemed children of God (cf. Rom. 8:18:24). The work of Christ on the cross not only reconciles individual human beings to God but also "all things, in heaven and on earth" (Col. 1:20). Though I do object strongly to Rob Bell's corollary view of hell as basically 'what heaven is like for all the spoilsports,' (which ignores biblical imagery of hell involving externality and separation, cf. Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; Rev. 22:14-15), I nonetheless applaud his attempt to straighten out evangelicals about their future hope - not for a disembodied eternity in the clouds, as some seem to think, but for the new heavens and new earth in which the knowledge of the Lord saturates all that exists (Isa. 11:9).

There are probably other good points for which Bell ought to be commended, but these two are, in my mind, the most praiseworthy. Now, it would be possible at this point to go into great detail about the specific exegetical shortcomings from which the book suffers - particularly, Rob Bell's deeply problematic interpretation of the various "all" statements describing the scope of redemption (cf. Col. 1:20, which is simply saying that redemption is cosmic in scope; 1 Tim. 2:4, which is saying that people of every nation, not just Jews, are to come to a knowledge of the truth; and 1 Cor. 15:22, which is only speaking of 'all' who are 'in Christ' as opposed to those 'in Adam'). I feel, however, that many other reviewers have treated these topics in sufficient detail already, and there is little need for me to say again what has already been said elsewhere (and, in fact, what has been said throughout the history of the Christian church when universalist sentiments have arisen). No, in my mind there is something much more important and much more problematic in Rob Bell's argument, that lies behind his particular presentation of universalist ideas.

The problem can be looked at from two angles, and can be explained in terms of the book's title: (1) Rob Bell argues from a highly problematic conception of God's 'love'; and (2) his view of what it means for love to 'win' is, in my opinion, profoundly un-biblical. Here is what I mean:

(1) Love. From the beginning of the book, 'love' is a lingering concept, but unfortunately one that never gets defined with sufficient clarity. In the Introduction Bell even refers to it as "this love" (p.viii - i.e., as 'this sort of love' that we are talking about, which God possesses), with the apparent assumption that any reader, regardless of cultural background and context, will understand infallibly what 'love' really means. Rob Bell simply cannot talk about God's love without giving it at least some definition, since even a brief foray into scripture will reveal that "this love" actually confronts our modern and post-romantic assumptions about what it is. How, for example, is a biblical writer able to write words as shocking as "Give thanks...to [God] who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, for his steadfast love endures forever!" (Ps. 136:10)? As we look at scripture, we find that God's love is not a vague, indefinite principle of good will toward everyone and everything in general, but rather as a fierce, passionate devotion to his people, to the creation, and to all that is good, right, true, and holy. God's love, in fact, lies at the very heart of his wrath: "this love" necessarily entails a deep hatred of all that is evil, wrong, false, and unholy. So, a statement like "God is love" (1 John 4:8), while it may very well sound like an endorsement of Christian universalism (particularly to post-modern, post-romanticism ears), should not be read as such, inasmuch as it overthrows scripture's depiction of God's love as particular and sovereign.

The fourth chapter of Rob Bell's book ("Does God Get What God Wants?") is where his 'argument from God's love' really comes to the fore. His basic proposition is this: if God loves us, he won't coerce our decisions or force us to do anything against our will. So far so good - but for Bell, this appears to mean a necessarily libertarian view of 'freedom' whereby God simply sits back, arms folded, waiting to see 'what will happen,' refusing to take any effective action until we make up our minds on our own to come to him. This, Bell claims, is love. In making this claim about our freedom, he ignores a great swathe of the Christian tradition that has viewed human freedom and God's sovereignty in a different light, with the latter establishing the former, and in no way at odds with it. In other words, while we interact with God according to our 'un-coerced free will,' we recognize at the same time that, ultimately, God is the one sovereignly directing everything that happens - even our decisions, and the reasons we have for making them. He wills that we will freely, in other words, and thus our freedom wouldn't be possible without his sovereignty.

