The Wrath of God Poured Out

I can agree up to a point with your last sentence, but didn't our Lord say something about letting your yea be yea and your nay be nay? And no one reads Steve Chalke to marvel at his scholarship.

 

OK. So you know the answer to your own question. I'll leave you to it.

 

We all read books and authors we don't agree with, but Wright's endorsement and involvement with The Lost Message of Jesus seems to go quite some way further than that. In his Acknowledgements page of The Lost Message, Chalke says:
“Our appreciation also goes to N.T. (Tom) Wright for his time and considerable theological wisdom.” Other references to Wright appear throughout the book

And Wright declares in his introduction: “Steve Chalke’s new book is rooted in good scholarship , but its clear, punchy style makes it accessible to anyone and everyone. Its message is stark and exciting: Jesus of Nazareth was far more challenging in his own day, and remains far more relevant to ours, than the church has dared to believe, let alone preach.”

Now if Wright believes the quotation that you gave, then according to Chalke, he believes the cross is cosmic child abuse. If he supports Chalke's position, how could he write that quotation? And how did he use his 'considerable theological wisdom' to edge Chalke towards orthodoxy?

I am not an academic and make no claims whatsoever to be one. If I'm anything, I'm a preacher and a church elder, and it worries me to death to see someone who purports to be evangelical supporting trash like Chalke's book. It worries me because my own congregation buy Christian books, and I want them to buy stuff that will help them, not lure them into error.

 

I have Piper's book on NPP. My impression was that he was simply being polite.

What I wrote was

I meant no more than that. If people say one thing out of one corner of their mouth and the opposite thing out of the other corner, it's hard to know what they really believe.

If you're speaking of Wright, I quite agree with you.

 

I would like to resume this thread which seemed to get bogged down somewhat in discussions over N.T. Wright.

May I refer readers to the O.P. and also to @JonC's post #46 and my reply to that in post #65?

Let us reprise for a moment just how serious the state of unredeemed sinners is in the eyes of God. There are several places where one could look, but I'm going to focus on Psalms 5:4-6.

'For thou art not a God who has pleasure in wickedness........' God has no delight in them.

'.......Neither shall evil dwell with thee.' They cannot reside in His presence.

'The foolish shall not stand in thy sight.......' They have no status before Him.

'........Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.' God is in a state of enmity with them.

'Thou shalt destroy all those that speak leasing [i.e. lying]..........' He will pour out upon them the fury of His wrath.

'The LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.' They will be under His indignation forever.
God is not a pussy-cat; not even a tame lion.

Next, let us look at God's standard of justice. It is that of rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. Consider the following texts; please take the time to click on them and read them: Deuteronomy 7:9-10; Nahum 1:2-3; Romans 2:5-11; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8. God commands human rulers and judges to govern in the same way. Read 1 Peter 2:13-14; Romans 13:4. A ruler is described as 'God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath of him who practises evil.' This is the case even if the ruler is a pagan or an atheist. God expects humans to have the same standards of righteousness and justice that He has.

So if God 'will not at all acquit the wicked' (Nahum 1:3) and if there is a future 'day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God' (Romans 2:5), how shall we escape, seeing that 'There is none righteous, no, not one' (Romans 3:10)?

So judgement is the outworking of God’s righteousness and His hatred of sin. Once Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, it was impossible that God should withhold the penalty that He had threatened in Genesis 2:17, for that would have validated Satan’s claim that God was untrustworthy (Genesis 3:2). So it happened that so many aspects of creation that had been full of blessing – marriage, work, childbearing – are now full of pain and frustration, and end in death Likewise, when God expelled the Israelites from the Promised Land, He was doing no more than He had warned that He would do if they continued in sin.

So what of God’s goodness and mercy? The prayers of Nehemiah, Ezra and Daniel (Nehemiah 1:8-9; 9:32-33; Daniel 9:13-15) all affirm God’s righteousness, justice and covenant faithfulness in bringing disaster upon Israel. Interestingly, they plead for mercy on the basis of the same covenant that promised judgement (Deuteronomy 30:3. If God were to go back on His promise to punish sin on what basis could we believe His promise to show mercy?

