For years I saw the cross as the place where God the Father poured out His anger on the Son in order to satisfy His justice. (That view is a very distorted view of what justice really means. I'll write about that subject another time.) Author Brad Jersak does a good job explaining the way many of us have seen God's involvement at the cross and the way it really is.
"God need not say, "I just can't get over my children's sin. I am so incensed with them. They are repulsive to me and trigger my wrath and need for vengeance. My hand is armed for their destruction. Somebody must pay me and it has to be with punishment; with blood.
But what if, alternatively, we imagine him saying, "I can't get over over my children. I'm so in love. I need to save them - even if it kills me." And so the wounds of Christ represent something far better than the satisfied wrath of an offended God. They speak of the power of God's great mercy and love for us." (Brad Jersak, Stricken By God?)
Which scenario describes your view of God? That choice will permeate how you see everything else in life.
The second, absolutely. I've heard the offended wrath thing, but I always just kind of ignored it. This idea has always been confusing and, to put it frankly, horrifying to me. I much prefer to look at my Lord as the rescuing hero who took me from hell, through death and back, safely within Himself in order to bring me home.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" I was horrified. Perish the thought that the Father of all mercies, who has drawn us with loving-kindness, is repulsed by us and wants to destroy us like a school yard bully tortures insects!
ReplyDeleteI have to try to explain this every year that I have a foreign exchange student, as the sermon is excerpted in a textbook of American Literature our district uses. It is always embarrassing. :(
a little clarification, please.
ReplyDeletesurely God did all He did with the cross because of His love, because He loved us and wanted to save us. surely, it is preferable to emphasize this love and grace.
but are you saying there was no propitiation toward God happening at the cross? and and are you saying that the cross does not maintain God's just character?
Yes, Lance, that is what I'm saying. Your use of the word "propitiation" in your question causes me to think you probably hold the penal substitution theory of the atonement. I don't hold that view. I do indeed believe that the cross expresses and maintains God's just character but also believe His character is Love, not retribution. The word propitiation can certainly be used to mean "appeasement" or "satisfaction" but it can also be defined as "the place of atonement," which I believe is the accurate understanding of the word. Justice doesn't require punishment. What it does require is that injustice be made right again and that's exactly what Jesus did on the cross. He made right what Adam had made wrong, thus expressing a Divine Justice that finds its source in mercy and grace.
ReplyDeleteShadowspring - I agree. That was one of the most damaging sermons preached in the past three centuries.
ReplyDeleteinteresting. so much depends on the definition of important words. i have long suspected that many important words are tainted by presupposed (works, legalist) theology. but i have not found a way to really totally clear up the true meaning of many important words. so, i am not so very closed minded.
ReplyDeletein the Old Testament, God does sometimes seem to express anger and demonstrate wrath. if Jesus was a propitiation (in the popular sense), it does nicely explain why God does not express or demonstrate anger or wrath anymore...
This is very interesting. The Bible clearly states that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. There was a death required. In Isaih clearly the death that Jesus died was Brutal. Romans is clear about the wrath God has for the sinner. But thanks be to the Father that he made peace with us clearly through his Son. In which Now there remains no wrath on us that are born again. There is there now no condmenation To those that are in Christ. Wow what love that is for those in Christ. Those that he has made peace with.
ReplyDeleteJohnny - you're right, the shedding of blood in death was required. Sinful humans shed our Lord's blood and, in love, He submitted Himself to their brutality. Check out the word wrath here and you'll see that it often means anger but doesn't have to mean that - http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/orge.html It can mean any intense emotion, even love. The Bible doesn't teach that the Father stood in heaven and punished His Son on the cross. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself..." Just food for though :)
ReplyDeleteso, is there nowhere in the Bible where God has actual anger or demonstrated angry-wrath?