Rob Bell simply ignores this position, treating his own conception of freedom as a self-evident given. But I would argue that this view of freedom and, ultimately, of God's love, lies at the very heart of a biblical view of human beings as created - as given all that they have (including the power to will) by a God who interacts with them contingently at their only level even while he is truly 'writing the story' according to his greater will and purpose. God's love is displayed in scripture not as a generic emotion (that's the romanticism creeping in), but as an active force that takes the initiative against evil, and for the sake of what is good. This brings me to the second problem in Rob Bell's fundamental argument, where his definition of love gets cashed in.

(2) Wins. One of the reasons reading Love Wins was so stimulating for me was that at the same time, I was reading Gustaf Aulen's classic, Christus Victor - a book that in many ways is arguably about precisely the same thing (though written with very different objectives in mind!). In Christus Victor (published in 1931), Aulen critiques the now standard 'Western'/'Anselmian' view of atonement, which in his view tends to downplay divine initiative in salvation and characterize God in a rather passive manner. The alternative, which he presents as the standard view of most of the church during its first thousand years or so, focuses on the victory of Christ through his cross and resurrection, over sin, death, and the Devil, according to God's purpose of redeeming the whole creation (humans included) and liberating it from captivity to evil. Rob Bell actually mentions this atonement theory at one point to bolster his argument, yet ironically, his own view of how love 'wins' scarcely resembles what Aulen or the church fathers he quotes were talking about. Love Wins, as a title, becomes something of a misnomer - a more accurate title for the book might be 'Good Will Eventually Gets What It Had Hoped For.' (Or, if you like, my slightly racier alternative: 'True Love Waits.') Whereas the point of God's victory through Christ in the cross and resurrection was meant to emphasize divine activity, Bell's construal seems to emphasize divine passivity to the point of absurdity. The God corresponding to Bell's idea of 'love' is not the eternal Lord of the universe whose voice breaks the cedars of Lebanon, but a working, middle-class dad waiting for his kid to get home from college: God "is there, standing in the driveway, arms open, ready to invite us in," (p.117, my emphasis) but certainly not actively involved in our coming to him by faith - only 'I,' the all sovereign individual, can do this by the impetus of my own will. J.I. Packer was more realistic about the shortcomings of such sentimental imagery: "the enthroned Lord is suddenly metamorphosed into a weak, futile figure tapping forlornly at the door of the human heart, which he is powerless to open" (In My Place Condemned He Stood, p. 136-7).

It is especially ironic that Bell should stand behind such a depiction of God as the one he gives, 'standing in the driveway,' while seeming to demand the exact opposite earlier in the book:

"God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2). So does God get what God wants? How great is God? Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do, or kind of great, medium great, great most of the time, but in this, the fate of billions of people, not totally great. Sort of great. A little great.... Will all people be saved, or will God not get what God wants? Does this magnificent, mighty, marvelous God fail in the end? (pp.97-8)

The problem is, if we go along with Rob Bell in his stress on supposedly 'un-coercive' divine passivity, Rob Bell's worst dreams might come true! After all, no matter how great God is, he could never, ever consider interfering with the will of his creatures, could he? Scripture testifies with the utmost clarity that yes, in fact, he most certainly could, can - does. God's love does not consist in 'sitting there' in passivity while those whom he loves self-detonate in sin and misery, however much it may be 'what they want.' Compare Rob Bell's conception of divine love with what we find in Ephesians 2:1-10:

And you all - when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to walk following the pattern of this world's present age, the pattern of the ruler of the power of the air - the spirit that's now active among the sons of disobedience... indeed, it's in that spirit that all of us once conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh, acting on the desires of the flesh and the mind's intentions, and we were children of wrath by nature, just like the rest of mankind. It was then that God - so rich in mercy! - because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses... by grace you've been saved! And he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that, in his kindness, he'd show us the overwhelming riches of his grace toward us in the coming ages, in Christ Jesus. After all, it's by grace that you've been saved through faith; and none of this is from yourselves - it is God's gift! It doesn't come from works, so that no one would be able to boast. We are God's own craftsmanship, you see, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared in advance, so that we'd walk in them.

