BY LESLIE KAY
ANNY Gilbert1 was clearly a man on a
mission. Sabbath lunch dispensed with, he settled himself on our couch, opened
his Bible, and got down to the real business of his visit. Grinning amiably,
his blue eyes sparkling with intensity, he asked, "What do you think? If
a man wanted to win the affections of a woman, would he grab her by the arm,
put a gun to her head, and demand, 'Love me or I'll kill you'?"
My husband and I readily admitted to the absurdity of this scenario.
"So," Danny excitedly made his point, "in trying to win our affections,
would God do the same--scare us into a servile submission with punishments and
threats, then demand, 'Love Me or I'll kill you'?"
After again securing our agreement that such methods would be
self-defeating, Danny took us on a scriptural journey calculated to convert
us to his theological master passion: the idea that no matter what the circumstances,
no matter how plain the biblical evidence to the contrary, God does not kill.
Does God kill? It's a question that raises Adventist hackles
on both sides of the argument. Not only because we feel passionately about the
answer, but because the very manner in which the question is phrased provokes
extreme reactions. So for purposes of objectivity, let's ask it another (less
volatile) way: In dealing with sin, does God ever find it necessary to take
life? A thoughtful and thorough answer requires that we first explore the subject
of God's wrath.
The Wrath Factor
"'God is love.' . . . His nature, His law, is love. It ever has been; it
ever will be."2 Selfless in its nature and self-giving
in its expression, this law of love constitutes "the foundation of the
government of God," and "the happiness of all intelligent beings depends
upon their perfect accord with its great principles of righteousness."3
Sin, on the other hand, is love's antithesis. Self-centered
in its nature and self-serving in its expression, the principle of sin is an
alien, destructive force in God's universe. Because it brings such devastation
to the children He loves, it provokes in His Father's heart a profound and justifiable
hatred. Far from being arbitrary and vindictive, God's wrath is His absolute
and irreconcilable antipathy toward the destructive principle of sin.
In fact, "to sin, wherever found, God is a consuming fire."4
The problem is, sin doesn't exist in the abstract. Like the long, tenacious
tendrils of a virulent cancer, sin entwines itself around, and attaches itself
to, the minds and hearts of people. But because God doesn't want us to suffer
its fate, He mercifully withholds the full measure of His justifiable wrath
during our probationary time to give us opportunity to be separated from it,
if we will.
If we won't, and choose instead to defiantly persist in sin
even after "what may be known about God [has been made] plain to [us]"
(Rom. 1:19, NIV), we become a snare to ourselves and others, and God is forced
to shift from an attitude of withholding wrath to one of expressing it.
A Complex Interplay
Because the sin problem is so complex and deeply entrenched, at both the individual
and corporate levels, the manner in which God expresses His wrath against sin
is also complex and multifaceted. Walking a tightwire between His sovereign
will and our freedom of choice, He must be both authoritative and flexible.
The Bible record indicates that He deals with our defiance by engaging in a
complex interplay of both passive and active disciplinary tactics, for redemptive
and punitive purposes.
Romans 1:18-32 describes what could be called the passive expression
of God's wrath, His "giving over" the stubbornly defiant to the consequences
of their sinful choices. "Withdrawing His gracious aid and restraint,"5
God reluctantly abandons the persistently rebellious, not only to the natural
consequences of their choices, but to the supernatural consequences, as well.
This means that, at their own perverse insistence, they are left without divine
protection to the forces of evil. Frightening as this is, most people have no
problem envisioning a loving God expressing His wrath in this "passive"
fashion.
It's the active expressions of God's wrath that cause us so
much distress. Appalled at the image of our God of love and life behaving in
an apparently unloving fashion, taking life that He has so graciously given,
we've invented many creative and torturous explanations for His "strange
work" (Isa. 28:21, NIV) of destructive intervention. We've blamed the forces
of nature gone haywire, human passion and intrigue, and the devil himself for
past and future episodes of divine retributive judgment, including the Flood,
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the seven last plagues. Yet the record
stands that although rebellious humanity is responsible for these and other
judgments in terms of culpability, God readily admits to being the causative
agency.6
Still, if we would finally answer the question "Does He
or doesn't He?" we must penetrate beyond these examples of divine retributive
intervention resulting in the first death and address the issue of the second
death. To do that, we turn to the cross.