ReplyDeleteThere are many places in the OT we can see God's anger, Lance. Before the cross, He was angry toward sin because of what it did to those He had created to share His love and life. That's what the cross was about - restoring us to union with Him - and that's was accomplished there. God still hates sin, not because of what it does to Him (which is nothing) but because it hurts us and He loves us.
ReplyDeleteBut here is what may be the most important thing we can understand about how to know the Father today: We know Him by Jesus! Hebrews 1:1-3 says, "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. 3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature..." We MUST (emphasis, not shouting) know the Father by the Son, not by OT texts that seem to show a different Father than Jesus showed us.
Hebrews says that Jesus was the "exact representation of (the Father's) nature." If so, did He leave out half the story? Where's the expression of the kind of descriptions we see in the Old Testament? How can I reconcile the OT pictures of God with the NT portrayal revealed in Jesus? I can't and I don't try. There are many views about why the OT presents such "a cranky God" compared to the New. I have opinions on that too, but that's all they are opinions. I don't think anybody can reconcile the apparent inconsistencies between the description of God in the OT and the NT.
So...since we can't know with certainty how to make sense of some of those OT passages that are so troubling about God, let's turn to what we can be certain about - and what we can be certain about is Jesus. We can be sure He revealed the Father to us and, in fact, know that "if (we) have seen (Him), we have seen the Father." So lets stand strong on what we do know for sure and decide that we won't build our theology around what we can't clearly understand and know (the OT descriptions). To try to merge the OT with the NT descriptions of God leaves us with a Dr.Jekyl/Mr. Hyde sort of scenario. So let's not do that. Let's just "look unto Jesus, the Author & Finisher of our Faith" with confidence that He hasn't misled us about who our Father really is.
Steve, how do you account for the many, many times the words wrath and anger are used to describe God, and his attitude toward sin in the Bible?
ReplyDeleteBob - I did research that when I wrote my book, "Grace Land" and in the book cited how many times the word "anger" appeared and noted that every time it was connected to sin. I don't remember off the top of my head what the details were about that, just that I did it.
ReplyDeleteLance, you are so right about how we understand the meaning of words. We allow our preexisting views determine which definition we will use. For instance, take the word "all." The Bible plainly says that Christ died for "all." What does that mean? The Ariminian will say it means "every individual." The Calvinist will say it means "every type of individual, people from every group." Who is right? Well, according to the Greek Lexixon, the word "all" actually can be defined either way. Which definition are you gonna go with? That depends on which one more closely fits the view you already have....
ReplyDeleteCheck out 'marrying yourself to 'God is Love,' on the recent blog posts on freebelievers.com. This might help you see a different view of the 'Jekyll/Hyde' way of thinking of God.
ReplyDeleteGod's wrath against sin that is hurting his children, not his wrath against us, sounds more like Love to me.
I've never understood why Jonathan Edwards is extolled by many as one of the great preachers of all time. :-(
The question is ~ Was God "angry at humans" or more "angry for humans"?
ReplyDeleteWe almost always assume that God was angry at a particular person or group of people when it just may be that he was angry for someone else who was being hurt, neglected, abandoned etc. by someone. One way to think of God's wrath is that it is the full weight of his love coming down on whatever is harming or neglecting someone else or that is harming us. Just a tought.-:)
Very good post Steve, thanks for writing it. It's ironic that the Canaanites used to sacrifice their children to their gods to appease them, yet we teach this very thing concerning Jesus' death.
ReplyDeleteSo I heard a "pastor" (he wrote a few popular books at least) guy say the other day that he couldn't believe that God would ask us to do something that He can't do himself...forgive. He was saying that if the atonement is correct than God couldn't just forgive us like He asks us to do. He said that it would be something like forgiving your spouse and then kicking the dog to take care of your anger...someone has to take it.
ReplyDeleteI am not a theologian nor do I understand many of their terms, but I do think too much and that can be a major pain :)
What was the point of Jesus? To be a good teacher and follow his example? I can't do that. He said so many difficult things, I can barely understand most of them. He gave only two commands of loving God and neighbor. I can barely do the second one and not sure at all about the first one. Am I really supposed to "get" that?