That, my friends, is a love that wins. It is a love whose 'winning' precisely doesn't mean leaving us to our own devices. God's love wins precisely because it is sovereign, and works in spite of the sinful human will that is dead in transgressions, that is as unresponsive to God as a corpse is to a surgeon, until the surgeon shocks it back to life. That's God's winning love for us - he made us alive, and did so "even when we were dead." He didn't wait for initiative or impulse on our part, but supplied the initiative and impulse; he didn't 'wait for us to make up our minds,' as Rob Bell seems to think. Love wins precisely because it works beyond our control or ability to prompt it - it is active, not passive.

And thus if God chooses eventually to make every individual person alive, even in the age to come, so be it, but let's not pretend that this didn't come about entirely because of his grace, his initiative, and his purpose. Though I cannot endorse the view myself, leave it to God that it would be within his power to choose to do that at some point. But at least let us not pretend that the detached, hands-off, backwards conception of 'love' promulgated in this book is in any way honoring to God! It is not 'love' of any sort that simply refuses to intervene in the lives of those loved.

Such is my criticism of Rob Bell's book. It is not simply that his exegesis is flawed at many points, or that he makes dubious claims about his place within the broad stream of historic Christian orthodoxy. It is not simply that his view of time and of hell do not seem at every point to make contact with what scripture says on the matter. The real problem with Love Wins, the underlying problem, the ultimate problem, is that it presents us with a picture, both of God and of his love, that is sentimental, passive, and really isn't victorious over anything.

God-Centered Atonement Theology

I've been reflecting lately on the nature of the atonement. And the more I've done that, reading scripture and pondering the matter, the more I've felt very strongly that a lot of our preaching about the cross since the nineteenth century has missed the point in a crucial way. The content is certainly there (at least, among evangelicals; perhaps not so much among liberal protestants) - sin, judgment, wrath, love, mercy, hope. But it seems as though the arrangement and ordering of these things has been altered in such a way that it is the human individual that takes center stage. As J.I. Packer observed, we've come to believe that at Calvary, God simply constructed a big soteriological machine that we operate, basically in order to save ourselves. I'd like to share, humbly, some of my thoughts on this matter; I also have a feeling that some of my initial comments may seem perplexing to you who know me and probably suppose me to be a pretty orthodox guy. Just read on, and you'll see what I'm getting at eventually.

Anyway, as I was saying, I feel that our gospel has become too man-centered. This is reflected in our preaching, which runs something like this: you are sinful, but you would like to go to heaven (who wouldn't?). That can't happen though, because, you see, God feels wrath toward the sins you've committed, and he is (constitutionally) incapable of forgiving you unless somebody takes the blame. But alas, Jesus has taken the blame, and now by believing you can do what you had hoped to do all along - go to heaven.

The natural consequence of this way of putting it, of this misdirection, is that God looks rather immature. He is ultimately the one with the problem, not us. He has an anger-management issue, one that can only be solved if Jesus steps in and calms him down. 'Sinners have slapped me in the face; I'm not going to forgive anyone until I get to slap someone back.' (Here you have a moral conundrum in the fact that it seemingly doesn't matter who gets punished, so long as someone does, and the wrath in question obtains its cathartic release.) God appears quite weak here, helpless to save anyone until the condition is fulfilled. By believing in Jesus, then, we furnish God with the ability he does not have himself, with the capability he so longs to exercise but cannot. We enable him to forgive us by exercising saving faith. In short: we save ourselves.

This, of course, is dishonoring to God and self-exalting with respect to man. If the gospel reveals anything, it is that God is not constrained by us; rather, the opposite: "He chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4); "he works all things [therefore our salvation too] according to the counsel of his will" (v.11). It is not a question of whether or we will let God do as he desires with us or not.

