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One purpose for two solutions

We recently observed that God has two solutions for the problem of mans sin – eternal destruction and substitution. We also saw that everyone will have one of these two solutions applied to them. However, some think that the one of the two solutions is not beneficial to God and often discard it and argue for its non-existence. To argue this way from scripture is hard work because scripture talks of eternal punishment frequently and to dismiss it requires either discarding huge portions of scripture or relying on extra-biblical material which ultimately undermines the rest of the position.

Having said that I want to demonstrate from scripture that both these solutions serve the same singular purpose.  That purpose of course is to make much of (i.e. bring glory to) God.  We've already seen that God is worthy of our worship and worthy to be made much of, but we can also see clearly in scripture that He is indeed in the process of doing exactly this.

To show this clearly we need to understand the language that communicates this.  It is throughout scripture, but generally we glide over the specific words without really grasping what they are telling us. 

God makes himself known

So – there are some key words to look for when you read your Bible.  They are words such as "show", "make known", "manifest", "declare", "proclaim", "demonstrate", "display" etc.  Whenever we see these words and the subject of these words is God (Father, Son, Spirit or simply even an aspect of God such as His attributes) know that God is exposing one way or reason why He is worthy of glory and that he expects the appropriate response.  In other words these words indicate a means by which God is bringing glory to himself – when you read these words, know that this is a method by which God will be glorified – even if we don't see it right now.

Let us consider some examples.

Psalm 19:1 reads:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."

The point of this verse is that the sky and stars tell us about the majesty and splendour of the God who created it.  Similarly it is said of Jesus after He had turned water into wine:

"This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him." (John 2:11)

That is that through the turning water into wine, he made known something about His significance by demonstrating that He was not simply a human like all the rest of us but something fundamentally greater.  This was confirmed by many of His other works and miracles.

Thus, when God is making some aspect of Himself known, he is doing this in order to show His greatness which brings Him glory.  We will see this in more detail as we go through this lesson.

How God is glorified in these solutions

We find with Pharaoh that God said to him through Moses:

"But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth."

The truly scary thing about this statement is that it means that the reason God gave Pharaoh his kingship over Egypt was so that God's power could be made known through the ten plagues.  The ten plagues were only required because Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let the Israelites go. The entire point of Pharaoh's life was so that God could use his stubbornness to judge Egypt in order to make known His power which ultimately spread Gods fame throughout the known world at the time.  Pharaohs destruction was to bring God glory.

We see this clearly in Romans 9:17-18 where we read in conclusion:

"So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills."

This of course begs the protest "Thats not fair!" and the question "Why does God judge us if He hardens peoples hearts"?  The answer of course comes back to the freedom of God to do as He desires to do (Rom 9:19-21) – and He desires to bring glory to himself (and rightly so) through both the destruction and glorification of people.

In fact, if we continue reading through Romans 9:22 we read the following:

"What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,"

This gives us a strong hint about why some people are destroyed (eternally) – not merely because our sin makes us worthy of this, but so that the full power and wrath of God can be made known on them (which we covered here).

In Isaiah 66 we get an even more graphic understanding of this:

"“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”"

When the end of time has come and the people of God are living in the new heavens and new earth, as people go to worship, they will see those who have been cast into hell and will be reminded afresh of the fierce wrath and power of God – and they will worship Him for it because whenever God makes known something about Himself, He does so in order that His creation may worship Him for the great God that He is.

On the other hand, those who give themselves wholly to the Lord will equally be a trophy for the glory of God – because deserving this awful punishment, they have been forgiven and granted an inheritance that is infinitely greater than the punishment that they deserve.

Paul saw his own salvation as Christ demonstrating His patience with him:

"But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life." (1 Tim 1:16)

To the Ephesians, Paul explained that the reason that the Christians at Ephesus (and indeed us today) have been raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenly places is:

"so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." (Eph 2:7)

Thus, both the eternal destruction of the unrighteous and the mercy and amazing grace shown to those who are granted faith (Rom 12:3, Eph 2:8) serve to bring glory and honour to the eternal God who is worthy of all our affectionate attention.

Regardless of whether we like it or not, creation is entirely for the purpose – and indeed glory of the Creator – not for any other fundamental purpose.  As Paul concluded in Romans 11:

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Rom 11:36, cf Col 1:16)

Gods second solution to mans sin – substitution

We’ve spent two posts (1, 2) looking at hell – the first and default solution to mans sin and evil. This puts the good news of the gospel into stark relief and helps us understand why it is called good news.

