No 47: To Rescue Us from Final Judgment

To reflect properly upon this chapter, we would need to dig deeply into the Bible's shifting and evolving concept of the wrath of God.  For the moment, I  have nothing more to add to what I wrote in my very first Lenten post on this theme:  'Whatever His wrath means, we know that love is His abiding and defining attribute - they aren't opposites.  God doesn't stop loving, to be wrathful.  Clearly, like God's love itself, his wrath lies outside all categories of human experience.  The analogy He has taught me comes from His natural order.  If I am walking along a cliff and fall off, I will experience violent consequences because of gravity.  Nature isn't angry with me, gravity isn't vengeful.  But I am being punished for my action.'

Piper quotes a passage from Revelation, describing it as 'the most graphic glimpse of hell'.  As I have begun a little bit to experience visions and prophetic pictures, I have realised how we can seize on an expression of the spiritual realm and apply it grossly to our physical, material world.  It is rather akin to taking a dream literally - very young children do, but soon learn not to. 

There are several occasions recorded in the Gospels where we see Jesus dealing with this wrong way of receiving spiritual truth.  One is related in John 6:32-58.  Towards the end of a long altercation, Jesus says: "I tell you most emphatically, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (verse 53), and He goes on to emphasise this message using the same words three more times.  Many of His disciples then said: "This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?"  No doubt their imaginations were filling with 'graphic' images.  Jesus replies: "Does this offend you?  The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.  The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:61, 63).

It is interesting that we have no record of Jesus ever mentioning God's wrath in proclaiming His good news.  He even cut short the reading He had been given to recite in the Nazareth synagogue, omitting "... and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2).  This makes me wonder why we should, either, when telling others our good news.  Isn't He our model?