Wrath

Okay. I will now attempt to write something theological while listening to System of a Down....

Yesterday I was invited to attend a theological discussion group led by UPC's former pastor, Earl F. Palmer. It was a really wonderful thing...

There are a couple of observations that I wanted to write about.

"To be a man means to be so situated in God's presence as Jesus is, that is, to be the Bearer of God's wrath. It belongs to us, that end on the gallows." - Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 107

One of the most redeeming things about Karl Barth's theology is his willingness not to run away from the fact that God has wrath. Some of the men at the study group seemed a bit squeamish about the whole "wrath" thing. However, wrath is simply the manifestation of God's holiness, his Otherness as Barth would put it in Romans.

Our sin has negated our original state before God, our state in Adam prior to the fall. Now God, who would have been our "yes" has now become our "no" because through our own rebellion and sin we have become God's "no." We have not only said "no" to Him but have become "no" to Him. We have taken what was holy and thrown it to dogs.

God's actions and attributes are not like a person's moods. He does not switch back and forth from love to wrath. He is holy. He is the Other. When we sin, when we are sinful, we become a negative to God and God becomes a negative to us. It is enmity. It is war.

God is not wrathful because He "hates" us the way one person hates another. His ways are above our ways as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah). To say that God hates, which Scripture does say, is to explain an unexplainable. God and sin are necessary opposites. More accurately, God and not-God are opposites. As the Apostle John says in 1 John, it is the contrast between Light and Darkness. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

Equally, God does not "love" the way we do. He loves and redeems for His own glory. He redeems us to glorify Himself. We are caught up into Him and made one with Him by the Holy Spirit. We are placed "in Christ" and Christ is "in us." This is not pantheism, because we are not God. This is not pan-en-theism, because God is not in us "prior" to redemption the way He is "after" redemption. "In Him we live and move and have our being," but we are not in Him redemptively unless by the grace of God He unites us to Jesus, the God-man.

In Jesus, where God and man become one, the dividing wall of hostility between God and man collapses. However, the hostility is also manifested and shown to be what it is. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus on the cross is both man condemned and God condemned for man. We are either redeemed by the sacrifice of our Lord or we are shown up as God's enemies and the killers of His Son. And it is only by faith, by belief and trust and hope, that we can turn from darkness to light and be counted as God's dear sons. His blood is shed for us, and it saves those who believe.

Does that mean that our faith saves us? Yes. Of course. However, we cannot believe unless God Himself has elected us to believe. The command, "repent and believe," does us no good. The law kills. However, the Spirit gives life. Salvation is ripped from our hands. We can only trust and fear and rest only in another, in Jesus. We can stop looking at ourselves. We can also stop being afraid of teaching on the wrath of God, for the wrath of God and the love of God are two sides of the same coin - or, rather, the same thing seen from two different angles.