The Wrath of God

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from J. I Packer, and is found in his superb book, "Knowing God."
     It deals with a topic many people (believer and non-believer) struggle with -- the concept, or better yet, the reality of God's wrath. Packer, knowing the confusion people have in regard to this common biblical subject seeks to explain, clarify and clear up some of the common misconceptions with regard to it.

     I have also added a second helpful thought from A. W. Tozer.  Years ago I found them very helpful. I trust some of you might find them helpful as well. Enjoy.

The Wrath of God

     "The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to downplay this subject. Those who still believe in the wrath of God (and not all do) say little about it. To an age that has unashamedly sold itself to the god's of greed and pride and sex and self-will, the church mumbles on about God's kindness but says virtually nothing about His judgment.

     How often during the past year did you hear (or if you are a minister did you preach) on the wrath of God? How long is it, I wonder, since a Christian spoke straight about this topic on the radio, or television, or in one of those half-column sermonettes that appear in the national dailies or magazines.  And if they did so, how long would it be before they were asked to speak or write again. The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo, and modern society, and Christians by and large, have accepted the taboo and agreed never to even bring the subject up....

       [Yet] the theme of God's wrath is one about which the biblical writers felt no inhibitions whatever. Why then, should we?  Why, when the Bible is vocal about it, should we feel obliged to be silent?  What is it that makes us awkward and embarrassed when the subject comes up; that prompts us to soft-pedal it and hedge when asked about it? The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that idea of wrath is, in one way or another, unworthy of God.

     To some, for instance, wrath suggests a loss of self-control, an outburst of "seeing red" which is partly, if not wholly, irrational. To others it suggests the rage of conscious impotence, or wounded pride, or plain bad temper. Surely, it is said, it would be wrong to ascribe to God such attitudes as these.

     The reply is: Indeed it would.  But the Bible does not ask us to do this.  There seems to be here a misunderstanding of the anthropomorphic language of Scripture - that is, the biblical habit of describing God's attitudes and affections in terms ordinarily used for talking about human beings. But when Scripture speaks of God anthropomorphically, it does not imply that the limitations and imperfections which belong to the personal characteristics of us sinful creatures belong also to the corresponding qualities in our holy Creator. Rather it takes for granted that they do not.

     Thus, God's love, as the Bible views it, never leads Him to foolish, impulsive, immoral actions in the way that its human counterpart too often leads us.  And in the same way, God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is.  It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil.  God is only angry where anger is called for.  Even among humans, there is such a thing as righteous indignation, though it is, perhaps, rarely found.  But all God's indignation is righteous.

     Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as he did in good be a good God? Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world be morally perfect?  Surely not.  Yet it is precisely this adverse reaction to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection, that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God's wrath."

It might also help to know that God's "wrath" is often devoid of "anger" altogether. It is, rather, a very intentional and "calm" determination to "give people over" (let them have) the sin they want (along with the consequences of that sin). Paul speaks of this when he tells us that "the wrath of God is being poured out" -- not in fire from heaven, or cataclysmic disasters -- but in simply letting people have the sinful things they want (see Romans 1:18-32, and especially verses 24, 26, and 28). In this sense His wrath is a "calm" form of judgment upon people who stubbornly persist in their sin and rebellion.

     A. W. Tozer's words from his book "The Knowledge of the Holy," are also helpful here.  There he states:

     "Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because He is holy, His attributes are holy. That is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy.

     God is holy and He has made holiness the moral condition necessary to the health of His universe. Sin's temporary presence in the world only serves to accent this. Whatever is holy is healthy; evil is a moral sickness that must end ultimately in death. The formation of the language itself suggests this, the English word holy deriving from the Anglo-Saxon halig, or hal, meaning "well, whole."

     Since God's first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure.  To preserve His creation God must destroy whatever would destroy it. When He arises to put down iniquity and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry. Every wrathful judgment in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation.  The holiness of God, the wrath of God, and the health of the creation are inseparably united. God's wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that takes the life of her child."

     I hope -- if nothing else -- you may have gained insight into what God's wrath is; why it is a necessary aspect of His being as God, and thus be less hesitant to affirm it, speak of it, or explain it to others.

To the end that we might worship God as He is and must ever be, Pastor Jeff

Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

Greetings All,

     This "thought" comes from a man to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude. He is one of my former professors at Gordon-Conwell and his "Life of Jesus" class still ranks as one of the best and most inspiring courses I've ever taken.
     To this day I still remember when he shared the anti-intellectual paradigm used in the Pentecostal church he was raised in: "I'd rather be a heart on fire (for God) than a mind on ice."  Yet as one who desired to pursue a PHd in biblical studies he had come to believe there was third alternative. That it was indeed possible to be, "A mind on fire for God," since we are called to love God "with all our mind."
     His booklet "The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel," (a mere 20-25 page booklet which critiques the obvious flaws of that movement) is well worth the read, and also had a formative effect on my theology.  Thus, this thought is in honor of him, Dr. Gordon Fee, and comes from his book, "Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God."  Enjoy!