At the Cross
In all of history Christ is the only person who has ever experienced the second
death. Hebrews 2:9 tells us that "He, by the grace of God, . . . taste[d]
death for everyone" (NKJV). Earth's overflowing cemeteries plainly testify
that the corporate death here referred to must be the second death, the eternal
loss of "both soul and body" (Matt. 10:28). Because the Bible rejects
the possibility of an ethereal, disembodied soul, this "soul death"
can occur only in the context of a concurrent physical death, all of which Christ
experienced.
What caused this total dissolution of Christ's body and soul?
Did life cease to exist merely because the Father passively withdrew His sustenance
and protection, abandoning Christ to our sin, which somehow consumed Him, as
it were, from the inside out? Or did a supernatural force from outside of Christ
penetrate to His sin-drenched core like a sin-seeking missile to the heart,
searing into oblivion His very identity?
Ellen White brings Calvary's complex interplay of dynamics into
focus with this poignant description: "The wrath of God against sin, the
terrible manifestation of His displeasure because of iniquity, filled the soul
of His Son with consternation. . . . The withdrawal of the divine countenance
from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow
that can never be fully understood by man. . . . It was the sense of sin, bringing
the Father's wrath upon Him as man's substitute, that made the cup He drank
so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God."7
The body and soul of Christ were caught and crushed in an unrelenting
three-way vise grip composed of "the sense of sin," "the wrath
of God against sin," and "the withdrawal of the divine countenance."
This means that, not only did God abandon Christ to experience the full, agonizing
measure of our guilt, He actively expressed His justifiable wrath against sin
toward His own Son. But how could a loving Father do such a thing?
At the cross, a mysterious transformation took place. As Christ
was made "to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV), He stood before the
Father "in a different attitude from that in which He had ever stood before."8
In response, the Father "assume[d] toward the Sin Bearer the character
of a judge, divesting Himself of the endearing qualities of a father."9
Consummating the acted parable He had instructed Abraham to initiate with Isaac
so many years before, the Father heartbrokenly unsheathed the sword of divine
justice against His own beloved Son (see Zech. 13:7). Yet, in all this they
were one, because "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself"
(2 Cor. 5:19).
One Question Remains
One question remains to be answered: What about the lost? What will they experience
in the context of the second death, and who is responsible for it? Again, the
answer is found at the cross, because the cross is a virtual mirror image of
the final judgment. "Christ felt much as sinners will feel when the vials
of God's wrath shall be poured upon them. Black despair, like the pall of death,
will gather about their guilty souls, and then they will realize to the fullest
extent the sinfulness of sin."10
Because Christ has already "tasted death for everyone,"
the lost die a tragically unnecessary, avoidable death. In rejecting His sacrifice
in their behalf, they cause their guilt and condemnation to revert back upon
themselves, and "at the end receive their wages, which is the wrath of
God and eternal death."11 By refusing to identify
with Christ, the source of life and love, they have, by default, identified
themselves with sin, becoming its virtual personification. And God, who is a
consuming fire to sin wherever found, must finally consume them for the good
of the universe.
One last question still remains to be answered, and that is,
What's the point? Why spend so much time and energy trying to understand something
so tragic as whether and how God takes life in executing justice? Why not spend
all our time and energy focusing on His love and grace?
It's a good question. And it's answered, I think, by this insightful
statement: "Those who wait for the Bridegroom's coming are to say to the
people, 'Behold your God.' The last rays of merciful light, the last message
of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of [God's] character of love."12
We have been called to declare to our dying world, "Behold
your God." Not by presenting an ineffectual, artificially sweetened caricature,
but by allowing God to reveal Himself in the totality of His character of self-emptying
love. We're called to represent Him as He truly is--a God who loves with such
jealous devotion that He hates the sin that hurts us, and consumes it with a
righteous wrath. A God who took into Himself the full measure of that justifiable
wrath and allowed it to consume Him, that we might be spared and set free.
What more could Love do to win our affections?13
_________________________
1 Not his real name.
2 Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets,
p. 33.
3 Ibid., p. 34.
4 White, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 62.
5 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 480.
6 See Gen. 6:5-7, 11-13; Gen. 19:13-25; Rev. 15, 16, respectively.
7 White, The Desire of Ages, p. 753.
8 Ibid., p. 686.
9 White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 246.
10 White, Testimonies to the Church, vol. 2,
p. 210.
11 Ibid.
12 White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 415.
13 Thanks to my friend, Jennifer Schwirzer, for wrestling through this complex
issue with me.
_________________________
Leslie Kay writes from Kingman, Arizona.
