The Cross – Was God Mad at Jesus?

“Must we talk about the wrath of God?” asks theologian S.C. Guthrie. “Yes,” he answers. The subject is such a hot topic among Christian folk. The success of Bill O’Reilly’s latest book with the rather insensitive title should point to that: Jesus and his death loom as large among the faithful almost as much as in the First Century some would argue.

However, S.C. Guthrie doesn’t leave it there, like a twitter posting. “But God’s wrath is not like that of the gods. It is the wrath of the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self” (Christian Doctrine page 261).

Unfortunately, instead of allowing Jesus’ love, compassion and kindness to shape their understanding of God, too many Christians have historically toward an overuse of what we might simplify as a “forensic” model of salvation. The word “forensic” seems like a penal or legal term and it is. This forensic model – though held by some of the giants in Christendom across the centuries – tends to sees God the Father as stern and vengeful, a frightening God from whom we need Jesus to save us. Not only does this tear apart the Trinity teaching, it also presumes that the starting place for understanding God is not Jesus Christ, but the Law. It sees the law as so important that even God is subject to it. Since God is concerned first and foremost about his law and only secondarily about humans, he will punish humans for lawbreaking in the same way as human courts and legal systems do – a straightforward examination of the facts (in this case, our wrong behavior/sin) followed by a verdict.

The late John Stott argued that nothing showed forth God's love for sinners more than the cross – the lengths to which God will go...

Doctrinal Strait-Jackets

Front and center in the forensic model is God’s anger against sin. God is offended, and someone must pay. Jesus steps forward and takes the full force of God’s wrath against human sin. That means we have had our penalty paid for us, but tends to leave it there. There is not much said about what St. Paul calls “walking in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). In the extreme application of this teaching it does nothing for a restored relationship of love and trust. This “offended deity” picture forgets that first and foremost, God is love, that God is creatively occupied in bringing “many sons to glory,” and that our salvation was in his mind “before the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8, AV).

So it is crucially important where you start in considering this notion of the sin/wrath reaction in the plan of salvation. God is angry, but he is angry at sin, not the sinner. At Calvary he was angry at the sins Jesus had taken upon himself, not at the Beloved Son. The forensic model, sometimes referred to as “penal substitution,” also forgets something even more basic –that Jesus and the Father are one, that Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father. The Father is not some angry, vengeful deity that we need protection from; he is just like Jesus, full of compassion and mercy, a God who “desires mercy and not sacrifice.” Jesus is the starting place for understanding God the Father, not the Law.

Let’s put it this way: God is not schizophrenic. He does not have a split personality. There is not one good God, Jesus, and one bad God, the Father. There is one God – Father, Son and Spirit – who loves us unconditionally. Jesus offered himself as our atoning sacrifice according to the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). tThis good God is full of good intentions toward us, his creation. Numerous Bible passages tell us that:

Through Jesus’ redeeming work on our behalf, the Father has made full provision not only for our sins to be forgiven and removed, but also for our full inclusion in that loving relationship which the Son has shared with the Father from eternity. Our reconciliation with God is assured (2 Corinthians 5:19-20).

Jinkins offers a readable summary of how Christians have understood the Atonement over the centuries.

Adoption

God is not in the business of training obedient valets but in building a family. The apostle Paul used the word “adoption” in describing the kind of relationship that God is working towards in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:4-5). This is a very handy one-word summary of where God wants to take the human race. Through God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in the Incarnation of the Son – by Jesus becoming one of us and taking up our cause as his own – God has drawn us into Himself and made us part of the intimate relationship that Jesus has always had with the Father. Listen: “On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).

We see the powerful implications of this intimate love that God has for humanity in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The repentant son is welcomed home and restored to full rights of sonship (Luke 15:11-24). This is the reality of the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). The death of Christ was not a vindictive act of divine child abuse, as some overzealous teachers have portrayed it. No. It was a divine rescue springing from God’s love for us, an intervention designed to restore a purpose of which we were oblivious in our ignorance and darkness (John 3:19-20).

