Holy Week Wednesday - Why You Want a God of Wrath

The idea of a wrathful God makes people angry and upset. If you find yourself in a conversation with an agnostic or a nominal Christian about the nature and character of God, you’ll probably hear some rendition of the following:  “I don’t believe in the kind of God presented by some people, an intolerant, demanding God.  I believe in a God of love…”  There was a time I said the same thing, even as a younger Christian.  And for sure, the love of God in Christ is what this week is most profoundly all about.  But I want to spend a few minutes on the uncomfortable subject of the wrath of God.  Because it’s the truth - a biblically sound part of the WHOLE truth, and because it’s a liberating and compelling truth indeed.

For starters, let’s look at a few scenarios:

• Tamar, the young, beautiful daughter of King David, is raped by her half brother and then hated by him, not to mention permanently ruined in the Jewish culture of the time she lived.
• A 13 year old girl in New York state is abducted while riding her bicycle, sexually assaulted, killed and her body hidden by her murderer.
• Black men and women in Africa are rounded up, chained together and stuffed into dark cargo holds, taken from their homes and families and sold like animals into a lifetime of slavery.
• 6 million Jews are starved, tortured and exterminated in Nazi concentration camps in the 20th century.
• A thirteen year old disabled boy from Delmar, NY is smothered in the back of a van by his caretakers.

Of course, the list of injustices in the history of the world, those known and unknown, those great and small, could go on endlessly, the sheer volume of them orbiting around the earth to the sun a thousand times.  

As the Creator, Sustainer, and King of the Universe, how ought a good, loving God respond to these atrocities?  Should He ignore them in the name of being “kind and loving”?  Should He minimize them and give the perpetrators an extenuating circumstances excuse?  Should he shrug His cosmic shoulders and forget they ever happened in the name of being tolerant and understanding?

God forbid.  The New Testament declares:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” ~Romans 1:18-19

It is precisely the beautiful goodness of the nature of God to utterly abhor sin of any kind.  Forget just the obviously horrific sins in the list above. Would it be ok for God to wink at people cheating on their taxes, ruining their bodies with drugs, alcohol, food or work addictions?  Can He simply look away from nasty emails sent at work or laziness that impacts the flourishing of a family?  Can He stand by while the dug-in, unrelenting selfishness of every human being goes about the business of destroying all that is lovely and precious in the world He made?

If God were to dismiss without a peep any sin, he would no longer be a good, righteous and just God.  

“God is light.  In Him there is no darkness at all.”  ~ 1 John 1:5

God has powerful, perfectly just wrath against any unrighteousness, and I’m glad He does.  You should be too.  We want a God who hates darkness.  Who hates double-crossing and racism and murder.  Who hates everything that perverts and twists and ruins us and those we love.  Those HE loves.

You see the problem, don’t you?  Of course you do.  You and I, we aren’t the heroes in the stories of the bible.  More often than not, we’re the villains.  We are the bad guys.  We are lost and justly under the wrath of a good and lovely Master of the Universe.  

Ah, but here’s the genius of the gospel… God must punish and take vengeance upon sin, or He ceases to be just.  And so He holds court as the righteous judge.  And you and I and every person ever born, save One, are found guilty. Then, from the back of the courtroom, comes a man.  A God-man, with spike holes in His hands and a spear hole in His side. A man who was dead, but now is alive. That man holds out those hands to His father, the judge.  And His father is glad, knowing that the full fury and wrath of His righteous judgment have already been satisfied.  The typhoon of light that burns and kills darkness has been unleashed on the Righteous Son of God, who alone could bear the sin of all men on this third rock from the sun, this home of the people He made for relationship with Himself. And the gavel comes down with a shocking verdict…”not guilty”.  The sentence of death was already meted out to Another, and with God there is no double jeopardy.

Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century preacher put it this way:

“In the gospel, God never trifles with human sin; we proclaim full, free, immediate forgiveness to the chief of sinners, but it is not in a way that makes us think the sin is trivial in God’s esteem.  By the sacrifice of his Son, God renders it possible for him to be merciful without being unjust.  In the substitution of Christ Jesus, we see justice and mercy peacefully embracing and conferring double honor on one another.”

So like the first day of spring, God in his son Jesus brings hope. He comes and saves us to the uttermost:

“Therefore he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. ~Hebrews 7:25

And God the Father, perfect in light and life, has HIS reward.  He’s the very One who sent Jesus into the world.  For this very reason.  That all who believe upon Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.

So you see, you want a God of wrath.  Who is also a God of unrelenting, unrivaled, justifying love.  Repent, believe and be saved.  Then go, and make disciples of the wonderful Jesus, who with His father and the Holy Spirit devised the brilliant plan to be both just and the Great Justifier.

Blessed be His name…

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Tuesday - Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: John Newton and Amazing Grace

There may be no better song as an anthem for Passion Week than the most famous hymn ever written in the English language - Amazing Grace. The lyrics of this masterpiece of gospel truth were penned by a sparsely educated British sailor-turned-pastor, who elegantly communicates (with mostly 1 syllable words) the profound beauty and power of the grace of Christ.