So salvation must be a matter of justice: sin must be punished and righteousness upheld. It must also be a matter of illumination, for we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1:25); it must be an act of liberation: for we are captive to the delusions of our false beliefs and cannot save ourselves; it must be an act of grace from start to finish, because by nature our hearts are set against God, and we do not even want to save ourselves; it must be an act of reconciliation, for the natural mind is alienated from God, and it must be an act of conquest, for we are by nature in thrall to Satan and need someone to rescue us. And all must be done in a way that upholds the truth of God’s word [last two paragraphs partly taken from Pierced for our Transgessions by Jeffrey, Ovey and Sach]

In 2 Samuel 14:14, we read, ‘God….devises means so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.’ This is a true statement, but in its context, as we read on, we see that reconciliation between David and Absalom was made on a false basis – there was neither retribution nor repentance – and the whole thing ended in disaster. Whatever means God devises must involve justice and righteousness.

So the first thing that Christ must do if He is to save us is to deal with the broken law. God’s law pronounces a curse on law-breakers: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them’ (Galatians 3:10; c.f. Deuteronomy 27:26; James 2:10). We ourselves are cursed, for none of us have continued in God’s holy law. But, ‘Christ has delivered us from the curse of the law….’ How has He done that? ‘…..having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”’ (v.13; Deuteronomy 21:23). In God’s law it is written, so, as Luther says, ‘Christ hung on a tree; therefore Christ was accursed of God’ (Luther: Commentary on Galatians). We need to modify that somewhat. On the cross Christ bore and suffered the curse due to sinners on account of sin. He was not literally cursed by God.

So what does it mean to be ‘accursed of God’? Let Paul answer first: ‘These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power’ (2 Thessalonians 1:10). And then the Lord Jesus: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:4-5; c.f. Matthew 25:41). So what does hell feel like? Well, we may think of darkness, pain and, according to Paul, separation from the presence of God, save perhaps for His abiding wrath. We may add, perhaps, the mocking and abuse of others (c.f. Isaiah 14:10-11). All these things came upon the Christ. Of the pain it is hardly necessary to speak, save to note that it could not be diminished in any degree. Our Lord was offered wine mixed with myrrh, but He would not take it (Mark 15:23); it was an analgesic, but He must suffer the full agony of sin and the wrath of the Father against sin. He was 'made sin for us' and the Father who is of purer eyes than to behold evil' (Habakkuk 1:13; c.f. Psalms 5:4 again), turned His eyes away from His stricken Son (Psalm 22:1 etc.).

This was also an act of illumination: on the cross we see the love of the Father who did not spare His own Son but offered Him up for us all; we see the horrible nature of sin by the punishment that divine justice prescribed, and we see our own total inability to save ourselves.

It was also an act of liberation: just as we were ‘in Adam’ when he fell into sin, so we were in Christ when He suffered for sin. ‘I have been crucified with Christ…….’ ‘There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus……’ ‘For this purpose Christ was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.’ Christ has taken our sin and the punishment for it upon Himself. God the righteous God sees therefore no sin in us and justifies us (c.f. Romans 8:33-34). ‘Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed’ (John 8:36).

It was also an act of grace: ‘For when we were still without strength, Christ died for the ungodly’ (Romans 5:6). It was also an act of reconciliation: ‘For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son…….’ (Romans 5:10). It was also an act of conquest: ‘……having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it’ (Colossians 2:14-15). And finally, of course, it was an act of love (John 3:16)

And in it all, the truth of God’s word is upheld and dignified. Our sins have indeed been laid upon God’s Suffering Servant and it is by His wounds that we have been healed (Isaiah 53:5-6). The guilty have been punished, for Christ was made sin for us, and the righteous have been justified for we have become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21)..