No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

For Faith and Belief I suppose.On the thread, The Politics of Assassination, addressing the morality of the very idea of assassination as well as the rightness or wrongness of Pat Robertson's statement of his opinion in a particular case, we kept veering off into questions about the meaning of God's commandments. Nuggin has proposed a thread on the Death Penalty off that thread for instance.I would like to propose a more general discussion of the perennial theme of the seeming conflict between God's wrathful judgments in all their forms as shown in the Bible, and the mercies that are offered by Jesus Christ. Many claim to be Christians who nevertheless reject God's punishments and in fact denounce the very idea in tones of righteous indignation, either denouncing God Himself for them or denouncing those who believe that He did such things while they claim He couldn't have.The thesis of this thread is that there is no conflict at all, that in fact you cannot have the God of the New Testament without the God of the Old, cannot have mercy without wrath, salvation without condemnation, gospel without law.I begin with my answer to a post by Prophex on this theme, in which he struggles with embracing both sides of the conflict but is unable to do it: Prophex on the conflict between God's wrath and Jesus' mercyYou have put yourself in an unresolvable muddle this way I'm afraid. The deaths attributed to God that you refuse to accept were God's righteous judgments based on His righteous Law, and Jesus came to die for offenders against that Law, so that you can't truly know Jesus or say that He is a part of your being if you reject the very righteous Law that condemns us all under the wrath of God. Our condemnation under the Law is the reason Jesus died -- to save us from that very condemnation and clothe us in His own righteousness as we are sinners with no righteousness of our own.I'm not sure it's all that complex as you claim. It's merely hard for fallen nature to understand, and that's because fallen nature is at enmity with God and refuses to submit to His judgments, instead regarding its own fallen morality as superior to His.The apparent contradictions you are talking about result from giving yourself the right to judge God. If you let God's word judge YOU then you will learn something about why God's judgments are not the atrocities people accuse them of being. They are lessons in God's Law and Justice. They teach what is an offense to the very Law that runs this universe, and by which all human beings will ultimately be judged when we stand before Him.God gave the entire record of the Old Testament to teach His nature and His judgments, particularly how death is the wages of sin, which is also clearly preached in the New Testament. He gave us His commandments to teach us what sin is, that is, what violations of the Law are. He gave the description of the sin, and He gave the appropriate punishment for the sin, and He also showed in His own punishments of idolatrous nations how ALL sin is ultimately to be punished at the end of time.Throughout these teachings He also showed what righteousness is, how it's all about loving God, trusting in God and doing His will and how He protects those who obey in this fashion, and is ready to forgive their sins because of their faithfulness and good intentions of obeying Him. He also teaches that He is merciful to all, however, and gives plenty of time to sinners to change their ways before He brings about punishment. Hundreds of years pass before His judgments are enacted against the violators of the Law, and then He sends prophets to warn them that it's coming too. The God-fearers repent, as Nineveh did, and the threatened judgment is put off until they fall back into their old ways.Throughout all this, too, there is the thread of the promise of a Redeemer to come. All the way from Eden through the prophets of Israel this Anointed One is preached. Adam and Eve who first sinned against God and lost their communion with Him, already put their hope in the Messiah on God's promise to send Him, to save them from the sin they had committed. Every righteous generation afterward put their hope in this Redeemer to come and their trust in the God who promised to send Him. Job was a Gentile considered to have lived in the time of Abraham, who understood that God had promised a Redeemer, a Mediator who would have the authority to plead his case before God.The things that offend the morality of fallen man in the actions of God all come from the refusal to own up to sin, to personal violations of the moral Law of God, and to acknowledge God's right to judge us for that sin. Once it begins to dawn on you that you are seriously in the wrong in the eyes of the God of love who made you, that you are the offender, that His law is just and good, then you become less inclined to find the fault in Him and begin to find yourself at fault for your rejection of such a loving Creator. You can begin to learn that in fact one single lie makes you a violator of the infinite Law that runs the universe, one single unjust criticism of another, one single lust in the heart, one single coveting of something that belongs to someone else, one single dishonoring thought of your parents or in fact any legitimate authority, and certainly your violation of the first commandment to love God with all your heart and soul which nobody can deny. All are offenses, sins, that NO human being can claim to have never committed, and all it takes is ONE to put you under condemnation by the Law. James 2:10: "For whoever shall keep the whole Law and yet stumble in one point{just ONE}, he is guilty of all {ALL}."Jesus said "If you love Me you will obey Me." And what did Jesus teach but the Law, which is what the Sermon on the Mount is, the spiritual nature of the Law, the inner sins the Law condemns, not just the outer. The Law condemns ALL. NO-ONE can escape it -- except by repenting as Jesus called us to do, recognizing that the Law is just and that we are hopelessly but justly condemned by it, and asking God for mercy and forgiveness -- which He has made abundantly available through the sacrifice of the Son of God.Those who call themselves Christians but reject God's judgments are on precarious ground. You can't have Jesus unless you know that all God's judgments are righteousness and justice and that you are condemned justly for your offenses. Jesus came to save us from just that condemnation. What Jesus is it you think you are following if you reject the Jesus who came to save from the very Law that you are so offended by?If all you do, as so many here do, is shake your fist in God's face and call His condemnations unjust, putting your own judgments above His, you just dig yourself deeper into your own condemnation and take yourself farther away from the forgiveness, love and mercy He is holding out to all through the gift of the Messiah Jesus.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-26-2005 10:16 PM

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