Tim Crosby
Ministry/July/1990
By the time of Christ some philosophers had come to the conclusion that
God, in His absolute perfection, is not subject to human passions and
emotions. He knows no distress, excitement, love, or anger. Philo, a Hellenistic
Jew who lived at the same time as Christ, wrote: "Some . . . assume that
the Existent feels wrath and anger, whereas He is not susceptible to any
emotion at all. For anxiety is peculiar to human weakness."[1]
We know better, for we
know that Jesus experienced very human emotions. And He said, "Anyone
who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9*). Scripture teaches that
God suffers with His children: "In all their distress he too was distressed"
(Isa. 63:9). God's tender love exceeds that of the most devoted mother:
"'Is not Ephraim-my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often
speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for
him; I have great compassion for him,' declares the Lord" (Jer. 31:20).
However, a strangely seductive
variation of the idea that God has no emotion is gaining ground today
and is widely accepted among Christians. It is the belief that God does
not get angry.
Modern theology tends to emphasize
God's love at the expense of His holiness. It overemphasizes the fact
that His love is unconditional (ignoring passages such as John 15:10-14:
"If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love. . . . You are my
friends if you do what I command") and tends to depersonalize the concept
of retribution. The universe, it is said, is like a live wire that automatically
burns those who get into the wrong relationship to it. But, as C. S. Lewis
pointed out, those who substitute the picture of a live wire for that
of an offended Deity do not realize that they have deprived us of all
hope, for an offended Deity can forgive, but a live wire cannot.
There is, in fact, a great
deal of truth in the "live wire" idea. Scripture teaches that evil brings
its own reward (Hosea 13:9; Jer. 6:19; Prov. 26:27; 28:6, 10; Ps. 34:21;
37:14, 15). God's punishment of the wicked often consists in abandoning
them to their wickedness (Rom. 1:24-28; Ps. 81:12; Acts 7:42) to reap
its terrible results. Even when the Bible speaks of God destroying, the
destruction often is actually the work of alien armies or evil men (Jer.
33: 4, 5). In 1 Chronicles 10:14 we are told that because of Saul's transgression,
the Lord "slew him" (RSV), yet verse 4 says that Saul "took his own sword,
and fell upon it" (RSV). The idea of retribution as a natural process
might be further supported from those texts that speak of sowing and reaping
(Prov. 22:8; Hosea 10:13; Gal. 6:7-9; Job 4:8). But these texts hardly
imply that damnation is a natural result of our evil deeds any more than
they imply that salvation is a natural result of our good works.
Although God's retribution
is often indirect, there is also overwhelming scriptural testimony to
God's active, direct vengeance. Those fundamental Old Testament passages
that define God's character affirm that He is both extremely kind, loving,
and forgiving, and extremely zealous in punishing and avenging (Ex. 20:5;
34:6, 7; Deut. 7:9, 10). The authors of Scripture see no difficulty in
this at all, nor do they shrink from presenting God's vengeance as a salient
aspect of His character (Deut. 32: 41-43; Ps. 94:1; Isa. 1:24; Eze. 7:8,
9; Micah 5:15; Nahum 1:2ff.)
Ah, but this is the Old Testament!
Don't we find a different picture in the New?
No. The same dual emphasis
is repeated in the New Testament: God saves and destroys (James 4:12).
We are told to consider both "the kindness and the severity of God" (Rom.
11:22, RSV). One of the most intense pictures of God's vengeance is found
in Revelation 19:11-21-and this is a portrayal of the Son! The
same Testament that says "God is love" also says "God is a consuming fire."
He is the avenger (Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30). Even Jesus got angry (Mark
3:5; compare Rev. 6:16). He destroyed the fig tree and threw the robbers
out of the Temple (Mark 11:12-17). Jesus also spoke of the wrath of God
(John 3:36); and portrayed God as a king who relentlessly punished and
destroyed the impenitent (Matt. 18:34, 35; 22:7; Luke 12:46; 19:27). Thus
the divine wrath is as clearly taught in the New Testament as in the Old.
Righteous
Indignation
Of course, human anger
is all too often fueled by wounded pride; we become petulant and vindictive;
we lose control. God's anger is not like this. But there is a righteous
indignation that is not only legitimate but essential. Imagine two individuals
who observe a group of thugs tormenting a helpless victim. One of the
observers shrugs his shoulders and walks away, while the other becomes
angry and forcefully intervenes. Which of them is righteous: the calm
one or the angry one?
Wrath is the emotion a just
man feels when confronted with injustice (see Judges 9:30; 2 Sam. 12:5;
Neh. 5:6; Ex. 32:19; Acts 17:16). To love the good is to hate the evil
that is antagonistic to it (Heb. 1:9); therefore anger and love are two
different sides of the same coin. Perhaps this is why it is John, the
apostle of love, who wrote the most graphic portrayal of God's wrath in
the New Testament-the book of Revelation.