Understanding that hell is the default solution is important. As we saw, sin is the exchange of God from the place of ultimate worth that He is truly worthy of and replacing Him with something else.  It is fundamentally denigrating that God should be given any place other than the one he is worthy of, and being perfectly just, God punishes this sin with eternal destruction. It is a just and fitting punishment that we are all worthy of.

However, not only is God just and righteous and holy, but he is also merciful, gracious, kind and forgiving.  However, God can’t just forget all our sins.  That would not be just.  After all, justice must still be done.  It is not possible for God to act except where every part of His being works together.  All sin must be punished, but yet God also wants to exercise compassion on mankind.  This is where the love of God enters the picture:

“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

While we were still in sin, Christ came to earth with the express purpose of being a substitute for man. The picture for this was set in the old testament through the sacrificial system and fulfilled in Christ   Just as the sacrificial lamb had to be perfect (Lev 9:3), so Christ had to be morally perfect – and this he was:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb 4:15)

“He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” (1 Pet 2:22)

“You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” (John 3:5)

The Bible teaches clearly that Jesus was God incarnate (John 1:1-3, John 1:14, etc), but Christ also demonstrated his deity numerous times.  We read for example that “He was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4). 

Not only does His resurrection from the dead prove that He is God, but there are host of other incidences that were recorded.  One of which was the calming of the storm in Matt 8:23-27 where with a word the wind suddenly stopped and the waves simply calmed in a moment.  There was no ripple effect – just calm.  This is evident even from the response of the apostles who said “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”.  We covered this incident in more detail earlier.

He also demonstrated that He was able to forgive sin in a similar, supernatural way.  We read in Luke 5:17-26 that Jesus told a paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven.  This raised questions with the Jews who were present because they knew that only God could forgive sin.  Jesus then healed the man of his paralysis to demonstrate that He had the authority to forgive sin.

The deity of Christ is a critical doctrine to Christianity because without it, Christ could not bear the sin of the world – merely His own.  However, scripture clearly tells us that Jesus died “to bear the sins of many” (Heb 9:28), and He could only do this if He was who He said (John 10:30) and demonstrated He was.

Why and how did Jesus die to bear the sins of many?  The why was because of the love, mercy, grace and kindness of God – in Christ who came to be a substitute for us. Rather than us being punished for our sin, the Lord put our sins on Christ who was then punished for that sin.  The one who demanded justice and wrath poured it out on His own Son rather than on those to whom it was due.  This is love – not that we loved God, but the He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

How Jesus died to bear the sins of many is by being nailed to a cross, and then abandoned by God on the cross (Matt 27:46) so that His soul made the offering for our guilt (Isa 53:10-11).  In doing this Christ “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God (1 Pet 3:18).

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet 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.” (Isa 53:4-6)

In providing a substitute for us, God satisfied all the requirements of His character.  Justice was done – it was poured out on Christ, mercy was freed, grace – the undeserved merit of God – can have free reign and because of this, God simply calls everyone – yes, everyone – to trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins  and be saved from the default solution that justice demands.  That is good news indeed!

Gods first solution to mans sin – hell – part 2

We saw at the end of the last post that this punishment was called eternal destruction (2 Thess 1:6-10).  This is a good starting point.  Here on earth while we live, we see much of the grace and mercy of God.  In fact scripture says that the kindness of God – which is evident – is meant to lead us to repentance (Rom 2:4) – however, we allow it to lull us into a false sense of security.

Seeing God through a mirror dimly

One of the points I made in the previous post was that our understanding of justice is often quite different from Gods (I mentioned Num 25:1-5, Deut 13:6-10, Ex 20:13, Ex 21:12, Ex 21:22-25 as examples).  The reason for this is that to a certain extent the character of God is hidden from us while we are here on earth (1 Cor 13:11).  Certainly there is much about God that is evident even from creation (Rom 1:20).  This is the purpose of special revelation – the Bible.  It is given to us to reveal much more about the Lord.

The reason this is important is that this dim view of God that we get from creation is a poor guide to tell us the seriousness of offending God.  Scripture does a much better job of this, and from scripture we get glimpses of His greatness, and also significantly of the punishment that sinners are worthy to receive.

Scripture on wrath

Far from being a place where we can hang out with our mates, hell is a place of eternal wrath.  We looked briefly at 2 Thess 1:6-10 last time where we saw the term "eternal destruction", but lets look at some other passages that tell us about what to expect in hell.