Notice the change in our emphasis: when the emphasis shifts manward (we want something; we can only get it by means of Christ), the problem shifts Godward (God can't give us what we want, because he is angry about our sin). However, when we do the opposite of this - when we move our emphasis Godward, as I think we should (to his sovereign desire to save sinners, to defeat and destroy evil) - the problem becomes ours, not his. There is evil in this world, there is sin, and God righteously intends to destroy all of it (cf. Rom. 1:18 & 2:6-11). He does not have an anger-management problem; his temper is not the obstacle in question. The obstacle in question is sin, is evil. If he is truly good, God will destroy sin and end its hideous rule over this world; he has promised to do this, and his wrath is therefore a blessing toward that end. The wrath of God is nothing less than the love of God directed against sin, the goodness of God enacted upon evil. When this outpouring of wrath occurs, we are not to feel embarrassed for our Lord, but are to feel joyful (even as we find it awesome and frightful). This, surely, is the view of the authors of scripture. "Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness" (Ps. 96:12b-13). God hates evil, hates sin - yes; and, it may shock you, sinners too (cf. Ps. 5:5) - and in his perfect love will not allow either to persist indefinitely. If he did - if God continued to allow the greedy to oppress the poor, the lustful and controlling to molest children and rape women; if God continued to allow the powerful to commit genocide and the hungry to starve, adultery and abuse to destroy marriages and depression and addiction to consume people's lives - then he would not be a loving God. His wrath is his love directed against sin.

What, then, is the cross? Is it not a display of God's wrath as well as his love? Why yes, and also a satisfaction of his justice. "God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation" (i.e., an atoning sacrifice through which God's wrath is spent) "by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness" (or justice, Gk. dikaiosune) "because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins" (Rom. 3:25). We are dead-accurate to say that the wrath of God was poured out upon our sins, our individual sinful acts, at Calvary. There is, however, more to it than that, as we see simply by looking at other statements Paul makes later in Romans. "We know that our old self" (lit. "the old man") "was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free" (lit. "justified") "from sin" (Rom. 6:6-7). In these verses (and others such as Gal. 2:20), Paul's picture of the atonement is rounded out quite beautifully: the cross was not centrally a kind of divine catharsis; certainly it was not a means of enabling a weak God to forgive people with whom he really has no quarrel beyond the fact that they've done a few naughty things (but deep down are good enough really to want to know him). Rather, Christ's death is a condemnation and obliteration of the whole sin nature that brought about these transgressions in the first place. In other words, the cross does not merely forgive sins for people who are otherwise good; it destroys sin itself in those who share in Christ's death and resurrection.

In other words - to borrow Packer's language again - the cross actually saves...not potentially. (Here's where we get limited atonement, by the way.) It is not only sufficient to forgive sins as individual acts of wrongdoing, but for those who have saving faith it is also effective for the actual destroying of a whole sin-nature. So to believe in Christ is not merely to escape God's wrath by the cross but also to die to sin and walk in newness of life through the cross (cf. Rom. 6:1-11 & 20-23; 7:4-6; 8:1-4; 2 Cor. 5:14-21; Gal. 2:19-21; Col. 1:19-22; 2:11-15; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; 4:1-2; 1 John 1:7). The result of this is, shockingly, that we are no longer identified with our sins, or indeed with that old self (cf. Rom. 7:13-25), but as Christians walking in the new life of the Spirit, we, by faith, spend the rest of our lives putting off that old self, which is still resident in the flesh (cf. Rom. 8:3b-13), but is condemned, at the cross, to eternal destruction and oblivion.

Think about it! You do not merely watch from a distance as your savior bears the brunt of God's wrath so that you can save yourself by faith. No: your precious savior bears you in his loving arms with him, up onto that cross - all of your sins, yes, and also all of your weakness, your rebellion, your pride, your covetousness, your hatred for or indifference toward God and others, your coldness and dullness of heart, and everything else within you that enslaves you to sin and suffering and evil and death - and brings you through the cleansing, wrathful, redeeming love of God, and out the other side of that fiery crucible by his resurrection from the dead. By his wounds you are healed, as well as forgiven. He is not only displayed before you on that cross, but embraces you upon it, holds you upon it, carries you upon it. Christian, realize the true scope of the freedom that comes from the cross!

And here the wrath of God ceases to be a terror but becomes a friend, for it is, truly, his love for you - a love that loves you enough to hate your sin, enough to hate all within you that holds you from him, hinders you from loving and enjoying him forever; enough not to immolate you along with the sin-nature from which your identity would be otherwise indistinguishable. No - "he became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). Our God has prised the two of you apart, having condemned the one to death, and having raised the other (you!) to life everlasting!