     "Despite the affirmations in our creeds and hymns and the lip service paid to the Spirit in our occasional conversations, the Spirit has been marginalized both in the halls of learning and in the life of the church as a community of faith.

     I do not mean that the Holy Spirit is not present; he is indeed, or we are not of Christ at all. But the primary emphasis regarding the Spirit's activity has been on his quiescence [stillness, quietness], based largely on imagery drawn from Elijah's encounter with God on Sinai, where the Lord was not in the wind, earthquake, and fire, but came to Elijah "in a still small voice" (I Kings 19:11-13).  Support for this view is then found in the New Testament by emphasizing Paul's "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22-23), while suggesting that the "gifts of the Spirit" in I Corinthians 12-14 were for the apostolic period only.

     Quiescence, however, has sometimes fostered anemia, not only in the church corporately, but also at the individual level, evidenced in part by the myriad of ways individual believers have longed for a greater sense of God's presence in their lives.

     This common "missing out" on the Spirit as an experienced, empowering reality has frequently been "corrected" historically through a variety of Spirit movements -- most recently in this century in the form of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.  Emphasis there has been on the "wind, earthquake and fire," and the primary texts are from Acts and I Corinthians 12-14.

       These Spirit movements have also tended to emphasize individualistic spirituality, so that the reality of the Spirit is sometimes merely experienced in the experience. Such piety frequently lacked sound biblical and exegetical basis or betrayed inadequate theological reflection.

   The net result has tended toward a truncated view of the Spirit on both sides, accompanied by an inadequate view of the role of the Spirit in Paul's understanding of things Christian. For Paul life in the Spirit meant embracing both fruit and gifts simultaneously -- what I have come to call life in the radical middle. The Spirit as an experienced and empowering reality was for Paul and his churches the key player in all of Christian life, from beginning to end. The Spirit covered the whole waterfront: power for life, growth, fruit, gifts, prayer, witness, and everything else.

   But if the empowering, experienced dimension of life in the Spirit is often missed on the one side, too often missing on both sides are two further matters that, for Paul, lie at the very heart of faith.  First, the Spirit as person, the promised return of God's own personal presence with his people; and second, the Spirit as eschatological fulfillment, who both reconstitutes God's people anew and empowers us to live the life of the future in our between-the-times existence -- between the time of Christ's first and second coming.

     If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and to recapture Paul's perspective: The Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God's own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await the consummation (of the Kingdom). All the rest, including the fruit and gifts (that is, ethical life and charismatic utterances in worship) serve to that end." 

     For those who do not know what the word "eschatological" means, it essentially means "having to do with time." As believers in Jesus we are experiencing in the PRESENT, a degree of the blessings we will experience in full in FUTURE, when Jesus returns to consummate the kingdom He inaugurated at His first coming.
     Through Jesus and the Gospel, God is giving us a "foretaste" of the some of the blessings of the eternal state. In Christ, and through the influences of the Holy Spirit, God has already brought some of those FUTURE blessings (justification, healing, pardon, joy, eternal life...) into the PRESENT.

        Picture God sending the Spirit into the future age, where he takes an "armful" of the blessings promised to the saved in eternity, and brings some of those blessings (not all) back into the now, and lets us experience a taste of them in the present.

     That (though inadequate to fully explain it!) gives you an idea of what the concept "eschatological" (having to do with time) means in relation to the kingdom, the Spirit, and the Christian faith.

     And obviously, if we are to walk in step with the Spirit and emphasize His part in God's glorious work of redemption, just as the apostles did, we need to do as Fee suggests and,  "recapture Paul's perspective: The Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God's own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await the consummation (of the Kingdom)."

Hoping this will simply perk your interest to look at the two books mentioned above!  Pastor Jeff

Why Go To Church?

Greetings All,

     This week's "thought" comes to you from Jerry Conklin and is found in Voice Magazine, An Independent Church Journal.
     It expresses many of my own sentiments in regard to the purpose of the gathering of the saints, or what we might call "attending church" (and what that spiritual habit is meant to accomplish in the lives of God's people). Not all will agree with everything he says, nor with what I say in summary, but it does offer a needed word of caution.  Enjoy.

Why Go To Church?

     "I received a mailing the other day, an advertisement for invitation cards to be used to invite people "back to God and church."  The mailing asked this question in large, bold type: "Why Aren't People Going To Church?" It drew attention to an alarming statistic" "Right now, fewer than 20% of people in the United States regularly attend church."  That's a startling number, especially considering the fact that about 80% of Americans identify themselves to be "Christian."

