Accepted By God, Not Exempt From His Wrath

Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010 Posted: 2:13:57AM HKT

The dictum 'right belief leads to right action' has been repeated ad nauseam. There are different interpretations as to what constitutes right belief.

It would not be practical to examine here every doctrine of Christianity; a major doctrine, namely that of salvation, and even then particularly in regard to what the Bible teaches about judgment and condemnation, will be in view.

Judgment and condemnation

It would be well to begin the discussion with a contested question: Can the Christian be judged? There are several views on the issue. An extreme one would be that God does not judge the Christian, because all his sins, past, present and future, have already been judged at the cross of Calvary in the Person of Jesus Christ.

As attractive and clear-cut such a view may be, it finds no basis in Scripture. The Bible nowhere says God will no longer judge the world or even the Church. If anyone is contentious let him study the section in the first letter of Apostle Peter where it says that judgment begins with the house of God, the Book of Hebrews which contains many references to the judgment that awaits those who fall away from faith and the second chapter of Romans where it plainly teaches that trouble, distress, tribulation and wrath await all, whether Jew or Gentile, who sin against God. If there were no judgment remaining, what about the Great White Throne Judgment in the Book of Revelation that awaits one and all? Are Christians exempted from that? The last chapter of the Bible maintains that all who are sinful and disobedient will be judged and excluded from the New Jerusalem.

The Bible is consistent in communicating the holy God’s hatred and judgment of sin from Old till New Testament; there has been not the slightest relaxation in His penalty for sin. But in order to avoid confusion God’s judgment is best understood in non-relational, objective terms. As theologian C H Dodd has pointed out, God’s wrath is an impersonal wrath (to say that God is angry at every offence against Him would simply make Him a bigot as the editorial titled 'God Was Never A Bigot' has argued); it is not actually that God is angry with the sinner as much as that sin produces undesirable and painful consequences for the sinner and God suffers along with him (wrath more like sorrow). Like Newton’s law of Physics, God’s spiritual law – that sin will surely yield misery – will never change.

Well then, one may ask, how has Jesus’ death benefited mankind? In an incalculable way. To put it briefly, Jesus’ death is the supreme assurance that God will not condemn mankind for any of their sins, past, present or future. Christians believe that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was not merely an execution by evil authorities of a perfectly innocent Man; they believe that the crucifixion is the ultimate atoning sacrifice God accepted from Jesus as a payment of sorts for all the sins that the world has committed and that it will ever commit. By the cross Man need live in fear of God’s condemnation and rejection no longer; they can always have the confidence that God forgives them in spite of their past sinfulness and still accepts and indeed will always accept them. Jesus does not save mankind from the judgment of God – that is, the cross does not relieve people of the terrible consequences of their sinful behaviour – but He perfectly assures them of the forgiveness and acceptance of God.

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