For the same reason it was also imperative that he who was to become our Redeemer be true God and true man. It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could do this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a power higher than world or air could do this? Now where does life or righteousness or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone? Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only begotten Son.
The second requirement of our reconciliation with God was this: that man, who by his disobedience had become lost should by way of remedy counter it with obedience, satisfy God’s judgment and pay the penalties for sin. Accordingly, our Lord came forth as true man and took the person and the name of Adam in order to take Adam’s place in obeying the Father, to present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to God’s righteous judgment and in the same flesh to pay the penalty that we had deserved. In short since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he couple human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death and that wrestling with death by the power of the other nature he might win victory for us” (Calvin, Institutes 2.12.3)
“Did God say?”, that plainly is the godless question.
“Did God say,” that he is love, that he wishes to forgive our sins, that we need only believe him, that we need no works, that Christ has died and has been raised for us, that we shall have eternal life in his kingdom, that we are no longer alone but upheld by God’s grace, that one day all sorrow and wailing shall have an end?
“Did God say”, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness…did he really say it to me? Perhaps it does not apply in my particular case?
“Did God say”, that he is a God who is wrathful towards those who do not keep his commandments? Did he demand the sacrifice of Christ?
I know better that he is the infinitely good, the all-loving father. This is the question that appears innocuous but through it evil wins power in us, through it we become disobedient to God…Man is expected to be judge of God’s word instead of simply hearing and doing it.
We come to our own rescue and build the tower of Babel. In what haste we are to soothe within us the stormy desire for the righteousness of God! And to soothe means, unfortunately, to cover up, to bring silence….The longing for a new world has lost all its bitterness, sharpness, and restlessness, has become the joy of development, and now blossoms sweetly and surely in orations, donor’s tablets, committee meeting, reviews, annual reports, twenty-five-year anniversaries, and countless mutual bows. The righteousness of God itself has slowly changed from being the surest of facts into being the highest among various ideals, and is now at all events our very own affair….You may act as if you were God, you may with ease take his righteousness under your own management. This is certainly pride.
First, We bid a man begin by examining himself, and this not in a superficial and perfunctory manner, but to sist his conscience before the tribunal of God, and when sufficiently convinced of his iniquity, to reflect on the strictness of the sentence pronounced upon all sinners. Thus confounded and amazed at his misery, he is prostrated and humbled before God; and, casting away all self-confidence, groans as if given up to final perdition. Then we show that the only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete. As all mankind are, in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since, by his obedience, he has wiped off our transgressions; by his sacrifice, appeased the divine anger; by his blood, washed away our stains; by his cross, borne our curse; and by his death, made satisfaction for us. We maintain that in this way man is reconciled in Christ to God the Father, by no merit of his own, by no value of works, but by gratuitous mercy. When we embrace Christ by faith, and come, as it were, into communion with him, this we term, after the manner of Scripture, the righteousness of faith.
John Calvin: Reply to Sadoleto
Translation by Henry Beveridge in John Calvin, Tracts Relating to the Reformation, Volume 1, pp. 25–68 (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844).
Beautiful Tension: Love and Wrath
How is it that God can be both loving and wrathful? Are not these two qualities mutually exclusive? Is it possible that in order to be loving one must also have wrath? Can a loving God ignore injustice, thereby shrugging off the attribute of wrath? Or is it possible to have an angry wrathful God who also have the ability to forgive thereby expressing inexplicable love?
On this issue Tim Keller (along with C.S. Lewis) is helpful. I am quoting at length Keller from his book King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. 1
Keller writes:
[[Here you may say, “I don’t like the idea of the wrath of God. I want a God of love.”
The problem is that if you want a loving God, you have to have an angry God. Please think about it. Loving people can get angry, not in spite of their love but because of it. In fact, the more closely and deeply you love people in your life, the angrier you can get. Have you noticed that? When you see people who are harmed or abused, you get mad. If you see people abusing themselves, you get mad at them, out of love. Your senses of love and justice are activated together, not in opposition to each other. If you see people destroying themselves or destroying other people and you don’t get mad, it’s because you don’t care. You’re too absorbed in yourself, too cynical, too hard. The more loving you are, the more ferociously angry you will be at whatever harms your beloved. And the greater the harm, the more resolute your opposition will be.