     Why go to church?  It's a good question. Many go out of a sense of obligation. Parents, friends, or relatives exercise some degree of influence and a person is led to dutifully attend. That was my situation when as an adolescent my mom took me and my siblings to the Catholic Church.  I had no desire to be there -- I would have rather been fishing with my dad -- but I went because she made me.

     Some go to church because they believe that going might somehow contribute to their favor with God and entry into heaven. They have been led to mistakenly believe that salvation is by being a good person and doing good works. "Good people go to heaven," they assume, and going to church is part of what makes a person a "good person."  Religious cults operate according to this way of thinking, though many professing Christians think this way about church attendance as well. However, going to church doesn't make a person a Christian any more than going into a garage would make them a car.

     In our day many churches have responded to this trend of decreasing church attendance by attempting to make church exciting, cool, and fun.  They cite the need to be culturally relevant. They cater music to the lost and endeavor to make church both comfortable and non-demanding. Christ-less and cross-less "self-help" messages are substituted for the teaching of sound doctrine (II Timothy 4:3). The person and work of Christ are de-emphasized in an attempt to gain a hearing with those who have little interest in such matters (I Corinthians 1:23).  Because so little attention is given to sound doctrine, or edification, these churches remain anemic and self-serving. Sinners are content to attend week after week without any conviction of sin. 

     The classic text on the matter of fellow-shipping together is in Hebrews 10:25, which reminds us not to be "forsaking the assembling together of ourselves."  A part of the answer to the question, "Why go to church?" is answered by the context of the verse. The "assembling together" is for those who have made a "confession of hope" (Hebrews 10:23). Of what confession is the verse speaking?  The confession of hope which accompanies one's faith in Christ as Lord and Savior. The text is addressed to those who have already trusted in Christ for salvation.

     It has long been said that the church gathers for edification and scatters for evangelism.  This statement represents a biblical perspective on the ministry of the local church. The gathering of believers on Sundays (or any other occasion) is primarily for the purpose of the edification (the building up) of the church. Though the church is commissioned to share the Gospel, the primary purpose of the assembling together is not evangelistic. That's not to say that it can't or won't happen. It is a good thing when an unsaved person finds his way into the assembly of believers and is saved as a result. But evangelism happens not as a result of the cultural relevance of the church to the lost, but the God-relevance of the saved.  First Corinthians 14:24-25 speaks of the convicting influence on the unsaved of God's presence in the midst of His people.

     The church gathers for edification (Heb. 10:24-25), and scatters for evangelism (Matt. 28:19-20). The believers who make up a local church constitute a team of missionaries and ambassadors for Christ, sent out to reach that particular community with the Gospel. Every believer in Christ lives amidst a unique group of family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers  and/or classmates. To the extent that the believer is growing, and walking with Christ, and deepening his understanding of the Gospel (and his ability to share it) he is sovereignly and strategically enabled and equipped to reach people that a church, pastor, or leaders could never reach." 

     Obviously it is not wrong to gear a worship service towards evangelistic proclamation and outreach. Surely every church does it on occasion -- or should!  But to gear every service, every week, toward appealing to the felt needs, musical tastes, and likes or dislikes of unbelievers, really evidences a much deeper problem. It evidences a group of disciples that has stopped doing what each one should be doing throughout the week -- seeking to reach the lost.

     One of the reasons many worship services have been habitually made the primary evangelistic outreach of the week is because the people in that church have stopped reaching out individually in their daily interactions. They have taken the responsibility that Christ laid squarely on their shoulders to reach out to others one-on-one, and have let the "church" do it for them. And in doing so they have not only twisted the purpose of worship gatherings, they have lost out on the blessing Paul speaks of In Philemon 1:6.

     The answer to getting people back to church is not to make the worship service appealing to unbelievers, but to use it (as was intended) to edify and mobilize all the believers in the church to do what they should have been doing (should be doing) every week at every opportunity they get:  1.) Speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  2.) Proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins to all people (Luke 24:47).  3.) Preaching the kingdom and testifying to the Gospel of God's grace (Acts 20:24-25).  4.) Giving an answer to anyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in us with meekness and respect (I Peter 3:15).  5.) Making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20).

     The answer to the problem of a diminishing church attendance is not to make our gatherings into what they were never intended to be (gatherings so devoid of true heartfelt worship and substantial truth that few are truly saved and the saints find it hard to be challenged and grow), but gatherings that accomplish what God intended them to be (time to thank praise and adore Him, and be edified, equipped and encouraged from the Word in our faith as believers).

One man's take of the purpose of the gathering of believers -- Pastor Jeff