If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why He have to crucify Christ? Why couldn’t He just forgive our sins? This question is an important one and seems to make total sense. If God is truly all-powerful, surely He could have just forgiven our sins, right? Why did He have to commit what is seemingly the greatest form of cosmic child abuse the universe has ever seen?
In order to really be able to grasp the answer to the main question of this post, you have to understand God’s wrath. On the cross Jesus experienced the fullness of God’s wrath against the sins of humanity. When many of us hear the word wrath in regards to God, it’s hard for us to square that with the love of God that we hear so much about. God’s wrath offends many. For non-Christians, God’s wrath is just one more reason that keeps them from following God. For Christians, God’s wrath seems like a skeleton in the closet of the Bible that must be hidden or ignored. The irony of the situation is that God’s wrath, the thing that offends so many, is what makes the Gospel possible. Without God’s wrath, we would have no Gospel. Rather than being offended by God’s wrath, we should embrace it.
The fascinating thing about our modern-day embarrassment and disdain in regards to God’s wrath is that at the same time we are embarrassed by God’s wrath, we all love true justice. I don’t know a single rational person that is embarrassed or offended by justice. Humanity was designed to love justice. It’s no coincidence that we all have a deep sense of satisfaction when good triumphs over evil or when the bad guys get caught. We love that. It’s important for us to understand that God’s wrath is the incarnation of His justice. God is the most just being ever. When Christians affirm God’s justice but deny God’s wrath they are preaching a lesser god.
Saying God can be all-just but have no wrath makes absolutely no sense. God’s wrath comes about because of His holy hate for sin. God hates sin and evil just like we do. When we sin, we are consciously making a decision to turn away from and dishonor God. Sin is serious. We may try and minimize sin, but it is nonetheless a deathly serious issue to God.
If we were to see a man rape and kill a little girl, we would be crying for justice to be served. Many would even cry for the man to be put to death. No one would claim that a crime like that was worthy of a slap on the wrist. We would want a severe punishment to come to the man. What we have to understand is that our sin is just as severe as that. James 2:10 says:
“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.”
The moment we commit a single sin, no matter how minor think it to be, we have broken all of the laws God has set. This may seem ridiculous and harsh but think about it: the reason that sin is so serious is because when we sin, we are consciously turning away from the very being that gave us life and created the entire universe. God created us so that we could partake in a personal relationship with Him. Sin prevents that relationship from happening. Sin keeps us from being a part of the greatest relationship we could ever be in. That’s why sin is so serious.
If God is truly just, He can’t look past sin. If God looked past all sin, He wouldn’t be just at all. Instead, He would just be a powerful pushover. For God to be truly just, He must punish sin. There’s no way around that.
The interesting thing about justice is that we all cry for justice until we’re the ones being punished. All of us have tried to get out of or lessen a punishment. We’re incredibly selfish in that regard. When we cry out against God’s wrath, we show our lack of understanding of what justice really means. If God is all-just, He can’t just let us off the hook. And if God let us off the hook and ignored our sin when Judgement Day came, He wouldn’t be merciful either. Why you might ask? Because if God always let us off the hook then there was never really a threat of punishment in the first place and He didn’t really let us off the hook when you think about it. Mercy would cease to exist if there was no justice.
Sin is a matter of life and death. Romans 6:23 says:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is incredibly evident in the famous Old Testament story where God takes out the Canaanites. This story is often used against Christians to try and make God out to be a moral monster. How could God kill all of those innocent people? First off, nothing about the Canaanites falls under the word innocent. But secondly, God gave them every opportunity to turn to Him. God was completely just pouring His wrath out on the Canaanites because they had sinned deserved the wages of their sin: death. As soon as the Canaanites sinned, they created a chasm between themselves and God and deserved death both physically and eternally. If a Canaanite had turned to God, they would have been spared. The important thing for us to remember is that we, just like the Canaanites are not innocent and deserve physical and eternal death. We deserve to experience God’s just wrath and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves from that wrath. No matter how well we try to hold to God’s laws, we will always fall short. We are hopeless unless God provides us with a way out. This is where the cross comes in.