Am I just missing something from the Gospels about Jesus? Doesn't he just say plainly why he is going to die? Does he say 'I'm going to die and you should die too so people will love each other'?
Sorry for my ranting but this is really important to me.
i guess that i would like for people to (1) resolve all questions about God's anger and wrath and (2) move on happily in the New Covenant, confident that there is no more anger or wrath coming.
ReplyDeletethis side of the New Covenant, i do not think or see any anger or wrath in God. in the Old Covenant, i sure do see anger and wrath [Old-Covenant-Jesus included, such as when He goes to the temple courts (John 2) or when He speaks to pharisees (Matt 23); i really see no problem with an angry Old-Covenant-Jesus.].
one way to possibly explain why the anger is gone now is that something changed, that perhaps something took away that anger...that the Old Covenant gave way to the New Covenant.
as i understand Hebrews, it was the death of Jesus on the cross that "signed" the New Covenant; it was that moment that moved us from the Old to the New; it was that moment when all the anger and wrath went away.
there are other explanations. some think God was never really angry; some think He was just feeling deep emotion, not anger-wrath. and perhaps there are dozens of other explanations...but a propitiating (meaning anger-satisfying) death would explain why the anger disappeared at that exact moment.
...with this potential explanation, i do not wonder (at all) about Old Covenant instances when God was angry; they do not confuse me (at all); that was before, this is after. i am left to happily focus on the New Covenant and i'm on my merry way.
...without an explanation of why the anger went away at that exact moment, it remains unresolved; left unresolved, some people will believe that the anger still remains; left unresolved, even i (who >>never<< feels God is angry or wrathful with us) would wonder.
so, far from being assured by what you wrote, Steve, it actually shakes me; without the resolution, i am shaken.
God is angry at sin because it hurts us. It's His slowness to anger one can appreciate where one can feel His mercy and grace in action at the cross I John 2:1,2. In I Corinthians 13 Paul says, "love is patient and kind." God is longsuffering or patient until the last sinner comes to Him being born again. Jesus is not "stricken of God" as the Old Testament says but was and is showing us kindness in putting our sins to rest in NEW COVENANT LIVING. God's imagery around the Atonement is to give every man an opportunity to escape the coming anger during the Tribulation but that is for the world, we get the rapture instead! "It's only through the Blood, it's only through the cross, You have overtaken me." Dave C
ReplyDeleteThanks steve for the food for thought.
ReplyDeleteJesus who knew no sin becme sin. Eternally God the father and son had never been separate until the cross. That was brutal for the son, that prompted the son to say while he was in the flesh physically to say why have you forsaken me. What a subject!
John 3:16 really simply clears up the question anger or agape. For God so loved the world that he gave. Thank you Father!
this may be a bit off topic.. as a child i thought the vinegar offered by a witness was mean... as an adult i researched and learned it was an act of kindness... from this small story occurring during the Crucifixion i take the life lesson "people often damn those trying to help them because the medicine is bitter."
ReplyDeletethank you for the post..it was thought provoking and i shared it on my facebook page.
Sin is a harming to us and results in death, even Death of our Savior though it was our sin He died for to make it right and now we can have it right with Jesus in our Midst like He was on the Mercy Seat between the angels. This offer of God's love is available during one's life on earth because God becomes Holy at our death in either confirmed righteousness or confirmed unrighteousness and we're accountable before Heaven takes us redeemed bodies to go it His way, salvation by following after Christ, denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Him. It's all about Christ in the heart listening to His Voice, keeping His Voice paramount, heeding it, knowing you're loved by God! Great blog Steve. It hits home. Dave Candel
ReplyDeleteI see our bodies receive redemption when we see Him! The Spirit quickens our mortal flesh like it raised up Jesus from the dead Romans eight. Now there is no condemnation to us in Christ!
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