The antithesis of love is not
wrath but apathy. And God is anything but apathetic. The second commandment
says that God is a "jealous" God. "Jealous" might also be translated "zealous,"
or even "impassioned." In other words, God cares-fiercely. Like
any good parent, He gets upset when His children go astray. God is not
love-dovey, namby-pamby, laidback, harmless, and jovial. If His children
are naughty, He disciplines them (Heb. 12:4-11), because He wants only
the best for them.
God's hatred of evil is just
as strong as His love of good. His holiness is benign toward right and
malevolent toward sin, just as a fire may comfort or destroy. His glory
is toxic to evil, just as oxygen, which is life-giving to humans, is toxic
to certain types of bacteria. God is matter, and sin is anti-matter, and
whenever matter encounters anti-matter there is a holocaust.
In Scripture, the problem that
perplexes the righteous is not "How can a merciful God destroy?" but just
the opposite: "How can a just God allow evil to go unchecked?" (Ps. 73;
79:10; 94:1-7; Hab. 1, 2; Rev. 6:10). Again, the scriptural testimony
is not that God does not get angry, but that He is slow to anger, and
does not stay angry (Ps. 30:5; Isa. 54:7, 8; Ps. 78:38;) Isa. 12:1; Hosea
11:9; 14:1; Micah 7:18). The modern embarrassment with God's wrath is
unknown to Scripture.
Anthropomorphism?
Some have suggested
that statements about God's wrath are just an anthropomorphism, a concession
to the times. But there is no reason to assume this, for it is impossible
to find even a single text that says that God never kills or gets angry.
If allusions to God's wrath are just culture-conditioned figures of speech,
then perhaps assertions of His love are equally unreliable.
Some writers would go so far
as to maintain that God does not kill; He merely allows Satan to take
life whenever it suits His purposes. Nor only is this viewpoint scripturally
invalid; it is based on the illogical assumption that Satan is always
willing to cooperate with God by destroying his own agents who are hindering
God's will! And even if it were true, it would not protect God from responsibility
for people's death. Although David did not personally take the life of
Uriah, he is still accused of having "struck down Uriah the Hittitie with
the sword" (2 Sam. 12:9). Therefore, it does not help matters to say that
God merely "allows" Satan to take life. If God wills for demons rather
than angels to destroy, how does that make Him less responsible?
Another argument that those
who deny that God kills raise is that what is wrong for us must be wrong
for God, too. At first glance this seems reasonable. Surely God practices
what He preaches, doesn't He? If the law is a transcript of His character,
does He not keep it?
The analogy of the child-parent
relationship is helpful here. Many things that children are forbidden
to do ("Don't torment the cat") are just as wrong for the parents. But
some things ("Don't touch the car keys"; "Don't stay up past 9:00") are
not wrong in themselves; they are forbidden only because the child is
incapable of exercising adult responsibility.
The same is true of God and
us. God forbids us to do certain things that are perfectly legitimate
for Him to do. For example, God demands praise (Jer. 31:7) and accepts
worship, but it is wrong for a creature to do these things (Rev. 19:10).
God asks us to rest on the Sabbath, but He continues to work on this day
(John 5:17)-as do His human agents (Matt. 12:5). God forbids
us to take vengeance, but He does so (Rom. 12:19)-as do His human
agents, the civil authorities (Rom. 13:1-5). Vengeance in itself is not
wrong, but God knows that we cannot be trusted to carry it out fairly
in our own case.
But what about the sixth commandment?
Set aside for the moment the generally accepted scholarly position that
this commandment should be translated "Thou shalt not murder" and does
not forbid capital punishment or killing in war. Let us assume, for the
sake of argument, that it forbids all killing. Even if this were true,
would it mean that God Himself has no right to take life? No, because
life belongs to Him. I have no right to burn down another man's barn (eighth
commandment), but the owner has that right because it belongs to him.
Likewise, God may take away the possessions of any of His children for
His own reasons-something that would be called stealing if we
did it-because all things belong to Him. A parent may teach his
child not to steal from others and yet, without being inconsistent, take
away from the child a toy that the child is misusing.
God and Genocide
But does that justify
what some would call genocide? Let us examine a worst-case example of
the problem: the slaughter of Canaanites in the Old Testament. Here generations
of skeptics have found ample ammunition in their case against God. How
could God command His people to wipe out entire cities of men, women,
and children simply because they happened to hold different beliefs?