"In this is love, not that we have loved God" - not that we have really been good enough deep down, have believed, and have allowed him to get over his anger toward us - "but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). It is an act of love: to quench his burning anger against the sin and injustice found among his people by actually destroying it; not to excuse the sin of those he forgives by 'getting over himself,' but to condemn it for what it is while the forgiven remain unharmed. "You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Col. 3:3-4). Consider, Christian, with what love God has loved you in Christ - the God who willed that you should no longer be enslaved, who in Christ accomplished both the forgiveness of your sins and the destruction of your sin, who by the Holy Spirit raises you into the justified righteousness of new life in him, and who even now, as you read this, brings this great work of new creation in you ever closer to completion, brings you and many sons to glory in Christ, the lover of your soul.

Let's start sharing the good news of the cross differently. Let's start remembering that it is not 'God's problem' that put Jesus Christ on a bloody tree, but our problem, and it is by God's sheer love alone that he decided to deal with that problem without destroying us in the process. To be invited to faith in Jesus, then, is to be invited to cling to him as he mounts that cross, to trust in him all your life as he not only forgives you your sins but also destroys your old self and renews your whole character through his Holy Spirit; and then ultimately to to step with him out of that tomb into newness of life that will be made complete one day when we stand in glory. Friends, that's a gospel that preaches.

News Update - 5/15/10

I seem to recall saying in my post 'to the reader' that I wasn't sure if this blog would just fizzle out like other projects I've started. Well, contrary to all appearances, it ain't over yet! I've been completely distracted by an extremely busy semester (and one full of insights, I hope), but I have every intention of continuing this blog now that school is winding down.

The project of translating and doing a series on John has been scrapped for the moment. Instead, I'll be doing some stuff on Philippians, on which I might be leading a bible study in the fall. I'll be translating as well, but I'd recommend comparing what I write with what your bibles say for the best experience of studying it. I hope you enjoy (if you're one of the, oh, two people who read this blog at this point :-).

Peace,
David

News Update - 11/13/09

Just wanted to inform those who read this blog (if any of you even exist yet) that I've been extremely busy but have not forgotten about this project. As it usually manages to do, college is consuming most of my free time, but I'm hoping to post more in the near future. Reading through John in my New Testament Greek course has been extremely rewarding so far and I'm looking forward to working through it on the blog (in translation, of course :-) . Hopefully this weekend I can get the first of the series done...

Peace,
David

The Sermon Text - 10/2/09

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Ephesians 4:17-32

This passage gives us much to think about, and I'm going to focus on what may seem like a smaller point to most who read it. Pastor Roeda today discussed the topic of anger in his sermon, and how we ought to understand it and deal with it in our own lives. Paul gives us instructions here that are perhaps unexpected: "Be angry and do not sin." (v.26) What? Without a doubt it is a curious command, and perhaps some of our minds immediately jump to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment..." Anger, at least as Jesus seems to have it, should not have a place in the Christian life. Or does he say that? If we are more careful with the way in which we understand anger, I think we find that Jesus is not saying anger itself is inherently wrong.

First off, it is worth pointing out that what Paul says in Ephesians is not some bizarre idea that is his alone. The beginning of Ephesians 4:26 is actually a quote from the Old Testament, of Psalm 4:4 - "Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent." Paul uses the same Greek expression (orgizesthe kai me hamartanete - be angry and do not sin) that the Psalm uses (the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was the common bible of Paul's day). So what he is doing is actually quoting a bit of wisdom literature that would have been familiar to his bible-reading audience. He probably means to evoke the sense of the whole passage from the Psalm. The Psalmist is not directing us to be angry on principle, as though it's the goal of the follower of God - he is saying, 'When you do feel anger, do not allow it to spill over into sin.' The proper response is to "ponder" in our hearts "on our beds." The kind of anger the Psalmist (and Paul) is talking about needs to be 'digested,' one could say... it needs to be dealt with calmly.