On the cross, Jesus Christ took on the entirety of God’s wrath against human sin so that we could be considered sinless on Judgement Day and have an eternal, perfect relationship with God in Heaven. What Jesus Christ was experiencing on the cross wasn’t cosmic child abuse, it was justice. We often think that the beating and physical act of the crucifixion were the worst things Jesus experienced. In reality, the physical pain He felt was nothing compared to the emotional and spiritual pain He felt when He experienced the punishment for all of man’s sin, which culminated in Jesus being separated from God until His resurrection. We can’t fathom that. The most loving and perfect relationship in the universe was severed so that God could be glorified and we could be saved from our sins. For all of eternity past, Jesus had been in perfect communion with His Father God. Jesus, the spotless and sinless Lamb, experienced the death we deserved on the cross. For God to be truly just, this had to happen. The cross is proof of God’s absolute justice and absolute love. God’s absolute justice is seen in His wrath for our sin being poured out on Christ and His love is seen because of the way to salvation provided by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Contrary to popular belief, no other story or event in history shows a clearer example of love and justice than that of the crucifixion.
Often times I’ll hear people talk about how the God of wrath in the Old Testament seems vastly different from the God of love in the New Testament. In reality, those two “gods” are actually the same. The Old Testament reminds us of the seriousness of sin and the just punishment for sin, while the New Testament reminds us that God has provided a way out from that punishment without disregarding justice. If we’re all honest, we want to believe in ultimate justice and a just God. At the same time, we want to believe in a God of mercy and love. Only on the cross do we see these things perfectly come together.
There is an objection that must be addressed when referring to God’s justice and wrath that we haven’t covered yet. Often times, people will claim that it’s unjust for God to eternally punish people for sins that happened over the course of a finite amount of time. To grasp the answer to this, we must grasp the gravity of sin. Sin like murder, lying, lust, etc. can be finitely punished. Some of this punishment happens on Earth through the governments God has ordained to uphold justice. But there are some sins that are of infinite importance. Those sins are the preaching of a false Gospel and permanently rejecting the offer to enter into a relationship with God. These sins have an infinite magnitude and therefore must have a punishment of the same magnitude. When you yourself turn away from God or you lead others away from God and a personal relationship with Him, you are leading them away from the very thing we were created for. It doesn’t get worse than that. When you freely choose to turn away from the Creator of the universe, the Giver of life, and the greatest being to ever exist, in order for justice to be served, you must be given a punishment of the same gravity. If you make a decision that has infinite repercussions, don’t be shocked when you receive those infinite repercussions.
There is a popular movement going around the Christian community that disregards God’s wrath. I like to call it the “Dating Jesus” movement. While these people think they are preaching a better, more loving Gospel by tossing aside God’s wrath, in reality they are preaching a lesser, pointless, and ultimately more offensive Gospel. That’s right, more offensive. If God doesn’t have wrath, He wouldn’t be just. If He’s not just, then there would be no punishment for our sin. If there is no punishment for our sin, then there’s nothing we would have to be saved from. If there is nothing we have to be saved from, then Jesus being crucified is cosmic child abuse. It’s only because God is just and because He has wrath that Jesus dying on the cross for us isn’t cosmic child abuse. By removing God’s wrath, people have not made the Gospel better, they’ve done away with it entirely.
If we take away God’s wrath, He is only a shadow of the God that the Bible claims He is. If we remove God’s wrath, God is no longer just. If we remove God’s wrath, then we have no Gospel. God’s wrath isn’t offensive, it’s necessary. We live in a fallen and broken world and we so desperately need a Savior. God provided that Savior in Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus experienced the punishment we deserved so we could enter into a personal relationship with Him. If we take justice and love seriously, we should enter into that relationship with God. Our culture is enamored by the idea of social justice. We love seeing justice served. There is no more just being than God and He’s waiting for us to recognize the justice served on the cross so that we can enter into a beautiful relationship with Him.
Unchaining the Lion 