Consider the following thought
experiment: Suppose that you were out walking one day and heard agonizing
screams coming from inside a house across the road. Upon entering, you
saw a boy being held down on a table by several teenagers while a muscular
man, his back toward you, was sawing through the boy's leg with a carpenter's
saw. They boy was screaming in pain. What would you think of this man?
Suppose now that, upon inquiry,
you discovered that the man was the boy's father; that he was also a physician;
that he had just arrived at his home in this primitive and isolated village
to find his son dying of acute septicemia of the leg; that no sedatives
were available; and that tears were streaming down the father's face.
Now what do you think? A full knowledge of the situation makes quite a
difference!
In the case of Numbers 31,
I suggest that if we knew all of the facts, that which at first seems
a cruelty would be seen as a mercy, as in the case of the amputating physician.
Consider the facts we know: If one accepts the premise of a literal hell
and the Bible's evaluation of the apparently irremediable wickedness of
the Canaanites-and archaeology has confirmed the moral bankruptcy
of Canaanite culture-then God's authorization of their total
destruction is justifiable, even merciful, in that it entailed the least
possible amount of suffering for the smallest number of individuals when
seen in the light of eternity. Had the Canaanites been allowed to live,
they not only would have continued in sin, resulting in additional suffering
in hell someday, but they would have begotten offspring who would have
ended up in the same place. In addition, they would have corrupted the
Israelites. God told His people to terminate the Canaanites' lives in
order to prevent all of this. It was a case of less suffering now or greater
suffering later.
Difficult times impose difficult
questions upon us. In times of war, to end the conflict more quickly,
even the defenders of liberty, justice, and righteousness have made decisions
that brought suffering or death to the innocent. If great leaders and
good men sometimes find it necessary to let the righteous die with the
guilty for the achievement of a greater good in the end, then has the
Creator Himself no right to discriminatingly (see Genesis 18) destroy
evil societies?
Hell was originally intended
only for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41), but those who have chosen
to share Satan's character must share his punishment. It has been suggested
that God will leave the wicked to destroy one another, but would a just
God leave the weak at the mercy of the strong? How then could the degree
of suffering be proportional to the amount of light (Luke 12:46-48)? According
to Matthew 10:28, human beings can "kill the body but cannot kill the
soul"; only God can "destroy both soul and body in hell." Hell is a supernatural
extinction of existence; it is God's retributive wrath against sin.
The doctrine of hell can be
understood only as a manifestation of God's retributive justice, in which
the sinner is punished until he receives the exact amount of pain he deserves
in the light of his crimes. Jesus warned those who failed to make things
right with the judge that they would never get out of prison till they
had "paid the last penny" (Matt 5:26, RSV). The unforgiving servant was
delivered to the tortures, "till he should pay all his debt" (Matt. 18:34,
RSV). The severity of the punishment depends on the amount of light a
person has had (Luke12:47, 48).
Reform or
Punishment?
But the concept of
equivalent punishment, or retributive justice, is currently under heavy
attack. Why punish men in hell when there is no hope of reform? After
all, giving the criminal his deserts will not undo the crime he has committed.
Is not the only legitimate reason for punishment to deter or to reform?
Let us see what happens when
we replace the "primitive" concept of imposing punishment to match the
crime with a more "humanitarian" concept of evil as a sickness that needs
to be "treated" until the patient is reformed. Under the humanitarian
system, punishment would no longer be based on what is deserved. It would
not be measured (an limited) by any "barbaric" rule like "an eye for an
eye," but would be administered only as long as it served to reform, or
to deter others-as is done in some nations where dissenters are
shut up in psychological wards until they are "cured."
Uh-oh! Already our new theory
of justice is headed for trouble. "That's unfair," you say. Not under
the humanitarian system it isn't, for the offender is not really being
punished at all; rather he is simply being "reformed, rehabilitated, educated."
Such a system no longer deals with categories of justice and injustice,
of deserts and merits, but of sickness and cure. Surely rehabilitation
is not unjust! Under the new theory the offender is not punished until
the punishment is commensurate with the crime, but is treated until he
is cured-which could last forever.
C. S. Lewis provides a trenchant
analysis of the ultimate results of rejecting the concept of retributive
justice: "According to the humanitarian theory, to punish a man because
he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore,
barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives
for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the
criminal. . . .
"My contention is that this
doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us,
from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human
being. The reason is this. The humanitarian theory removes from punishment
the concept of desert. But the concept of desert is the only connecting
link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved
that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the
question 'Is it deserved?' is the only one we can reasonably ask about
a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others
and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is
a question about justice. . . . Thus when we cease to consider what the
criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others,
we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether. . .
.
"Only the expert 'penologist'
(let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous
experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter; only the psychotherapist
can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of
us, speaking simply as men, to say, 'but this punishment is hideously
unjust, hideously disproportionate to the criminal's deserts.' The experts
with perfect with perfect logic will reply, 'but nobody was talking about
deserts. No one was talking about punishment in your archaic,
vindictive sense of the word. Here are the statistics proving that this
treatment deters. Here are the statistics proving that this other treatment
cures. What is your trouble?'"[2]
What Punishment?
Why do sinners deserve
punishment? For the same reason that God deserves praise. We should not
praise God with a view of receiving some favor, but because He is what
He is. The purpose is not to change God; the praise is not offered as
a cause to achieve some result; it is simply due. Likewise, Adolf Hitler,
for example, deserves to suffer for the suffering he has caused others,
not to change him, or to achieve any result, but simply because it is
due. It is justice. If, in addition, his suffering has a deterrent effect,
or if it cures him, all the better. But retribution is required apart
from any deterrent or curative effect it may have. It is the moral analogy
to the physical law "for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction."
Anyone who works deserves to receive the wages that he has earned, and
the wages of sin is death.
Furthermore, the punishment
must match the crime. This is the principle behind the law of lex
talionis, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I would argue
that this principle is the very essence-in fact, the definition-of
justice. Unfortunately, a misinterpretation of the Sermon on the Mount
has led some to regard this principle as an abandoned relic of a primitive
mentality.
Most scholars (e.g., Joachim
Jeremias, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Arthur W. Pink) agree that Christ,
in Matthew 5:38-48, is not setting aside the law of lex talionis
as a judicial principle, but as a principle of personal vengeance. It
is wrong for the individual to take the law into his own hands. Vengeance
belongs to God (Heb. 10:30) and to His delegated agents. Although Jesus
warned His audience on the mount to "resist not evil" (Matt. 5:39, KJV),
yet in Romans 13:4 the governing authority in the land is said to be a
"minister of God, and avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices
evil" (NASB). Civil authorities have the right to avenge. But Jesus' audience
on the mount had not such authority. The Old Tesatmanent law of lex
talionis was given as part of the laws of the government of the nation
of Israel; but the Sermon on the Mount is given to the Jews who have lost
their sovereignty to the Romans.
Therefore, "an eye for an eye"
is still a valid principle of jurisprudence. Indeed, the lex talionis
principle-punishment commensurate with the crime-is
actually reaffirmed in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:1, 2; "Do
not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others,
you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured
to you."
The rest of the New Testament
also indicates that God acts in accordance with the principle of lex
talionis. "God is just," writes Paul. "He will pay back trouble to
those who trouble you" (2 Tess. 1:6). Note that this "tit for tat" response
is considered to be proof of God's justice. Hebrews 2:2, 3 makes the new
dispensation an intensification of the old, where "every transgression
or disobedience received a just retribution" (RSV). Colossians 3:25 and
Romans 2:5-11 speak of payment in kind for one's deeds. The parable of
the unmerciful servant concludes with a retributive judgment that requires
an amount of suffering equivalent to the crimes committed: "So angry was
the master that he condemned the man to torture until he should pay the
debt in full. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you, unless
you each forgive your brother from your hearts" (Matt. 18:34, 35, NEB).
Particularly revealing are
the Apocalypse's indications of the behind-the-scenes reactions to God's
judgments. The plea for blood vengeance on the part of the righteous dead
in Revelation 6:9-11 is eventually answered in Revelation 19:2, where
God avenges on Babylon "the blood of his servants." After the first three
angels have poured out their "bowls of God's wrath" upon the earth (Rev.
16:1-4), the angels praise God for His justice in requiting the wicked
blood for blood (verses 5-7), exclaiming "They deserve it" (NASB). Note
that this punishment is purely retributive, not corrective, for at this
point in history the wicked are beyond repentance (verses 9, 11); probation
has closed. It is clear that God works on the principle of "an eye for
an eye" and that the angels find this praiseworthy.
One last point. The "no-wrath"
position-robs even the biblical statements about God's love and mercy
of all force, for without wrath, there is no mercy. When a parent serves
a child a meal, this is not a mercy, but a duty. But if the child disobeys,
and for punishment is sent to his room without supper, and then the parent
relents and serves him a meal in his room, this is mercy, because only
wrath is to be expected. Thus unless we take seriously the scriptural
testimony about God's wrath, we can discover no need for His mercy.
It is easy to slip from the
truth of "God is love" into its counterfeit: "God is nice." It seems much
safer to serve a tame God, always gentle, ever the lamb, never the lion.
But as long as the Bible remains our creed, this caricature of God must
be rejected.
______________
[1].
Quod Deus Sit Immutabailis 52.
[2]. C. S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,"
in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 287-289.
*Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in this article are from the New
International Version.