I think this understanding of anger should resonate with most people very well. We all know what it is to feel a burning anger toward another person, the kind of anger with which we want nothing more than to lash out, to shout down, even to punch out the person who is the cause (or many times, even people who didn't do anything). It is a burning that we feel, a fury that is difficult to quench, and it seems to arise in us spontaneously in many cases, regardless of whether or not we asked for it. Can Jesus really be saying that the mere experience of the emotion is enough to bring judgment on us? Perhaps, but I don't think this his point. Notice what Jesus says in the verses immediately following: "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire." (Matt. 5:22) I think if we are paying attention, we see that Jesus is in fact right on board with the Psalmist and Paul (or, considering Jesus' identity, perhaps we should say that the Psalmist and Paul are right on board with Jesus). The 'being angry' is not the ultimate source of judgment (though perhaps we may be judged for being too easily angered); instead, it is the anger which lashes out that is condemned.

Notice how Jesus describes this - his condemnation of anger grows in intensity with each sentence based on what the angry person is doing: if you are angry with your brother, you will be judged... if you insult your brother, you will be liable to the council, if you say "You fool!" (literally "raca," a degrading Aramaic term), you will be liable to the hell of fire. Jesus has in mind here a very specific kind of anger - the kind of anger that leads us into sin, causing us to hate and mistreat those around us. Such anger has no place among Christians. Paul recognizes this as well, which is why he gives us the instruction, "do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." (Eph. 4:26-27) Like Jesus, he recognizes the inherent danger in being angry, that it erodes our capacity for selfless love and respect. It is important to notice how Paul's exhortation comes in the midst of a lot of practical advice (vv.25-32), and that all of it is grounded in what he has just said prior (vv.17-24). In the preceding verses he tells the Ephesians (and us) that "you have heard about [Jesus] and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (vv.21-24) Christians are new people, Paul is insisting, with new lives that differ drastically from before. He does not want us to "walk as the Gentiles do" - in other words, we must not walk like those who are without the presence of God in their lives.

What does the absence of God in one's life involve? Well, if we look carefully at Paul's description we see that his condemnation of the unbelieving Gentiles' lives focuses especially on their ignorance "in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous." (vv.17-19) But, he says, "that is not the way you learned Christ!" (v.20) Christians are supposed to be people who know God in a saving relationship, and who understand the kind of life he calls them to live into. We must "put away falsehood" (v. 25) in order to live differently, to "be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (v.32) If we are people who know that God's anger towards us was satisfied on the cross of Christ and that even now we depend upon God's mercy to save us from our sins, how on earth can we then become so enraged with others that we lash out at them, when we ourselves are every bit as sinful? To 'be angry and sin,' as Jesus, the Psalmist, and Paul caution us against, is to be "darkened in understanding." It is to ignore the fact God in Christ has forgiven us.

What kind of anger is appropriate for Christians, then? One of the observations that Pastor Roeda made in his sermon is that saying "Be angry, and do not sin" is not the same as saying "Lust, and do not sin." They are different categories of emotions, and anger has a much greater variety than lust when it comes to what the emotion does and how it is caused. There is such a thing as good anger, and it is an anger which Jesus displays at multiple points. At the beginning of Mark chapter 3 (read), Jesus comes into a synagogue on the Sabbath, and encounters a man with a withered hand. He knows the Pharisees have their eyes on him, looking for an opportunity to accuse him of violating the Sabbath. Their interest is not in the Sabbath itself, nor is it for this man who is suffering, but their sole hope is to find some means of condemning Jesus. He says to them the biting words, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" (Mk. 3:4) and they say nothing in reply, making it obvious what they are waiting for. Now something interesting happens, something that we mustn't miss if we want to understand the character of Jesus of Nazareth properly: before healing the man's withered hand, "he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart." (v.5) The second phrase explains the first - Jesus is grieved that these Pharisees are so calloused and hard-hearted, ignorant of God's goodness and of the very meaning of the Sabbath, that they are incapable of receiving his message, incapable of feeling for this weak man with a withered hand, and so obsessed with upholding human tradition (in their specific interpretation of 'work' on the Sabbath) that they do not recognize the Messiah when they are sitting in his very presence. Their ignorance and calloused minds are incapable of love, mercy, and true justice. So, Mark records, Jesus feels anger toward them.