In Ezekiel 8:15-18 we read of a group of men who Ezekiel sees worshipping the sun at the entrance to the temple of God.  With their backs to the very place God had determined would be His house, these men committed idolatry.  This is a grievous evil – worshipping idols (created things) with their backs to the place that housed the presence of God on earth at the time – in the entrance of His house no less.  No evil will go unpunished, and God pronounces judgment on them:

"Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them." (Ezek 8:18)

Note that his action would be in wrath.  This is not a fitful rage as human wrath might be considered to be, rather it is the righteous anger of a holy God directed with the full power of God against sin.  Gods wrath is not impersonal, it is reasoned, dignified, righteous and just anger exerted in the full power of an omnipotent God.

In fact, we read in Romans 9:22-23 that part of Gods plan is to show His wrath and to make His power known – through the punishment of sinners.

Wrath without mercy

We also read of the execution of the wrath of God in Isaiah 63:3-6:

"“I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments, and stained all my apparel. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption had come. I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold; so my own arm brought me salvation, and my wrath upheld me. I trampled down the peoples in my anger; I made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”"

This is another horrifying account that graphically demonstrates that the mercy of God will be absent in the punishment of sinners.  As we also saw in Ezekiel 8:18, even though they cry for mercy, none will be shown, nor will He listen to their cry for help.  Jonathan Edwards puts this well in "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God" when he said:

"That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies, that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld, because it is so hard for you to bear."

If all of this seems a bit extreme, bear in mind that God is perfectly just and righteous.  We understand this dimly, but that doesn't change or alter the fact of it. Hell is a perfectly just punishment.  This gives us clarity about the seriousness of our sin and rebellion toward God – it is serious enough that the punishment weakly described above befits the crime.

Mercy now is exceedingly good news

The mercy and love and kindness of God are available now to grant forgiveness and repentance to all who want it.  This is a sharp contrast to what we have just seen, however, the sharp relief that exists between the justice and righteousness of God which drives His wrath and the grace and mercy of God that is available now is why the gospel is called good news. We'll see more of this in coming posts.

Gods first solution to mans sin – hell – part 1

As we've seen, the fundamental problem of sin can be described as man exchanging the glory of God for something other than God.  The full comprehension of this failure is somewhat masked as we are spiritual beings clothed in matter.  However, as we saw, God is the highest and most valuable thing in the universe and deserves all our affection and attention. Simply put we were created to make much of God – because God is altogether worthy of being made much of.

Hell, is a much debated subject – even among Christians.  At the end of the day many people simply seem to want to think of God as a great loving benevolent father who could never do ill to His children.  However, while such a view is half right – when it is considered as a whole truth, it is no truth.  In reality, this view of God, when considered a whole truth, reveals an understanding of God that is rooted in a man centred theology.  In fact – it demonstrates that the greatness of God is being exchanged with man in the heart of the person holding to this theory.

God is not just love

Like I said, God is loving, but that is not the sum total of God.  In the same way, God is gracious, but He does not apply his grace equally, nor is he gracious alone.  The truth is much more shocking.

If I wanted to emphasise a truth, I could underline it, put it in italics or bold font, or perhaps highlight it. In the Hebrew way, to emphasise something they would repeat the text to emphasise it. With this in mind, we find twice in scripture:

"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts" (Isa 6:3)

"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty" (Rev 4:8)

Nowhere do we find any other attribute of God repeated in this manner – not even Gods love. It is the holiness of God that is most emphasized in scripture – a reading of the Old testament in particular will make this abundantly clear.

The holiness of God demands that God stand apart from all that is evil.

"You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?"

Evil and sin are the same thing.  To value something more highly than Him who is altogether worthy of our worship and praise is the core of all evil. 

Applying justice

Justice must be done – God will not ultimately let any injustice go unpunished.  The legal system we have in most countries bears some resemblance to the justice of God.  Its very existence points to a holy, righteous and just creator.

We see the justice of God clearly in the old testament law. In Numbers 25:1-5 adultery leading to idolatry on a national scale resulted in the execution of the leaders who led this rebellion. In Deut 13:6-10 we see that inciting people not to walk with the Lord was guilty of death by stoning. In Exodus 20:13 and Exodus 21:12 we see that murder is a capital offense – even murder of an unborn child (see Exodus 21:22-25).  There are more, but we can see the severity and justice of God in these quite plainly – and it is clearly different from our understanding of justice today.

