If there were a FAQ section of Christianity, it would be filled with things like:
If God is good and real, how can there be pain and suffering in the world?
How did Satan fall?
And, if God is loving, how can he send people to hell?
This blog is in response to the last question, because, according to Scripture, God has every right to be angry. I am writing because the wrath of God has come under attack from emergent churches, but this is to be expected as Paul certainly encountered such problems.
First, we must understand that God is indeed loving, but that is not the sole characteristic by which we know Him. Nor is it the entire focus of the Bible. God is loving, just, compassionate, humble, glorious, and many other things. All of these combine to say that God is perfect, or Holy. The Hebrew definition of "holy" is set-apart, different, flawless, perfectly righteous. So all of God's characteristics in sum show us how different he is than us, how holy he is. And if one of those attributes were missing then he would not be holy, he would not be perfect, and thus would not be God. Let us say, for instance, that God was not perfectly loving, but loved with flaws. His love would be incomplete, and thus he would be incomplete, and he would not be God, certainly not a God worth worshiping. The same is true for his justice. If God is not perfectly just, then he is not holy, and he is not therefore God, and is not worth worshiping. By all this it is essential that we see God as just. He must be perfectly just.
Second, we must define what it means to be just. By human standards, just means to be guided by truth, reason, fairness, and justice. By God's standards, he must be perfectly guided by truth, reason, fairness, and justice. In order for God to be just, he must be perfectly these things. Most people would not debate up to this point, but here is where people start to turn away because it is a difficult truth.
The third conclusion we must reach in order to understand this is that human beings are sinful. We are completely and totally depraved. After the fall of man in Genesis 3, human beings have been 100% evil. Romans 3 states that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Every person in history (except for Jesus) has fallen short of what God intended for our lives (namely, to worship Him- think garden of Eden). Scripture also says that the payment for this sin is death (Romans 6:23). So every person who has ever sinned (which is all of us), will pay the payment of death. And not just any death, but death separate from God. Death in itself is no punishment/payment at all, for it simply means not existing. There is no pain or consequence while not existing, it is simply nothingness. The punishment for our sin is death, and in order for God to be just he must punish wrongdoing with death, namely a death apart from Him.
Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we are by nature children of wrath. IT IS OUR NATURE. I'm not sure how it could be worded more clearly than that. God must hate sin. If he is holy, if he is God, if he is perfect, he must hate sin with an infinite amount of passion, and he MUST punish it. If God did not punish sin, he would not be good!
God had every right to be angry at me. He had every right to destroy me, to kill me, to separate me from himself forever because of my sin. But, and that is a beautiful but, God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us...made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4-5). How were we made alive? With Christ. How is a person saved from the wrath of God? Through Jesus. God's great provision was to send his Son to bear my punishment. This was the only solution. In order for me to be made righteous and for God to remain holy, his wrath had to be poured out on sin, and he CHOSE to do that on his Son.
Oh that we could see and fear that divine omnipotent wrath and know what it was we were saved from! This is what makes the Gospel so precious. Without it then we have a compassionate and unjust God letting sinners go freely with a great amount of wrath built up towards sin, and the cross has saved us from nothing.
Scripture is clear that in order for a person to be saved they must believe in their heart and confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord (master) of their life, and that God raised Him from the dead. That is the only essential belief. And if this is not required, Scripture is wrong.
In a recent video, seen below, Rob Bell raises the question of how a loving God could send people to hell. This video has already caused quite a stir in the evangelical world, and the camp seems to be divided. Many who have been impacted by Bell's intellectualism and thought provoking ministry are calling judgments "premature and unfair." Others are frustrated that Bell is getting further and further from Biblical Christianity. While Bell may be a "contrarian" and uncannily good at "asking innocent questions" so as to remain guiltless in all this, it seems his new book has crossed into universalism. The publisher's review of the book has this in the preview: "Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering." Some are saying judgment is premature, and others are saying that Bell is simply asking questions. But if the publisher is saying that Bell is making this argument, either Bell has departed from Biblical Christianity or the people who pay to have his books sold don't even understand what he is writing. The real problem- Bell is a pastor. It is his job to shepherd the sheep, to answer questions, and to help people trust the Bible. He seems to generate distrust, controversy, and strife all for the sake of publicity for himself and his writings. This is not the call of a pastor or a Christian, and I pray that Bell would repent and head back to Biblical based faith.
God does not need me to run to his defense, and this is certainly not me wishing to stir up dissent within the church. But believers cannot be misled by false teachers. I will pray for Rob Bell, and hope that this is simply a publicity stunt. But a lesson is to be learned here- Theology should be based off of the Bible, not feelings or relevancy- simply the Word of God. And strong Theology is essential if we are to keep from forming our God into the image of ourselves.
Bell may have a hard time seeing God with wrath because loving human beings are often pictured as never being angry. But God is not human, he is Holy, which means he is very different than every one of us. It is essential that we understand God's wrath towards human beings poured out on his Son Jesus to free us from that wrath in order to truly understand the weight of the Gospel. Without God's wrath, the cross was meaningless.