This is good anger, and if we are to feel anger at all, this is the kind we should feel. A look at John 2:13-17 will reveal a very similar kind of anger. This anger is best described as a passion for justice on behalf of those who suffer, and also a passion for glorifying God. It fits in parallel with the greatest commandment we are expected to follow: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. When we see either of these being neglected, anger is the appropriate response, a 'righteous indignation' that is grieved (as Jesus was) that injustice exists and that the greatness of God is being ignored. It is very different from the 'bad anger' Jesus condemns in the Sermon on the Mount. The anger that sins, which Paul is talking about in Ephesians 4, is an anger that concerns the self. It is based on a feeling of inadequacy, that a personal slight must be met with wrath and vengeance, that the person who insulted me must be destroyed. But the good kind of anger has little to do with the self - it is instead focused on God and others. It is not a capricious kind of anger, but simply a passion for justice and righteousness. This is the kind of anger we are right in feeling, and Jesus serves as our example in the two passages I mentioned and elsewhere throughout the New Testament.

Not only that, but this kind of anger is what God the Father feels toward sin and evil. Paul writes in Romans, "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." (Rom. 1:18) This is something that few pastors like to talk about in the pulpit, but I truly believe that this statement (for believers, anyway) is actually good news, not bad! It means that God hates evil and is committed to justice down to the very core of his being. It means that God is not 'okay' with the injustices of our world and with the unrighteousness of people in the world. This burning passion is awakened by the fact that people "by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." God cares about truth. If God did not feel anger at all of this, what kind of God would we suppose him to be? Indifferent at best, or evil at worst. No - God is indignant at the evils of the world, and we should be too. We cannot say we love anyone in the world or anything about the world if we do not also say that we hate evil and injustice.

And this injustice, we quickly discover, is rooted in ourselves. As Paul writes later in Romans, "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened." (Rom. 1:21) Because of this, they "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals," (v.23) for idols that do not reveal the truth about God.This way of thinking is exactly what Paul diagnoses elsewhere, if we go back to Ephesians: "you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart." (Eph. 4:17-18) Human beings have a fundamentally disordered existence - we are by nature unreceptive and unresponsive toward God, and instead we feel the kind of anger that leads into sin, the kind of anger that is rooted in self-absorbed, obsessive pride, that wants nothing more than to destroy anyone who utters the slightest insult or or suggests the slightest fault on our part. In doing this we live lives without God, and in that we "suppress the truth."

The truth is, however, that "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 Jn. 4:8). The truth is, "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him," (v.16) and that "everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." (3:15) Those are strong words, and challenging, especially to those of us who go around claiming that God loves us and gave his only-begotten Son to die for our sins and yet still lash out in anger at other people, showing our contempt for anyone we happen to dislike or by whom we feel wronged. When we do this, we are suppressing the truth - the beautiful truth - that God has come into the world to destroy evil, punish injustice, and rescue the oppressed; that we should have a passion for that justice, and that such passion must lead us to love those around us, "forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Eph. 4:32) We cannot love the good and take delight in it unless we also hate the bad and grow angry on behalf of the weak, seeing justice neglected.

If you are reading this and are not a Christian, I invite you to consider how you have felt anger in the past. What kinds of things make you angry very quickly, and cause you to lash out at others, even at others who have nothing to do with the anger? What do you think that says about human nature, that we are so immediately protective of our selves, trying to justify everything we do and admit no error? According the the Apostle Paul, we are by nature darkened in our understanding, living in the futility of our minds without any substantial knowledge of God. That may be a difficult idea to stomach, but it is accompanied by the best news the world has to offer - that "God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved!" (Eph. 2:4-5) God gives us hearts to understand him, even though we have been calloused and futile in our thinking, and by doing so he enables us to love him, love others, and long for justice in the world. It may be difficult to admit how very wrong things have gone in the world and within all of us individually, but doesn't it seem obvious that they have, if we are being honest with ourselves? Consider what Paul is saying, that we ought to live a renewed lifestyle grounded in our knowledge of God, a lifestyle that overflows with a passion for justice, a love for God and for others, and at times, a very real anger on behalf of others to see injustice being perpetuated so constantly in a world that is without God. May God give you grace to come and receive his love, so that in newness of life you can "be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Eph. 4:32)