I heard John Piper's message from the Desiring God national conference last fall. He spoke on The Supremacy of Christ and Joy in a postmodern world.
One thing that I cannot get off my mind it the issue that has become
debate in the last few years (which is to say that it has come back
around from old theology debates). This is the issue of the
"substitutionary atonement" of Christ. This is point number 4 made in
the sermon...
"The Son of God, Jesus Christ, came into the world, lived a
perfect life, died to bear the penalty for our sins, absorbed the wrath
of God that hung over us, rose from the dead triumphant over death and
Satan and all evil, so that all who receive Jesus as the Savior, Lord,
and Treasure of their lives would be forgiven for Christ’s sake,
counted righteous in Christ, and fitted to know and enjoy God forever.
Oh,
how I wish that at least here, at the center of the gospel, there would
be common ground among those who claim to be followers of Jesus today.
But that’s not the case, and one of the reasons is that the postmodern
mind, inside and outside of the church, has no place for the biblical
truth of the wrath of God. And therefore, it has no place for a
wrath-bearing Savior who endures God’s curse that we might go free. One
of the most infamous and tragic paragraphs written by a church leader
in the last several years heaps scorn on one of the most precious
truths of the atonement: Christ’s bearing our guilt and God’s wrath.
The
fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful
Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.
Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found
this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to
faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in
total contradiction to the statement: God is love”. If the cross is a
personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne
by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your
enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil. (Steve Chalke and Alan
Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003], pp. 182-183.)
With
one cynical stroke of the pen, the triumph of God’s love over God’s
wrath in the death of his beloved Son is blasphemed, while other church
leaders write glowing blurbs on the flaps of his book. But God is not
mocked. His word stands firm and clear and merciful to those who will
embrace it:
We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God,
and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was
crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought
us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have
gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has
laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” (Isaiah 53:4-6, 10)
Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it
is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” (Galatians
3:13)
For God has done what the law, weakened
by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. (Romans 8:3)
Whose sin? My sin. Whose flesh? Jesus’ flesh. Whose condemnation? God’s condemnation.
In our present fallen, rebellious condition, nothing—I say it again carefully—nothing
is more crucial for humanity than escaping the omnipotent wrath of God.
That is not the ultimate goal of the cross. It is just infinitely
necessary—and valuable beyond words.
The ultimate goal the
cross—the ultimate good of the gospel is the everlasting enjoyment of
God. The glorious work of Christ in bearing our sins and removing God’s
wrath and providing our righteousness is aimed finally at this: “Christ
also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”
(1 Peter 3:18). Jesus died for us so that we might say with the
psalmist, “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy”
(Psalm 43:4)."
What I have found in my own life is that I am questioning so many
things, yet I must come back to the truth of scripture. It is what we
must do...not hijack scripture to make it say what I want, but humbly
say what scripture says.
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