As western culture moves with exponential speed away from a shared understanding of our human limits, the concept of the need of grace becomes more and more foolish to modern man, if considered at all.  Despite the overwhelming evidence of the reality of the sinful nature, and the failed attempts of mankind to “make a better world”, the resistance to the need of a Savior remains.  It is in this moment in modernity, when personal freedom is elevated to the pinnacle of virtue (how’s that workin’ for us?), that the lyrics of Amazing Grace and the story of the man behind the song are an oasis in a desert of self absorption and bad theology.

John Newton’s story is a textbook example of the adage “truth is stranger than fiction”.  This forum is too brief to outline the whole drama of Newton’s life, but I recommend going deeper with him, especially through the letters he wrote (which were the social media of the the 18th century).  In light of the topic here, suffice it to say that through a series of circumstances John Newton found himself occupying the position of captain of an African slave trade ship, where he witnessed and was party to the great evil of the capture, torture and sale of human beings.  This wicked era of human history created a hurricane of inhumanity so malevolent that the calamitous winds of that social villainy continue to blow today.  

But through the unbounded grace of a  Greater Wind -the convicting power of the Holy Spirit - John Newton recognized the absolute corruption of the human heart - especially his own- and the impossibility of cleansing the stain of sin from his soul. No hope could be found in good works, in self awareness, in charity. Here, in this place of his soul’s ruin, Newton discovered that most needful truth, indeed the only rescue for the disastrous shipwreck of sin:

The unmerited grace of Jesus Christ in His death on the cross.

John Newton repented of his sin and placed his trust in the atoning blood of the Son of God.  Period.  That is amazing grace.  There is nothing that can add to it, and nothing that can take away from it. 

And out of this conversion came not only a hymn that will likely be sung in heaven, but a providential earthly good as well.  John Newton became a mentor to William Wilberforce, the great British abolitionist who fought relentlessly for his entire career in Parliament to end the slave trade in his nation.  Newton advised Wilberforce to enter into politics instead of the pastorate when he was a young man deciding on a career path.  And in an ironic turn of the wheels of divine superintendence, the words of a redeemed slave trader played a critical role in the eventual abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom.

Though not popular and not pleasant, the bible says two things we need to hear as we approach Good Friday:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

~Jeremiah 17:9

AND

“…for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

~Romans 3:23

None of us have captained a slave trade ship.  But we have by our very  nature rebelled against God and His perfect, beautiful justice and righteousness.  The only hope for you and I is the amazing grace of God.  We cannot fix ourselves.  That’s why this coming Friday is called good.  The best.news.ever.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,

His Word my hope secures;

He will my Shield and Portion be,

As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease,

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who called me here below,

Will be forever mine.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’d first begun.

John Newton

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Monday - There's No Vaccine for This

There is no lack of uncomfortable subjects for conversation in 2021.  Vaccines, mask mandates, the last election…any of these can turn a polite communication into a dog fight in mach 2.  But if you really want to clear out a room, bring up that age old killer subject that makes the most loquacious of men suddenly mute and sends a natural born gossip hunting for the back door out.  

Death is the most inevitable, dependable, solid truth in each of our futures.  It’s not up for dispute, has no controversy to come up against, and cannot be foiled by great virtue, great intellect or great strength.  The bible calls it “the last enemy”, and indeed it is - completely undefeatable by all the powers of man.  It is as sure as day turning to night.  And it is the most off-limit topic of human discourse.

Lent is the great reminder, the bell ringing in the tower to sober up mankind to the brevity of life and the certainty of death.  In all the beautiful, horrible passion of holy week, there is no avoiding the ultimate truth.  Only One man defeated death.  And only He is its remedy. 

John Donne was an English poet who lived around the turning of the 16th century.  In those days before antibiotics and RNA vaccines, sickness would pass through a town and wipe out large swaths of a population swiftly.  Donne was lying on his bed, listening as the church bell rang out for each death, ring, ring, ring.  And it was there he penned the poem that included the famous line:

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

He survived that particular plague (and graced the world with works of profound and beautiful poetry).  But death did ultimately come to John Donne, as it will for you and me.

Here on the solemn ground of Holy Week, where we remember the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps a wise first step in our meditation should be to listen to the bells ourselves.  It is not morbid or brooding to consider daily the words of the brother of the Son of God, recorded for our good:

“For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, then vanishes away.”

~ James 4:14

I squirm under this serious question that drives me to repent of the wasted time in my life, and to reorient my days toward the thing that really matters.  In this week especially, the bell tolls loud for the waking up of souls to the great reality that life is brief.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls, my friend, it tolls for thee.  And for me.

How much greater, then, the truth that sounds louder than any death nell. As we “proceed to the route” as GPS advises, we will find on Good Friday the hope that makes this short stretch meaningful and hopeful.  The bell tolled for Him - even though He was God.  His death bought us life.  Not a stingy 80 years of toil and trouble, but an everlasting spring in the Kingdom of Love.

Today, don’t avoid the reality of your mortality.  Let it sink in.  Let it drive you to the cross of Christ, for whom the bell tolled.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann