Jonathan Edwards
Hath any man hope
that he is converted and sanctified,
and that his mind is endowed with true excellency and spiritual beauty,
and his sins forgiven,
and he received into God's favor,
and exalted to the honor and blessedness of being his child,
and an heir of eternal life:
let him give God all the glory;
who alone makes him to differ from the worst of men in this world ...
Jonathan Edwards
One of the nagging questions of theology that continues to present profitable opportunities to think hard is the existence of sin. Why did God allow it in the first place? This is a tough question, but John Piper has helped me partially answer this. I believe, as per my understanding of Piper's stance on this, that the world we live in will reflect the glory of God in the highest possible degree. That is, at the end of time when all is said and done, God will be revealed as more glorious then He would be in any other world. Christ's atonement will be seen with the uttermost glory possible. So, somehow, sin had to be part of that picture. Along those lines, I present this quote from Jonathan Edwards which declares that it is a more glorious work to uphold our souls in grace than it would have been had we never sinned to begin with; the display of God's grace and glory is greater in our sinning then it would be in an Edenic innocence.
So 'tis a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, then it would have been to have kept man from falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man. Jonathan Edwards, Sermon - God Glorified in Man's Dependence
Well there has certainly been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere about Rob Bell's newest book. I was actually thinking I'd like to start writing formal book reviews on here a bit more, so I'll leave any comments on Bell or his theology to such a time... I do agree with Chris as he said that confrontations like this should get well intentioned Christians in to their own bibles, reaffirming what they believe, and that's good.
I thought I'd share a few thoughts I had and a few, far more intelligent thoughts, some other theologians have had concerning the doctrine of Hell.
First, for those who may cite John Stott, or Martin Lloyd-Jones as other theologians who have questioned the doctrine of Hell (as I've read on several uninformed comments of blog posts that have criticized Bell) , remember that both Stott and Jones publicly contemplated the doctrine of Annihilationism. Annihilationism IS NOT universalism, nor does it renounce the doctrine of Hell... it simply says that sinners are destroyed rather than left to eternal suffering. It argues eternal separation can look like non-existence, or existence that is separate from God.
(It is also important to point out that neither theologian publicly supported this doctrine... it was a thought, or an idea that they gave some credence to. I've wrestled though this doctrine myself and would lean more towards a traditional view now.)
Now, a few things about Hell.
The bible doesn't exactly give us a detailed exposition of hell, but it does describe the fate of it's inhabitants and what they will experience while there with several adjectives, including: fire (Matt 13:42; 5018:8-9 and Rev 19:20), darkness (Matt. 25:30; Jude 13), punishment (Rev 14:10-11), exclusion from the presence of God (Matt 7:23; 25:41; Luke 16:19 and 2 Thess. 1:9), restlessness (Rev 14:11), second death (Rev 2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8), and the weeping and gnashing of teeth we all hear (Matt 13:42 among others).
I like what Richard Niebuhr said of the ongoing attempt from liberal Christianity to ignore the bibles clear teachings on Hell. He says they teach of "a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross." (The Kingdom of God without America)
Interestingly, all the buzz in liberal Christianity is just being a follower of Jesus and loving people. It seems as though the issues emergent types have with the bible primarily comes from Paul's teachings (church discipline, celibacy, sobriety and clear condemnation of homosexuality) but Niebuhr goes on to remind us that Jesus talked more of Hell than he did Heaven, or the Kingdom and he speaks more on Hell than anyone else in Scripture.
Mark Driscoll, in DOCTRINE, says "Amazingly, 13 percent of anything [Jesus] says is about hell and judgment; more than half his parables relate to the eternal judgment of sinners." (Cited in Doctrine by Mark Driscoll, from "What Ever Happened to Hell?" by John Blanchard)
Another interesting point that Driscoll makes in "Doctrine" is reminding us that hell isn't anything like the cartoons or modern pop-culture depicts it to be. It IS NOT a place where Satan rules. The devil ruling in hell (like so many of our theological assumptions, look for the term "apple" in Genesis in a real translation of the bible-- no I don't consider NLT or The Message real translations) is an idea we get from John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which the Devil arrogantly declares: "It's better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven".
The Devil, like all who die separated from Christ, are describes as those who:
"will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
Revelation 14:10-11
Hell is real and terrible. It is eternal. There is no possibility of amnesty or reprieve.
I think our attitude towards hell ought to be the same as our Father's... who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but pleads with them to turn from their evil ways (Ezek 18:23; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9).
Jesus weeps for Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44)
Paul has "great sorrow and unceasing anguish" in his heart. (Rom 9:2-3)
Charles Spurgeon rightly began a message on the eternal, conscious torment of the wicked in hell this way: "Beloved, these are such weighty things that while I dwell upon them I feel far more inclined to sit down and weep than I do to stand up and speak." (Spurgeon, The Final Separation)
First, we need God’s wrath to keep us honest about evangelism. Paul reasoned with Felix about righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment (Acts 24:25). We need to do the same. Without the doctrine of hell, we are prone to get involved in all sorts of important God-honoring things, but neglect the one thing that matters for all eternity, urging sinners to be reconciled to God.
Second, we need God’s wrath in order to forgive our enemies. The reason we can forgo repaying evil for evil is because we trust the Lord’s promise to repay the wicked. Paul’s logic is sound. “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). The only way to look past our deepest hurts and betrayals is to rest assured that every sin against us has been paid for on the cross and or will be punished in hell. We don’t have to seek vigilante justice, because God will be our just judge.
Third, we need God’s wrath in order to risk our lives for Jesus’ sake. The radical devotion necessary to suffer for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus comes, in part, from the assurance we have that God will vindicate us in the end. That’s why the martyrs under the throne cry out “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (Rev. 6:10) They paid the ultimate price for their faith, but their blood stained cries will be answered one day. Their innocence will be established when God finally judges their persecutors.
Fourth, we need God’s wrath in order to live holy lives. Paul warns us that God cannot be mocked. We will reap what we sow. We are spurred on to live a life of purity and good deeds by the promised reward for obedience and the promised curse for disobedience. If we live to please the flesh, we will reap destruction from God. But if we live to please the Spirit, we will reap eternal life (Gal. 6:6-7). Sometimes ministers balk at the thought of motivating people with the threat of eternal punishment. But wasn’t this Jesus’ approach when he said “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28)? Sometimes we need to literally scare the hell out of people.
Fifth, we need God’s wrath in order to understand what mercy means. Divine mercy without divine wrath is meaningless. Only when we know that we were objects of wrath (Eph. 2:3), stood condemned already (John 3:18), and would have faced hell as God’s enemies were it not for undeserved mercy (Rom. 5:10), can we sing from the heart “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”
Sixth, we need God’s wrath in order to grasp how wonderful heaven will be.Jonathan Edwards is famous (or infamous) for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s still read in American Literature classes, usually as a caricature of the puritanical spirit of colonial New England. But few people realize that Edwards also preached sermons like “Heaven is a World of Love.” Unlike most of us, Edwards saw in vivid colors the terror of hell and the beauty of heaven. We can’t get a striking picture of one without the other. That’s why the depiction of the heavenly New Jerusalem also contains a warning to the cowardly, unbelieving, vile, immoral, idolaters, and liars whose place is in “the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (Rev. 21:8). It’s unlikely we will long for our final salvation if we don’t know what we are saved from.
Seventh, we need the wrath of God in order to be motivated to care for our impoverished brothers and sisters. We all know the saying that Christians are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good. The idea is that if all we think about are heaven and hell we’ll ignore ministries of compassion and social justice. But what better impetus for social justice than Jesus’ sober warning that if we fail to care for the least of our brothers we will go away to eternal punishment (Matt. 25:31-46)? The wrath of God is a motivator for us to show compassion to others, because without love, John says, we have no eternal life, and if we don’t share our material possessions with those in need we have no love (1 John 2:17).
Eighth, we need God’s wrath in order to be ready for the Lord’s return. We must keep the lamps full, the wicks trimmed, the houses clean, the vineyard tended, the workers busy, and the talents invested lest we find ourselves unprepared for the day of reckoning. Only when we fully believe in the coming wrath of God and tremble at the thought of eternal punishment will we stay awake, keep alert, and be prepared for Jesus to come again and judge the living and the dead.