Set against this majestic purpose, God‘s wrath can be seen for what it is – his anger – not at the humanity he sent Jesus to save, but at sin, that which destroys the relationship he has always intended for us in Christ. God is not some resentful, selfish parent in an emotional stew because we have not played by his rules. God is Father, Son and Spirit, loving, faithful and unconditionally committed to bringing humanity into the joy of knowing him for who he really is. Jesus prayed about this in John 17: “I have given the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

Mercy vs. Judgment

God, however, will never be at peace with sin. His justice goes hand in hand with his loving-kindness. The great human tragedy is that most have been totally unaware of the pardon and reconciliation the Father has brought about through Jesus Christ. The Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition gives us time to think about this. We have all fallen short. We have loved darkness rather than light and have to often chosen to ignore what the Father offers us through the Son.

Through Christ, the Mediator, the great disconnect between the world and God has been removed once and for all. The great majority of unbelievers are those who through weakness or ignorance or misunderstanding are resisting the influence of the life-giving Spirit, that member of the Godhead who beckons to us to abandon our addiction to darkness and sin (Isaiah 61:1-2). The God who is loving kindness reaches out to us in excess of the sometimes deadening provisions of the Old Covenant with its “quid-pro-quo/you do this and I do that” stipulations:

A Question of Emphasis

A lot of it comes down to this. The Bible’s sometimes dire and apocalyptic language reflects God’s wrath at the rebellion and wickedness that destroys humanity. Thus Paul wrote that “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men” (Romans 1:18). Paul also alluded to a time when “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels” when “he will punish those who do not know God…They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

Judgment falls on those who move tragically beyond basic blindness, ignorance or apathy into out and out rebellion against God’s purposes. New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias, who grew up in Palestine, understood that many of Jesus’ tough statements – “the weeping and gnashing of teeth,” “the rich man in hell” – these were part of his teaching method. They were designed to shock his very religious audiences out of their self-confident conceit. “Jesus repeatedly and intentionally uses by way of illustration …methods of punishment regarded by the Jews as particularly merciless,” says Jeremias. Jesus spoke to people whose concept of government was swift retribution from Oriental despots and where democracy was unknown. Jesus spoke within the political realities of his day, where an angry look from a king could cost one his life (The Parables of Jesus, pages 27, 212).

But the people who saw and heard Jesus, who saw his miracles who experienced his healings, who heard his patient teaching – they knew Jesus was not a king like that. Jesus did not just bring good news, he was good news. The overwhelming accent of his teaching was mercy, not vengeance. His hallmark sayings reflect the God who is love, in whose mind mercy rejoices against judgment (James 2:13). Thus, what was hinted at in parts of the Old Testament becomes the major theme in the Gospels – “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” Jesus’ word pictures reveal a forgiving father throwing his arms around a failure of a son, a Good Samaritan binding the wounds of his nation’s enemy, the compassionate teacher scolding his disciples for holding back the little children, a splendidly generous employer who gives everyone the same wage, the Great Physician who pleaded “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 10:28).

“Anger is God’s response to wrong and evil-doing,” says Christian writer William P. Young. “For God to have that response to rape, abuse, greed is only fitting.” Even the scary blood and thunder of the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is set in a book whose overall trajectory is consistently positive: Christ working to deliver his Church from evil, destructive powers. The beginning of the Apocalypse identifies Jesus as the one who loves us, who has passed through death and agony for us (Revelation 1:17-18) and the ending is a Hallelujah Chorus of God’s people redeemed and walking in the light and invited to a wedding banquet that will make earthly joys seem irrelevant (Revelation 19:1-9).

One Loving, Inviting God

So what of this other “God,” this schizophrenic one? Are we to represent a God of love but one whose bad side you’d better not arouse? No. This is not the God of the Bible. The grace notes harmonize loudly and clearly across Scripture. God is one, and his emphasis is clearly on salvation, on we his creation being readily and lovingly adopted through the Beloved Son and invited to the Wedding Feast just ahead. That is the God of the Bible, and it is the good news we are invited to proclaim, especially at this time of year.