This alone is cause for concern.  If God sees this as being just and He sets the standard, then nobody will escape the judgement of God. But again, it is much worse. With true justice the punishment befits the crime, and while we can fail to grasp the seriousness and the comprehensiveness of our sin, hell as a punishment can do a lot to help us understand the severity of our crime.

Again – when Isaiah saw the Lord and understood at last who he really was (Isa 6:1-5) he pronounced judgement on himself "Woe is me! For I am lost!".  When he said he was lost – he meant that he was destroyed.  As far as Isaiah was concerned he saw that he himself was worthy of destruction – not because he had seen the Lord, but because His sin was so evident – he was crushed in his spirit because of the massive gulf between his own importance and the ultimate greatness of God that he was standing before.  This gulf made clear in one brief moment the severity of the situation – the magnitude of the offense of his sin and Isaiah pronounced destruction on himself.

2 Thess 1:6-10 describes the fate of those who do not know God in the following way:

"They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."

Paul describes this punishment not just as destruction – but as eternal destruction.  We'll look at the depths of what hell actually means in the next post.

Mans problem

Man has one problem or issue that God has two solutions to.  Every human being who ever lives will have one of those two solutions applied to them.  The solutions are entirely just (i.e. right) and can in no way be debated or discussed and there is no way to vary the solution applied to us once it is applied.

The problem of course is what is referred to as sin.  But what is sin?  Over the years the word has for many come to mean "a minor indiscretion". To many, sin might mean the bad things that we do – and indeed this is sin, but these evil actions or omissions are merely the symptoms of a much deeper problem.  When we understand what the core of sin is, we can better understand what an affront to God it is and why it has the two solutions that it has.

Sin is, fundamentally mans entire problem.  Now that I’ve made a huge sweeping statement, lets try to understand why this is the case.

Starting with scripture

We read the following in Romans 1:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

This passage begins a longer passage that explains mans descent into depravity.  If you want to read where it goes next, you can read Romans 1:18-32.  For the moment though, we will get to understand the key issue behind sin from this snippet above.

The passage above begins by talking about why Gods wrath is revealed against men – the key reason given is that they suppress the truth by their unrighteousness (i.e. sin).  Paul then explains the issue in more detail as follows:

1. Significant information about God is seen clearly in creation – specifically Gods eternal power and divine nature are called out.
2. There is no excuse to suppress the truth because His attributes are visible
3. The activity there is no excuse for is exchanging the glory of God for created things

The key fact in the above that I want to dwell on is the last point – that mankind has exchanged the glory of God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The exchange

We dealt with the glory of God in this post, and while much more could be said, I’ll just quote part of that here:

"The qualities of God that make Him God make Him worthy of all our attention.  This is what we refer to as the glory of God – the infinite value and greatness of God displayed for all creation to see.  The glory of God is made known, demonstrated, proclaimed, shown and displayed throughout scripture.  In fact, this is what God is doing with creation – all creation exists just to display His greatness."

It is not easy to put this into words that do it justice.  The greatness of God is something that we will struggle to fully comprehend until we stand face to face with Him – except that then it will be too late.  We can see this clearly from Isaiah’s response when He came face to face with God and saw the gulf between himself and God (Isaiah’s experience was covered in more details here).

The problem with man and the core of sin, is that rather than honouring God as God, we have decided we know better and substituted God for something else.  Remembering that God is the one truly valuable thing in the universe – this fundamentally means we have valued something else more highly than God. In the time of Paul and the apostles, the dominant thinking of mankind was spiritual.  Since the enlightenment, mans thinking is more reason based and less spiritual, and so spiritual substitutes are often removed completely and mankind himself, or more regularly the individual is substituted as the most valuable thing to the individual.

Sin – as seen on TV

To this day, most people go their own way, not only ignoring God, but purposefully excluding Him from their consciousness.  Rather than following in Gods ways, man goes his own direction.  Good and evil becomes a discussion based on the "rights" of individuals and what is offensive to my "values" – all of which is entirely subjective because the objective truth is being suppressed.  As a result, our consciences are seared due to perpetual suppression of conviction – which means we continually silence our consciences and the reason is that we simply have no understanding of the truth of God and therefore we do not fear Him as we should.

Romans again says this:

"as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.""

The core nature of sin is that mankind has rejected God and given the honour, respect, fear and centrality that should be reserved for God alone to something else – generally ourselves.

God has two solutions to this problem.