I have spent a lot of time digging in to the doctrine of sanctification over the past several months, John Stott helped me out with "Men Made New" and now Thomas Watson is helping me out as well.
When we think about sanctification we seem to shy away a bit don't we? We think of everything it will cost us. It costs us time, energy, we need to will ourselves to study more, pray harder and give up some of our desires... we always seem to focus on what it costs us.
Most of the time you are encouraged to look above that. Look to the exceeding joy of knowing Christ and look at fulfillment and peace and living as we were meant to as the fruit of the process of sanctification.
Watson also has us look up, at what sanctification costs God. He argues that making the entire universe cost God MUCH less than what it costs Him to make one "new creature (2 Cor. 5:17):
1. When God made the world He met with no opposition—but when God is about to make a new creature He meets with opposition. Satan opposes Him, and the heart opposes Him.
2. It cost God nothing to make the world—but to make the new creature costs Him something. Christ Himself was glad to become man. In making the world, it was but speaking a word; but, in making of the new creature, it cost Christ the shedding of His blood!
3. God made the world in six days—but He is carrying on the new creature in us all our lives long. The new creature is but begun here; it is not perfected or fully drawn in all its orient colors—until it comes to heaven.
To the darkness of ignorance have been added presumption and wantonness, and hence there is scarcely an individual to be found without some idol or phantom as a substitute for Deity. Like water gushing forth from a large and copious spring, immense crowds of gods have issued from the human mind, every man giving himself full license, and devising some peculiar form of divinity, to meet his own views. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.5.12)
Bright, however, as is the manifestation which God gives both of himself and his immortal kingdom in the mirror of his works, so great is our stupidity, so dull are we in regard to these bright manifestations, that we derive no benefit from them. For in regard to the fabric and admirable arrangement of the universe, how few of us are there who, in lifting our eyes to the heavens, or looking abroad on the various regions of the earth, ever think of the Creator? Do we not rather overlook Him, and sluggishly content ourselves with a view of his works? (1.5.11)
God oftentimes, in his providential dispensations, meets with a man, and speaks particularly to the evil of his heart, as he did to Joseph’s brethren in their selling of him into Egypt. This makes the man reflect on his sin, and judge himself in particular for it. God makes it to be the voice of the danger, affliction, trouble, sickness that he is in or under. Sometimes in reading of the word God makes a man stay on something that cuts him to the heart, and shakes him as to his present condition. More frequently in the hearing of the word preached, his great ordinance for conviction, conversion, and edification, doth he meet with men. God often hews men by the sword of his word in that ordinance, strikes directly on their bosom-beloved lust, startles the sinner, makes him engage unto the mortification and relinquishment of the evil of his heart.
- John Owen -
from The Mortification of Sin in Believers, volume 6 of Works, page 49
... how richly does he supply us with the means of contemplating his mercy when, as frequently happens, he continues to visit miserable sinners with unwearied kindness, until he subdues their depravity, and woos them back with more than a parent’s fondness?
Nay, we have still stronger evidence of the proposition for which I now contend—viz. that a sense of Deity is naturally engraven on the human heart, in the fact, that the very reprobate are forced to acknowledge it. When at their ease, they can jest about God, and talk pertly and loquaciously in disparagement of his power; but should despair, from any cause, overtake them, it will stimulate them to seek him, and dictate ejaculatory prayers, proving that they were not entirely ignorant of God, but had perversely suppressed feelings which ought to have been earlier manifested. (Institutes, 1.4.4)
We are to love Him, not only better than other things, but singly, as only good, the fountain of all goodness; and to reject all fleshly and worldly enjoyments, even our own lives, as if we hated them, when they stand in competition with our enjoyment of Him, or our duty towards Him. (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, 2)
... we must be persuaded
not only that as he once formed the world,
so he sustains it by his boundless power,
governs it by his wisdom,
preserves it by his goodness,
in particular,
rules the human race with justice and Judgment,
bears with them in mercy,
shields them by his protection;
but also that not a particle of light, or wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause ...
(Institutes 1.2.1, line breaks mine)