When we think of God’s wrath, we usually think of God’s justice, and that is right. Those who care about justice get angry when they see justice being trampled upon, and we should expect a perfectly just God to do the same. But we don’t ponder how much his anger is also a function of his love and goodness. The Bible tells us that God loves everything he has made. That’s one of the reasons he’s angry at what’s going on in his creation; he is angry at anything or anyone that is destroying the people and the world he loves. His capacity for love is so much greater than ours—-and the cumulative extent of evil in the world is so vast—that the word wrath doesn’t really do justice to how God rightly feels when he looks at the world. So it makes no sense to say, “I don’t want a wrathful God, I want a loving God.” If God is loving and good, he must get angry at evil—angry enough to do something about it.
Consider this also: If you don’t believe in a God of wrath, you have no idea of your value. Here’s what I mean. A god without wrath has no need to go to the cross and suffer incredible agony and die in order to save you. Picture on the left a god who pays nothing in order to love you, and picture on the right the God of the Bible, who, because he’s angry at evil, must go to the cross, absorb the debt, pay the ransom, and suffer immense torment. How do you know how much the “free love” god loves you or how valuable are you to him? Well, his love is just a concept. You don’t know at all. This god pays no price in order to love you. How valuable are you to the God of the Bible? Valuable enough that he would go to these depths for you.
A correspondence between C.S. Lewis and a man named Malcolm has been collected in a book called Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. In one letter Malcolm said that he was uncomfortable with the idea that God gets angry. He found it more helpful to think of God’s power and justice like a live electrical wire. He said, “The live wire doesn’t feel angry with us, but if we blunder against it we get a shock.” Lewis replied: “My dear Malcolm: What do you suppose you have gained by substituting the image of a live wire for that of angered majesty? You have shut us up all in despair, for the angry can forgive, but electricity can’t….Turn God’s wrath into mere enlightened disapproval and you turn his love into mere humanitarianism. The ‘consuming fire’ and the ‘perfect beauty’ both vanish. We have, instead, a judicious headmistress or a conscientious magistrate. It comes of being high-minded….Liberalizing and civilizing analogies can only lead us astray.” 2 Your conception of God’s love—-and of your value in his sight—-will only be as big as your understanding of his wrath. ]]
We must be able to take the God of the Bible seriously without picking and choosing or schlepping off the realities that do not initially sit well with us. Can God handle your doubt and questions? Absolutely. In fact I encourage everyone of faith to doubt and question in order to have your faith take a deeper root. Faith worth having will stand the test of fire (both doubting and suffering). But there is a difference between doubting and recreating. The historic rule of thumb has been faith seeking understanding, and not understanding seeking faith. This is a good guide for areas of belief, doctrine, or Scripture that are hard to understand, reconcile, or even believe.
Does the idea of wrath initially place a bad taste in our mouth? Of course it does. Why? Because humanity wants to do what it pleases without question and without consequence. Sure the idea of a wrathful God is unpopular, but God is not running for president of our high school student council, the president of the United States. He is not running for any office. He is God, He is King and He is reconciling a people, not campaigning. The reality of a God who is simultaneously loving and wrathful should make us run to the cross, not run away. The reality of a God who is both able to forgive and demand justice should give us cause to reflect and ask do I want God’s forgiveness or God’s justice.
The message of the Gospel is that you are much, much more deserving of God’s justice than you dare to believe and on the other hand, much, much more loved and provided for than you could ever imagine. God owes you nothing, yet he extends grace and mercy for those who will accept his incredible offer.
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- Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 2011), 176-78.
- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963), 96-97
And, indeed, one of the choicest and most eminent parts of practically spiritual wisdom consists in finding out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin; to consider and know wherein its greatest strength lies;- what advantage it uses to make of occasions, opportunities, temptations,- what are its pleas, pretenses, reasonings,- what its stratagems, colors, excuses; to set the wisdom of the Spirit against the craft of the old man; to trace this serpent in all its turnings and windings; to be able to say, at its most secret and (to a common frame of heart) imperceptible actings, “This is your old way and course; I know what you aim at;”- and so to be always in readiness is a good part of our warfare.
Joseph’s story foreshadows the central story of the Gospels. The worst day in human history was the day of Christ’s crucifixion, which saw the worst possible punishment inflicted on the One who, in all history, least deserved it. Two more sunrises and the Son rose: the best day in human history, the day God turned death itself against itself—and because he did so, each one of us has the opportunity to share in death’s defeat.
That is our God’s trademark. Down to go up, life from death, beauty from ugliness: the pattern is everywhere.
That familiar pattern is also a great gift to those who suffer disease and loss—the loss may remain, but good will come from it, and the good will be larger than the suffering it redeems. Our pain is not empty; we do not suffer in vain. When life strikes hard blows, what we do has value. Our God sees it.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=84612
Redemption: A Definition by Jonathan Edwards
The definition of Redemption has both a micro and a macro definition. Here Jonathan Edwards is particularly helpful in explaining both from his work, A History of the Work of Redemption:
The use of the word redemption.—And here it may be observed, that the work of redemption is sometimes understood in a more limited sense, for the purchase of salvation; for the word strictly signifies, a purchase of deliverance. If we take the word in this restrained sense, the work of redemption was not so long in doing; but was begun and finished with Christ’s humiliation. It was begun with Christ’s incarnation, carried on through his life, and finished with the time of his remaining under the power of death, which ended in his resurrection. And so we say, that on the day of his resurrection Christ finished the work of redemption, i. e. then the purchase was finished, and the work itself, and all that appertained to it, was virtually done and finished, but not actually.
But sometimes the work of redemption is taken more largely, as including all that God accomplishes tending to this end; not only the purchase itself, but also all God’s works that were properly preparatory to the purchase, and accomplishing the success of it. So that the whole dispensation, as it includes the preparation and purchase, the application and success of Christ’s redemption, is here called the work of redemption. All that Christ does in this great affair as Mediator, in any of his offices, either of prophet, priest, or king; either when he was in this world, in his human nature, or before, or since. And it includes not only what Christ the Mediator has done, but also what the Father, or the Holy Ghost, have done, as united or confederated in this design of redeeming sinful men; or, in one word, all that is wrought in execution of the external covenant of redemption. This is what I call the work of redemption in the doctrine; for it is all but one work, one design. The various dispensations or works that belong to it, are but the several parts of one scheme. It is but one design that is formed, to which all the offices of Christ directly tend, and in which all the persons of the Trinity conspire. All the various dispensations that belong to it are united; and the several wheels are one machine, to answer one end, and produce one effect.
The way that God has prepared for the saving of sinners is a fruit and product of infinite wisdom, and powerfully efficacious unto its end. As such it is to be received, or it is rejected. It is not enough that we admit of the notions of it as declared, unless we are sensible of divine wisdom and power in it, so as that it may be safely trusted unto. Hereon, upon the proposal of it, falls out the eternally distinguishing difference among men. Some look upon it and embrace it as the power and wisdom of God; others really reject it as a thing foolish and weak, not meet to be trusted unto.
(via davidlindell)
Source: davidlindell
What Jesus calls his hearers to do, most fundamentally, is not a cognitive act but a political one. They are called not to understand him, but to follow him; not to master a mantra, but to join a movement, to proclaim news, and to bear a cross. In the life of that movement, elements of cognition, statements in an ontological mode, both straightforward and paradoxical, are not missing; but they are not the heart of the challenge. Some texts (especially the parables, the apocalypses) intend to jolt the hearer into a new way of seeing, but this seeing is not an ahistorical gnosis; it is a new way of living, a walk.
(via davidlindell)
Source: jonwasson
